Billy Phelan's Greatest Game (6 page)

Martin drove downtown and parked on Broadway near the Plaza, as usual, and headed, he thought, for the
Times-Union.
But instead of turning up Beaver Street, he walked
south on Broadway, all the way to Madison Avenue. He turned up Madison, realizing then that he was bound for Spanish George’s bar. He had no urge to drink and certainly no reason to confront
either George or any of his customers, especially at this hour. George, notorious in the city’s South End, ran a bar and flophouse in Shanks’s old three-story livery stable. He had come
to America from Spain to build the Barge Canal and stayed on to establish an empire in the dregs, where winos paid to collapse on his cots after they had all but croaked on his wine.

The sour air assaulted Martin as he stepped inside the bar, but he understood the impulse that was on him and did not retreat. His will seemed unfettered, yet somehow suspended. He knew he was
obeying something other than will and that it might, or might not, reveal its purpose. In the years when this came as a regular impulse, he often found himself sitting in churches, standing in
front of grocery stores, or riding trolleys, waiting for revelation. But the trolley often reached the end of the line and took him back to his starting point without producing an encounter, and he
would resume the previous path of his day, feeling duped by useless caprice. Yet the encounters which did prove meaningful, or even prophetic of disaster or good fortune, were of such weight that
he could not help but follow the impulse once he recognized it for what it was. He came to believe that the useless journeys did not arise from the same source as those with genuine meaning, but
were rather his misreadings of his own mood, his own imagination, a duping of self with counterfeit expectations. Five such fruitless trips in four days after his debauch made him aware his gift
had fled. Now, as he gagged on the wine-pukish rancidity of George’s, on the dead-rat stink and the vile-body decay that entered your system with every breath, he was certain that the impulse
was the same as it had always been, whether true or false; and what he was doing was giving his mystical renewal a chance to prove itself. He ordered a bottle of beer and when George was looking
elsewhere he wiped its neck clean with his handkerchief and drank from the bottle.

“I don’t see you too much,” George said to him.

George was, as usual, wearing his filthy sombrero and his six-gun in the embroidered leather holster, and looked very like a Mexican
bandido.
The gun, presumably, was not loaded, or so
the police had ordered. But any wino aggressive on muscatel could not be so sure of that, and so George, by force of costume alone, maintained order on his premises.

“That’s true, George,” Martin said. “I keep pretty busy uptown. Not much on this edge of things lately.”

“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 original: 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.

Martin never looked at the machine without remembering the night Willie Powers, the night slot man, went to lunch and came back pickled, then failed to notice an advisory that The Chief was
changing his front-page editorial on Roosevelt, changing it drastically from soft- to hard-line antipathy, for the following day. Willie failed to notice not only the advisory but also the
editorial which followed it, and so the
Times-Union
the next morning carried The Chief’s qualified praise of F.D.R., while the rest of the Hearst press across the nation carried The
Chief’s virulent attack on the president, his ancestors, his wife, his children, his dog.

There is no record of Hearst’s ever having visited the
Times-Union
city room, but a week later, during a stopover at the Albany station on the Twentieth Century, The Chief received
Emory Jones, who presented him with the day’s final edition, an especially handsome, newsy product by local standards. The Chief looked at the paper, then without a word let it fall to the
floor of his private compartment, and jumped up and down on it with both feet until Emory fled in terror.

Martin fished up salt, pepper, saccharin, and spoon to garnish his sandwich and coffee and, as he ate, studied the entries in the
Armstrong.
There in the third at Laurel loomed a hunch,
if ever a hunch there was: Charley Horse, seven-to-one on the morning line. He circled it, uncradled the phone receiver and dialed the operator: Madge, lively crone.

“Any messages for me, kiddo?”

“Who’d call you, you old bastard? Wait while I look. Yes, Chick Phelan called. Not that long ago. He didn’t leave a number.”

“You heard from Emory? He coming in?”

“Not a word from him.”

“Then give me a line.”

Martin dialed home and told Mary the news and swore her to secrecy. Then he called Chick’s home. The phone rang but nobody answered. He dialed the home of Emory Jones, the Welsh rarebit,
the boss of bosses, editor of editors, a heroic Hearstian for almost as many years as Hearst had owned newspapers, a man who lived and died for the big story, who coveted the Pulitzer Prize he
would never win and hooted the boot-lickers and eggsuckers who waltzed off with it year after year. Martin would now bring him the word on the Charlie Boy story, fracture his morning serenity.

Martin remembered the last big Albany story, the night word arrived that a local man wanted for a triple murder in Canada would probably try to return to the U.S. Which border crossing he had in
mind was uncertain, so Em Jones studied the map and decided the fellow would cross at Montreal. But on the off chance he would go elsewhere Emory also alerted border police at Niagara Falls,
Baudette, Minnesota, and Blaine, Washington, to our man perhaps en route. When the four calls were made Emory sat down at the city desk, lit up a stogie, and propped up his feet to wait for the
capture. We got him surrounded, he said.

“Em, that you?”

“Ynnnnnh.”