William Kennedy - Billy Phelan's Greatest Game

The condition of being a powerless Albany Irishman ate holes in his forbearance. Piss-ant martyr to the rapine culture, to the hypocritical handshakers, the priest suckups, the nigger-hating cops, the lace-curtain Grundys and the cut-glass banker-thieves who marked his city lousy. Are you from Albany? Yes. How can you stand it? I was there once and it’s the asshole of the northeast. One of the ten bottom places of the earth.

Was it possible to escape the stereotypes and be proud of being an Albany Irishman?

Martin awoke late one morning, hung over and late for a doctor’s appointment. He dressed and rushed and when he stripped for the examination by the doctor, a stranger, he could smell the stink of his own undershirt. He yearned to apologize, to explain that he was not one of the unwashed. Sorry I stink, Doc, but I had no time to change. I got up late because I was drunk last night. Oh yes.

The quest to love yourself is also an absurd quest.

Martin called Patsy and told him he was wrong in what he was doing to Billy.

“I am like hell,” said Patsy, and he hung up in Martin’s ear.

Mary Daugherty agreed with Patsy McCall.

She sat in the Daugherty living room, reading in the evening paper the latest story on the kidnap gang. When Martin raised the issue of Billy Phelan by way of making polite conversation, she dropped the paper in her lap and looked at him through the top of her bifocals, her gaze defining him as a booster for the anti-Christ.

“The boy is evil,” she said. “Only an evil person would refuse to help bring back young Charles from the clutches of demons.”

“But Billy gave them the information that caught the demons,” Martin said.

“He didn’t know what he was doing.”

“Of course he knew. He knew he was informing, which was why he refused to inform any further.”

“Let him go to hell with his evil friends.”

“Your tone lacks charity.”

“Charity begins at home,” said Mary, “and I feel first for young Charles, my own flesh and blood, and for his father and his uncles. Better men never drew breath.”

Martin silently charted the difference between his wife and Melissa. Michelangelo and Hieronymus Bosch, Saint Theresa and Sally Rand. In the sweetness of her latter-day bovinity, Mary Daugherty swathed herself in immaculate conceptions and divine pleasure. And with recourse to such wonders, who has need of soiled visions? Life is clean if you keep it clean. Hire the priests to sweep up and there will be no disease. Joan of Arc and Joan Crawford. Hell hath no fury like a zealous virgin.

“What are we having for dinner?” Martin inquired.

Martin decided to send the column to Damon Runyon, for the recent edict from Hearst on Runyon was still fresh in his mind. Runyon was now the oriflamme of the Hearst newspapers, and yet editors across the country were cutting and shaving his column regularly. “Run Runyon uncut,” came the word from The Chief when he heard what was happening.

“If you find a way to get this piece into print,” Martin wrote Runyon, “I will try to find it in my heart to forgive you for those four bum tips you gave me at Saratoga in August.”

And so, on a morning a week after he wrote it, Martin’s defense of Billy Phelan appeared in Runyon’s column in full, with a preface reminding his readers who Martin was, and suggesting that if he only gambled as well as he wrote, he would very soon make Nick the Greek look like a second-class sausage salesman.

The day it appeared in the Times-Union , the word went out to Broadway: Billy Phelan is all right. Don’t give him any more grief.

Red Tom called Billy with the news and Billy called George Quinn at the Hendrick Hudson Hotel in Troy and told him to come home.

And Martin Daugherty bought himself six new sets of underwear.

Martin visited his father in the nursing home the afternoon the Runyon column appeared. His purpose was to read the old man a letter from Peter. Martin found his father sitting in a wheelchair with a retractable side table, having lunch. His hair had been combed but he needed a shave, his white whiskers sticking out of his chin like bleached grass waiting for the pure white lawnmower.

“Papa,” he said, “how are you feeling?”

“Glmbvvvvv,” said the old man, his mouth full of potatoes.

By his eyes, by the movement of his hands over the bread, by the controlled hoisting of the fork to his mouth, Martin perceived that the old man was clear-headed, as clear-headed as he would ever again be.

“Did I tell you I had lunch with Henry James?” the old man said, when he had swallowed the potatoes.

“No, Papa, when was that?”

“Nineteen-oh-three, I think. He and I had just published some of our work in the North American Review , and the editor dropped me a note saying James was coming to America and wanted to talk to me. He was interested in Elk Street. His aunt had lived there when she married Martin Van Buren’s son, and he wanted news of the Coopers and the Pruyns and others. I had written about life on Elk Street and he remembered the street fondly, even though he loathed Albany. We had lunch at Delmonico’s and he had turtle soup. He talked about nothing but his varicose veins. An eccentric man.”

“Mary and I had a letter from Peter,” Martin said.

“Peter?”

“Your grandson.”

“Oh yes.”

“He’s gone off to become a priest.”

“Has he?”

“He likes the idea of being good.”

“Quite a novel pursuit.”

“It is. He thinks of Saint Francis as his hero.”

“Saint Francis. A noble fellow but rather seedy.”

“The boy is out of my hands, at any rate. Somebody else will shape him from now on.”

“I hope it’s not the Christian Brothers. Your mother was very distrustful of the Christian Brothers.”

“It’s the Franciscans.”

“Well they’re grotesque but they have the advantage of not being bellicose.”

“How is the food these days, Papa?”

“It’s fine but I long for some duck. Your mother was always very fond of duck à l’orange. She could never cook it. She could never cook anything very well.”

“Melissa was in town this week.”

“Melissa was in town?”

“She appeared in your play.”

“Which play?”

“ The Flaming Corsage. ”

“Melissa appeared in The Flaming Corsage ?”

“At Harmanus Bleecker Hall. It was quite a success. Well attended, good reviews, and quite a handsome production. I saw it, of course.”

“What was Melissa’s last name?”

“Spencer.”

“Ah yes. Melissa Spencer. Quite a nice girl. Well rounded. She could command the attention of an entire dinner table.”

“She asked for you.”

“Did she?”

“She’s writing her memoirs. I presume you’ll figure in them somewhere.”

“Will I? How so?”

“I couldn’t say. I’ll get a copy as soon as they’re published.”

“I remember her profile. She had a nose like Madame Albani. Exactly like Madame Albani. I remarked on that frequently. I was there the night Albani came to Albany and sang at the Music Hall on South Pearl Street. In ’eighty-three it was. She drew the largest crowd they ever had there. Did you know she lived in Arbor Hill for a time? She played the organ at St. Joseph’s Church. She always denied she was named for Albany, but she wouldn’t have used the name if she hadn’t had a fondness for the city.”

“Papa, you’re full of stories today.”

“Am I? I didn’t realize.”

“Would you like to hear Peter’s letter?”

“Peter who?”

“Your grandson.”

“Oh, by all means.”

“I won’t read it all, it’s full of trivial detail about his trip, but at the end he says this: ‘Please tell Grandpa that I already miss him and that I am going to pray every day for his good health. I look forward to the day when I will be able to lay my anointed hands on his head in priestly blessing so that he may have the benefit, in the next, of my vocation. I know that you, Papa, and Grandpa, too, have been worldly men. But for me, I am committed to the way of the Cross. “Live in the world but be no part of it,” is what I have been instructed and I will try with all my heart and soul to follow that guidance. I love you and Mother and bless you all and long for the time when next we meet. Your loving son, Peter.’ ”