With the appearance of Poppa Rivers, we are entering nightmare territory. Gruesome, the man is. Naked to boot. Hey, am I the only one here with any clothes on? (I take that back. I seem to have abandoned my customary modesty. The bony little Leary rump is there for all the world to see.) Poppa Rivers’s manhood is enormous. It’s not like I go around looking at such things, but this particular waterspout is hard to overlook. Poppa Rivers is covered with dried mud, the dirt sunk dark and deep into his many wrinkles. He has a drum fashioned from a cow’s skull, rattles from a snake. Poppa Rivers plays along with Hallie’s music. The unruly New York Americans dance, White Wings and Dummy Bakker, all of them, and all of them have brought naked bimbos along from the Forrest Hotel. Blue Hermann stands off to one side, taking notes.
Poppa Rivers spies me, and his arseholes-for-eyes pop open, and he comes dancing over. He appears to be doing the ha-cha-cha, a sashay from the Boom Boom Room. “Loof-weeda!” he screams. “You dumb fuck!” Then Poppa Rivers spins around and brandishes his wrinkled, mottled buttocks in my face. His fingers spread his cheeks and Mayday! Mayday! Little Leary’s entire body horripilates. It gets you-know-who to laughing. Yes, sir, Clay starts laughing, that laugh he had, like life was a circus and he had a free ticket.
Clay has appeared with Janey Millson on his arm. They both are naked. Janey’s body has a nice softness to it, although her breasts are a tad duggy, dragged down by gravity, worried by Life. Those two show up and I realize that this isn’t Manfred’s funeral (despite the enormous oaken casket over in the corner) this is the nuptials of Clay and Janey. Hallie changes the organ music appropriately, drawing out a Twilight Zone version of “Here Comes the Bride.” Chloe pumps the bellows so hard that she has an asthma attack. Clay and Janey walk down the aisle. There is drunkenness and fornication going on all about them. Poppa Rivers scurries up to the pulpit; apparently he is going to do the service. “Dearly beloved,” he begins—the man can barely suppress his giggling—“we are gathered here in the presence of God and this dumb shit over here—” Poppa Rivers wags his crooked finger at me “—to join this man together in you get the general idea. You may fuck the bride.”
Clinton begins to do so. Their coupling strikes me as particularly wanton.
Then there is a bellow, and the top of the casket lifts off. Manny “The Wizard” Oz, royally rummed, scronched, and whiskey-whipped, bolts upright and surveys the situation.
Manfred takes to the hills like a wild creature.
THIRTY-SIX
“YOU’RE CUT OFF.”
I wake up and suss out the situation. We are being tossed, specifically Iain. That’s going some, you get tossed out of the Boiler Room. In the fifties there was a knife murder here, and I believe they let the perpetrator finish his drink. But this stocky bartender is gathering up glasses and wiping the tabletop, affecting an air of nonchalance, and saying as how we can’t have any more.
“Why not?” screams Iain.
“You’ve had enough.” The bartender has the tone of voice of a lad answering history questions in grade school.
“Yeah, well, listen up, buddy-boy,” says Iain. “I am a paramedic. I know when I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough when a Sherman tank can roll over my tootsies and I don’t even notice. Now, bring us more boilermakers before I rearrange your gnarly puss.”
“Just leave, pally.”
“Fuck you!” Iain reaches up and grabs the fellow’s collar. The fight is over before I’m done putting on my overcoat. Blue Hermann finishes up all the drinks before the waiters can fetch them away. Then the two of us slowly make our way across the room and out the door.
Iain is all bruised up and purple. He fair glows in the dark. He has a cut on his forehead and is spitting blood. “I lost a frigging tooth!” he cries. Iain is on his hands and knees hunting for the thing. What he’s going to do with it when he finds it is beyond me. His glasses have vanished as well. Blue strolls around, using one of his canes like a blind man’s stick, and he finds them.
Iain saddles the glasses across the bridge of his nose and labors upwards. “Well, at least I got in a few good licks.” With the back of his hand, Iain drags a loopy thread of blood across his face. “Didn’t I?”
