St. Patrick's Bed (Ashland, 3) (13 page)

I went in. Into the Legacy Lounge.

It was narrow, dimly lit, smoky blue. There was a jukebox in the corner, two billiards tables, three green-shaded, low-hanging lights over each.

A long, rectangular island bar ahead of me, wine-colored stools with backs on them. Red and white plastic pennants strung across the ceiling: "Bud Racing," and "Bud Driven to Win." In recesses at the back, I saw a dartboard and tables. The clock on the wall had a Budweiser face.

I counted seven men at the bar, two waitresses behind it. Nobody paid any attention to me.

He was on a stool, elbows on the mahogany counter. I watched as a match flared to life in his hand, saw the cigarette tip brighten as he sucked smoke deep into his lungs.

"You want chicken noodle soup?"

The waitress had one hand on a ladle, the other on the glass lid of the large tureen. The question caught me off guard, coming out of nowhere as it did. I leaned forward on my stool, stared at the offering. "Not right now," I said. "Maybe later."

"What'll you have?"

"Just a beer. A Bud."

A can appeared from a cooler beneath the counter. No glass. I snapped it open, sipped.

I had left one seat between Bobby Swiss and myself. We had breathing space, but I could feel him there. I could feel him. Beside me.

I looked straight ahead.

III

Tiffany shades over the bar, jugs hanging from hooks, glasses suspended upside down in sliding slots. I sat there for another twenty minutes or so, listening, watching.

Not counting the bartenders, eight of us: two groups of three, on opposite sides, at the far end of the bar. Then just us, here, a little beyond the middle.

I heard the chicken noodle soup lady say something that ended with, "... our union rep," and the guy she was talking to high-fived her. Raucous laughter. From the other group, I caught the occasional Goddamn, or Fuck You Guys. More laughter.

The condensation trickled in weaving rivulets down the aluminum sides of my Bud, pooling on the counter. I reached over the bar, took a cardboard Samuel Adams coaster from the pile there, placed it under my beer.

I sat there, wondered if Jeanne had gone to the Trail Drive-In with him.

At low volume, the six o'clock news came on the TV high up in the corner, the lead story something to do with the Oklahoma City bombing back in the spring. A still of the gutted Federal Building, then a shot of Timothy McVeigh. I focused on the close-set, frowning eyes, the narrow, pinched mouth on the screen.

"Maniac," said Bobby Swiss.

I turned, looked at him.

"Fuckin' idiot." The smoke drifted from his mouth, nostrils. "My sister was killed there." He swiveled on his stool, spoke to me. "She worked in one of them offices. Social Security Administration. Had a good job. Wasn't hurtin' nobody. I'd hang the bugger myself if I could."

He seemed to be waiting for me to say something. I'd driven hundreds of miles, waited months to talk to him, planned what I'd say, how I'd introduce myself. Suddenly, it all went out the window. I'd been derailed.

"I'm sorry," I said. And I was. For her. Not for him.

"No time for the past, though, right?"

I was quiet.

"Gotta move on."

The past was all around me. I had no idea what he was talking about.

"One good thing came out of it, though." He looked at me. Brown eyes, like his son. Like Adam.

I managed to speak. "What's that?"

"Made me think. I filled out an organ donor card. Keep it in my wallet, right with my driver's license."

He had moved on. The past was over for him.

I couldn't let it go. "Your sister have any children?"

"Two boys."

I waited.

"But they're teenagers." He tipped his jug, filled his glass.

I ran a finger through the cool sweat on the side of my aluminum can.

"They ain't kids. They'll be fine," he said.

I drained my beer. When the chicken soup lady looked in my direction, I held up the empty can. She brought me another.

I asked just to see what he'd say. "You from Oklahoma City?"

"Hell, no. I never even been. It was Lorraine, my sister. Married a fella from there. They divorced. She stayed, worked there, raised the boys." He paused, then: "That fuckin' McVeigh."

"Where are the boys now?"

"With their father. That's what I heard, anyway." He looked at me. "I haven't seen you here before, have I?"

I shook my head.

He waited.

I heard myself: "I work for a newspaper in Toronto. Canada."

He looked interested. "What brings you to Dayton?"

I thought about what I'd told the woman on the phone from the 7-Eleven. "Workin' on an article about the area."

"You a writer?"

I nodded. I was beginning to amaze myself.

"Goddamn," he said. "Here long?"

I shrugged. "Couple of days. That's about it."

"What you writin' about?"

I thought. Then I said, "Shift work in large factories. People who work them. Like that."

"You come to the right place." He inhaled the last smoke from his cigarette, ground it out in an ashtray, shook another Marlboro loose from the package lying on the counter in front of him.

"Delco?"

He nodded. "Yup. Most who come in here work there." He lit the cigarette, held the smoke deep in his lungs, expelled it in a stream toward the Tiffany shade. "Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company. Owned by G.M."

"What do you do there?"

"Goin' to put me in your article?" He smiled.

I looked down, unsure how deep I should get in. Then: "No. Just askin'."

"We make shocks and struts. I oversee the packaging. Make sure it's okay for shipping." He shrugged. "It's a livin'."

I heard my father's voice, me asking him if he liked his job at the
Star. It's a living.
I heard my own answer to myself, when no one had even asked the question, just as I hadn't asked Bobby Swiss—realized that it was one of the things men would confess to, unbidden, one of the bonds so many of us shared, and was stunned.

"You from Dayton?" I wanted to hear what he'd say.

"Kentucky. Ashland. It's on the Ohio River, near West

Virginia. 'Bout a hundred miles from here. Been in Dayton twenty years though."

