THE OLD BULL Dennis O’Rourke
The road can be a wonderful thing. There are women out there. It’s winter in New Hampshire. There’s a foot of snow under a big yellow moon, but the pub is warm and inviting, and it’s nearly full. We’re all having a wonderful time. Midway through the second set, I spy a group coming through the door behind the audience. It’s an older couple and two young women. The man and what I assume to be his wife are in their late sixties or so. The two other women are in their twenties. The man is standing in front of his little herd. He’s a hulking fella, one of those guys that looks like a retired longshoreman. His massive shoulders are only a little stooped with age, and he has a big crop of unruly white hair. As I sing, I watch as he admonishes the women to wait there for him, and then wends his way carefully through the crowded tables and into the middle of the room. He finds an empty table, and he adds a loose chair to the three already there. He looks slowly around him, surveying the assembled multitude. After a moment, he beckons with his hand, and the women dutifully trot towards him. He pulls out a chair for each and tucks them in, one at a time. One last look around, and the old bull sits down with his females. I’m nearly choking. I can’t wait to finish the song and tell the crowd what I’ve just observed. It’s Nature. It’s animal instinct. It’s primal. It’s evolution. But I do it gently. It’s not my intention to embarrass these folks. I have just seen this guy orchestrate a dance right out of Mother Nature. I want to heap praise on him, not laugh at him, and I have to manage it without getting the old bull pissed off at me. First, I call the audience’s attention to their table. Everyone looks. The women immediately get a little uncomfortable and smile nervously. The old bull fixes me with a dead stare. I hurry on. This has to be quick and sweet. I relate what I’ve just seen to the audience. I tell them it’s something out of Marlin Perkins’ Wild Kingdom, a beautiful example of life in the wild translated to modern man. The male reconnoiters an area, in this case, a watering hole, while the females wait in the safety of the brush. When he’s satisfied there is no danger, the male calls out and the females join him. (Mind you, I was careful to say “the male,”rather than “the old bull.”) I ask the crowd if that protective and gallant behavior isn’t worth a round of applause. Well, don’t they give him a standing ovation. The women at his table join in, and the old bull’s face is flush with pride and pleasure. When I finished the set, I get myself a drink and head for their table. They are only too glad to welcome me. A chair is found, and I join them. They’re a married couple and two grandnieces. The young women are up from North Carolina to do some skiing. They are both very pretty, especially the older one. They’re bunking in a small lodge about a mile or so from the great-uncle’s house. The great-uncle himself is still tickled by the ovation. His wife is beaming at him. The younger of the two women is munching pretzels. The older one is sipping wine and looking at me with lazy, hooded eyes. I’ve seen this look before—not often, but I’ve seen it. This is one sensual woman. She’s interested, and by God, so am I. They stay for the entire show, and I join them again after packing up the guitar. The old bull is a bit tipsy, but still on his toes. He’s noticed the silent exchanges between me and the prettier of the grandnieces. He throws an arm around her, busses her on the cheek, and makes noises about “my girl,” and then noticing the other’s pout, he says, “My girls, both of them.” But when he’s not looking, I’m getting a wink and a smile from my girl. Well, it turns out they’ve come in one car. The old bull is going to drop them off at their lodge. We stand to say our good-byes. We shake hands. My girl slips me a balled-up napkin. I open it before they’re out the door. It reads, “My sister is going to say she wants to stay the night at their house. Follow us. We’re in a silver Caddy. When they drop me off, wait ‘til they go, and come in.” I love this cloak and dagger stuff. I pull on my coat, count to ten, and I’m out the door. I hug the shadows along the building. I see them across the lot getting into their car. The old bull puts his wife in front and the girls in the back. He stands in front of his open door and looks around. I duck behind my car. He gets in his. I get in mine and follow at a discreet distance. After a mile or so, they make a left onto a small side road. There is a like road on the other side and I back up well within it, about twenty yards, and shut off my lights. In a few minutes, I see his headlights coming back. He pulls out into the main street and stops. Jaysus, I think. Am I far enough back he doesn’t see me? Mother of God! The moon! He gets out of the car and looks around. His door is open. My window is down. I can hear his wife bawling at him to get back inside and take them home. One more look around, and he gets in. I listen as the sound of the big Caddy disappears in the frigid air. I shoot across the street, skidding on some ice ‘til I hit exposed dirt on the access road. I proceed slowly for about a hundred yards—the snow, the trees, and the moon all around me. The lodge presents itself, small, but beautifully constructed. A huge bay window in front. Up the steps and a breathless knock on the door. It opens, and I’m hauled inside where the celebration begins on the living room floor. We’ve been waiting nearly three hours for this. Moonlight blesses us through the big window, and as I place my hands on her “peachies,” I can’t resist a muted wolf-howl. Even Mother Nature’s implanted instinct can sometimes fail the grandest of old bulls.
