The TV above the bar is showing the news.
Our top story tonight. Willie the Actor Sutton, the most prolific bank robber in American history, has been released from Attica Correctional Facility. In a surprise move by Governor Nelson Rockefeller . . .
Sutton stares into the grain of the bar top, thinking: Nelson Rockefeller, son of John D. Rockefeller Jr., grandson of John D. Rockefeller Sr., close friend of— Not yet, he tells himself.
He reaches into his breast pocket, touches the envelope.
Now Sutton’s face appears on the screen. His former face. An old mug shot. No one along the bar recognizes him. Sutton gives Donald a sly smile, a wink. They don’t know me, Donald. I can’t remember the last time I was in a room full of people who didn’t know me. Feels nice.
Donald orders another round. Then another.
I hope you have money, Sutton says. I only have two checks from Governor Rockefeller.
Which will probably fuckin bounce, Donald says, slurring.
Say, Donald—want to see a trick?
Always.
Sutton limps down the bar. He limps back. Ta da.
Donald blinks. I don’t think I get it.
I walked from here to there without a hack hassling me. Without a con messing with me. Ten feet—two more feet than the length of my fuckin cell, Donald. And I didn’t have to call anyone sir before or after. Have you ever seen anything so marvelous?
Donald laughs.
Ah Donald—to be free. Actually free. There’s no way to describe it to someone who hasn’t been in the joint.
Everyone should have to do time, Donald says, smothering a belch, so they could know.
Time. Willie looks at the clock over the bar. Shit, Donald, we better go.
Donald drives them weavingly along icy back roads. Twice they go skidding onto the shoulder. A third time they almost hit a snowbank.
You okay to drive, Donald?
Fuck no, Willie, what gave you that idea?
Sutton grips the dashboard. He stares in the distance at the lights of Buffalo. He recalls that speedboats used to run booze down here from Canada. This whole area, he says, was run by Polish gangs back in the twenties.
Donald snorts. Polish gangsters—what’d they do, stick people up and hand over their wallets?
They’d have cut the tongue out of your head for saying that. The Poles made us Micks look like choirboys. And the Polish cops were the cruelest of all.
Shocking, Donald says with dripping sarcasm.
Did you know President Grover Cleveland was the executioner up here?
Is that so?
It was Cleveland’s job to knot the noose around the prisoner’s neck, drop him through the gallows floor.
A job’s a job, Donald says.
They called him the Hangman of Buffalo. Then his face wound up on the thousand-dollar bill.
Still reading your American history, I see, Willie.
They arrive at the private airfield. They’re met by a young man with a square head and a deep dimple in his square chin. The reporter presumably. He shakes Sutton’s hand and says his name, but Sutton is drunker than Donald and doesn’t catch it.
Pleasure to meet you kid.
Same here, Mr. Sutton.
Reporter has thick brown hair, deep black eyes and a gleaming Pepsodent smile. Beneath each smooth cheek a pat of red glows like an ember, maybe from the cold, more likely from good health. Even more enviable is Reporter’s nose. Thin and straight as a shiv.
It’s a very short flight, he tells Sutton. Are you all set?
Sutton looks at the low clouds, the plane. He looks at Reporter. Then Donald.
Mr. Sutton?
Well kid. You see. This is actually my first time on an airplane.
Oh. Oh. Well. It’s perfectly safe. But if you’d rather leave in the morning.
Nah. The sooner I get to New York the better. So long, Donald.
Merry Christmas, Willie.
The plane has four seats. Two in the front, two in the back. Reporter straps Sutton into one of the backseats, then sits up front next to the pilot. A few snowflakes fall as they taxi down the runway. They come to a full stop and the pilot talks into the radio and the radio crackles back with numbers and codes and Sutton suddenly remembers the first time he rode in a car. Which was stolen. Well, bought with stolen money. Which Sutton stole. He was almost eighteen and steering that new car down the road felt like flying. Now, fifty years later, he’s going to fly through the air. He feels a painful pressure building below his heart. This is not safe. He reads every day in the paper about another plane scattered in pieces on some mountaintop, in some field or lake. Gravity is no joke. Gravity is one of the few laws he’s never broken. He’d rather be in Donald’s GTO right now, fishtailing on icy back roads. Maybe he can pay Donald to drive him to New York. Maybe he’ll take the bus. Fuck, he’ll walk. But first he needs to get out of this plane. He claws at his seat belt.
The engine gives a high piercing whine and the plane rears back like a horse and goes screaming down the runway. Sutton thinks of the astronauts. He thinks of Lindbergh. He thinks of the bald man in the red long johns who used to get shot from a cannon at Coney Island. He closes his eyes and says a prayer and clutches his shopping bag. When he opens his eyes again the full moon is right outside his window, Jackie Gleasoning him.
Within forty minutes they make out the lights of Manhattan. Then the Statue of Liberty glowing green and gold out in the harbor. Sutton presses his face against the window. One-armed goddess. She’s waving to him, beckoning him. Calling him home.
