Willie Monahan dropped dead in the Hollow Leg Saloon. It was five years ago in the middle of the third quarter of the Pittsburgh Steelers-New York Giants football game. He died with a glass of bourbon in his hand, and there are some who say he drank it off before his passing.
He went the way he wanted to go - in the friendly atmosphere of Clancy's place and the warm conviviality of his companions. His wife and grown daughter were at home watching the Monday Night Movie and were spared the melodrama of his final moment. We, at the bar, were not.
His final moment was theatrical. Just as the Giant quarterback was sacked, Willie raised his bourbon as though to drink. Instead, he slipped backwards off his stool, held his bourbon high, and placed his left hand on his chest. We thought he might break into song, for the pose was similar to that of an Italian opera tenor with limited acting ability. We thought he might propose a toast to the Pittsburgh tackle for sacking the quarterback, or we thought we might enjoy one of Willie's rare attacks of largess, and he might stand a round of drinks for all of us.
It was, in fact, none of these things. Willie was already dead - but still on his feet. We watched him expectantly, and as we did, he sidled to his right still holding his glass high. The toilet was in that direction, and it seemed plausible that he was headed that way. His face revealed neither pain nor anguish, but there was a puzzlement upon it as though some one had asked him a question to which he had no answer.
His path brought him quite close to Lotte, who resorted to a jigger of gin occasionally to ease her chronic back pains. She had no interest in football, as we did, but some of us maintained she had the hots for Clancy. Lotte was an unpredictable person - she could be volatile, and she carried a cane. "It was a cane me Grandfather carried," she often would say. She would display its horse's head handle and warn us that the first turkey who tried to get smart with her would bear its imprint "up the side of his head."
As Willie sidled within range of Lotte, she put her glass down and reached for her cane. She lashed out at him vainly as he fell at her feet. Had she connected, she may well have blamed herself for Willie's demise, for at heart she was a gentlewoman and would not club a dying man. All of us, by now, suspected something was seriously wrong with Willie. Our attention was equally divided between his curious behavior and the football game but two or three of us went to his side.
"Look, he's still holdin' his glass."
"Who's 'e starin' at?"
"Can ya tell if e's breathin'?"
"Why'ntcha try sittin' 'im up."
So we tried sitting him up, and Bob Hollister tried to get the glass out of his hand. "He ain't lettin' that go," said Bob. "Feel of his wrist, see if y'can get a pulse."
None of us really knew how to feel for a pulse. Somebody felt the side of his neck and shrugged his shoulders. Then Helmsley walked over to the bar and told Clancy he'd better call 911. Clancy tipped the derby to the back of his head and put his cigar down. He gave the information to the night operator and told him it was Willie Monahan. Now Willie had been in emergency before for various bar-related accidents and had been a frequent week-end visitor to the hospital. This may very well have been the reason why the ambulance didn't arrive at the Hollow Leg Saloon until the middle of the fourth period. None of Willie's previous problems had required immediate attention.
Just before the ambulance arrived, somebody realized that no one had called Willie's wife, and it was pointed out to me that since I had been sitting next to Willie, it was my place to do it. I couldn't follow the logic, but I turned and looked at Willie and thought, well, if it had been me, wouldn't my wife want to know? Clancy was a first class bartender and kept all our telephone numbers in a little black book under the salted peanuts. Time and again he would find it necessary to call someone to come and get us if we were unable get home alone. He dialed Mrs. Monahan for me and handed me the phone.
"Hello"
"Mrs. Monahan?"
"No, this is Sally ... Ma! somebody on the phone."
"Hello"
The stage was set for me to break the news. I took a deep breath and cast a final look at Willie with his back to the wall. "Mrs. Monahan, I'm calling from the bar downtown, you know, the Hollow Leg? I'm afraid Willie's took a spell down here. We've called emergency and they should be here any minute."
"Is he drunk?"
"Oh no. Nothing like that. He's fainted, and we thought you oughta know, y'know?"
"Well I ain't comin' down to no bar. I'll meet him at emergency."
"O.K., Mrs. Monahan. It'll be St. Stephens -- that's what 911 told us."
What she lacked in solicitude, she made up for in experience. She had spent many long weekends waiting for Willie in emergency as he was patched, pumped, or splinted. She was like the farmer who refused to answer the call of the little boy who cried wolf for the third time.
The ambulance arrived midway through the fourth quarter and by that time we had thrown a coat over him. Some of the customers had left, stepping over Willie's outstretched legs as they made for the door. The medics quickly determined that Willie was no longer with us in substance, and there was no hurry in getting him to the hospital. I told them that his wife would be waiting there.
"I ain't tellin' her, that's not my job. I'll radio the desk, they can get a priest ... he was Irish, huh?"
I wondered how she'd take the news, would she be inconsolable? Contrite? Calm, more than likely, as though she knew it would come some day.
Willie left in a heavy plastic bag still clutching the bourbon glass. It seemed fitting he should take it with him. No one was able to take it from him while he was alive.