WELL, HAR-DEE-HAR-HARDennis O'Rourke
Leo Egan and I had been a duo for a year. We had contracted with a company in the mid-west that owned several different theme restaurants—Irish pubs being one part of the organization. We’d been signed for six gigs, two weeks each, over the course of several months, at four different locations. We had been a bit uneasy about the lack of an audience in the first club. Not only were they not coming to hear us, they were spurning the four-star restaurant, and it so happened that the food was very good. The manager assured us that we were doing a terrific job and that the lack of business was just growing pains. In time, they would come. I wasn’t so sure. It had been my experience that when a new restaurant and pub opened, especially one as elegant as this, it was packed from the get-go. Everyone wanted to be first to try it. This was not the case here. As it turned out, the second gig, in a different state, was at a pub actually doing some business, and it happened to be within walking distance of one of the company’s other ethnic theme restaurants. Leo and I had heard that the entertainer at the other joint—call him Bubba—was a gas character. We went over during one of our breaks to catch his act. He was indeed a great deal of fun, a good guitar player with a decent voice and a big and boisterous laugh. We deemed it proper to introduce ourselves. We agreed to meet later that night at a local Denny’s or some-such. Backgrounds and war stories were exchanged. Leo was especially taken by the guy—there was that laugh. He dropped in on one of our gigs, and a mutual admiration society developed, camaraderie between working road musicians. Over the next few nights, we learned that Bubba was being paid less than we were on an individual basis and had to provide his own accommodation. He was lamenting this fact over his eggs, and Leo and I exchanged looks. “Tell him, Den,” Leo said. I was only too happy, and after extracting a promise that the source of the information I was about to reveal should remain anonymous, I told him the deal we had received from the company. This was information we routinely passed among ourselves on the Irish circuit. Now, this guy was not on that circuit and we didn’t know him. But he seemed such a good fella we took the chance. He displayed mild surprise and interest, but otherwise appeared fairly unruffled. We had been complimenting him right along about his show and urged him then to press for the extra dough. And again, we reminded him not to use our names in any negotiation of demands. He fell all over himself promising he would not do that to us. His gig ended, and he hit the road. We bade him good-bye and good luck. What a nice guy, we agreed. As our run continued, we heard rumors from the staff that a shake-up was coming because the Irish pub part of the organization was not generating enough money to suit the company. Undoubtedly, the bean counters had suggested the cutbacks in cash outlay for all the entertainers. Our first gig had included round-trip airfare. That had been scratched, and we had driven out for the second. Instead of separate hotel rooms, we were given one. Food and booze allowance was severely curtailed. Indeed, our welcome at the next club was cool and curt. The manager let us know that as far as he was concerned we were no different from the other employees. We wondered if the aim was to make things so uncomfortable for us we would quit. Removal of perks notwithstanding, the money was still good, and we had six more weeks booked. We had no intention of quitting or doing anything that would get us fired, and we performed to generally enthusiastic audiences. Unlike the first club, this one appeared to have hit the ground running. On the final day of that gig, a call came to our hotel room from the corporate office. It was a woman who had greeted us at the first restaurant and expressed delight in our show. She had bad news. She was calling to tell us that our remaining gigs had been cancelled. More to the point, we had been fired. They had found a reason to terminate us, and the reason was Bubba. He had made his way to the corporate office and shouted and bawled about unfair and unequal treatment. He demanded more money and accommodations. Why should he be paid less than O’Rourke or Egan? He was every bit as good. The expression on my face alerted Leo to the fact that something catastrophic was occurring. He sat on