“You look great,” said Ike. “A couple of months here, do that for anyone.” St. John is what he meant and they both knew it. From his barstool to Ike’s table, Walter sent his friend a nod of thanks. Territory had been firmly established years ago. Ike already had his table when Walter arrived. Billy’s former management—Frogman’s, it was called back then—either didn’t notice or didn’t care. The owner, a man named Jorge Castillo, lived on St. Thomas where he’d come from Kansas City or Milwaukee or some place like that. The Virgin Islands were filled with people, Americans who came from somewhere, none of them—for reasons nobody ever talked about—too eager to go back. When Billy bought the place, he did not change the way it looked, the placement of tables or any of the fixtures, including the barstools. He did allow for a more or less official recognition of Walter’s and Ike’s already settled presence. The hostess and wait staff knew to keep customers away from their spots without certain knowledge that either of them would not show up. Billy never minded. In fact, Billy liked it that way from the beginning. Ike was thinking about that, watching his friend at the end of the bar, near the kitchen, getting healthier and healthier every day.
“You look great,” he said again.
“This surgery you had, Walter,” chimed in Billy, “I think it made you even better than before. You think I could be right?”
“Yes,” Walter said. “Yes I do. But I think Ike’s right too. Don’t I look great?” His smile quickly turned to full blown laughter. “Seriously though,” said Walter, “I think he’s right about being here, on St. John. If I lived in Cleveland, or someplace, I don’t believe I’d feel as good as I do or look as good either, thank you very much.”
“Damn right, Walter. Shit, that’s true for us all, isn’t it?” laughed Billy proudly, extremely satisfied with his own observation.
“Wise man,” said Ike. “Billy, you definitely a wise man.” For his part, Billy was as happy as he could be with Walter’s recovery.
Billy Smith—previously William Mantkowski in another life altogether—knew a little something about recovery. He had seen men, including himself, injured in a way no one ever thought they would come back, come back all the way that is, come back to their old selves. He knew there was a lot more to it than drugs and doctors. Billy was certain as the day was long that among other things, the grace of God, the loving hand of Jesus, as well as his own good food had done wonders for his friend’s robust improvement. If Walter wasn’t praying, Billy was sure his own would suffice.
“They took something from your leg—is that right?” Billy asked.
“And they used it for my heart,” said Walter.
“Bypass,” Ike said, at the same time he was sucking into his lungs a volume of cigarette smoke that might have killed a first-time smoker. “Bypassing. Gotta go around something. Gotta use something to do it.”
“True, true,” said Walter.
“Like they did with Tommy John.”
“Tommy John—again, Billy?”
“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.