however.
“Wild Turkey,” he says. “And I hope it’s the hundred-and-one proof, not that silly eighty-six stuff.”
The bartender laughs. “Well, sir, we have both. One just costs a little more.”
“Money is no object,” Da says, finally certifying his complete departure from this reality.
He does savor it, though, and the pure enjoyment I witness on his face as he does, and as he heads not once but three times over to the small circular porthole window that looks out onto the waterfront, is more intoxicating than if I had my own drink. Even the 101 proof.
“Let’s give the next place a try,” he says, nodding repeatedly his agreement with his own idea. “I bet they’ll serve you a drink. For goodness’ sake, you certainly look old enough. You look older than you did yesterday, even, you ol’ crock.”
“Sure,” I say, surfing his wave of good spirits, “let’s go, young crock.”
16
“Who the hell in this world plays a concertina anymore?” Da says as we sit at a grubby table in the grubby Compass Inn tavern, next to the grubby North Star Bar. Grubby as the place is, just like the North Star you can still look out the backside windows to watch the workings of the grubby harbor and the comings and goings of the ferry.
Da can barely contain his glee. One by one, salty characters attach themselves to us like barnacles, taking up all the spaces around our table. He’s like the new kid in the schoolyard everyone wants to get first friendlies with.
The little old crusty in an ancient mariner outfit comes right up and blasts his concertina music for us, at us. It is more like a battle than a performance, though it is hard to tell who is winning. It’s also hard to tell what, if any, tune is involved.
“Was that ‘Greensleeves’ toward the end there?” Da says, waving his finger at the man. The man’s wide-open, toothless, babylike smile suggests that it was.
“Let me buy you a drink,” Da says.
“I thought you’d never ask,” the man says.
“I
He stands up and pushes my head away as he goes to the bar. At the bar I see him order, then watch as another grizzled seafaring type says something to him. Da fairly leaps into a short, animated telling of something that makes the hardened old soul gasp, cover his mouth in shock-like, then wave the barman over to get Da another shot.
A minute later, Da is sitting again with us, toasting America, the concertina, and life in general. Then, using America as his segue, he starts with the yarns.
“Did I ever tell you…,” he says to all these people he has never met before.
Chairs scrape the floor as folks inch closer. Old vertebrae audibly creak as people twist to lean their good ears into the story.
He tells the one about the blinded scientist in Tel Aviv.
He tells the one about setting the nerd’s face on fire with thick specs and sunshine.
He tells one about impersonating a jockey and winning a big race on a drugged horse in Bolivia.
A beer shows up in front of him. A few minutes later, a hefty-looking Reuben sandwich appears.
He does not appear to remember me. He shows no sign of awareness, of either my presence or any of the strain and tribulation of the preceding days. He does not even show any of the tiredness he expressed only just recently.
“He’ll be absolutely fine,” the frightening man sitting on the other side of me reassures me. I look at him, and he speaks from behind a gray walrus mustache and two cheeks with prominent T-shaped scars carved into them. There is nobody here, in fact, without some facial hair. Da’s beard has grown in rather fully. “He’s got currency here. In Lundy Lee, everybody lives on stories. One way and another, a man with stories gets by very well here. One way and another.”
I look at the man while on my other side Da keeps storying away. Oohs and aahs and small claps are the background music as he reaches peaks of spellbinding.
“That is good to know, thank you,” I say to the man. He winks reassurance and I see the same T scar on his eyelid.
There is a brief lull in the show, as a couple of people head for the toilets, a couple more head for the bar, and one of the two women in the place comes up and puts her hand on Da’s hand. “Don’t you dare start again until I get back,” she says, unlit cigarette in one hand and the solution in the other.
“I won’t,” he says, giddy. Probably the first time he’s ever been pleased to be asked to stop talking.
I am hoping my first day at the university is half this successful, is what I’m hoping.
“This is what you want?” I ask after tapping his shoulder, after he has shooed me away for the third time. “Is this the place, Da? Is this the time and the place?”
“Valhalla,” he says impatiently, shooing me the fatal fourth time.
“You understand, though? That I am leaving you. I am really just leaving you here. And going my own way. For good and for real.”
He nods.
“I knew it before you did,” he says.
He reaches out and places his hand on the side of my face. He stares at me for several long seconds, truly, I think, appreciating me. Then he gives that side of my face a good, crisp clap, sending me away, finally, finally- finally.
And so it goes just like that. After all. I go. I am shooed, and I go. I put on my trench, tie up the belt, gather my chunky sweatshirt, and I go.
“Nobody dies of peritonitis in this day and age, right? So…” goes the beginning of the story he is spinning as I leave.
Outside, I take it in, the town, the everything, and I still cannot fathom it. I curl around to the port side to walk along the grubby, crumbling dockland. The ferry is coming in, rusty tears running down all along its seams.
“Hello, Young Man,” Zeke says, startling the ever-loving out of me.
Once more, I cannot fathom it.
“No,” I say. “No, absolutely not. No. He has found peace.”
“Maybe peace never wanted to be found. Not by him.”
“No. He is here now. Everybody tells stories here, so it’s all good and fine by everyone here. He has a beard now, like everyone here.”
“We’ll give him a good shave.”
I remember when Da joked about his whiskers, he said just precisely that, that they were going to give him a good, close shave. He made a little zipper-scar gesture at his temple.
“Absolutely not,” I say. “The beard looks good. The beard suits him. The beard stays.”
Then Zeke says something. Something that works a kind of sick magic, something that instantly calls to mind Da’s words about flipping a guy’s kill switch.
“You’ll get it, son. Someday, you’ll get it.”
There is a moment. There are, I suppose, lots of smaller, preparatory moments in your life. But I think there is the one moment where something of you is changed, profoundly, elementally. It probably does not happen to everyone, but that’s just because they swerve this way or that way and just narrowly miss it, because it was probably there, out of sight, out of mind.
I feel different before I even do it. The doing of it is almost secondary.
One of the many great things about a rotting old port town is that there is always a chunky piece of wood lying handy when you need it.
