In His Wake

The day after Christmas 1995, a Scotsman walked into an Irish bar for a German wake in a fading corner of the geographically largest city in America. I was 2,956 miles from home. At twenty-four, I was old enough to order whatever I wanted inside the doors of MacCool’s, but still young enough to feel like I didn’t belong in a place called MacCool’s. I went in anyway because you don’t duck out on a wake, especially for your own Grandad, regardless of how you felt about him. Or so I'd gathered. I’d never actually been to a wake, which seemed like a very grown-up thing to do. At that point I’d yet to do anything that actually made me feel like an adult, and I thought maybe going to a wake might be the thing that would.

And I guess it did, at that.

Leo Frey was: a first generation immigrant, born in England to German parents, a military man, and a hard drinker. He arrived at Ellis Island as a child of ten, just in time to grow up in New York City in the teeth of the Great Depression. So they lived the kind of hard-scrabble life that immigrants do pretty much anywhere in the world, multiplied by the grueling effects of that economic nightmare. Eventually he went off to war, and when he came home he raised two kids who turned out to be outstanding individuals. Who, in turn, raised another crop of outstanding individuals, if I do say so myself. Which I do. His wife Nana—that's Muriel to you—stayed with him through thick and thin for all the decades of their married lives, with one notable exception.

She came to stay with us for a time when I was about nine, because of Leo’s drinking. My parents put her in my room, and I moved out into a glorified shed on the back of our property. I didn’t really mind because it was like having my own house, plus Nana doted on us all the while, so my cookie intake tripled. Still, it painted a picture of Leo that was kind of disturbing to a kid, and I didn’t have a lot of positive memories of him to begin with.

Mostly I thought of him as a gruff guy who liked to tease. Like once, when I was five, he let me steer his golf cart, but I almost put us into a sand trap and never heard the end of it after that. And he used to joke about making cat soup out of our household kitty, aptly named Klutz. It should have been obvious he was joking, but the limits of my humor didn’t extend past an anvil dropping onto Wile E. Coyote’s head, so ironic remarks about the culinary appeal of my pet were not well received. His nickname in the family was Pickle-Puss, not only because of the roughness of his affect, but the permanent scowl on his face, even at rest. Resting Bastard Face, we call it today.

He wasn’t all bad, he used to sit my sister and me on a giant stuffed lion named Leo, which he owned as a personal mascot, and drag it around his living room with us on it while he made lion noises, which he excelled at. But since the birthday and Christmas cards always came in Nana’s handwriting, and even his name was signed in her floral script, he seemed like a distant ancestor whose entire contribution had been in making my Mother. So walking into his wake in MacCool’s Irish Pub in Jacksonville, FL in my only button-up shirt to say a final goodbye seemed like a formality. A show of respect to my Mom and Nana, but little else.

Needless to say, I was surprised when—after the salty, old-school elegy his compatriots delivered—one of his VFW buddies made a beeline for me while I was waiting my turn at the bar. The ancient pub was full of white heads and VFW garrison caps, it smelled like dust and spilled liquor. As I waited, the air was slowly turning blue as a pall of cigarette smoke filled the joint. With all the dark mahogany paneling and inches-thick armor of lacquer on everything, it seemed like a library of alcohol.

The Irish were born thirsty, so I'd been waiting for a while. Although at a wake full of seventy and eighty-year olds, a twenty-something punk doesn't even register on the radar, so I might have waited forever. Thankfully, the instant the old VFW guy walked up, the barman immediately had time to take an order, but the old duffer kindly deferred hist turn to me.

"What's your poison, boyo?" the old duffer asked in an Irish brogue that must have been quite thick in his youth.

The barman looked at me like I wouldn't have the decency to order a Guinness, or worse, that I'd order a Coors Light instead. Which I did. I was just starting to become a proper beer snob, but none of the microbrews I approved of had made their way to Florida by that point. Since Guinness seemed less like a beverage and more like an ingredient for a pipe bomb, what choice did I have?

