| Ãàðîëüä Êîííîëëè Harold Connolly | |
| Ïîåçäêà çà Îëèìïèéñêèì Çîëîòîì The Journey for Olympic Gold ãëàâû 20 | |
Chapter Twenty
The best time to visit Uncle Jim was after 10 P.M., when his
political friends, who
rarely missed a day without dropping by for a chat and a
high ball, had usually gone
home. After everyone left, the Senator remained sitting in
his undershirt, slumped over
his large kitchen table with the telephone always at hand,
an ashtray with a burning
cigarette, a large television next to the kitchen door with
muted images to keep him
company, a hot coffee pot on the stove, and a bottle of
whisky with extra shot glasses in
the center of the table. That was when his closest friends
or family members who wanted
to catch him unhurried rang up to say hello or dropped by to
request his help.
As I walked in, finding him surprisingly alone, sitting in
his undershirt at his
kitchen table, customary place of business, he mumbled,
“Hold on,” and covered the
telephone receiver. “Sit down, Dinny,” he pointed to a chair
across from him at the table
and waved his hand. “This is a bad case. It will take a
minute.”
He uncovered the phone. “No, I don’t want you to come over.
My nephew just
dropped in. Listen, I got you a job last week and you didn’t
show up.”
“Yes, I took care of your traffic ticket, not because of
you, you bum, but because
of your kids. Now I want you to get off the booze, then come
over and we’ll talk about
another job.”
“Don’t thank me; stay on the wagon! By the way,” the
Senator’s voice softened,
“Tomorrow morning send your wife over to Lynch’s Market.
They’ll give her some
groceries - O.K. - I know. -- Yeah -- O.K. --- Good night.”
Exhaling a deep sigh of resignation, he hung up the
telephone and looked at me
from his slumped position through dark, heavy lidded,
basset-like eyes set in a jowly,
ashen face that rarely saw the sunshine. “A problem. A
mustache man, a drunk! The
bastard’s got six kids and the loveliest Irish wife on
earth; it’s hard to believe how she
puts up with him. He can’t keep a job, but if I don’t scrape
up something for him, those
kids don’t eat.”
The Senator raised his head with eyes now fully opened as if
suddenly
remembering something, and said, “Dinny, I need to make a
call. Meanwhile, run down
to McDermott’s drug store in the square; they’re open till
midnight. Pick up those pills
Dr. Rubin prescribed. I forgot about them all day. They’re
supposed to dehydrate me
and get my weight down.
I got up and turned toward the kitchen door. “Wait a minute,
while you’re there
get two bottles of black cherry soda and a quart of coffee
ice cream.”
I came back to find Red, a wiry, red-headed, sallow-cheeked,
high school crony
and one of uncle Jim’s most trusted men, standing next to
the stove with a drink in one
hand and a cigarette in the other. After greeting me, he
said, “I forgot to tell you,
Senator, about what that S.O.B. Fire Commissioner told
Eddie. He said: ‘Corbett
should keep his mind on the Senate and forget about running
for mayor.’ Maybe you
should think it over and run another year. It may be true
that the people prefer to have
you as their Senator and wouldn’t go for you as the mayor.”
“Get yourself home, Red. I’ll tell you whether I’ll run
after I make up my mind.”
“Jim get to bed, it’s almost midnight,” advised Red.
“That’s right, Uncle Jim,” I agreed quickly, “I’ll come back
to see you another
time.”
“No, no, what are you, a conspiracy? I’m not tired. Red, you
get the hell out of
here and go home to your family, and Dinny, you sit down. I
know you don’t drink so
take some of that black cherry, it’s good.”
“No, thanks, Uncle Jim,” I took a deep breath and wanted to
say more.
Jim interrupted me, “Dinny, give me a second, I have to call
another bastard –“
“Uncle Jim, please don’t call anybody. It’s too late!”
“What do you mean, too late. In this business you don’t
worry about the clock;
you worry about constituents.”
After the call he remained at the table, his enormous soft
body hunched over, his
head turned on its side resting on his forearms with their
dark, calloused elbows,. The
oppressive late July heat and the accumulated fatigue of
long busy days weighed heavily
on my uncle. His eyes were nearly closed, as he sighed out
huge puffs of air through a
corner of his almost toothless mouth. He hated his dentures
and put them in only when
speaking at public meetings or delivering a speech on the
floor of the State Senate. When
he spoke to his political workers or the individual people
in his district, he never wore his
teeth and they probably would not have understood him if he
had.
