A BEER AND A GINGER ALE? was what Clay Clinton had to say. “How embarrassingly plebeian.”
Manfred and I found it hard to argue the point, not knowing what the word meant. Clay had just ordered some house speciality. It was just like Clinton to know what the house speciality was, even though he’d never been in the house before. The particular house was in a huge hotel. There were chandeliers on the ceiling and oil paintings on the walls. There were men with waxed whiskers and women with bosoms making escape attempts from the bodices of frilly gowns. Clay Clinton sat in the midst of all that, waving and nodding. At first the patrons just stared at the boy quizzically, but before long they were returning his waves, and before much after that they were dropping by the table. Many people assumed that he had suffered some grievous injury during the war, a notion Clay wasn’t anxious to dispel. “I’ll heal,” he told them all, “physically.”
Meantime Manfred was trying like a son of a bitch to sip his beer. Manfred hiked the glass up slowly, placed his lips gingerly on the rim, and then whoosh, about half the ale shot into his mouth. His first beer lasted all of fourteen seconds. A waiter floated by and dropped another frosted glass in front of Manfred.
“Oh,” said Manny, raising a hand, but Clay waved the waiter away.
My ears were buzzing on account of the ginger ale. I was spine-tingled and goose-bumped.
“I propose a toast!” Clay Bors Clinton raised his house speciality. “To the three of us.”
We drank the toast, another beer down Ozikean’s gullet.
Clay tapped his near-empty glass with his forefinger. Clinton had long, manicured nails. “Another,” he snapped, always curt with the hired help.
“I’ll try one of those,” announced Manfred. “A house speciality.”
“Drink while ye may,” Clay chanted, “for I fear the dries shall rule the day.”
Manny glanced up quickly. “You think there’s gonna be prohibition, Clay?”
“I do, I do,” answered Clinton. Then he slapped a dizzying smile on us. “And, my leaping lord, the money to be made!”
“You should hear the old mother on that topic.” “Rabid” would be the word for the mother. She wouldn’t have nothing to do with the Anti-Saloon League, which also billed itself as the “Protestant Church in Action,” but aside from that she was doing everything she could to rid the world of the Demon Rum.
The waiter came back with house specialities and cocked an eyebrow at me.
“Naw,” I muttered. “There’s a game tomorrow.”
“So?” That was Manfred. The word pounced.
I shrugged. “Just saying.” We were playing back-to-back with the Black Hawks, Saturday and Sunday afternoons.
“I’ll play good. Don’t you worry about that, Percival.”
“I was just saying,” I repeated.
“Don’t start on me, Little Leary,” muttered Ozikean.
“Jumpin’ Jesus, Manny, I was just saying!”
“How are the various loves of our various lives?” asked Clinton.
That softened Manfred some, and he started to smile. “Pretty good.”
I managed a shrug.
Whereupon Clay launched into a long and windy tale involving his seduction at the hands of an older woman when he was stationed at the OT camp in the prairies. I suspect it was more fanciful than historical, but it got the three of us laughing and kept us engrossed for the better part of an hour. In that time, Manfred ingested four more beer and two house specialities.
“Hey!” Manny shouted, after the story was done. “Let’s go somewhere else.”
“What did you have in mind?” asked Clay, raising his glass to someone sitting across the room.
“You know,” answered Manfred, “a tavern.”
“Oh, Fred,” asked Clay, “how do you expect to get anywhere in the world?”
“I don’t,” admitted Manfred Ozikean. “I’m already somewhere in the world.”
I’ve just won a real battle. I won it when Iain tossed the queen of hearts, even though anyone with half a brain would have known I was saving the ladies. For the past few moments, Iain’s been a bit distracted. I know what he’s doing. He’s looking for the black man with the little silver trolley. Iain spots him and waggles his fingers.
Blue Hermann is asleep, but his booze detector never rests. He opens one eye and mumbles, “Scotch. No ice,” and then returns to slumber until it’s served.
I shuffle the duckets. It’s not my go, but Iain’s not about to do it. Iain looks at me and shakes his head. “Let’s give it a rest, my liege.”
