Fresh Kills by Bill Loehfelm Read Free Book Online

they could see down her dress, or that she better use two hands to work the camera. I found myself hoping that both men had suffered through king-hell hangovers the next morning.

    I wondered if my mother had known that blond guy well. What had my father done to drive that guy out of his life? There must’ve been something, because my father eventually did that to everybody. Before I even finished grammar school, not long after the “accidents” started, people stopped coming over, and my folks had stopped going out before that.

    Julia wouldn’t know who the guy was, either. That was probably why she’d left the picture out, to remind her to ask me about it. There was nothing for me to tell her. It occurred to me, standing there in that empty kitchen, that there was no one left but me to ask. It was a shame. I didn’t have any answers. I put the photo back into the box, burying it under a pile of the others. I switched off the kitchen light, grabbed my jacket, and headed out the front door.

    I decided to forgo the car and its busted taillight and its expired registration. Minus my few pleasant hours passed out next to Molly, I’d pretty much been drinking for twenty-four hours or so and I’d seen enough cops for one day. So I walked, head down, hands in my jacket pockets, the few blocks along Richmond Avenue down to Joyce’s Tavern.

     
 

THE PLACE WAS NEARLY EMPTY when I walked in, just two old drunks at the end of the bar and one couple leaning close together at a side table. Old Joyce himself stood behind the bar, white apron stretched across his plump belly, the soft colors of the Christmas lights over the liquor shelves shining on his bald head. He watched me, digging fingers into his black beard, as I took a seat at the bar under the TV. Then he whispered something to the drunks.

    They looked at me, the watery eyes of the old men dark in the dim light of the bar. I stared back at the three of them. Joyce was either trying to recognize me, or already had, and was debating whether or not to throw me out. One of the drunks said, “Sanders’s kid,” to him and he nodded some more. Like it was on the rest of the island, “Sanders’s kid” was a strong indictment at Joyce’s.

    For half a year or so my father had been a regular, picking this joint after he’d worn out his welcome somewhere else. I’m surprised it took him so long to get here. It was the bar closest to the house and literally on the way home from the Eltingville train station. My father had walked right past Joyce’s Tavern on his way home from work every weekday for years. It would be his last stop, his last regular bar. His reputation preceded him, but my father paid his tab and didn’t misbehave any more than the other regulars, so Joyce gave him a chance. But my old man had a special talent for getting under someone’s skin, for picking the one thing that drove them craziest and latching on to it like a pit bull. For Joyce, that thing was Northern Ireland.

    Born on the Catholic side of Belfast, Joyce finished high school there before joining his older brother on Staten Island, taking over the bar when his brother died years later. All in all, Joyce had adjusted to the island well enough. He lived with the traffic, the frantic pace, the pollution, and the smell of the Dump in summer. All of it was easier to take, I guess, than riots and kneecapping.One thing he always hated, however, was drunken spouting about “the Troubles.” He once smacked a guy right in the mouth for ordering an Irish Car Bomb.

    The “barstool Irish” Joyce called them, the Irish-Americans, three or four generations removed from Ireland, who’d never even been to the Republic, never mind the North, but who loved to get shamrock tattoos, shout about getting the Brits out of Ireland, and ask him how to send money to the IRA. Of course, barstool Irish were also the lifeblood of the tavern’s business; Staten Island was loaded with them and my father