For a while we both sat silently. My uncle had fallen
asleep, and I figured I had
better help him to bed. But as I moved to rise, the Senator
lifted his head. “Where are
you going? Did I ever tell you about the joker who wakes me
up every New Year’s Day.
“For the past twelve years he’s waked me up at exactly 3
A.M.- never missed one.
‘Happy New Year, you big, fat son of a bitch,’ he says.
Every year I’ve had the city
operators, police, everybody lined up to catch the bastard.
But he’s a smart cookie,
always uses a different phone booth.” He sighed and there
was the shadow of a wry smile
and a twinkle in his tired eyes. “As far as I remember, only
once was he a couple of
minutes late. I’m sure I know the bastard. He disguises his
voice, but I know it from
somewhere, and when I get my hands on him --”
I also smiled a little as I caught in Uncle Jim’s ostensibly
annoyed expression, his
secret appreciation of the humor in the situation.
Nevertheless at various times
everybody in Somerville came under suspicion. During
discussions with his close
friends, Jim would unleash a leading question carefully
designed to catch the possible
culprit off balance, but he never nailed the joker.
It was well past midnight before I got to tell my uncle I
had passed the driver’s
test and was looking to buy an old car. As he listened to
me, I could sense his thoughts
were elsewhere, but he momentarily snapped out of it,
promised he would phone me
about it in the morning, and returned to discussing the
problems he found more pressing.
He began to outline his fall campaign for re-election and my
part in it. For many
years Senator Corbett ran for his seat unopposed by any
Republican candidate - his
avalanche of votes discouraged all pretenders except the few
local democratic die-hards
who kept trying to unseat him in the primary. But he never
slackened in his relentless
campaigning, trusting only door–to-door canvassing and four
speeches a night. From the
Elks he would dash to the American Legion, then over to St.
Joseph’s Parish Hall,
occasionally to one or two wakes, or a late birthday party
until he wore himself and his
workers down to their last reserves of energy. The upcoming
senatorial campaign was
important to him because he wanted to ascertain the extent
of his popularity before he
made his decision about running for the position he had
always dreamt about - the Mayor
of Somerville.
Uncle Jim’s political world was filled with colorful
personalities, and seemingly
never-ending humorous stories. That night I stayed until one
in the morning when the
Senator finally got ready for bed. Once he fell into heavy
snoring, I turned off his lights
and slipped out of the bedroom; but no sooner had I closed
the front door and taken three
steps down the street to catch the last bus, when his phone
began to ring again. The
bedroom lights flared on instantly.
Two days later the Senator called my house. “Has Red shown
up there yet?”
“No, Uncle Jim. What’s he coming for?”
“Never mind. Only tell him to get back here fast. I want him
to take me into the
State House.”
“But Uncle Jim?”
He had hung up. Obviously something more important
preoccupied his mind.
But why call Red here? As I placed the receiver down, I
heard the blare of a car horn.
Looking out of the window, I saw Red and a man I had not met
before standing next to an
older-model, maroon colored, automobile. An exciting
suspicion sent me flying
downstairs.
“Harold, I want you to meet Dennis Riley. He’s giving me a
lift back to
Somerville. Here’s your automobile, a real beauty - a happy
birthday gift from your
uncle. He knows you’ll be nineteen next week and he wants
you to have this car.”
I was practically speechless. “How did he find it, I mean
where did he get it?”
“It belonged to an old widow of a doctor over near St.
Joseph’s. Every time there
was a cloud in the sky, she’d put the car in her garage; and
after her husband died five
years ago, she never drove it. Your uncle knows her; he’s
got a million friends. Give
the car a whirl.”
“Don’t worry, I sure will, right now, and drive straight
over to thank --” I
remembered the message for Red, asked him to tell uncle Jim
how happy I was, and that I
would call him that night and come over to see him as soon
as soon as he had a free
moment.
The men drove away, and I stood face to face with the
sprawling 1937 Buick,
four-door, roadster with bulbous headlights, that protruded
above the fenders like the
round feelers of a mollusk. I spent the next three hours
washing and polishing the 13-
year-old car inside and out, wondering whether or not Mrs.
Boyle would allow Virginia
to go with me for a ride.