Blue Hermann, Ace Reporter, shakes his head sadly. “Not even close, son.”
“Yeah, but I sure gave those guys a tongue lashing. You should have heard it. Your ears would be burning.” Iain sighs heavily, wobbles in the moonlight. “Where now?”
“Bed,” the Blue man and I say as one.
“Me, I’m ready for love.” Iain giggles, stumbles over to the other side of the walkway. “Just joking. Not ready for love. Totally unsuitable, in fact. Not built for it. Oh, well. How’s about a little drinky-poo?”
There is further commotion in the tavern doorway. My son Clifford is battling all three of the bouncers and two of the heftiest waiters. Cliffy is handling himself well, wielding his magnificent belly like a battering ball, unleashing smooth, straight punches with his beefy hams. The gormless boy is biting his tongue with concentration, and his eyes are reddened by rage. His opponents give him the sort of respect they’d give to a rabid dog. For the most part they stay their distance, only venturing in when there’s a chance to do true and permanent damage. Clifford smacks one on top of the head and drops him. Then another (who has been standing away from the fray, surveying the action) spies Cliffy’s Achille’s heel. The lout rushes in and elbows my son soundly in the gut. The air rushes out of his body and with a cry of “Poppa!” Clifford timbers. The bouncers and waiters clear out of the way. They wipe their hands. One of them even affects a disdainful spit, but it’s obvious to us and to them that they were lucky. They hurry inside before the gormless boy can lumber to his feet.
“Fuck a duck,” says Cliff.
“What were you doing, boy?” My throat is almost too tight for speech.
“I thought Iain was in a fight!” he moans.
“Well, technically” says Iain.
“We showed them,” says Clifford. He’s made it as far as his knees. I don’t like to see him on his knees like that. “We didn’t pay for that last round.”
I attempt to haul him up. He won’t budge. Iain and Hermann come to assist, and with some effort we’ve got the lad on his huge, fat feet.
Iain is urinating against the side of a building. Actually he’s just spraying the edifice owing to gravity and such similar natural forces; he’s aiming for the Dogstar Sirius.
My gormless boy decides to join Iain. He reaches around his belly and with some toil draws out his short, squat tool. His beer-fueled stream lands only inches away from the high toes of his shoes.
I tell him, “You can’t drive, boy, you’re too drunk.”
“No probs, Poppa. I can drive.”
“Remember what happened,” I tell him.
“What happened, Poppa?”
“To your brother.”
Clifford replaces himself. He needs to hop up and down in order to do his zip. “Lemme see. My brother drove into a telephone pole. I don’t think I want to do that.”
“Drunk, he was. Drunk as anything.”
“Poppa, you don’t think it was an accident?”
“All right. Enough.” Blue Hermann speaks quietly, but his voice registers. “Let’s go to our room. Clifford can take a room at the hotel.”
“It’s kind of pricey,” says Cliffy.
“I’ll pay,” says I.
“Well, then, fuck a duck.”
As quick as that, it starts to snow. The flakes tumble downwards, big and wet. You can feel them as they settle onto you. Iain darts around, plucking snowflakes out of the air. “I just know,” he tells us, “that two of these boogers are the same!”
“They all look the same to me,” grumbles Blue Hermann.
Clifford splays out his palm and waits for things to land in it.
“Oh, well, ‘it’s lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you …’ ”
The man can’t carry a tune
in a suitcase.
“Percival, my precious” he hails me. “Let’s you and I have some sort of a contest. A race, perhaps. Or a fight!”
“No fair, Clay. After all, I am old. Agèd and infirm.”
“Don’t complain too much, little one. I’m dead.”
“Clay?” asks Blue Hermann.
“Can you see him, Blue?”
“Did you say Clay, Leary?”
“Aha!” Iain has both hands held out, his thumbs and pointers pressed tightly together. “These two!” he shouts. “Identical!”
Clifford is giggling.