Willie's funeral was set for Friday. There was room for him in the plot his mother bought many years ago, and that was where Lillie wanted to put him, down there with his mother and father. She said he'd be better off with his family than in a grave of his own. Her reasons went deeper than that. Willie Monahan was a drinker like his father before him, and his mother was no teetotaler either. It meant, of course, that when Lillie's time came, she would not lie in the same patch of earth as Willie.
Lillie wanted no part of Willie after death, and there's nothing wrong with that. She took a vow for better or worse, but only until death do us part. Willie would have to take care of himself from then on. Looking back on it now, he wasn't much of a husband -- and if you looked around the Hollow Leg Saloon the night of his passing, there wasn't much you could say for the rest of us either.
O'Dell picked him up at the hospital on Tuesday morning. My bathroom window overlooks O'Dell's parking lot, and I noticed his black van by the receiving door. As much as possible, O'Dell tries to be discreet in these matters, but some things just have to be done. He has a three-sided canopy by his receiving door, but if you're curious, you can see who or what goes in and out. Under my breath, I said "good morning" to Willie, noting with due penitence the heady aroma of my alcoholic mouth wash.
I've heard it called "the curse of the grape." It spares few of us Irishmen. It is our national pride, our national shame, and it has loosened the tongues of our poets. Willie was not a poet, but he had a way of saying things that made you think he was, and in the end, isn't that what poetry is all about?
With the wake a day away, I found myself thinking about Willie Monahan. I know that if he wanted to, he could have been the same person at home as he was with us at the Hollow Leg Saloon. There, he was affable, friendly, and eager to please -- you could rarely raise his dander. I suspect he was not like this at home.
He had the pinkest skin and the whitest hair and the bluest eyes of any man I'd ever seen. He looked like you'd expect the president of Aer Lingus to look. "The drink," they say, "it's the drink that makes them pink." But I like to think Willie would have been pink without it.
I suppose you've been to wakes. You see one wake, you've seen 'em all -- at least that's the way I feel about it. It's like seeing "Hamlet" every week with a new cast; the words are always the same but the people are different. Lotte tottered in wearing black -- "I'm very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Monahan." Then she smiled to reveal her two remaining bicuspids and tapped-tapped her way to a corner seat. She sat there holding her horse's head cane athwart her bony knees. She had the tact not to mention that she tried to brain Willie with it as he collapsed in front of her.
Tim Clancy, the bartender, used the identical words when he paid his respects, and so did Bob Hollister. It sounded as though we all got together and rehearsed it. I found myself thinking of something else to say when it came my turn.
"He was a great guy, Mrs. Monahan; we'll all miss him." As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew I'd made a mistake. She knew who his friends were, each and every one of them. If it hadn't been for his friends, Willie might not be stretched out there ... and been a better husband to boot. She said this with her eyes as she looked at me, and I wished I had taken the safe way out and said what the others said.
Father Stanley walked in. "I'm very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Monahan." (He wasn't taking any chances.) He looked so much smaller without his Sunday robes ... it's difficult for a priest to achieve stature in a Sears and Roebuck suit. His homily was a graphic description of where Willie was going and how he'd get there. He went on to say we would all be together again, and explained how Willie had sailed from these shores to other, more distant shores and how Willie would be waiting for us to sail after him. It might have been more effective had we been seafaring people.
Lillie and her daughter Sally were dry-eyed throughout the evening. Occasionally Lillie would escort a guest to the casket and gaze at her husband as though he were a stranger. Guests who attempted to comfort her soon realized it was unnecessary. Thirty years with Willie had not yet made her an old woman. She still had her figure, and as soon as Sally could be induced to leave the nest, Lillie might live again.
I stopped in to see Willie next morning before the laying in. I wanted to see him alone for a minute. After all, I was the one sitting next to him that Monday night. He didn't get to see the end of the football game, and we had a bet going. Willie had given me a point spread on Pittsburgh, and I didn't make it. I could have forgotten all about it, I suppose, but I knew Willie wouldn't, and a bet's a bet. I called O'Dell over.
"Charlie," I asked, "there anything wrong with putting a five dollar bill down in the bottom of the coffin? We had a bet going that night and Willie won -- I owe him."
"That's O.K.," said O'Dell, "nobody's ever gonna know. I got something I wanna show you anyhow."
We were alone there in the grieving parlor, so O'Dell opened the bottom part of the lid. Willie wasn't wearing shoes or socks; no need for shoes and socks, his walking days were over. Between Willie's pink feet lay the bourbon glass. Tears sprang to my eyes immediately.
"That was damn thoughtful of you, Charlie."
"It was in his bag of belongings when I picked him up at the hospital. I knew Lillie would throw it out, and who can tell ... ".
O'Dell took my five dollars, folded it four times and stuffed it in the bourbon glass. "There," he smiled, "if it's a cash bar, Willie, you're all set."
(Copyright 1998 by Harry Buschman - No reproduction without express permission from the author)