Peter Orner - Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge

I also lived in Pubic, or my voice did. I was the voice of the Matchbox Chevrolet Caprice that served as Big Bill Thompson-Fox’s limousine. I wasn’t supposed to say any words. The car didn’t know any. My role was to make automotive noises at appropriate moments. As I say, Longfellow’s chief preoccupation was making me cry, but he also spent much of his time and energy disrupting city council meetings and haranguing Big Bill Thompson-Fox for things like misappropriation of public funds, giving out no-bid contracts to shadowy underworld cronies, and in general fostering a culture of corruption that pervaded Pubic from the lowliest branch post office to the fifth floor of City Hall. One day Longfellow advocated impeachment of Big Bill after he allowed me (i.e., his car) to vote on an important resolution that would have limited fluorocarbon emissions. Longfellow claimed that it was a blatant conflict of interest. For the record, I voted against the resolution, because I felt that any restrictions on the auto industry would have resulted in the loss of American jobs. After Longfellow raised his loud objections ( Kickbacks! Backroom cigars! Sweetheart deals! ), Big Bill Thompson-Fox, in what I thought was a pretty brilliant switcheroo, claimed that my vote actually hadn’t counted, that it was nonbinding. “In certain circumstances,” Mayor Thompson-Fox said, “interested members of the public may, according to our charter, weigh in, in a purely advisory capacity, on matters of particular interest, in order to give them more of a voice in government. It’s a unique and quite participatory feature of our democracy here in Pubic. It’s actually based on a pre-Napoleonic French model.”

“Ah ha, Chevrolet. I knew all along there was something francophone about that car!”

“Please, sir, we’ll have no unseemly outbursts.”

“Oh, you and your Robert’s Rules of Order …”

“Bailiff!” Big Bill Thompson-Fox cried. “Where’s the bailiff?”

I made car noises to the effect that we didn’t have a bailiff on the payroll.

Longfellow would not be silenced. Big Bill Thompson-Fox and his car remained on the carpet. It was Longfellow who attained the heights of the prophet. My brother set the hippo on his head and intoned: “Taxidermy without representation is tyranny. If this be treason, you can kiss my ass back to the Zambezi.”

In 1990, I found Longfellow in a drawer in my mother’s house, along with some rolling papers (my mother’s), circa 1975. He’d survived my parents’ divorce, three moves, and two remarriages, the little shit. I held a summary trial. Longfellow stood accused of assault, slander, noise pollution, and a myriad of immigration violations.

“Any last words?”

“Yo, toothache, what’s with the shilly-shally? If you’re going to do it, do it.”

I popped his head off with a toenail clipper. And though there was ample evidence (the clipper in my hand, the severed rubber head on the carpet), I could not be prosecuted, because the municipality where the execution allegedly occurred no longer existed and local criminal statutes could not apply. Under the letter of the law, you can’t be found guilty of killing anybody in Atlantis unless you can dredge up that jurisdiction from the bottom of the sea. Same is true for Narnia, Bedrock, and Nimh, where the brave rats live. Nonetheless, legal niceties aside, there is the human heart to consider. The only certain thing is, you’ll be brothers forever, my mother used to say. Everything else in your entire life — health, money, sex — is all crapshoot.

I clip his head off and still — still, thy brother’s blood cries out in a high, high voice only dogs and myself can hear.

The clown prince had them. All his raucous talk, his famous quotable lines, and yet there were certain nights, late in his career, when, if there was no committee meeting or funeral or wake or wedding, the once-mighty alderman would shoo out the stragglers and lock the door. This particular boozing shed is closed. And the man himself would slump on a stool, quiet, and face himself in the mirror of his own bar. Mr. Bauler, sir, aren’t you on the wrong side of the slab? Think about it. A real conundrum. When you’re Paddy Bauler, you can’t go see Paddy Bauler. Where does this leave me? And he laughs. Not out loud, an inside laugh, the kind you can carry around for hours, days, years even, the kind of laugh you might carry to the end if you don’t take yourself too seriously. But here’s another conundrum. Lately he’s stopped laughing all that much, outside or inside laughs. A German, he’s been playing an Irishman so long he’s started to dream of his own boggy grave. Used to be that it was all laughs — and votes. Now, that’s how you run a city. A vote is loyalty and loyalty is a vote… a lifetime of them. See? Easy. From the cradle to the grave. (Casket courtesy of the Democratic Party.) And you’re either constant to the party or you aren’t constant to the party. No such thing as halfway. Independent? Ha! Go see Paddy Bauler.

Heal me, Ward Heeler.

A mammoth man, but soft all over. A. J. Liebling described him as more gravel pit than mountain. Alderman Bauler used to wrestle himself on the floor of the mayor’s office for the personal entertainment of His Honor Mayor Anton Cermak himself.

Cermak martyred, the lucky Bohemian. Pat Nash gone. Ed Kelly gone. Paddy Bauler? Is that antediluvian still kicking around?

Hey, Paddy, spot me a drink. You know I’m good for it. Don’t I always carry my precinct for you?

Paddy, my boiler’s busted. They want three hundred and fifty bucks.

Hey, Paddy, listen, Paddy. My son. Knocked his old lady around a little. Talk to Sergeant Itagopian for me?

Paddy, it’s my mother — the cancer—

Paddy, it’s Eddie Gabinik; don’t you remember me?

Paddy?

Paddy?

Mr. Bauler?

Sir?

He warns us that what’s inside might not be appropriate for children and other sensitive viewers. Al Capone’s lost vault. They’re tearing down the Lexington Hotel, once the Big Tuna’s headquarters, and have discovered a vault that’s been sealed for decades. Who knew he lost one? Who even cared? But now that Chicago knows it, the city is awash in hysterical anticipation. And Geraldo’s got the exclusive. Live . I’m alone in front of the TV with a joint and a hunk of cheese. There’s a team of hard-hatted workmen with jackhammers and high explosives. There are wafts of dust and lots of noise, and Geraldo whisper-shouts into the microphone. We’re making history here . It goes on for more than an hour and a half, with frequent commercial breaks.

At one point Geraldo says, “I feel like Jeremiah walking among the ruins.”

Look, Geraldo, just open the thing already.

Finally, they blast the door off. Geraldo coughs, gasps, says something inaudible — there’s an enormous crash. The camera jumbles and the screen goes blank. Cut to another commercial. Geraldo’s dead and they’re selling antacid. And Oldsmobiles and Mountain Dew. And then he’s back, undaunted. Geraldo Rivera knows no daunted. Wait. He’s holding something. A bottle. Ladies and gentlemen, citizens of Chicago, interested parties around the world, we’ve made a discovery. Pause. Swallow. Alphonsus Capone — alias Scarface alias Big Tuna alias Jolly Fellow alias Snorky — may have once drunk from this very bottle before carrying out yet another despicable act, the likes of which have made this city infamous around the globe. Go to the deepest Amazon, as I have, Geraldo says, and there you might meet, as I did, a little native boy, naked, nothing but a loincloth hardly covering his burgeoning private parts, and tell him, as I did, that you are from Chicago, and he’ll say, Chicago! Chicago! Capone! Pow! Pow! Kill! Kill! Kill! Yes, the lips of such a man may have once touched the phallic spout of this very bottle…