Blue Hermann looks like he’s got hair again, the snow piling up on top of his gleaming bald pate. “My sister said, come live with me in Florida. But me, I decide to stay in Canada. Brilliant.”
I says, “You may have made something of a gaffe there, Blue-boy.”
“Well,” the scribe says vaguely, “I had promises to keep.”
Then all of a sudden I get beaned by a snowball! It’s a soft, mushy one, packed only hard enough to sail it through the sky, and it explodes across my forehead. “What bastard done that?” I scream. Meantime, Iain is giggling like a circus seal. “Two can play at that game!” I shout. What, does he think I’ve forgotten how to fashion a snowball? I even got my own method, quick and efficient. First I take a handful of snow and squeeze it hard, squeeze it down to about the size of a walnut. I set that down and roll it back and forth, side to side, and it quick picks up a couple layers, each about an inch thick. Then I compact that, apply a rub for luster and glaze, and I am armed. The problem with snowball fights (actually, what gets your heart beating like a marching band) is that while you’re making your snowball, someone else is making theirs. You’re crouched and semiprotected during the construction, but once you stand up to fire, you’re a dead duck. This is where the Inner Eye becomes very important. You have to aim before you stand up, visualize it in your mind. I stay hunkered and imagine where Iain is. I can hear his wheezly giggling (another reason never to smoke cigarettes, they give away your location during snowball fights), and I picture him there. He is standing up, something tells me, which means that he has a snowball on the ready. I got maybe half a second, tops. I clear my mind. No sense waiting. I pop up and unleash. There’s a whoosh and a gagging sound and the boy is choking on snow! “Ha-ha!” Now I bolt for cover. I’ve maddened Iain; he uncorks even though I’ve gone weavy. The snowball whistles past my ear.
Then I get beaned in the back of the head. This one stings! This one had a quarter inch of ice around it. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that it was a prefashioned snowball, made the night before and stored in an icebox. They ought to make those things illegal. Someone is assisting Iain. There’s no way he could have made two snowballs to my one. “No fair!” I shout. “No fair, you bastards!”
I go down.
I didn’t see the slick of ice, buried as it was underneath the soft, new snow. But my fancy dress shoe doesn’t stand a chance.
The pain in my left leg is enormous. I decide against moving for a while.
A little red toy fire truck rolls in front of my eyes. It says CLARENCE ARMSTRONG LEARY in big bold capital letters. Son of a gun. I didn’t even know the lad could print.
I will not be King of the Ice now. Not with Manfred out there. He’s as big as a mountain, but he moves like the wind.
“Percival, my prince! Are you all right?”
“My leg, Clay. Can’t move my leg.”
“No, no, of course not. Cartilage damage, Little Leary. Your hockey-playing days are done.”
“But—”
“But the good news is that Pat Boyle, the slimy pederast, is no longer coach of the Patriots. I want you!”
“Sure! I can coach the lads, Clay-boy. I’ll fill the bucks full of vim and vigor.”
“Fine. Now, Percival, we have a problem. I have been offered no less than four players and quite a chunk of cash for one of our players.”
“Do it! We need men out there! Manfred can’t do it all alone!”
“The problem being, Percival, my pet, it’s the big Man-Freddy they want.”
“Manny? You want to trade Manny?”
“Of course I don’t want to, Leary-deary.”
“Who’s the other team, Clay?”
“The offer was tendered by a very good friend of yours. One Jubal St. Amour.”
“The Amerks?”
“The New York Americans.”
“You can’t trade Manfred to the Amerks.”
“And why not?”
“Because … they’re a wild crew. I don’t think he could—”
“He hasn’t had a drink in years.”
“Yeah, but you don’t know what it’s like down there.”
“He’s a professional hockey player.”
“This is so you can get Janey, isn’t it, Clinton?”
“That thought was the farthest thing from my mind. In fact, let’s just leave me out of this. It’s up to you, Percy, my pretty. Do we trade Manny or don’t we?”
“Let me think about it.”
“You don’t need to think about it. Your mind is made up.”
“Well …”
“Yes or no, Little Leary?”
“Trade him. Trade him to the Amerks.”
