_____ __ CLINTON ST. QUARTERLY . . . in walk a couple refrigerators, disguised in suits, with wide brimmed hats riding low over their eyes . . . and den . . . why and den maybe we find a spot for ya in da good old elev- ent ward. How about dat, huh?” 1 rubbed my hands lazily under some hot water and looked into the mirror. It was just another mug. If only I had a few scars or a patch over the eye it might give me a little character. ‘‘Listen, kid. Ya don’t need any scars or a patch over da eye ta have character. Dat’s ridiculous. Ya got all da character in da world. Just remember dis: dose guys are da mugs, ya got character!” I worked my way back between a couple of crowded tables rapidly filling with Bridgeport bowlers and several pitchers of beer. My step was springy, agile. “ Another beer and two more bags of Beer Nuts.” I picked up my little bag of Beer Nuts with vigo'r and ripped it open with my teeth just like Lee Marvin or Jack Webb might do with a hand grenade pin, and poured some Beer Nuts into my lager before I could stop myself. I took a nice, smooth draught, trying to catch a nut or two with my teeth or upper lip, which was prodding about like it belonged to a chimpanzee. I was lucky. I got one. I was getting ready to listen back in on that soft-spoken conversation just a stool away on my right, when suddenly those Bridgeport bowlers began to clap their hands and chant. Jane Jane you ’re insane You got water on the brain You ’re so bitchy You make us itchy Look out next term Here comes Richie! I swirled on my bar stool, all primed and ready to shout, “ Shut the fuck up!” and looked directly into the belt buckle of Bambi O’Hurlahee. It looked like something I might have seen around the waist of Dick the Bruiser, Crusher Lisowski, Buddy Rodgers, or Bruno Sammartino back in the days when Joe Stahoola used to take me to the wrestling matches at the Amphitheater. It was made of solid gold and had the words “ Champion of the World” engraved into it, archlike, over a couple of crossed shamrocks. My eyes instinctively gravitated upwards as if they were filled with helium, and the torso of Bambi O’Hurlahee emerged like the Rocky Mountains breaking through the clouds. Arms that I would have named Gog and Magog were folded over her massive chest with an authority that could have turned a mortal man like myself into a minnow. “ They chant well,” I said, looking up into that neck rising out of her rock-hard shoulders like a fireplug. Finally I saw her face. It wasn’t half- bad. It looked like a cross between Kim Novak and a bull mastiff. She wasn’t going to get any argument from me. You see, pal, I had heard about Bambi one day when I was watching John Drummond’s Chicago Chronicles on Channel 2 News, over at Joe Stahoola’s place. Bambi was telling John how she used to be known as Subbo Shebang back in the days when she was a professional wrestler. And after she took the title by squashing Leontyne Little Feather, she decided to get out of the ring and become a professional bouncer. She’s been at McTusch’s Bar ever since. In a voice that sounded like a handful of crushed potato chips, she said, “Mister, you’re new around here, and you look like trouble.” “That don’t make me bad,” I countered. She brought those arms down and put her hands on her hips. The Colossus at Rhodes couldn’t have looked more intimidating. Behind her the light seemed to take on a golden haze, and those Bridgeport bowlers started singing “ Danny Boy.” It was awful. Just a stool away from me those two palookas were still studying their whiskey sours with faraway eyes and talking about Mayor Daley in reverential tones. Further down the bar, the bartender was idly polishing a shot glass, whistling along with the crooners’ melody softly to himself. It was just Bambi O’Hurlahee and me. I didn’t like the odds. “ Bambi,” I said, “ I know you’re Bambi O’Hurlahee because I saw you on Channel 2 News talking with John Drummond. Can 1 buy you a drink, Bambi?” She shot me a stare that was actually pushing my shoulders to the bar, and said, “Mister, you look like you got a short fuse. What does it take to get you mad?” My elbows were grinding into the bar, and my neck was starting to shake, straining upwards at her. “Woman, there’s only three things in this world that get me fighting mad: One, if someone calls me a son of a bitch. Two, if someone calls me a bastard. And three, if someone calls . . . dis is a fine cidy, . . . dis is a fair cidy . . . and, ah, dat's right Chicagah is da finest cidy in da world . . . me a motherfucker. Because then you’re making an implication about my mother, and no one makes an implication about my mother!” Sometimes a little wind will blow the clouds away and you can see the sun shining through. A smile was cracking through those tight lips and her cheeks were starting to fill with a rosy blush. “Mister, you got grapes. Bartender, give this man another beer!” “And two more bags of Beer Nuts,” I added. Bambi d idn’t sit down. She couldn’t have even if she had wanted to. She was too big for the bar stool. And if she had managed to somehow squeeze her thighs under the bar and rest her bugunga on that stool, one false move and those thighs would have busted right through the bar like an earthquake breaking through concrete. “ Hey, Bambi!” I said, tearing open another bag of Beer Nuts and then watching them tumble into my lager, “ they ought to call this place Daley’s Tomb!” “Mister, understand this: unless you want me to bury your ass you’d better not crack wise about Mayor Daley in McTusch’s Bar.” I pushed a Beer Nut under the surface and it bobbed right up again. I pulled a foam-covered finger out of my beer and pointed it toward her, quickly and right to the point. “ Bambi, you’ve got me wrong. I’m a fan! I ’m the biggest Mayor Daley fan in Chicago! In the world, Bambi!” She looked at me as if she were a kid who had just tasted her first cream soda. Finally she said: “ How old was Mayor Daley in 1923?” “ Twenty-one years old,” I answered as quick as that. “When was he first inaugurated as Mayor of Chicago?” April 21st, 1955.” She was silent for a second, and so I asked her: “When was Mayor Daley named ‘Best-Dressed Man of the Year’?” For a second I thought a hard- boiled egg was going to pop out of her mouth. And then I answered my own question. “ The year was 1969, Bambi.. . . ” If I was quick and had a cigar I would have blown a satisfied smoke ring in her face. But I would have had to act quickly, because her face was coming toward mine like a female beer truck double-clutching into second gear. That woman planted a kiss on me as warm and firm and hungry as I’ve ever been kissed. