EVEN BEFORE IT CHANGED, Clay’s voice had a richness to it, and your ears were drawn toward the rhythms, the rises and the falls, the way Clinton always seemed on the edge of tumbling into laughter. That’s the sound I woke up to.
I opened my eyes, and the first thing I saw was Manny Oz—Manfred Armstrong Ozikean, really, because it would be some years before he became Manny “The Wizard” Oz, the Witch Doctor. It gave me quite a start, I’ll say, seeing Manfred when I figured I was likely drowned and froze to death. Manfred’s hair was long and red and appeared to be made out of wool. His eyes were black and a little crossed. Manny’s nose was wide and flat, and fashioned so that his nostrils stared at you like another pair of eyes. Manfred saw that I was awake. His smile was vanished before I was certain that he had smiled at all.
There never was a book Leary & Clinton Take a Tumble Through the Ice, but if there was it would probably feature Clay Clinton saying, “That was as tight as my Aunt Rose’s girdle!” because that’s what Clay actually said.
The pair of us were naked and bundled in blankets, sitting on a short wooden bench. Clay had a cup of soup in his hand and Manfred handed one to me. “Soup,” said Manfred.
“Luckily Manfred heard you shouting,” Clay explained, as if we were in one of those penny adventure magazines.
We were in a shack not much bigger than the outhouse up at Clifford’s cottage in the Muskokas. Much of the space was taken up by a black potbellied stove. Our clothes lay upon it, steaming and hissing. The hut had a floor of ice, and in front of us a square had been taken out of it. Water lapped over the edges, an odd glowing green. When he wasn’t sneaking quick peaks at me and Clay-boy, Manfred hunkered over this hole in the world and stared down into it.
“I heard shouting,” Manny whispered, talking more to the water than to us, “so I came and pulled you out.”
“Thank you kindly,” I said, the old mother having taught me to be polite. “I’m Little Leary.”
He said his full weird monicker: “Manfred Armstrong Ozikean.” His voice was so quiet you had to strain your ears to catch it.
Even that short conversation embarrassed poor Manfred. He took a huge gang hook, something that looked like an anchor with six sharp spikes sticking out of it, and dropped it into the glowing water. He fed out line in long, smooth movements. When he’d set the gang hook on the bottom of the river Manfred let it be for a bit, occasionally jiggling the line in his hands. Then he started it back up again, looping rope with quick, sharp turns, and in no time the gang hook was dangling above the water.
There were at least ten eels impaled on the thing, wriggling and squirming like a Blue Hermann nightmare. I could feel Clay stiffen up beside me. He was scared shitless.
Manfred grinned at us, his teeth arranged a little haphazard. Apparently this was a good haul. Clay and I managed a return smile, wondering what this lunatic might do next. What he did was open a little door at the side of the hut and one by one pick the eels from the barbs and fling them out into the night. Then he tossed the gang hook back into the water. “Eels,” he informed us. “Do you want some?”
We declined with all the manners we could muster.
To avoid looking at the forthcoming eels (did you know that people actually eat those black wormy devils?), I took a gander around the hut. It was full of religious artifacts, twice as many as the old mother owned, and the mother was widely regarded as something of a crank. There was a painting of the Virgin Mary hanging up. There was a particularly grisly statue of Christ upon the Cross that took up almost one whole wall. The wound on Our Savior’s side was wide and gaping.
Manfred wore a crucifix around his neck. It cut the gloom like the North Star. It was big, too, almost big enough to nail up a midget. Had Manfred been of normal stature, the crucifix would have stooped him over, maybe even broken him in half. But Manfred was six foot two, two-hundred-odd pounds, most of it muscle. When I first set eyes upon him, Manfred Armstrong Ozikean was thirteen years of age.
After a time, Manny seemed to forget that we were there, or else he simply got used to us, because he started smiling (for no apparent reason) and laughing (ditto) and singing little songs under his breath. Mostly he sang hymns, and once or twice he broke into some strange stuff that I figure must have been Latin. He was raking in the eels like nobody’s business, which, in my opinion, is what eel harvesting should be. Manfred nodded toward our ice skates. “I like to skate,” he told us.
“Do you play hockey?” we asked, the realization hitting Clay and me that with this boy around we likely wouldn’t lose another game for as long as we lived.
“Sometimes I play hockey,” he admitted. “My Poppa Rivers showed me how to play. He used to play with the soldiers. But mostly I just like to skate. To go fast.” Manfred shrugged.
“Is this where you live?” I asked, nodding at the tiny hut.
Manfred laughed. He had a boomy laugh, and if you weren’t ready for it, it could make you jump a couple of inches. “No, I live over in the valley. This is just a fishing hut.”
“Are you poor?” Clay wanted to know.
Manfred reflected on this and then shrugged. “I suppose.”
“I’m rich,” Clinton stated. “Little Leary is poor.”
Manfred turned and looked at me. His dark eyes glowed with excitement. “Take some eels home for your family,” he told me, as if this put the lid on the poverty issue once and for all. “Boil them up and eat them.”
“We’re not eel-poor,” I told him. “Just Black Irish poor. The old man has a job, though, working for the Eddy Match Company, so we’re not eel-poor.”
“My father doesn’t have a job,” Manfred said, tossing the gang hook back through the hole in the world. “My father has no legs.”
“Uh-yeah.” I nodded. “My old man’s got legs. Might not have any brains, but he’s sure as shooting got legs.”