“God have mercy, Percy. At least I was in love.”
“And I,” says I, “am King of the Ice.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
THE SUNLIGHT IS LEAKING THROUGH THE WINDOW, but it is weak and cautious, far more trepidatious than, say, the maid, who stormed in here twenty minutes ago with her vacuum aimed like a bazooka. She took a look at the three of us and fled in terror.
I can’t blame her. Over there is Blue Hermann. He lies on top of his bed sheets (but somehow knotted in them), naked to the world. As he snores, his mouth falls open, his maw both darkly gray and red as blood.
On the chair over there, folded up like yesterday’s paper, is Iain. That boy was bad pissed last night. He kept me and Blue awake for almost an hour with whiskey-inspired lunacies. As he talked, Iain kept throwing little white pills into his mouth. He dug out Hermann’s secret stash of hooch and made short work of it. Sometimes he’d be laughing, and the next breath would find him close to tears. About every four minutes, Iain would introduce Ray Charles. “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Ray Charles!” After one such intro, Iain tumbled asleep. That’s what he is now, asleep, snoring fitfully, his long legs twitching like a mechanical dog’s. Iain has accumulated a total racktime of about fourteen minutes, and that was spent crumpled in the chair.
He wakes now, still tight as a tick. “The King is dead,” he mutters. “Long live the King.”
Iain’s eyes are red, and by far the brightest thing in our gloomy hotel room. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Iain announces, “it is showtime.” He springs, staggerish, to his feet. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Iain calls out in the morning stillness, “Mr. Ray Charles!” Iain begins to stamp his feet awkwardly, closing his eyes and twisting his face side to side, his features clenched in demonic abandonment. “‘It’s crying time again …’ ” He leaves off abruptly. “Kinger, Kinger, make my day.”
“How could I do that, son?”
“Why, tell me what day it is!”
“Sunday.”
“I hate Sundays,” Iain broods. “The righteous hit the streets.”
“Do me a favor, lad.”
“Sire, for you I would do most anything.”
“See if you can hail Cliffy on the blower for me, will you?”
“Why, sure!”
I practice for the advert a bit while the besotted Iain talks to the desk clerk. Here’s what I say: “Hello to all my friends across Canada and Newfoundland! This is King Leary, here with his good buddy Duane-o Killebrew to talk about the good old stuff, Canada Dry ginger ale. I been drinking it all my life. People ask me why.”
“Why?” croaks Blue Hermann, who is struggling to extricate himself from his bedclothes.
“Why the hel
l not?” I jump into my trousers. “It’s as good as anything else, I’ll allow. But, you know, I maybe should have tried some other stuff. Coconut milk, maybe. I never in my life tasted coconut milk, and might be it’s the puppy’s butt.”
Iain blows trumpety noises through his crooked, swollen lips. “Ladies and gentlemen,” says Iain, “Clifford Leary and his fabulous tummy-tum-tum! How’s it hanging, Big Cliffy?” Iain listens for a bit and then chuckles. “We won’t tell you-know-who.”
“Won’t tell me what?” I grab the phone out of Iain’s hand. “Tell me whatever it is, Clifford. I’m your father.”
Iain locates an empty whiskey bottle and with some vigorous shaking manages to coax out a few meager drops.
“It’s nothing, Poppa.”
“I know what it is. You got a woman in your room with you.”
“No I don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Beg your pardon, Poppa?”
“Never mind, Clifford. I’m just phoning to say good-bye.”
Cliffy yawns and I’m reminded of the gormless baby sucking on his mother’s tit. Cliffy never cried as an infant, but he yawned a great deal. “Hey, Poppa, I’ll see you a week Sunday. The Louses are going to play the team from Hope.”
“I wish them luck, boy. You stick with those Louses, Clifford. I know they’ll win soon.”
“Oh, yeah. I’m gonna stick with the Louses all the way.”
“Now, Clifford …”
“Poppa?”
“Cliff, I want you to listen very carefully to what I’m going to tell you. It’s about the accident, when I hurt my knee.”
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