The plane tilts sideways and swoops toward LaGuardia. The landing is smooth. As they slow and taxi toward the terminal Reporter turns to check on Sutton. You okay, Mr. Sutton?
Let’s go again kid.
Reporter smiles.
They walk side by side across the wet, foggy tarmac to a waiting car. Sutton thinks of Bogart and Claude Rains. He’s been told he looks a little like Bogart. Reporter is talking. Mr. Sutton? Did you hear? I assume your lawyer explained all about tomorrow?
Yeah kid.
Reporter checks his watch. Actually, I should say today. It’s one in the morning.
Is it, Sutton says. Time has lost all meaning. Not that it ever had any.
You know that your lawyer has agreed to give us exclusive rights to your story. And you know that we’re hoping to visit your old stomping grounds, the scenes of your, um. Crimes.
Where are we staying tonight?
The Plaza.
Wake up in Attica, go to bed at the Plaza. Fuckin America.
But, Mr. Sutton, after we check in, I need to ask you, please, order room service, anything you like, but do not leave the hotel.
Sutton looks at Reporter. The kid’s not yet twenty-five, Sutton guesses, but he’s dressed like an old codger. Fur-collared trench coat, dark brown suit, cashmere scarf, cap-toed brown lace-ups. He’s dressed, Sutton thinks, like a damn banker.
My editors, Mr. Sutton. They’re determined that we have you to ourselves the first day. That means we can’t have anyone quoting you or shooting your picture. So we can’t let anyone know where you are.
In other words, kid, I’m your prisoner.
Reporter gives a nervous laugh. Oh ho, I wouldn’t say that.
But I’m in your custody.
Just for one day, Mr. Sutton.
A Conversation with J.R. Moehringer
What has happened in your life since the events retold in The Tender Bar?
The biggest change has been leaving daily journalism. I thought I’d be a newspaper reporter forever, because I couldn’t imagine a better job, but newspapers are going away, or at least atrophying into something unrecognizable, so I’ve left the Los Angeles Times and I now write magazine pieces and books. Also, I’ve become a nomad. I left Denver, moved to Vegas, then Scottsdale, then Napa, and now I’m about to move again—I don’t know where.
What has happened in the lives of other people whom readers met
in The Tender Bar?
My mother is great. She still gets fan mail now and then, very moving letters, often from single mothers seeking advice. McGraw is still in St. Louis, doing a radio show that’s wildly popular. Everyone in that town seems to know him, to love him. (I wrote a story about a homeless man outside St. Louis, and the poor guy didn’t know the name of the president, but he was deeply impressed when I told him McGraw was my cousin.)
Alas, several of the regulars from the bar have passed, including Dalton and Don and Joey D.
How did the publication of The Tender Bar change you personally?
A thousand ways, big and small, but one small example stands for all the others. The Tender Bar came out in Germany and I got the chance to go on two lengthy book tours there. One magical night I found myself sitting in a bookstore in East Berlin while a man read my memoir aloud in German to a crowd of about two hundred. As I watched East Berliners laugh and tear up and nod their heads at scenes from my 1970s Long Island childhood, I felt that oceanic feeling Freud talked about. I felt that the world is smaller than I’d always thought, that for all our surface differences people are alike in essential ways. And that’s been the overall effect of the book. It’s created connections with far-flung strangers and it’s deepened existing bonds with family members and friends.
The Tender Bar received much praise from critics and was much loved among readers. Did you receive any interesting responses from fans in the United States or around the world?
Yes, many, from all over. Italy, Rumania, Mumbai, Kansas. I got one heartfelt letter from a prisoner who said the book helped him let go of corrosive, lifelong anger he felt toward his father. I got a letter from a woman in her nineties who said my book helped her understand a long lost love, a troubled boy to whom she’d been a kind of Sidney. I also had a drunk ask me one night at a historic New York tavern if I’d ever read a book called The Tender Bar. When I said no he told me, kind of belligerently, to read it.
One particular fan, who happened to be a legendary tennis player, loved The Tender Bar so much that he asked you to co-write his autobiography. What was your initial reaction to Andre Agassi’s request? Is that something you would ever consider doing again?
I don’t believe in saying never. And of course there are many athletes and artists and politicians who I think are fascinating, so I’d surely listen if they invited me to help tell their stories. But it’s hard to imagine a more perfect situation than the one I had with Andre. Or a partner with whom I could be more in sync. He came to feel like a brother during the writing of Open, and that feeling, that friendship, is even stronger now.
You’ve written in many forms (magazine pieces, newspaper articles, books). Was there a person you profiled or a subject you’ve written about that you find the most rewarding?
There are few subjects I enjoy writing about more than boxing. I hope I get a chance to write about it again soon.
You write in The Tender Bar about growing up around bookstores. What do you still love about them?
Everything. Every single thing.
What are you working on now?
I’m starting to take notes and organize my research for my next book, another novel, and I’m trying to write essays and short stories in the wee hours of the morning.
What attracted you to the subject of Willie Sutton?
