Billy nodded and turned away from Francis. “Okay,” he said, and then he jumped up from the bench and left the kitchen so the old man could not see (though he saw) that he was choked up.
“Grew up nice, Billy did,” Francis said. “Couple of tough bozos you raised, Annie.”
“I wish they were tougher,” Annie said.
The yard, now ablaze with new light against a black sky, caught Francis’s attention. Men and boys, and even dogs, were holding lighted candles, the dogs holding them in their mouths sideways. Specky McManus, as usual hem’ different, wore his candle on top of his derby. It was a garden of acolytes setting fire to the very air, and then, while Francis watched, the acolytes erupted in song, but a song without sense, a chant to which Francis listened carefully but could make out not a word. It was an antisyllabic lyric they sang, like the sibilance of the wren’s softest whistle, or the tree frog’s tonsillar wheeze. It was clear to Francis as he watched this performance (watched it with awe, for it was transcending what he expected from dream, from reverie, even from Sneaky Pete hallucinations) that it was happening in an arena of his existence over which he had less control than he first imagined when Aldo Campione boarded the bus. The signals from this time lock were ominous, the spooks utterly without humor. And then, when he saw the runt (who knew he was being watched, who knew he didn’t belong in this picture) putting the lighted end of the candle into the hole in the back of his neck, and when Francis recognized the chant of the acolytes at last as the “Dies Irae,” he grew fearful. He closed his eyes and buried his head in his hands and he tried to remember the name of his first dog.
It was a collie.
o o o
Billy came back, clear-eyed, sat across from Francis, and offered him another smoke, which he took. Billy topped his own beer and drank and then said, “George.”
“Oh my God,” Annie said. “We forgot all about George.” And she went to the living room and called upstairs to Peg: “You should call George and tell him he can come home.”
“Let her alone, I’ll do it,” Billy called to his mother.
“What about George?” Francis asked.
“The cops were here one night lookin’ for him,” Billy said. “It was Patsy McCall puttin’ pressure on the family because of me. George writes numbers and they were probably gonna book him for gamblin’ even though he had the okay. So he laid low up in Troy, and the poor bastard’s been alone for days. But if I’m clear, then so is he.”
“Some power the McCaIls put together in this town.”
“They got it all. They ever pay you the money they owed you for registerin’ all those times?”
“Paid me the fifty I told you about, owe me another fifty-five. I’ll never see it.”
“You got it comin’.”
“Once it got in the papers they wouldn’t touch it. Mixin’ themselves up with bums. You heard Martin tell me that. They’d also be suspicious that I’d set them up. I wouldn’t set nobody up. Nobody.”
“Then you got no cash.”
“I got a little.”
“How much?”
“I got some change. Cigarette money.”
“You blew what you had on the turkey.”
“That took a bit of it.”
Billy handed him a ten, folded in half. “Put it in your pocket. You can’t walk around broke.”
Francis took it and snorted. “I been broke twenty-two years. But I thank ye, Billy. I’ll make it up.”
“You already made it up.” And he went to the phone in the dining room to call George in Troy.
Annie came back to the kitchen and saw Francis looking at the Chadwick Park photo and looked over his shoulder. “That’s a handsome picture of you,” she said.
“Yeah,” said Francis. “I was a good-lookin’ devil.”
“Some thought so, some didn’t,” Annie said. “I forgot about this picture.”
“Oughta get it framed,” Francis said. “Lot of North Enders in there. George and Martin as kids, and Patsy McCall too. And Iron Joe. Real good shot of Joe.”
“It surely is,” Annie said. “How fat and healthy he looks.”
Billy came back and Annie put the photo on the table so that all three of them could look at it. They sat on the same bench with Francis in the middle and studied it, each singling out the men and boys they knew. Annie even knew one of the dogs.
“Oh that’s a prize picture,” she said, and stood up. “A prize picture.”
“Well, it’s yours, so get it framed.”
“Mine? No, it’s yours. It’s baseball.”
“Nah, nah, George’d like it too.”
“Well I will frame it,” Annie said. “I’ll take it downtown and get it done up right.”
“Sure,” said Francis. “Here. Here’s ten dollars toward the frame.”
“Hey,” Billy said.
“No,” Francis said. “You let me do it, Billy.”
Billy chuckled.
“I will not take any money,” Annie said. “You put that back in your pocket.”
Billy laughed and hit the table with the palm of his hand. “Now I know why you been broke twenty-two years. I know why we’re all broke. It runs in the family.”
“We’re not all broke,” Annie said. “We pay our way. Don’t be telling people we’re broke. You’re broke because you made some crazy horse bet. But we’re not broke. We’ve had bad times but we can still pay the rent. And we’ve never gone hungry.”
“Peg’s workin’,” Francis said.
“A private secretary,” Annie said. “To the owner of a tool company. She’s very well liked.”
“She’s beautiful,” Francis said. “Kinda nasty when she puts her mind to it, but beautiful.”
“She shoulda been a model,” Billy said.
“She should not,” Annie said.
“Well she shoulda, goddamn it, she shoulda,” said Billy. “They wanted her to model for Pepsodent toothpaste, but Mama wouldn’t hear of it. Somebody over at church told her models were, you know, loose ladies. Get your picture taken, it turns you into a floozy.”
“That had nothing to do with it,” Annie said.
“Her teeth,” Billy said. “She’s got the most gorgeous teeth in North America. Better-lookin’ teeth than Joan Crawford. What a smile! You ain’t seen her smile yet, but that’s a fantastic smile. Like Times Square is what it is. She coulda been on billboards coast to coast. We’d be hipdeep in toothpaste, and cash too. But no.” And he jerked a thumb at his mother.
“She had a job,” Annie said. “She didn’t need that. I never liked that fellow that wanted to sign her up.”
“He was all right,” Billy said. “I checked him out. He was legitimate.”
“How could you know what he was?”
“How could I know anything? I’m a goddamn genius.”
“Clean up your mouth, genius. She would’ve had to go to New York for pictures.”
“And she’d of never come back, right?”
“Maybe she would, maybe she wouldn’t.”
“Now you got it,” Billy said to his father. “Mama likes to keep all the birds in the nest.”
“Can’t say as I blame her,” Francis said.
“No,” Billy said.
“I never liked that fellow,” Annie said. “That’s what it really was. I didn’t trust him.”
Nobody spoke.
“And she brought a paycheck home every week,” Annie said. “Even when the tool company closed awhile, the owner put her to work as a cashier in a trading port he owned. Trading port and indoor golf. An enormous place. They almost brought Rudy Vallee there once. Peg got wonderful experience.”