“I see you writing in the paper.”
“Still at it. Right you are.”
“You never write me a story any more.”
“I’ve done you, George, again and again. You’ve ceased to be newsy. If you decide to renovate the premises and put in a bridal suite, then maybe I’ll work up a story.”
“No money in that stuff.”
“You’re probably right. Honeymooners are bum spenders. But business is good, I suppose?”
“Always lousy. You like a sandwich? Fry an egg for you?”
“I just had breakfast, thanks. The beer is fine.”
“Okay,” George said, and he pushed Martin’s dollar back to him.
Martin sensed a presence then and looked toward the door to see a tall, shambling man in a suit coat of brown twill, collar up, lighting a cigarette as he moved toward the bar. Despite what the years had done to the man, Martin instantly recognized Francis Phelan, Billy’s father, and he knew his own presence here had a purpose. Forced confluence of Martin and the Phelans: Billy and Chick, now Francis, and yet more than that. The McCalls were part of it. And Martin’s father, too, in his bed of senility; and Melissa, in town in the old man’s play. A labyrinth.
“Francis,” said Martin, and Francis turned and squinted through half-waking eyes, pitiable visage. Martin vividly remembered the originaclass="underline" Franny Phelan: Albany’s best-known ball player in his time. And he remembered too the dreadful day in 1901 when the scabs and the militia were trying to drive a single trolley through a mob on Broadway in front of Union Station, and Franny, in front of the Railroad YMCA, hurling a smooth round stone like a fast ball, and laying open the skull of the scab conductor. The militia fired wildly into the crowd as other stones flew, and in retaliation for the dead scab, two men who had nothing to do with the violence, a businessman and a shopper, were shot dead. And Franny became a fugitive, his exile proving to be the compost for his talent. He fled west, using an alias, and got a job in Dayton playing pro ball. When he came home again to live, he returned to life on the road every summer for years, the last three as a big leaguer with Washington. Franny Phelan, a razzmatazz third baseman, maestro of the hidden ball trick.
Such a long time ago. And now Franny is back, the bloom of drink in every pore, the flesh ready to bleed through the sheerest of skin. He puffed his cigarette, dropped the lit match to the floor, inhaled, and then looked searchingly at Martin, who followed the progress of the match, watched its flame slowly burn out on the grease of George’s floor.
“Ah, how are you, Martin?” Francis said.
“I’m well enough, Fran, and how are you keeping yourself?”
“Keeping?” He smiled. “Orange soda, with ice,” he told George.
“What color orange has your money got?” George said.
“Take it here,” said Martin, pushing the dollar back to George. And George then poured Francis a glass of soda over ice, a jelly glass with a ridged rim.
“It’s been years,” Martin said. “Years and years.”
“I guess so,” said Francis. He sipped the soda, once, twice. “Goddamn throat’s burning up.” He raised the glass. “Cheers.”
“To you,” Martin said, raising the bottle, “back in Albany.”
“I only came to vote,” said Francis, smiling.
“To vote?”
“To register. They still pay for that here, don’t they?”
“Ah, yes, of course. I understand. Yes, I believe they do.”
“I did it before. Registered fourteen times one year. Twenty-eight bucks.”
“The price is up to five now. It must’ve been a long while ago you did that.”
“I don’t remember. I don’t remember much of anything anymore.”
“How long has it been? Twenty years, it must be.”
“Twenty-two. I do remember that. Nineteen-sixteen.”
“Twenty-two years. You see the family?”
“No, I don’t go through that business.”
“I talked to Chick this morning.”
“Fuck him.”
“Well, I always get along pretty well with him. And he always thought well of you.”
“Fuck ’em all.”
“You don’t see your kids either?”
“No, I don’t see nobody.” He sipped the soda. “You see the boy?”
“Quite often. He’s a first-rate citizen, and good looking, with some of your features. I was with him last night. He bowled two-ninety-nine in a match game.”
“Yeah.”
“You want to see him? I could set that up.”
“No, hell no. None of that old shit. That’s old shit. I’m out of it, Martin. Don’t do nothin’ like that to me.”
“If you say so.”
“Yeah, I do. No percentage in that.”
“You here for a while?”
“No, passing through, that’s all. Get the money and get gone.”
“Very strange development, running into you here. Anything I can do for you, Franny?” Franny, the public name. What a hell of a ball player, gone to hell.
“I could use a pack of smokes.”
“What’s your brand?”
Francis snorted. “Old Golds. Why not?”
Martin pushed a quarter at George and George fished for the cigarettes and bounced them on the bar in front of Francis.
“That’s two I owe you, Martin. What’re you doin’ for yourself?”
“I write for the morning paper, a daily column.”
“A writer like your father.”
“No, not like that. Not anything like that. Just a column.”
“You were always a smart kid. You always wrote something. Your father still alive?”
“Oh yes,” and ancient times rolled back, the years before and after the turn of the century when the Phelans and Daughertys were next-door neighbors and Martin’s mother was alive in her eccentric isolation. Francis was the handyman who fixed whatever went wrong in the Daugherty home, Edward Daugherty cosmically beyond manual labor, Martin a boyish student of Francis’s carpentry skills as he put on the new roof or enlarged the barn to house two carriages instead of one. He was installing a new railing on the back stoop the summer morning Martin’s mother came down that same stoop naked, bound for the carriage barn with her shopping bag. Francis wrapped her in a piece of awning and walked her back into the house, the first indication to anyone except Edward Daugherty that something was distracting her.
Edward Daugherty used Francis as the prototype for the fugitive hero in his play about the trolley strike, The Car Barns, in which heroic Francis, the scab-killer, was immortalized. Legends and destinies worked out over the back fence. Or over a beer and an orange soda.
“He’s in a nursing home now,” Martin said of his father. “Pretty senile, but he has his moments when a good deal of it comes back. Those are the worst times.”
“That’s how it goes,” Francis said.
“For some people.”
“Yeah. Some don’t get that far.”
“I have the feeling I ought to do something for you, Fran,” Martin said. “Something besides a pack of cigarettes and a glass of soda. Why do I feel that?”
“Damned if I know, Martin. Nothing I want out of you.”
“Well, I’m around. I’m in the book, up on Main Street in the North End now. And you can always leave a message at the Times-Union.”
“Okay, Martin, and thanks for that,” and Francis extended his right hand, which was missing two joints on the index finger. He will throw no more baseballs. Martin shook the hand and its stumpy digit.
“Don’t blow any whistles on me, Martin. I don’t need that kind of scene.”
“It’s your life,” Martin said, but even as he said it he was adding silently: but not entirely yours. Life hardly goes by ones.
Martin bought an Armstrong at Jerry’s newsroom, just up from the paper, and then an egg sandwich and coffee to go at Farrell’s lunchroom, three doors down, and with breakfast and horses in hand he crossed Beaver Street, climbed the paintless, gray, footworn, and crooked staircase to the Times-Union city room, and settled in at his desk, a bruised oak antique at which the Albany contemporaries of Mark Twain might have worked. Across the room Joe Leahy, the only other citizen on duty and a squeaker of a kid, was opening mail at the city desk and tending the early phone. The only other life sign was the clacking of the Associated Press and International News Service teletypes, plus the Hearst wire, which carried the words of The Chief: editorials, advisories, exclusive stories on Marion Davies.