"Why Dayton?"

"Dayton, Cincinnati, Columbus, Akron. Could've been any of 'em." He smiled. "You know that car, the Pontiac GTO?"

"I know of it."

"In Kentucky, they say GTO stands for Goin' To Ohio. It's where there's work. Can get a good union job. You know of Ashland?"

"Not much."

"If you aren't at Ashland Oil, jobs are scarce."

I was in real deep now, in territory I'd never even dreamed of entering. None of it was planned. It was just happening.

"The Judds are from Ashland." Then he chuckled. "There's a Judd Plaza. Chuck Woolery, the game-show host. They even got a street named after him—Chuck Woolery Boulevard."

"Lots of celebrities."

"Lots? Right. Sure. Oh, I forgot." He gestured with his hand, expansively. "George Reeves."

George Reeves. I actually knew the name. It was from my generation. "Superman?" It struck a nerve, one that the other names hadn't tweaked. I was suddenly back on the floor at Maxwell Avenue, 1953, in front of the black- and-white RCA. Wednesday nights, 7 p.m. WBEN-TV, channel 4, Buffalo. The never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American Way. Brought to you by Kellogg's. "He's from Ashland?"

"Well, not exactly. He was born in Iowa, they say. His mother's parents lived in Ashland. When his own parents broke up, his mother moved back to Ashland for a while. He did some growin' up there."
 

I tilted my head.

"He's a celebrity. We'll take what we can get. You remember watchin' him?"

"It was my favorite show." It was true.
 

"Killed himself."

"So they say. As I recall, it was never clear."
 

"I was just a little kid."

"I'm a bit older than you." I looked at him. "It was 1959."

He raised his eyebrows. "Pretty good memory."
 

I nodded. "I'm good at the past," I said.

"What do you think of that?" Bobby Swiss nodded toward the television above us.

I glanced up. Some kind of triangular, glass, architectural wonder was on the screen, at water's edge.

"Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Cleveland. Opens in about a month. Big news there. Big tourist attraction. Architect is the same guy who built the addition onto the Louvre in Paris."

My eyebrows rose upward. A modern-day pyramid, on Lake Erie.

A list of the 1995 inductees appeared, superimposed on the building's image: The Allman Brothers, Al Green, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Martha and the Vandellas, Neil Young, Frank Zappa.

"What the fuck," he said.
 

I was quiet.

"I couldn't even name a song that any of them cut. How about you?"

"Maybe Neil Young. Canadian, I think. Maybe Martha and the Vandellas. 'Dancin' in the Street.' "

"Del Shannon," he said. "Where the fuck is Del Shannon? How come he's not in there?" He looked at me.

"I dunno," I said. And I didn't.

"Old Del shot himself."

I nodded, thoughtfully.

"You gotta go way back. Gotta go to the roots. Chuck Berry, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, Buddy Holly. And the King. Elvis."

"You're probably right."

"The Coasters, Clyde McPhatter, Roy Orbison, Otis Redding, The Platters."

"You sound like you know this stuff."

"Love it."

"I thought you weren't big on the past."

He looked at me with wonder. "Hell, music ain't the past. Music is forever. I can put my tapes on in my car right now, and it's there. There's a song, 'American Pie,' about 'The Day the Music Died.' The music never died. It was those assholes ridin' around in cars or on motorcycles or in airplanes or doin' drugs that got killed. Not their music."

JESUSROX, I thought. "Whatever happened to Del Shannon?" I remembered "Runaway," "Hats Off to Larry."

"Shot himself. Age fifty-one. All the good ones, the music killed them. It consumed them. They gave themselves to it, now they're gone. But not their music. No, sir. Not their music. The music is forever."

An image of Graceland Wedding Chapel, Las Vegas, rose up in the back of my head. "Even Elvis—" I started.

"—is dead. Age forty-two. Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper, Otis Redding, even Rick Nelson—plane crashes, all of them. Clyde McPhatter, heart attack, age forty. Roy Orbison, heart attack, age fifty-two. Mama Cass, heart attack. Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, even John Lennon, shot to death. And I haven't even started on the drug overdoses. Morrison, Joplin, Hendrix . . ."

But part of me had stopped listening. I was thinking about Jeanne's line, about loving singers who had died violently in motorized vehicles.

I was quiet. I'd heard a lot of this before.

After a third beer, I had no plan left. Finally, when he'd drained his jug, finished the fifth cigarette, he sat back. "Gotta go," he said.

I half smiled and nodded.

"Wife'll have dinner ready."

I'd wondered. Now I knew. But I wanted more. "Got kids?"

"One," he said. "Got a boy. Sixteen." He frowned, added no more. Then, "You here for a couple of days, you say?"

"That's right."

"Might see you tomorrow. I'm here most days after work."

I studied the strong chin, the slicked-back hair, the five o'clock shadow that Adam favored. I wanted to ask him if he'd ever gone to the Trail Drive-In, to Crisp's, to the Bluegrass for a hot dog and a root beer or the Flying Saucer Burger with the special sauce.

But I didn't. I couldn't. That had been more than twenty years ago.

I looked around, up at the TV, thought of Nanny, the bars in Buffalo. I took a plastic swizzle stick, put it in my pocket, left.

THIRTEEN

I

I went back to the Hampton Inn, rested for an hour, went for dinner at a Pizza Hut nearby. When I got back, I phoned Jeanne. It was our shortest conversation since I'd left. I didn't know how to tell her anything, and she didn't ask. With grace, without details, we enjoyed the contact. It was enough. I was tired. I was more than tired. I was drained.