The dog accusing him on the landing below knew too how Frankie was forever breaking everything he touched: crockery, women’s hearts or suckers’ pocketbooks – then squealed in puppyish surprise and Sophie knew Frankie had kicked it in spite against all such dogs.
‘He thinks he’s gettin’ even on me, kickin’ somebody’s little helpless pup – I ought to say I want a horse, maybe he’ll break his dirty foot.’ A thin pang of pleasure went through her so deeply that she felt it between her withering thighs.
‘I’m gonna lock my heart
’N throw away the key,’
she sang among the ruins.
‘I’m wise to all those tricks
You played on me…’
and paused at the echo of a woman’s voice or of some scolding girl’s: that no-good little Molly N. giving her Frankie unmixed hell for kicking the dog. That one had something coming to her too. Ever since Frankie had taken her dancing that night. With a swift and babyish glee Sophie wheeled to the door, it wasn’t every night there was this much excitement for her pale eyes to see or her ears to hear.
Yet the tingle of anticipation faded to an uneasy qualm as she listened and wondered dimly why her joy must always turn sick within her without her ever really knowing why.
‘Next time you come downstairs feelin’ mean go kick your own dog,’ Molly N. was telling him off down there. While doors all over the vast and drafty old house opened a crack to hear the battle on the first floor front.
To Sophie it sounded as though Frankie were buckling under down there. Not a peep out of him. Not a single dirty name of all the names he knew to call his wife. He mustn’t say a one of them to a little tramp like that one. It sounded as if he were standing down there with his cap in his hand taking it big.
Frankie had his cap in his hand all right; but wasn’t hearing a thing. Dark-eyed Molly stood before him holding her pup in her hands and so angry she’d forgotten she wasn’t wearing a slip and wasn’t dressed to be standing in a doorway with the light behind her. Her anger subsided slowly before Frankie’s downcast eyes till she realized they weren’t downcast from humility – and slammed the door in his face.
Frankie didn’t move a step. Just stood there grinning like a tow-headed clown. ‘Wow,’ he decided at last, ‘a shaft like that wasted on a clown like Drunkie John. I got no dog of my own to kick, Molly-O,’ he called through the door.
Molly-O answered swiftly, urging him to go. ‘Sorry I hollered at you, Frankie. Maybe the hound was makin’ too big a racket, she deserved a little kick.’ After all, what was the use of inviting trouble with the rent overdue?
He heard the scraping of the wheelchair’s arm against the railing overhead. Sophie had been listening up there the whole time. ‘Zosh is gettin’ sneaky, she never used to be like that,’ he realized uneasily.
The sign above the cash register of the Tug & Maul Bar indicated Antek the Owner’s general attitude toward West Division Street:
I’VE BEEN PUNCHED, KICKED, SCREWED, DEFRAUDED, KNOCKED DOWN, HELD UP, HELD DOWN, LIED ABOUT, CHEATED, DECEIVED, CONNED, LAUGHED AT, INSULTED, HIT ON THE HEAD AND MARRIED. SO GO AHEAD AND ASK FOR CREDIT I DON’T MIND SAYING NO.
Antek’s customers, from Meter Reader the Baseball Coach to Schwabatski and Drunkie John, held the bar directly across the street in lively contempt. For the joint across the way didn’t even have the simple honesty to confess itself a tavern: it was a club, mind you. Club Safari, Mixed Drinks Our Specialty.
Nobody mixed anything but whisky and beer at the Tug & Maul. To ask Antek for a martini would have been the equivalent of asking him for a kiss. It wasn’t done. Antek kissed no one but his wife and served no man anything but whisky and beer.
Tug & Maul
Shove & Haul
Old Fitz, Old Crow or Old McCall-
When you’re broke go home-
That’s all.
That was not only Antek’s own poetry: it was also his coat of arms. It was inscribed on the back of an oblong strip of tin originally intended to advertise Coca-Cola and leaned, against the pretzel bowl, to warn the barflies who buzzed all day long between the curb and the bar.
And all day long brought Antek news of the carryings-on in the Safari, who had just gone in and who had just come out. They could see right into the window of the Safari and thus could undo any man’s reputation without so much as taking a foot off the rail. ‘I seen Nifty Louie steerin’ some old swish in there again yesterday, what they was drinkin’ was somethin’ wit’ leaves on top.’ That pretty well placed Louie on the Tug & Maul’s social register.
For Antek held to the old days and the old ways, familiar whisky and well-tried friends. Neither bright neon nor a soft fluorescence lighted either his ceiling or his walls; but there was plenty of butchershop sawdust along the floor and an old-fashioned golden goboon for every four bar stools. He’d roll you for the drinks and give you a square shake, friend or passing stranger, every time; while penny-ante sessions went on, in one or another of the booths, from noon till 4 A.M. If you came in already stewed you right-about-faced right back to the place you’d come from; but if you had had too much out of his own bottles he’d see you didn’t get strongarmed on his side of the street.
He drew the line at television. ‘I give it a honest chance,’ he often told Frankie, ‘it don’t work.’
‘Television don’t work, Owner?’
‘Well, it works in a way – but it don’t work out at all. A customer orders a beer, looks at the screen ’n asks me, “What’s the score, Owner?” I dunno, I been too busy to follow. All I can do is ask some guy who been watchin’: “What’s the score?” He dunno. He thinks it’s 8-3 but he ain’t sure. “What innin’ is it?” the new customer wants to know then. I dunno that neither, so I ask the guy who’s been watchin’: “What innin’?” He dunno neither. He thinks it’s the last of the sixth or the first of the sevent’, he ain’t too sure.
‘“Who’s playin’?” the new guy wants to know. I still dunno. So I ask the old customer. He dunno neither. He thinks it’s the Red Sox but he ain’t too sure.’ N all afternoon it goes that way till I’m hittin’ the bottle myself instead of pourin’.
‘’N when I do get a chance to listen ’n look a little all I hear is: “Here comes Luke Applin’, he’s breakin’ the record for most games played at short, at third, I dunno. Last year he played so many games, this year he played so many awready, the record is two thousand - will he make it? I dunno.
‘“Luke would have broke the record sooner but he had to play third awhile, awready he got a better run-batted-in average than Everett Somebody. Yeh, but Everett Somebody was back in the days of the dead ball, you got to take all that into consideration” – why the hell do I have to take all that into consideration? Just because I work behind a bar?’ N the next time Luke comes up all I’m takin’ into consideration is do I wait for somebody to holler for the Old Fitz ’r do I open it up just for myself.’
Frankie would nod understandingly and call for the Old Fitz himself, television or no television.
‘Why put up with a thing like that?’ Antek with the bottle in his hand would want to know, making Frankie wish he hadn’t said anything in the first place. ‘When I come up to serve a customer I don’t hear nobody yellin’: “Here comes Antek the Owner! Last year he served 5444 beers, 11,220 shots of bar whisky and refilled the pretzel bowl twice a week fer fifty-two weeks! Up to ’n includin’ last Sunday’s double-header he got 3317 shots of Old Grand-dad to his credit, 2343 shots of Schenley’s ’n God knows how many fifths of Old Fitz he has drunk by hisself!” What the hell, I got a record too -’ n when they put me on that screen I’ll buy it. Not before.’