But the big excitement for us was hearing Malcolm tell about his old Aunt Sally and her dog. The old lady lived in Troy Hill but kept up with the news of the neighborhood because she still had distant relatives living at the top of the street. Her family had lived there since it was known as Allegheny City, and in fact she still owned the building the bar occupied and the house next door that she rented out to a welfare family. That always graveled Malcolm, he’d go on for a good hour about how the house next door was going practically rent free to that family on the roll when he could get three or four times more for it if he had any say about it. Also, he lived upstairs over the bar, and the people renting the house next door were a noisy bunch with that girl of theirs bringing men back to sit on their stoop at all hours. It was going shabby, no argument about it, and becoming an eyesore for the neighborhood.
“‘Look at that dawg. That dawg is dead, Aunt Sally,’” he told us he’d say to the old lady, hoping she’d get the idea for herself. She was close to the dog, about all she cared about. He’d visit her every Sunday, but more than a social call, he’d come to check out her breathing since she was connected to some oxygen. “‘Everything connected okay?’ I ask her, sometimes I turn up a valve to make her eyes pop. It can’t be too much longer,” he’d say like he was holding his breath under water and then pour himself a shot of the Old Overholt he kept mostly for himself. None of us favored the whiskey, as one shot nearly equaled the cost of three Rocks, and then its sipping time was short.
He’d bring his aunt little gifts he’d somehow collected at the bar. One time he brought her a package of fruit jellies that was a promotion from the beer distributor, but they weren’t a success as they got stuck in her dentures and her mouth almost had to be pried apart. That was a good laugh. “Some sight, I tell you,” Malcolm said, adding fuel to our amusement. He figured he was her closest relative, and she had no one to leave her properties to, so why not him? So he’d get cleaned up on Sundays, maybe grab a package of peanuts from behind the bar, and head up to Troy Hill to sit with her through the TV shows she watched. The Christian Hour was a favorite, followed close by a program on family antiques people brought in to have their value assessed, and Malcolm would say he’d sit through all these programs, yelling comments into her one good ear and trying to avoid the dog. The nuts got stuck in her teeth.
The dog’s name was Mitzi and she looked like a mop head that might have swept up all the floors of the Salvation Army. And it was clear she didn’t like Malcolm, and had even peed on his shoes one Sunday during the The Christian Hour. He couldn’t understand the relationship between her and Aunt Sally; he’d tell us how she would hug the little animal, even give her a whiff of the oxygen now and then like it might cement the bond between them. “But I don’t care,” he said one afternoon good-humoredly. “A little baptism now and then is good for the soul.” He put one foot up on the sink behind the bar like some high school athlete being a regular guy. “When I get down to Boca Raton in all that sunshine, I won’t care if that little mongrel has taken a dump on me. I’m going to leave all you bums behind.”
So Malcolm had his plans for after Aunt Sally passed on. He’d sell the bar and throw the welfare people out and sell that house too. It was hard not to feel happy for him about his future; he’d get so excited about his prospects that his foot on the sink would start jiggling, and once or twice he even forgot to ring up a brew.
But when would this good fortune take place? Every Sunday he’d greet her and she’d be all rigged up with her various tubes and the oxygen pumping into her like she was a ten wheeler going west. Mitzi would be scampering about, raising up the dust, a creature gone mad with her own prospects, and the programs would be blaring on the TV. Well, it was no place for a sane man, Malcolm said, and a test of his endurance. Some of us sympathized with him and all enjoyed the scene as he rendered it. Then it was suddenly over.
The report in the Post-Gazette mentioned the oxygen and that a spark of some kind had set off the explosion. There was speculation that Mitzi might have loosened a connection in her play with Aunt Sally, and Malcolm in his report to the investigators mentioned that the dog had been especially active during his visit that Sunday, running up and down and all over her owner like she was a garden ornament. He said he must have got out of the house just in time, because he had been on the front steps as it blew, one window in her bedroom went completely out, and when he ran back in, there was nothing he could do. He did pull Mitzi out from beneath the bed. “I won’t try to describe what I saw,” he told us. “It’s a sight I’ll never forget.” He shook his head and looked at the Pirates calendar taped on the mirror.
So there was a lot of talk and investigations, one special note in the P-G of how Malcolm had saved the dog. He had taken her over as her lone survivor and was something of a hero. The police asked him a lot of questions and even questioned some of us — especially Jerry. Apparently someone had told them that Malcolm had talked to Jerry a lot about the blast in ’Nam that had crippled his lungs. Of course, all of us knew about that — Jerry talked about it often, sometimes to a fault. Meanwhile, Mitzi took up residence at the Buena Vista, and she was a cute little thing the way she went up on her hind legs to greet you when you came into the bar, pawing the air, her tiny eyes bright inside all that fluffy fur. It was as if she had always belonged in the bar, belonged to us. Meanwhile, Malcolm was busy consulting with lawyers about Aunt Sally’s estate — he’d give us full reports. He must have spent much of the fall downtown. And the cops kept coming around too, until finally they just quit, and Malcolm signed a lot of papers. “Here’s the ticket to Boca Raton,” he told us one afternoon, holding up a bunch of legal papers that he asked me to witness, which I did gladly. I didn’t read them, that sort of mumbo-jumbo is not in my line, and he set up a round for us to celebrate.
Then a whole set of new lawyers and officials began to show up, looking at the bar, taking measurements, and talking to the family next door. It turns out that Aunt Sally had left the whole kit and caboodle to that television program, The Christian Hour. They kicked out the welfare family next door and put the house up for sale. It was snapped up quick by a couple that looked like people off a cereal box — and with a child of about two. And they in turn hired lawyers to start the works turning to close down the place, saying the Buena Vista was a “public nuisance.” All of which came as news to us because we weren’t loud or disorderly and most of us were vets. All through it, Malcolm kept up his spirits like a guy on a sinking ship, but I guess the final blow came when this bunch of people walked in one afternoon and started measuring the bar and the back of the place where they planned to put a kitchen. All of us were told to find a new place to go, including Malcolm who had to pack up his things as well.
I kept Mitzi, and the two of us make pretty good company for each other.
Homecoming
by Kathryn Miller Haines
Wilkinsburg
He stepped onto the platform at the Pennsylvania Railroad Station and heard the Veterans of Foreign Wars Band strike up the national anthem. Mothers and fathers, children and wives had come out to see the returning soldiers. He scanned the crowd for Lorraine, but the mass of humanity crowding the platform did not include her. He felt his spirits sink. He’d tried to persuade himself she would come.