the bed opposite me. “You can’t be serious,” I said to the woman. “Just because he used our names we’re fired?” Leo looked stricken. “I’m afraid so,” she said. “He was loud and obnoxious, and he used your names so many times that when he finally left, my boss told me to call and tell you that you had been cancelled. I’m sorry, I really am. You guys are great, but there’s nothing I can do. If it’s any consolation to you, though, Bubba didn’t get the raise.” The financial loss to us was in the thousands. Suing them was not something we thought seriously about. Contract or no, neither of us had any desire to get involved with courts and lawyers. We drove back in a gloom, wondering how we were going to fill those dates on such short notice. What bothered us most, especially Leo, was Bubba’s infamy—his betrayal of a confidence. Leo was always a good judge of character, but his instincts had failed him this time. When we got home, I wrote Bubba a short note, as we had exchanged addresses early on. I asked him to explain himself. I marked out all the dates he had cost us and the money involved. I told him that that big laugh of his was ringing hollow in our ears. Not surprisingly, he didn’t have the guts to write back. I spent a few days earnestly praying that he might meet the wrong woman someday and spend a week pissing red-hot, rusty fishhooks.
THE BOSS Dennis O’Rourke
The Boss. His name was Dennis O’Rourke. My father’s father. Huge, gnarled hands he had, with long fingers, and a thick mane of white hair combed straight back from a high and noble forehead. He was six foot, three inches. He was Ireland to me. I had only two dreams when I was a kid—to go to sea and to live for a time in the land of his birth. He was a musician, a concertina player from Skibboreen. I never heard him play it, and I wonder how must that little instrument have looked in those mighty hands? And when and why did he put it down? Perhaps it was this. There was the bitter truth about him that when the whiskey siren sang in his young man’s ear, my grandfather gave himself up to her—was awash in her. The booze would prompt his eternal banishment by my granny when their family was still young. My father and his older brother filled his place as the man of the house, and then Uncle Joe, when my father went to New Guinea in World War II. He would come to the housing project on 150 D Street in Southie where we lived in the fifties. He would come to baby-sit the three of us—me and sisters Elizabeth and Kathy—when my father and mother were invited out to a party, or on those special and rare evenings when they would go to a nightclub, perhaps a show at Blinstrub’s. That would have required some scrimping and saving, but they managed it occasionally. We’d have long been put to bed though we were none of us within a hare’s leap of sleeping. But there would be no children underfoot at these times, looking for this, wanting that. Not while my mother indulged herself in the very great pleasure of dressing up, and certainly not while my father complained about having to wear a tie. “Ted Williams doesn’t wear ties,” he would grumble. “Why do I have to?” Finally, when they had made good their escape in a heady rush and whirl of perfume and Old Spice, my grandfather would look in on my sisters first in the one room, while I lay abed in the privileged sanctum of the only son’s room, waiting impatiently for his massive frame to fill my door and blot out the light from the kitchen. The booze would get him locked out of our little apartment sometimes. My father would learn from his brother that the Boss was on a binge, and Da would mutter that he was in no mood to listen to foolish talk. So when we heard the slow, solid rap of one of Grandpa’s mitts on the door, my father would silence us all with a fierce shush and an angry swipe through the air of his own not inconsiderable paw. The big hand would fall upon the door again, a little harder, the way you’d think, if he wanted to, he could have easily broken it down. All of us sitting in silence. Then, as if he were ashamed he’d banged so hard, he would softly call out my father’s name and then my mother’s, and I would whisper, “Da, why can’t he—?” But Da would turn a look on me that would fry milk, and I’d button up. One last time, Grandpa would call out, “Frank? Betty?” his voice echoing in the concrete and steel hall. Then another silence. In my mind’s eye, I could see him turn around, a little