“Let me tell you something, Ike,” Billy said, dropping his bar rag on the counter and leaning over, with both hands on the bar, in the direction of the old man. “There’s been other players in baseball besides Negroes. Players like Tommy John.”
“White boy, huh? The one you always talking about? Must be your favorite player, or something.”
“White boy, huh?” mocked Billy. “Tommy John threw out his arm. You know, that’s what they called it back then-throwing out your arm. When a pitcher did that, it was all over. But, with Tommy John, they operated on him-took something out of his leg, I think, and used it somehow to fix his bad arm, you know his elbow or shoulder or whatever it was he threw out. Anyway, he recovered and he was better than before. Better.”
“Tommy John,” laughed Ike. “Must be a Negro, with two first names, you know.” He laughed again. “Walter?” asked Ike. “You better than before? Now, before you say anything, I want you to know I think you look better. You know what I mean?”
“I think so, Ike. And again I thank you.”
“You know,” the old man said, with a sad shake of his head, “You walked in here, after you came back, and you looked like-” once more he shook his head the same way. “You looked like shit, you know what I mean?”
“I feel a lot better now,” said Walter with a generous smile. “Living here. The sand. The water. The weather. Billy’s food, of course, and…” He held up his bottle of Diet Coke. “Couldn’t have done it without this.”
“Denise too,” added Helen from her spot over by the wine cooler, the newest addition to Billy’s behind-the-bar equipment.
“Yes indeed,” said Ike. “Denise. Good girl.” And again Walter lifted his bottle. It was not necessary to say more. Good girl.
“So,” said Billy unwilling to give up on Tommy John just yet. “Tommy John was a good pitcher. Maybe even a great one. That’s not for me to say. But he’s better known for the surgery than for his pitching.” He glared at Ike. “That is among people who know who he is at all.”
“There’s others,” Ike interjected, coughing and spitting up phlegm into a bar napkin. one he then rolled up and left on the table in front of him. Still, despite his obvious discomfort, he dragged a huge inhale, exhaling from his mouth and nose simultaneously, once more, for the millionth time, appearing as if he was on fire himself. “There’s others more famous for what they did than what they did.”
Helen looked at the old man with a stare that had hopelessness written all over it. No one was going to change this man, not now, not ever. He was, she was sure, going to kill himself with those cigarettes.
“Damn!” Billy said, looking over at Ike.
“Ike,” said Walter. “You ever hear of those Buddhist priests who lit themselves on fire in Vietnam?”
“I have,” the old man answered. “Fine people, every one of them.”
The conversation turned back again to Tommy John and the surgical procedure that came to bear his name. Billy felt that alone was proof of his argument. “The man’s name is on it,” he said. “Like Lou Gehrig’s disease.”
“Jim Brown,” said Ike, with a period, like that was all that was necessary. More was required, however.
“Jim Brown? What about him?”
“I tell you, Walter, Jim Brown’s more famous for what he’s done after football than for when he was playing.”
“What’s that for?” Helen chided. “Throwing women-small women at that-off hotel balconies?”
“That too.”
“That too? Geez, Ike!” said Helen obviously too upset to say anything further about Mr. Brown.
“I don’t agree with that either, Ike,” said Walter. “Jim Brown-for all his difficulties, Helen-was the greatest player ever to suit up in the National Football League. Number thirty-two for the Cleveland Browns. Nothing he’s done since-movies, or anything else, good and bad-outshines that. I think we’re talking more about somebody like.. .”
“Mike Tyson,” shouted Billy. “Mike Tyson. I’d say Michael Jackson, but he’s even crazier than Mike Tyson, too crazy to talk about.”
“Well, how about Ronald Reagan?” the old man offered for consideration.
“Now you’re talking, Ike,” said Helen. “More famous for being President of the United States than for his time as a second- or third-rate actor. Good one, Ike.” The old man flashed her one of his patented, yellow-toothed smiles complete with a tip of his cap, which today was a John Deere hat. It had to be one of Ike’s jokes. There couldn’t have been a half-dozen pieces of John Deere equipment on the island of St. John, all of them probably lawn mowers.
“Or Kennedy,” said Billy.
“Kennedy? For what? Which one?”
“Either one of them, Helen. They’re both more famous for being dead than for anything they did when they were alive.”
“Now Billy, John F. Kennedy was the President of the United States. How much more famous are you going to get than that?”
“Yeah, and when you think about him, what do you think of? Come on, don’t sit there with that silly look on your face. What do you think of? That’s right, you know it. The same with his brother Bobby too.”
“Billy, do you know who Roosevelt Grier is?”
“Sure, I do, Walter.”
“Well, since you bring up the Kennedys, I’ll go with him-Rosey Grier. All pro, famous as you can get as an athlete. Yet, better known as the man who caught Robert Kennedy’s assassin, Sirhan Sirhan.”
“He did too,” said Ike. “Jumped on the man, right there in the kitchen where he shot him. That’s a good one, Walter.”
Billy broke the pause, the momentary silence among them, with a question. “You want me to write it up?”
“Put me down for Roosevelt Grier,” said Ike. “Thank you. Walter, if you don’t mind.”
“I’ll take Tommy John,” said Billy, showing loyalty to himself and his unwillingness to be moved off his original conviction. “Walter, what about you?”
“No,” said Walter. “Don’t write it, not yet. You say the Kennedys are more famous for being dead. Okay, I say the same for Wild Bill Hickok.”
“Wild Bill Hickok?”
“That’s right, Billy. Aces and eights.”
“Well now, boys,” cautioned Ike. “This is getting out of hand, if you know what I mean. Billy, you say the Kennedys, either one. Walter, you have Wild Bill Hickok-which I think is a good one-but I’m taking John Lennon.”
“That’s a stretch, don’t you think? Christ, he was a Beatle.”
“You don’t like it, Walter, don’t vote for it. Go on now, Billy,” said Ike, “Now you write it up.”
On the chalkboard, near the old register, Billy scrawled, KENNEDYS/WILD BILL/THE BEATLES.
“Beatles? Not what I said, but that’ll do,” said the old man with the silly cap. “They ain’t all dead yet, but that’ll do.”
“And just what does this prove?” asked Helen pointing toward Billy’s handiwork. “I don’t get it, and I’m not sure you fellas do either.”
“It shows,” Ike pronounced, “you never can tell what you’ll be remembered for. Isn’t that right, Walter?”
“As rain, my old friend. Right as rain,” said Walter. Helen seemed unconvinced.
Walter went to Boston. He spent two days there, talking to people, some at Harvard, others in the financial trade. He also had former clients in Boston. One in particular, a mature woman from a legitimate old New England family-not one like the more popular, Johnny-come-lately Kennedys-was eager to help Walter. So many of the pre-Revolutionary Protestant families hated the upstart Irish, thought of them as twentieth-century fakes. Plus, Walter had helped this woman in a way she could never have hoped for, at a time when she thought she might lose everything. Now she could do him a service and she was truly thankful for the opportunity. He wanted to know as much as he could about Abby O’Malley. He wanted to know who her friends were, where she spent money and how much, and especially who she talked to on the phone, both hard-wired and cell phone. Such information could be had. He had done it before, more than once. All you needed was the right contacts and sometimes enough money.
“Would you like me to hire an investigator?” she asked Walter.