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I felt as viable as a worm about to get rolled over by a bowling ball, I would have enjoyed it. She pulled herself away from me before I could catch my breath, pull myself up a little, and wipe my mouth with my forearm. She looked down upon me with her hands on her hips and a glow on her face like a satisfied Goliath. “Mister, you got grapes.” I watched her walk over toward those Bridgeport bowlers and out of my life forever. A moment later the bartender came up to me and asked if I had any intentions of becoming a regular customer so he’d know if he should order an extra case of Beer Nuts. “ Sure, I’ll be here every night for the next six months. Order a couple of cases.” Of course, I had no intentions of ever coming back, but someday a man who understands the beauty of a good Beer Nut is going to come in there and he’ll be all set. I’m a nice guy. In fact, I could be the nicest guy in the world, but I might as well be playing handball for all the luck I would have trying to enter into the conversation of those two palookas on my right. They were staring into their whiskey sours with faraway eyes and speaking softly. My instincts told me to leave them be; everything’s soft as chiffon. But do you think I’d listen to my instincts, pal? Not a chance. I was going to listen in on their soft-spoken conversation. A conversation that, incidentally, was getting more interesting. “ I enjoyed it,” the palooka with the Lee Marvin voice said. “ We all It wasn't ha lf bad. It looked like a cross between Kim Novak and a bull mastiff . . . enjoyed it. Sixty-eight was a good year for slamming people to the ground. What was it . . . August? Yeah, that’s right . . . August. That’s when they had the Democratic Convention here. I bet I must have blackjacked 200 heads in one day that week. Two hundred phonies dressed up like fags and spineless fairies, calling themselves hippies and yippies and yelling, ‘Pig! Pig! Pig!” ’ Lee shook his head with amused nostalgic pleasure. “ I was in plain clothes that afternoon, but I’m no sissy so I stood out. Hippies were pointing at me and yelling, ‘Narc! Narc! Narc!’ like they were so righteous and I was Benedict Arnold getting ready to betray them. So you know what I do? I go out and get a nice orange wig with lots of curls and some wire-rimmed little fairy glasses, and Dennie O’Malley from homicide takes me to this place on Wells called ‘Man at Ease’ and we pick me out a bright red polka-dot shirt and a Wild Bill Hickok vest and some Indian beads and I was all set.” “ What about your trou’?” his partner asked, looking more amused than I ever thought a mug so “ emotional” as that could look. “ Good point, I’m glad you askej. O’Malley asked the same questior, and then he told me that thos? screaming, self-righteous fairies trying to ruin our country only wear torn old Levis that smell like piss. And since it would take us years to get them to reek that bad, we were in a jam .” Then Lee chuckled a bit and rubbed his square jaw absentmindedly and continued, “ So O’Malley takes me down to one of those costume shops off of Dearborn Street and fixes me up in a pair of polka-dotted Bozo-balloon pants, and some 20-inch flapjack Clarabell shoes.” Lee shook his head in disbelief and then he added, “ But O’Malley don’t stop! No! He puts white makeup all over my mig and navy blue stars on my cheeks aid a great big red ball on my nose. And then with red, white and blue day-glow fingerpaint he prints ‘Far Cut’ on my forehead.” Lee’s partier actually broke out with a laugh He couldn’t hold it back. It was skort and quick, right to the point, and vide-range like a single bark from a Great Dane. “ Don’t laugh, pal . . . you should have seen O’Malley! He rented a gorilla suit!” And they both laughed so hard and loud that for a while I thought I might be in the Lion House at the Lincoln Park Zoo and it was feeding time. But then they got quiet, lust like that. A few minutes later, Lee continued. “ They were crawling all over the pak that night like maggots, and OMalley and 1were infiltrating their filihy ranks. They were all smoking done and saying, ‘Wow,’ ‘Heavy,’ ‘Hey Man,’ and ‘Share it, brother.’ And when our men in blue arrived to disinfect all of that vermin, the fairies started chanting, ‘Pig! Pig! Pig!’ ” Lee cracked his knuckles with patience and then rubbed his fist in his palm real slow and steady. He had a faraway, bitter look. “ During the chaos O’Mal'ey would sneak out from behind the trees in his gorilla costume and quieJy grab a hippie around his or het big filthy mouth and pull the kid behind the bushes and conk him cn the head. And I would twirl around in my Bozo suit singing ‘Kokomo the Disco Man.’ Some of the frerks would start singing along and skipping behind me through the park, and when I had enough of them gathered behind me, I would swirl around, pumping away on my Bozo pump spray can, spraying their uncleaned faces with mace! When they were good and dizzy and coughing and crying, 1 would charge them five at a time and k'tock them over like bowling pins! And then, just to be sure, I’d crack their long-haired heads with my blackjack.” Then Lee got quiet. Real quiet. During his silence I thought about my own experience that night in the park. 1was just a curious kid picking up on the excitement of the evening, enjoying the hippies’ friendly energy, feeling loose and naturally high. 1 wasn’t looking for trouble. I was walking right into it, pal. I caught a blackjack right across the temple that continued next page 19
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