During the financial meltdown of 2008 I wanted to write about banks. Since the world had been held up at gunpoint by banks, I wanted to write about someone who held up banks. I felt that would be cathartic. Specifically I wanted to write about the most “successful” bank robber in American history, Willie Sutton. I started reading up on his life, his many crimes and prison breaks, the great romance of his youth, which led to his first crime. Then I found the story of him walking free on Christmas Eve 1969, into the arms of two newspaper journalists, and I think that was the moment I knew he’d be the subject of my next book.
Did the process of writing The Tender Bar help you write Open with Andre Agassi? Did the process of writing Open, someone else’s memoir, help you write Sutton? Or was the process of writing each book very different?
Whether you’re trying to get into the head of a tennis player, or a bank robber, or yourself, it’s weirdly the same process. You’re still trying to get into someone’s head. You’re still doing a lot of guessing. Strange as it may seem, our own motives and rationales are not much clearer than a stranger’s. Sometimes they’re less clear. So whether you’re writing nonfiction, like memoir, or some hybrid of nonfiction and fiction, like biographical fiction, you (and the reader) need to accept that the protagonist on the page won’t ever be the person in reality. Despite your best efforts, there will always be a sizeable gap.
Is there anything you would like to add to the story of The Tender Bar?
I can see picking up the story where I left off. I can see writing another memoir one day. But I think about Henry James saying it takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature; it takes a great deal of life to produce a little memoir. So I say one day, but at the moment that one day seems far off.
Discussion Guide for The Tender Bar
1. In the memoir, JR has a difficult childhood and family circumstances in many respects, but there are also many positive elements in his childhood, including a loving mother and grandmother. Compare Moehringer’s portrait of childhood to other memoirs you’ve read.
2. There are various portrayals of “good” and “bad” men in the memoir. What are the different definitions of goodness in men?
3. Alcohol permeates the memoir. In what ways is it both a positive and a negative factor in the lives of the various characters?
4. JR’s mother is deeply conflicted about her living circumstances. Do you think her experiences are representative of the struggles of many single mothers? Do you think she is a strong character? Did you admire her, or empathize with her?
5. JR’s grandmother is tremendously long suffering, verbally abused by both her husband and her son, and forced to put up with her husband’s stinginess and philandering. Did you find her a sympathetic character? Did her dilemma feel familiar to you?
6. JR’s grandfather is terrible to his wife and children, and mostly terrible to his grandchildren. Yet he has occasional moments of greatness, such as at JR’s school breakfast. What do you think motivated JR’s grandfather? Did you find him likable?
7. JR and his mother spend a good bit of time during his childhood looking at other houses, and the ways that other people live. JR even peeks in living room windows. Consider the ways that such comparisons might be a positive or a negative influence.
8. JR grows up without a present father. How do you think his search for a masculine identity compares to that of men who grew up with fathers—good or bad—who were more present in their lives?
9. The men along the bar are depicted warts and all—did you consider them positive role models? Which of the men was most appealing to you, and why?
10. At various points in his young adulthood, JR notices that the men in the bar have conflicting attitudes toward success in other men. What does this stem from? Was it familiar to you?
11. Sports and athletes are tremendously important in the memoir, particularly among the men—athletes are admired and even deified, and games and matches are focal points of drama in the memoir. The experience of sports can even become personal milestones in the men’s own lives. Consider the importance of sports to men and in their relationships with one another.
12. Sidney is compared to Daisy in The Great Gatsby. In what other ways do characters and circumstances in The Tender Bar resemble that novel, particularly with respect to class and aspiration?
13. In what ways was JR’s enormous ambition a positive element in his life, and in what ways was it the source of pain? Is this inevitable?
14. At the end, JR suggests that Sidney wasn’t wrong to have wondered about a young man who spent so much time in a bar. Did you find her sympathetic?<
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15. How did you feel about the epilogue, and the way that the events of the epilogue tied together the themes of the memoir? Did you feel resolution? Did you think JR had changed? In what ways?
16. Did you see yourself and any of your own experiences as a parent, child, man, or woman in the memoir?
Copyright
“What Kind of Fool Am I?”
From the Musical Production Stop the World—I Want to Get Off
Words and Music by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley © Copyright 1961 (Renewed) TRO Essex Music Ltd., London, England. TRO-Ludlow Music, Inc. New York, controls all publication rights for the U.S.A. and Canada
“Blue Sky”
By: RICHARD BETTS FORREST © 1974 UNICHAPPELL MUSIC INC. and FORREST RICHARD BETTS MUSIC. All Rights Administered by UNICHAPPELL MUSIC INC. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Warner Brothers Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, Florida 33014
“Got to Go Back”
by Van Morrison
© 1986 by Essential Music, all rights in the United States administered by Universal—Songs of Polygram Int., Inc. / BMI. Used with permission. International copyright secured. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2005 J.R. Moehringer
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the original hardcover edition of this book as follows:
Moehringer, J.R.
The tender bar : a memoir / by J.R. Moehringer.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-4013-0064-2
The Tender Bar: A Memoir Page 46