BLUE HERMANN, HAVING INHALED a couple of whiskies, lights up one of his dead ends and leans back. “I used to come here with Clay Clinton,” Blue whispers. He’s not whispering for secrecy, he’s whispering because a coughing jag has deprived him of gas.
“Clay liked it here.” The food’s arrived, although no one but for the Claire thing is happy about that. I’ve sucked on a few pale noodles, crunched on a baby corn, that should do me fine.
“One time,” Blue remembers, “Clay sat right where you’re sitting now and cried like a baby.”
“Uh-yeah? I imagine he’d just seen some motion picture. Those motion pictures could surely make him blubber.”
“No.” Blue Hermann shakes his head. “We’d been drinking all day.” It might be my imagination, but I swear that when Hermann just shook his head, all of the liver spots and various mottles shifted position.
“Right. Clay would get drunk and then start crying over some silliness. He’d sing songs and say poetry. The man was mostly hambone, Hermann.”
Blue Hermann spears a piece of meat and tosses it into his maw, satisfying his daily requirement of seven calories. He talks while he’s chewing, as disgusting a sight as you’d ever want to see. “Not this time, O your royal highness, King of the Ice. This time Clinton was crying about specifics.”
“Never happened, Blue-boy. This is liquor- and drug-induced fabrication. Hey, Iain! Hermann is commencing to hallucinate.”
“Specifics,” Blue Hermann hisses.
“Like what?”
“Something you and he did.”
“Clay himself done a lot of things, and sometimes I was around. But we were never in cahoots.”
Blue lifts his trembling hand and manages to snap his fingers. Before long there’s more drinks on the table. I guess Hermann’s finger-popping has a kind of alcoholic authority. “It happened in 1933.”
“In one-nine three-three I was coaching the Ottawa Patriots. Clay was general manager. We won the divisional championship that year.”
“True. And you lost to the Americans in the first round of the play-offs.”
“If you say so, Hermann.”
“I was there.”
“So was I.”
“The Paddies sure could have used Manny Oz.”
“Uh-yeah.” I spear an onion, ain’t onions supposed to be good for the blood, but to hell with it, I toss her back on the serving dish. “The world don’t always shake fair, Blue-boy. Look at me, for an example. The year previous, ’thirty-two, I’m playing as good as ever I was. I think I had twenty-some goals already that year. I was so full of ginger I could make a horse sneeze at thirty paces. And what happens? I break my kneecap all to bits, and that’s the end of the song. I’m hung out like Wednesday’s wash.”
“And you didn’t even break your leg playing hockey,” says the withered scribe. “Ironic.”
“Yeah. Things get ironic every now and then.”
Blue sticks out his warted chin and scratches at it. He’s affecting a poor memory, but I know the booze sops everything up like a sponge. “Now, if I recall, it was your son Rance—”
“His name was Clarence. And it don’t matter. All that matters is, I busted the ’cap, Jubal St. Amour turned me loose, and I likely would have starved to death if Clay hadn’t said to me, King, old buddy, old pal, come back to Bytown and coach the Pats.”
“He had a job he wanted you to do.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Yep,” says Blue, “Clinton sat right where you’re sitting and cried.”
“Could be his bunions were acting up. The man’s feet were in sorry shape. You know what else he had? Gout. A disease no one’s had since King Arthur and his Round Table stopped drinking the hard stuff.”
“And he called you a little Irish bastard.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Yeah.” Blue Hermann polishes off his drink. His hands have stopped shaking so much. Now they just modulate back and forth. Blue’s eyes are rheumy and his wet lips press outwards. “He called you a little Irish bastard and said, ‘Why didn’t he stop me?’ ”
“Why didn’t I stop him?”
“He said, ‘All the little Irish git had to do was say no.’ ”
Iain asks, “What’s the matter, Kinger?”
Clay asked, “What’s the matter, Percy, my pet?”
I says, “Are you sure it’s a good idea? You know, the Amerks are a wild crew. There’s always booze around. Jubal even puts it right in the dressing room!”
“If you don’t think we should do it, just say no.”
“King?”
“King?”
“It’s rather interesting, about Leary’s nickname. The King.” That’s Blue Hermann speaking. Don’t listen to him. They’ve been giving him some very nasty drugs at the home. “Now, some people have pointed out that there is an allusion to the Bard, but such subtleties are lost on Percival himself. It was, coincidentally, myself who popularized his nickname, but I cannot be given credit for having originated it.” Yeah, don’t listen to him. He’s got the heebie-jeebies, he don’t know what he’s saying. “That dubious distinction goes to a young hockey player named Richie Reagan.” Voiceless Richie Reagan was a winger with the Amerks, I remember him. Nice enough fellow. “This was in New York City. Percy Leary was the star of the New York American hockey franchise, owned by one Jubal St. Amour.” Sure, Jubal St. Amour and his moll, Hallie. Hallie would come into the dressing room after games, and the whole entire team would hush up like we’d gone to church. Hallie used to dress in silver and gold. When she passed by a light, you could see the shadow of her nakedness. “They were holding scrimmages at the end of a practice. I was there, from the Star.” That’s right, always standing off to one side, trench coated and fedoraed, scribbling into a little notebook. You were a good-looking young charlie, Blue, you always had that bubbly-bosomed blonde on your arm when you hit the streets at nighttime. “Leary was on the blue team.” Blue versus red. Red, white, and blue for the Americans. I was always blue. “And they take the puck down the ice. Leary applies the St. Louis Whirlygig to his cover and poof, he’s in the clear.” One of the great wonders of the world, the St. Louis Whirlygig! It’s a spit in the eye of gravity and sundry physical laws! “And Leary starts pounding his stick on the ice, you see, so that his teammates will pass the puck.” Boys, I’m by my lonesome over here! Give us the rubber, lads, I’ll tally one sure as shit. “But they ignore him. They pass the puck back and forth a bit and then shoot it at the net. The goalie stops it.” Of course he does. The shot’s got no mustard on it, a weak drive from a piss-poor angle. “Leary throws down his stick in digust and marches off the ice.” Damn right I do.
“And Richie Reagan says, ‘Well, who the hell does he think he is—the King of the Ice?’ ”