unsteady with the drink, his big frame stooped. In my mind’s eye, I could see him take hold of the metal banister and move slowly down the steps one flight, into the shadows of the stairwell, out into the night, and the hot heart inside me breaking with the sadness of it all. Ah, Grandpa. Grandpa. On the night of my First Communion—seven years old I was—I lay awake in my bed, suffused in my newly bestowed holiness, caught up in the radiance of religion. The murmur of my parents’ voices from the kitchen, talking over the day’s events, nudged me away and out of my fervent dream of being devoured by lions in the Coliseum, and the certainty of immediate sainthood in heaven, where baseball could be played all day. I heard my father mention Grandpa, and I was suddenly upright in the bed, listening keenly. Grandpa had been told in which church the ceremony was to take place—Saint Peter’s and Saint Paul’s on Broadway. But shortly before all the scrubbed and starched angels were to march down the aisle, there wasn’t a sign of him. Drinking or no, my father knew the Boss would not miss this, his then only grandson’s most holy Catholic rite of passage. Now I crept to the foot of the bed, close to the door, to put my ear on my father relating how he suddenly had a thought leap up at him and give him an idea where Grandpa might be. He spoke of slipping out a side door and taking off at the gallop for several blocks through the warm, spring sunshine, ‘til he arrived at Saint Peter’s, a Lithuanian church. He went slowly down the main aisle, blinking in the dark, down past the rows of pews that were empty save for a handful of old women muttering prayers fiercely, as if they were certain that without these supplications the whole of the wicked world would perish. And there, right up front in the first pew, “As tall as a redwood, even sitting down,” Da said, was Grandpa. Sitting alone, waiting to watch me make my First Communion. Sitting alone, in the wrong church. He wasn’t drinking. The two Saint Peter’s had confused him. He got up, followed my father out, and made it to our church with precious few moments to spare. By then, there was just room enough for my father to squeeze into the pew with Ma and the sisters. So when I spotted Grandpa waving to me, it was passing him at the back of the church. He was smiling. The procession began at a crawl, and then stopped, although little feet continued to shift in place. I turned around to him again, and saw his granite face wet with tears. I had no idea then how close he had come to missing it all. When my parents’ conversation turned and continued to other things, I lay back in bed. My dreams of lions and sainthood and baseball had vanished, and I went to sleep with the picture of him sitting tall and white-haired, alone in the dark of the wrong church. And so, on the nights he watched over us, he would take leave of Kathy and Elizabeth and come into my room, and secured within two giant mitts, I was lifted high. The low growl of his laughter, and sometimes the whiskey breath. The fabled gentleness of the giant. No one could hurt me while he was there, while he held me in his arms. And how solemn he was, demonstrating the execution of the sign of the cross. High drama. Again and again, ‘til I had it right. At last, before he left the room, before I slept, he would sing a song or two, a ballad in a rich brogue. It was so long ago, and I was so young, that I can’t remember the sound of his voice, and I can’t remember a one of the songs for sure. Only that they were Irish. Well, the booze killed him in the end. I was nine or ten, and wasn’t told, I don’t know why, ‘til a week after he was in the ground. Yes, I wanted to see the country where he’d been born, where he’d been young, and I finally got to Ireland on my twenty-fifth birthday, after two years in the Merchant Marine, sailing oil tankers. So you see, I’d realized both my childhood dreams the morning I stepped onto Irish soil in Shannon. I met some wonderful people and had some great adventures in the time I lived there. I achieved dual citizenship, as well. I believe that would have made him proud. The booze, the booze laid him low. He died in an unheated room somewhere in the Back Bay. Alone. Dead three days before anyone thought to look in on him. All alone. There is a verse in Carrickfergus that sometimes brings him to mind when I sing it:
Ah, Grandpa. Grandpa.
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