I kept the car for almost two years until I grew tired of
pushing it downhill in our
back alley to get it started on cold winter mornings. On
late summer weekends, Virginia
and I drove on Friday nights to Norembega Park to continue
working on my ballroom
dancing to the music of the popular big bands, and on
Saturday or Sunday mornings to
Boston harbor to catch the morning boat ride to Nantasket
Beach, a popular recreation
site two and half hours away from the stifling city. We
would spend the day swimming,
talking or catching the last of the year’s sun-tanning rays;
and on chilly, overcast days we
browsed through the amusements at Paragon Park until five in
the afternoon, when we’d
hurry back to the long line waiting to board for the return
voyage. We knew from
experience that missing it meant having to stay quite late
for the next boat, a smaller
older craft, which made a very slow, chilly trip home.
On just such an occasion, with a biting breeze whistling
across the bow, I
suggested to Virginia that we move down to the protected
promenade, but she insisted on
the remaining on the unshielded top deck, away from the
crowds and sound below. The
wind and spray from the tossing boat chilled us both, and we
moved closer together.
With my sweatshirt over her shoulders and my arm around her,
I gently attempted to kiss
her. She slowly turned her head, which was resting against
my shoulder, and our lips
lightly touched. Then suddenly she pushed me away.
“No, Harold, people might see us!”
For over an hour I could not collect enough courage to try
again to kiss her. But
the silvery moonlight casting its shiny path across the
black water and the flickering stars
spread throughout a cloudless infinity made us both forget
there was anyone else but us.
Finally, ever so tenderly, I kissed her again, and this time
she returned the magic, but it
was all too brief because the ship gave a piercing whistle
and we jumped apart. The
rhythms of the dance floor jukebox drifted up from the deck
below.
“Soon we’ll be home. Perhaps we should start down so we can
get off ahead of
the crowds,” she said.
“Sure,” I picked up her black beach bag and the blanket;
“maybe we can have one
dance before we dock.”
“I’d rather not dance here, if you don’t mind.”
“Why not? You love dancing and everybody down there’s
dancing.” Virginia
persisted in her unwillingness to enter the dance floor.
“What’s wrong? Why don’t you want to dance? We’ll dance very
slowly if
you’re tired. It’s better than just standing in the door for
twenty minutes. At least I can
hold you --”
“But that’s why --” She hesitated.
“What’s why? What’s wrong, Virginia?”
“I’ll tell you, but please understand. It’s no fault of
yours, that when we dance on
this boat, we’re so - so pressed together. Father Lynch told
me it’s wrong to dance like
that. It leaves no room for the Holy Spirit between us.” I
was stunned. I could never
again ask Ginny to dance on the boat. I wasn't worried about
the Holy Spirit; I wanted to
hold the girl I loved. I would never have violated her
religious convictions, nor mine. I
believed that true devotion was built on trust? What right
had priests to judge my
trustworthiness from the cloister of a darkened
confessional? I wondered why no one
ever brought this up in theology class.
During the fall of my senior year, I continued seeing
Virginia even after I learned
she was also dating another BC guy. Despite being
disappointed and devastated, I
rationalized that it was only natural for such a beautiful
girl to enjoy the company of
more than one guy. After a while, however, I got the
impression that she was testing us
against each another to determine who was most worthy of her
attention. Once I
confirmed that suspicion, the object of my adoration, who
resembled Diego Valazquez’s
16th century painting of the Rokeby Venus, took a back seat
to throwing a sixteen-pound
hammer, but I still couldn’t get her out of my mind.
At Boston College I was a shot putter and discus thrower.
Discovering my
aptitude in the hammer throw at the end of my junior year in
college was serendipity.
Coach Bill Gilligan worked with our only hammer thrower,
Bill Sweeney, as his last task
of the day. Since Coach Gilligan and I lived close to each
other, he offered to give me a
ride home each day after practice, saving me the long trek
by streetcar. Saving on gas
money for the weekends and using the time on the streetcar
to study, I rarely drove my
old Buick to school. In an effort to speed up practice, I
went out in the field to toss the
hammers back to Sweeney. I thought it would be good exercise
for my left arm. I
watched what the coach was having Sweeney do to improve his
throwing, and tried to
copy his movements, while introducing my own emphasis on leg
lift to compensate for
my left arm. After a week I was throwing the hammer back to
them over their heads.
Coach Gilligan soon called out, “Connolly, you better come
in here and start throwing
from this direction.”
Copyright © 1999-2002 Harold Connolly |
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