William Kennedy - Roscoe

He had never sat here with her before, and it seemed calculated to create intimacy. She wore a golden chiffon scarf as a choker, and her hair was pulled back behind her ears. He fixated on her beautiful left ear, which he wanted to nibble.

“Do you like your lunch?” she asked.

“This is a room of enchantment. I like much more than my lunch.”

“Don’t like too much more.”

“The more you like, the happier you are. Is it wrong to try to be happy?”

“Don’t try to be too happy,” she said.

“Elisha would want us to be happy. He knew how to be happy.”

“No, he didn’t. He killed himself.”

“He did that for other people,” Roscoe said.

“Which other people?”

“You. And the boys.”

“How can you say that?”

“I’m eliminating possibilities.”

“Killing himself for me. You’re crazy, Roscoe.”

“He also may have done it because he owed me.”

“What did he owe you?”

“You. He took you away from me. Maybe he’s trying to give you back. I’m not sure it’s working, but so far, so good. You’re saving my life, and we’re together in this beautiful place.”

“I don’t think it’s wise to talk about this. Elisha would want us to be wise.”

“You think that’s all he’d want us to be?”

As he watched her across the table he thought: This is the most sublime woman ever put on this earth; perhaps I exaggerate. But all Roscoe wanted from the world right now was to look at her, talk to her, love her, have lunch with her, right here, forever. Was that asking so much? Also, once in a while, he’d like to kiss her, fuck her, forever, here, anyplace, on the table, once in a while. Was that asking so much?

The Soldier Boys Campaign

Roscoe in his wheelchair looked like a wounded old soldier, which he was, as he stared out from under the umbrella he held to fend off the foglike drizzle. Beside him stood Veronica, with Gilby holding an umbrella over her. Gilby had decided that even if Alex was only his brother-cousin he was more brother than cousin.

“He looks wonderful,” Veronica said to Roscoe. “I see so much Elisha in him. His gauntness makes him more of a man. Don’t you think, Roscoe?”

“He’s very like his father was at that age.”

“We’ll leave after his speech,” she said. “Gilby has to be at the dentist.”

“I’ll see you for dinner,” Roscoe said. “It’s years since I’ve gotten emotional about dinner.”

The block had been closed to traffic, and on the lawn in front of School Twenty, with the army, navy, and Marine color guard behind him, the soldier-boy Mayor was on the platform dedicating the communion of names of sailors, soldiers, and Marines who spent their young years fighting Japs, Nazis, and Italian Fascists, as a crowd of four hundred in the middle of the street listened. The names on the Roll were a stark listing of alphabetical love, a scroll of blessedness. Several names were separated out, writ larger. The Mayor pointed to one.

“Charley Becker, a Marine private from Walter Street — I used to play tennis with him,” the Mayor said, “and I could never return his serve. He was cut down in the first wave at Saipan. Bobby (Shadow) Valentino, an army corporal from Mohawk Street who could outrun my dog, was killed in the battle for Salerno. Captain Ray Ergott from Bonheim Street, a bomber pilot who played real good banjo, was shot down by Nazi anti-aircraft fire over Berlin. I saw other men, some of my great pals, killed on the battlefields of France. I won’t forget them. Neither will you, my friends, and neither will this city. Their names here will be revered as long as we. ”

He stopped speaking. He took off his overseas cap and looked up at the sky and let the rain hit his face.

“I hate talking about this,” he said. “I hate it that they’re dead. We live on and we leave them behind. How can we remember them? They fade. I already forget the name of the soldier who was shot a few yards away from me. I’m not sure I ever knew his name. Maybe it was Dave. He fell and the rest of us kept running until a shell hit Dave directly and the blast knocked me over. I was stunned, not hurt, but Dave’s blood was on my field jacket, my hands, my rifle. And that blood was all that was left of him. We couldn’t even find his dogtags. He died and I didn’t and I don’t know why I didn’t, but I know I consecrate his blood here today, and the blood of Charley Becker and Shadow Valentino and Ray Ergott. And I’m going to try to keep that blood of their short lives flowing in my memory until I’m not here anymore. That’s not very much to do for those fellows, and it sure won’t help them. But that’s all I can do. That’s all anybody can do. Now I’ll stop talking. I’m sick of words.”

Nobody moved, nobody applauded. It’d be like applauding a funeral mass. Alex stood the laurel wreath on its end on the Honor Roll’s pedestal. Then he put his cap on and saluted as the bugler played taps and the newspaper photographers took pictures. People waited in the rain to welcome Alex home, shake his hand, women he knew kissing his cheek, tears in their eyes, what a wonderful speech, don’t you look grand, we were worried about you. Veronica was right. In his voice, his inflection, Roscoe heard the echo of Elisha’s clear intelligence, but laced with the ease of a workingman’s speech pattern. Alex had been exposed to plainspoken language all his life by his father and Patsy and Roscoe, who took him to Party meetings, and ball games, and cockfights, and saloons, but the boy’s elite education had fortified his resistance to anything of a common order, and he spoke publicly with the unbendable rhetoric of a patrician. Today he spoke as a peer of those working-class dead men he’d known, no longer just Patsy’s boyish Mayor but now his own man, a personage: a rich man’s son with a common man’s heart. Goddamn it, Alex, that is an unbeatable combination. You can be Mayor forever.

The crowd broke up and Roscoe spotted Townsend Blair, bent over and staring at the ground, looking for money, people said, but that wasn’t it. He carried a burden. He’d been the Democratic candidate for mayor in 1919, our breakout year. He raised his head and looked at Alex, then turned to face Roscoe. Their eyes met and Roscoe nodded, but Blair’s face was a frown, and then he walked off with his bent back, the old anger still there.

Pop O’Rourke, diabetic, florid, and spiffy as always, whispered to Roscoe, “How do you like this turnout, Roscoe? And on a dreadfully stormy day like this. I’m exceptionally happy how we got our people out.”

“The Mayor must be happy, too, Pop,” Roscoe said, smiling at the loyalty of it all. “I see Townsend came out for the ceremony.”

“A rarity, indeed,” said Pop. “I never see him. Poor fellow, he still talks about it, collars people at the ballpark and says, ‘You know what happened to me in 1919? You know what they did to me?”’

“He still does that?”

“He does.”

Win Clark stood in the rain behind Pop, waiting to greet Roscoe, thank him again for his job as sidewalk inspector: tell us which flagstones need fixing, Win, and stay off the sauce, the ruin of Win, who drank the inheritance from his wife’s death. Only the sidewalk job put him back on his feet. But why shouldn’t we help a loyal committeeman, a stalwart for twenty years till he tipped over sucking the bottle. Win would want to tell Roscoe his bladder joke.

“Hiya, Roscoe,” he said. “What’s this with the wheelchair?”

“The old bladder’s acting up, Win.”

“I had a bladder stone once. You know how I got rid of it?”

“Tell me.”

“Like everything else, I pissed it away.”

“Stay dry, Win.”