"Coors Light?" the old duffer asked in dismay. "Belay that order," he said to the barman. After a moment's silence, he looked up from his facepalm and asked with exaggerated patience, "You know what kind of beer we drink in these parts?"

I shook my head.

“Scotch.”

I barked a laugh, the first I'd had since being immersed in the solemnity of Leo’s passing, days previous. The old timer smiled and his dentures were white as snow as he extended his hand to shake mine. “I'm Doyle. How’s about I buy you a man’s drink, O’B?” He seemed to enjoy my surprise at his knowledge of my childhood name, long since changed. He continued, “Or are you still going to insist on being called Lawrence?”

I looked around, trying to figure if someone was playing a joke on me. Should I know this grizzled old Irishman? I couldn’t even say if Doyle were his first name or his last; could've gone either way with old Mick like him. So that was no help and my family was spread out around the room socializing, and none were looking my direction.

“Stand easy, boyo” he said. “You don't know me. But I knew Fry a long time, so I felt like I knew his kids and grandkids some, too.”

I started to say, “Actually it’s pronounced…”

But he went right on, “I know bloody well it's pronounced ‘Fray!' But ol’ Fry hated being called Fry, so I kept right on with it. Served the old Kraut right.” Doyle said to the barman, “Two Glenlivets.” He gave me the once over, then turned back and said, “Lots of ice for him.”

“Thanks,” I said, not meaning it now that I had a glass of Scotch to choke down.

We plunked down on a couple of stools against the mile-long mahogany bar, and he pulled a pack of Pall Mall’s from his shirt pocket with liver-spotted hands. He offered me one, but I was already reaching for my Camel Wide’s, as a big a snob about cigarettes as I was about beer. He beat me to the punch with his lighter, and I noticed that his hands shook as he chased the tip of my smoke with the tiny flame. I felt a sharp pang of fear at the idea of growing old.

“I didn’t think that barman was ever going to serve me,” I said.

“He wasn’t. It's the Devil’s own luck he didn’t keel haul you out of here, dressed like that,” Doyle said.

I looked down at myself. Button-up blue and black plaid shirt, khaki pants, Doc Martin boots. Again he confused me, which is all the old Mick seemed to be able to do. I couldn’t tell if he was just a drunken Irishman, or if I was just an idiot.

He read my confusion and seemed to enjoy it. “That’s a Scottish tartan you’re wearing for a shirt, boyo. Your family’s, I’d guess. Any other day in here, they’d have fed you your lunch and popped the bag. But Fry was alright, for a Limey-Kraut and all, so us old timers made an exemption for him drinking in here with us. Long as he had his garrison cap on.”

He took his own off his iron-gray head, and showed it to me. It had an emblem sewn onto it that I couldn’t make out, but it seemed heroic. It was surprisingly heavy for what was essentially a woolen envelope for your head.

“You feel that weight?” he asked. “That’s three silver dollars sewn in under the patch. That way when we was in port, if some towny ballbeg started asking for it, a fella could sap his noggin with it right quick and proper.”

I knew his words were all in English, but they were still Greek to me. I nodded sagely and took a drink of my Scotch, lest he think me a ballbeg and sap me.

“You need a chaser with that, boyo?” He asked, ready to flag the barman. I shook my head, afraid I’d have to chase the napalm out of my mouth with the nitroglycerin of Guinness. I waited for the warmth to hit my stomach and then had a hard hit on my smoke. It didn’t help much, but it was better than nothing.

“Sounds like you must have known my Granddad a long time?” I asked.

“Oh, aye. Me and him came up Puddlejumpers in the Coast Guard back in the war, when them Navy Squids was too hi-falutin’ to take guys with missin’ teeth like us.”

I nodded sagely, as though I despised them Navy Squids as well.

“Bout had to thump Leo good when he made Warrant Officer,” he continued. “A workin’ man’s got no business bein’ called ‘sir.' But he got what was comin’ to him when he had to work with all them college pukes as had gotten their commissions the easy way.” He drained his Scotch in a single draft and signaled the barman. When he had a fresh glass in hand, he raised it up and said, “To absent friends, Limey-Kraut Sunsuvbitchin’ Officers though they be.”