“You owe me money.”
Iain goes for his pocket, but not to pay me, to pay the black man with his gleaming cart.
Blue wakes up long enough to slurp down his whiskey.
Iain lingers over his brew, savoring every mouthful. He lights up a smoke and begins to whistle.
I look out the window. We’re moving through farmland. Things are darkening, the night is coming.
In the tavern, Manfred took over saying hello to everybody.
This was quite the place. There were men with waxed mustaches, but they’d been drinking so much that the booze had melted the wax and sprung all the hairs. And, with these women, one or two bosoms had made successful escape attempts from the bodices of frilly gowns. The walls and ceiling of the joint were covered with brickety-brack and purplish daguerreotypes of baseball players and naked ladies. There was, or so I seem to recall, a goat in the joint. It wandered around snacking on people’s trousers and shoes.
The house speciality at this place was nickel-a-bottle hooch strained through an old sock. Manfred and Clay had about seven of those apiece, and twice as many beers for chasers. I nursed a single glass of ginger ale.
Two women appeared, Hermione and Ginger. They were older ladies, by which I mean they were in their late twenties, and they were heavily made-up. Both had waists so tiny that even I could have wrapped both my hands all the way around them, and both of them had bubbles so large that the rest of their bodies seemed tagged on as afterthoughts.
A little man wandered over and started yelling in my ear, addressing the Great Debate raging between the wets and the dries. He was a wet. His breath was bad, and he had a nasty habit of digging his forefinger into my ribs. Hermione and Ginger were giggling with Manfred and Clay.
The little man started to cry in my ear.
Manfred got raging drunk. Not mean drunk, though. Manny started laughing and pawing old Ginger right through her dress, not that she minded. Manfred and Ginger disappeared—Lord knows what diseases she might have!—and Hermione and Clay wandered off, and before I knew it I was out in the streets of Chicago. Damned if the sun wasn’t coming up, making everything a wintry silver. I wasn’t afraid to be out on the streets alone; back in those days things weren’t half as rough. Oh, you might find the odd thug, but once you’ve gone toe-to-toe with Sprague Cleghorn, thugs don’t seem like much. I understand Chicago is mean these days, a city full of bad blood. My no-good son Clarence lived there for a couple of years, writing his pornography and poetry, and he got mugged seventeen times! Once they even took a knife to his face, and he had a scar across his cheek. The scar looked like a garden slug clinging to his face.
Clarence was arrested and put on trial for obscenity. Most terrible day of my life, almost killed his mother. And it wasn’t even good clean obscenity! That’s what cities like Chicago will do to you. Full of whores and perverts. Mind you, Herm and Ginger were whores, so that much ain’t new, and who the hell is shaking me?
I’m alone in the Windy City, just me and the gray morning, the empty streets and milk bottles. I need my sleep, that’s for damn sure. A professional athlete needs his shut-eye. Listen to him, Blue says. Blue Hermann? Leave me alone, you bastard, I was out late last night. Sure, I’ll score the hat trick again. I don’t know about Ozikean, though. Looks like he spent the night in a suitcase. Just a bit of sleep, that’s all I need. Toronto? What is this business about Toronto? We don’t play those Toronto boys until Wednesday. Don’t you read the schedule? You can pick me up and shake me all you want—it won’t change the fact. Look out the window? How can I look out the window, my peepers is shut. I’ll open them, all right, I’ll open them. Whoa. Big black city out there. Breathing smoke into the air like a dragon. I don’t know, I don’t know where I am. Keep calm, King. Slip open one eye and take a quick gander. Train station. Biggest I ever seen. Maybe I died, maybe I finally went and did it, maybe this is the train to Glory—there would have to be a Jesus-big station for the Glory-train—but I recognize that wheezy braying, that there is Blue Hermann, newspaperman, and he for damn sure ain’t bound for the Pearly Gates. There’s arms around my chest, holding me up. Lookee there. A tattoo of a bird. The bird gives me the heebie-jeebies. Iain. All right. Let me take a couple of breaths. Just a dream, that’s all.
“Just a dream,” says I.