“Hey!” shouted Manfred Ozikean. When something occurred to him, Manny let you know by shouting “Hey” in a very loud voice. “I have a whitefish, too. Do you want a whitefish?” Before we could say anything, Manfred had squeezed himself out the little hut door. He came back a moment later with a frozen-stiff fish in his hands. It looked to go three pounds. “This is good,” Manfred said. “Take this home for your family.”
Well, I’d be quite the hero if I fetched home a whitefish. I didn’t know that the Ozikean clan totaled maybe fifteen people, and that they were mostly dependent on Manfred for their grub. I thanked him and took it. Manfred spent a few minutes pressing Clay into taking home some eels. “Give them to the servants,” Manny suggested. Of course the Clintons had no servants, but Clay said nothing about that.
The potbellied stove soon had our clothes dry enough that we could don them and venture into the winter’s night. Our teeth were chattering and it would be about a month before I got warm again, but at least I wasn’t dead, for which I have Manfred Armstrong Ozikean to thank.
Clay told this story at Manfred’s funeral. Manny died in a hotel room in New York, New York. Some say he had a broken heart. I disbelieve in the notion of dying from a broken heart. At any rate, the man died, and Clay spoke at his funeral (attended by thirty people tops, mostly drunken Amerks) and he told this story of how the three of us met. He somehow contrived to make it sound like it was Clay Clinton who saved Manny “The Wizard” Oz.
The Claire thing hails me on the blower. This is maybe two or three days later—I amn’t sure. We don’t put much stock in days here at the South Grouse. I was sleeping, I think I was having a dream, but it washes away as I pluck up the telephone. “Yo?” The room is pale blue. They oughtn’t to paint nursing-home rooms pale blue, because that’s the color I expect heaven to be. They ought to paint the rooms lime green or purple, so when you wake you know you’re still in the land of the living.
“Kinger-Binger?”
“Yes?” I take a glance sideways. Blue Hermann isn’t in his bed. I hope he hasn’t popped, I don’t really want to be left alone. I look over to the other side, though, and see that our bathroom door is shut. If I strain my ears I can hear a weary grunting.
“Claire Redford ici.”
“The ginger ale person,” I remember.
This makes the Claire thing laugh, and that in turn makes me rip the blower away from my ear and hold it out at arm’s length. I give the Claire thing a few moments to calm down and then place the receiver back to my ear.
“—have a go-ahead!” Claire is saying.
“Go-ahead?”
“We want you in Toronto in two weeks.” The Claire thing names some dates, Saturdays and Sundays, elevenses and twelfths.
I grunt out “Uh-yeah” and pretend that it all means something to me.
“Is there a problem?”
“Toronto’s a long ways from here. I’d have to spend the night there, and I’m on medication.”
“You can practically see Toronto out your window!” says the Claire thing. “We’ll arrange for first-rate accommodation, and as for medication, well, my dear, who isn’t on some damn thing or another? I mean, this is why God gave us little pills! And—here’s the big surprise—Saturday night is going to be King Leary Night at the Toronto Gardens!”
“Oh.”
“It is so exciting! It couldn’t be more perfect!” I’m still trying to decide whether this Claire is a manor a woman, and when it gets going like this I get more and more confused. “Guess who Toronto is playing?”
“Who?”
“Ottawa! That means—drum roll—Duane Killebrew will be in town! The golden-haired cutie with the best buns around! I’ve managed to secure his services as well. I wish. I mean, he’s going to do the commercial for us. Visualize. Two Ages of Hockey Legend. Duane Killebrew and King Leary, arm in arm. Flutter my heart. Is this not Pfeiffer Award-winning stuff, I mean, shouldn’t I start dusting my mantelpiece immediately? What do you think?”
“Blue is coming with me.”
“Who is this, your faithful hunting dog?”
“Blue Hermann. Newspaperman. He’s coming to Toronto when I make the adverts.”
“Not a problem.”
“And—I think there might be someone else coming with me. One of the staff people here.”
“Bring a staff person, King. Bring a fucking entourage, darling, because these ginger ale people pop coin like Penelope pops pimples.”
“Okay, I’ll bring him.”
“Now get excited! King Leary Night at the Gardens!”
“They’ve had them before.”
“You get to meet Duane Killebrew. This is excitement, admit it.”
“All right, it’s exciting.”
“Ciao.”
I hang up on the Claire thing.
The toilet flushes, but it’s minutes later when I hear the bolt get drawn back (what does Hermann figure I’m going to do, barge in on him?), and Blue comes hobbling out. Blue needs two canes to walk, both of them thick as oak saplings. He’s got the Toronto Daily Planet newspaper rolled up and stuck in his armpit, a fate that even that rag don’t deserve. “It pisses me off,” he announces.
“What’s that?”
Blue’s got the john-to-bed lurches pretty well down pat. Anyone else would figure he was going for a tumble, but I know he’ll make the mattress safe and sound. It’s an alarming spectacle, though, particularly the way Blue Hermann allows himself to ricochet off the far wall. Once he’s safe on top of his bed, Blue grumbles, “This new Canadian Sports Hall of Fame.” He waves the Daily Planet at me. “Bullshit,” he croaks.
“I’m in it, that’s all I know. They got a whole display case for me.”
“Clay’s in it, too.”
“What the hell for? He never did anything sports-wise, unless you count whacking me in the giblets one time when we were sprouts.”
Blue tosses the newspaper over onto my bed. “There’s a list of everyone who’s in it.”
The small print makes my eyes water. I manage to pick out a couple of names—Howie Morenz, Eddie Shore—but then I am wearied. I throw the paper into the wastepaper basket. “What’s the problem, Hermann? Somebody there you figure shouldn’t be?”
“Asshole,” snarls Blue, and we both fall asleep pretty much simultaneous.