“Here, here,” I joined him in his toast, realizing it meant I had to fire another swallow down my gullet. It went down a little easier than the first draft. After that we sat in silence for a minute, him out of respect I guess, and me because I had no more in common with this old stranger than I did with my Granddad. If Leo had been there instead, the same silence might have been there between us since we hadn’t seen or spoken to each other in over ten years.

“You know he used to talk about you kids?” Doyle began again, apropos of nothing. “I suppose all us old-timers do, sooner or later. Nothin’ else to go on about ‘cept them glory days, and even we get tired of those old lies, eventually. So he’d show us pictures of you young chiselers, let us know how you got along in the world. It’s how I recognized you, don’t you know?”

“I was wondering about that. Guess I’m surprised he had that much to say.”

“Oh my, but he did. ‘Bout all you kids, though you’re the only one I see here.”

“My sister’s here somewhere,” I said. We scanned the room and found her looking for an escape from the semicircle of dirty old men trying to dazzle her with their charm.

“Shall we go and rescue her then?” Doyle asked.

“No. Trust me, they’re the ones in trouble.”

He laughed and said, “You've got ol’ Pickle-Puss’ tongue on you, all right. Said you were a quick one.”

I had no idea how Leo would have known any of that, and felt a strange sense of having been watched, retroactively. It was unsettling, though not entirely unpleasant. Like I was being curated from afar.

“Runs in the family, I'm told,” I replied. “But I've always taken it to be a Scottish trait.” I gave with a wink and had another slug of Scotch. It looked like he was thinking about giving me a proper sap with his garrison cap, but instead he let out a peel of laughter.

“Perhaps it is, O’B. Perhaps it is.” He crushed out his smoke then asked, “So how do you find driving a forklift to be? Better than diggin’ them ditches, I'd wager."

“Beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick,” I said. “But…”

“…Not by much,” he finished with me, followed by a wry chuckle. “Guess you’ve kissed the Blarney a time or two yourself, Lawrence. So I suppose you can be forgiven for tradin’ your moniker from a fine Irish one like O’Brien to a Limey one like Lawrence. Least ways as long as you don’t go by Larry. That’d be a travesty, even for a Scottish dog like yourself.”

“God bless America, land of the mutts,” I said.

“I’ll drink to that.”

I crushed my smoke out and said, “I thought you might.”

He signaled the barman for another round for both of us, and I didn’t object. My stomach was feeling pretty warm and my head pretty light, but the avalanche of ice in my tumbler hadn’t had a chance to melt much, and it would be wrong to let it go to waste. It went down easy as I sat and talked with Doyle for another half hour about ol’ Pickle-Puss, and so met a man I never knew.

Never knew that he’d kept track of my various jobs and girlfriends, the occasional move or adventure. Never knew that he was actually proud of me. I’m not sure I would’ve believed that as the kind of generic, reassuring platitude from one of my relatives at a funeral. But from a stranger picking my face out of the crowd, solely from the pictures he’d been shown over the years? That went down easier than the Scotch.

Doyle and I went our separate ways soon after that, him blending back into the sea of white hair as I went and rescued those dirty old men from my sister. She had them wrapped around her finger like she’d kissed the Blarney a few times herself.

All in all, the wake was pretty much as I’d expected, except for the part where it was nothing like I’d expected. You know, the part where I met a guy at his own funeral more alive in the memories of his crusty drinking buddies—and on the unseen fringes of my life all those years—than he’d been to me in the decade prior to his passing? I thought about the little narrative I’d written, rehearsed, and replayed over and over through the years about who Leo was. I started to wonder where the hell I’d come up with any of it.

As the family regrouped and headed out of the dim Irish pub and into the Florida sunshine, warm even in December, I was feeling a lot less sure of the world than when we went in. Like maybe I had no idea what was going on.

And if that ain’t the definition of grown-up, I don’t know what is.