Sunday's at Leo's

“Hey John, the usual?”

“No, just give me a cranberry juice,” said Big John.

I was a little surprised since in the three months I’d been working at Leo’s, Big John had always ordered cherry brandy. Like most of the clientele that came into Leo’s, he was old and he was a heavy drinker.

I poured him a glass of cranberry juice and placed it next to the napkin full of breadcrumbs that he always saved for his birds at home.

Big John was in his late seventies. He came in every Sunday at eleven in the morning always dressed in the same black suit. With the nice red lapel and black and white striped tie he looked like he had just walked out of church. Though he was Irish, I think he was far from being the religious type. Hunched over, he was about six-two and he probably weighed at least two-fifty. His head was enormous. It looked like a massive watermelon. When he laughed you could see his decayed and jagged teeth on full display. His cheeks and eyes were all baggy and puffed out and all the fat seemed to reside in his double chin.

“You wouldn’t believe what happened to me last night,” said Big John.

“Oh yeah, what’s that?”

“Well before I went into bed I went into the bathroom. So I was peeing and at first everything seemed normal. Then, all of a sudden, this big gush of blood comes pouring out of my dick. I mean it was enough blood to fill that catsup bottle over there. Hah! I couldn’t believe it. I’ve never seen anything like that. All that blood floating around in the toilet. I tell you, it was dis-gusting.”

“Jeez, did you call the hospital?”

“You’re damn right I called the hospital. Jesus Roy! I lost a pint of blood! The ambulance came and they took me to the emergency room. They had all these tubes going into my arms. Amazing!”

“Damn John.”

“Doctor says I’ll be all right though. It was just a little hemorrhage. They gave me all kinds of drugs. Now I feel like a drug pusher. A drug pusher! As long as I stay away from the booze I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”

Big John lowered his eyes into the Sunday newspaper and I walked back to the end of the bar and straightened up the bottles in the cooler.

About a half-hour later Jack walked in. Jack was another one of the Sunday, suit-wearing old-timers. He was a little younger than Big John and always wore a blue suit with a black top hat that had a red feather tucked into the ribbon.

He sat down a few stools over from Big John and I put a mug of Bud down in front of him.

“Hey Jack.”

“Hey Roy. Hey, how goes it John?”

“Ugh,” grumbled Big John, not looking up from the paper.

Jack was a retired card dealer. He did fifteen years in Vegas and then twenty up in Atlantic City. He also had a penchant for always passing out at the bar. The strange part about it was that it only happened when he was on the fourth beer. All of the sudden, you’d look over and he’d have his face flat on the bar, his big white mustache right in the spilled beer, snoring away. I’d usually let him sleep for a couple minutes and then I’d bang my fist down on the bar and say, “Wake up Jack! This ain’t a hotel!” Every once in a while there’d be a few people in the bar and they’d laugh and then Jack would open his eyes, lift his head, and in one fluid motion, he’d grab the glass of beer and resume drinking.

“Say, Roy, get John a drink for me,” said Jack.

“I’m not drinking!” screamed Big John.

“What’s wrong John, you going soft?” goaded Jack as he winked at me.

“Why you…I’m sick of your talking, Jack. You know, you never know when to shut up.”

Big John’s eyes looked they were going to pop right out of that huge head of his. I never could quite figure out what Big John had against Jack. Maybe it stemmed from something way back in the day. He turned towards the window and covered himself up with the paper.

“Oh, come on John.”

“Just shut up, Jack!”

Jack looked at me and shrugged his shoulders. I thought about filling him in on the whole blood incident, but I figured it really wasn’t any of my business. I walked back to my stool in the corner and looked out the window. Families all dressed up were coming back form church. People were jogging and walking their dogs. I noticed Jack had a deck of cards in front of him and was shuffling them.

“Hey Roy, come over here and shuffle this deck.”

Jack had done his card tricks for me a handful of times. I didn’t mind. They were pretty amazing and even after carefully studying his hands, I still had no clue as to how he pulled them off.

I shuffled the cards about four times and then put them down on the bar. Jack had me cut the deck and then he shuffled them once.

“Here he goes again with those damn card tricks,” grumbled Big John. I noticed he had now moved from the Metro section to the comics. Maybe that would lighten his mood up a little.

Jack got up from his stool and walked over to the far side of the bar.

“Now I’m going to call out each card as you flip it over. There’s no way I can see the cards from where I am.”

“All right,” I said.

Jack yelled out for the Four of Clubs. I turned the first card over and it was the Four. He then called out for the King of Hearts. I turned the card over. Sure enough, it was the King. Jack stood by the bathroom, moving farther back, smiling as he tipped his hat. “Eight of Diamonds…Queen of Spades…Six of Hearts.”

I must have gone through half of the deck and he knew every single card.

Jack walked back to his stool. “I got another one for you.”

He shuffled the cards and I watched him intently, waiting for any slight of hand movements. Nothing.

This time he had the trick worked out so that every time I pulled four cards in a row they’d out as a straight. The whole damn deck came out straights.

“So, you were a card shark or a card dealer?”

Jack smiled, drank down his beer, and said slyly, “Dealer.”

“Well, if I ever make it out to Vegas I think I’ll stick to the slots.”

Roger, a Korean War vet who owned a refrigerator repair shop, walked in half way through the trick.

“I knew this guy who was a card shark in Vegas. He got caught so many time that he started dressing like a woman just to disguise himself. Even got away with it for about a year before they found out.”

Big John, who had been awfully quiet, waved me over. “Roy, get me a brandy.”

“You sure John?” I asked.

“Damn it, one drink isn’t going to kill me.”

I figured he was right. Besides, you get to that age with that kind of liver and
really, what difference does it make? I placed the drink down on the bar.

“Say, I’ve got a trivia question for you,” said Big John.

“All right, shoot.”

“How does a baseball team with no men on base hit a grand slam?”

I thought about it for a minute, but couldn’t think of the answer. “I don’t know John.”

John kept me hanging for a minute with a big jowly grin. His eyes got all big and electric as he prepared for the punch line.

“It’s a girl’s baseball team. You get it? It’s all girls on base. It’s true. I saw it once when I was a kid. Up in Pennsylvania. All the men were in the war so they had girls playing. Oh man, haha, a girl’s baseball team.”

“Yeah, that’s a good one.”

Down at the end of the bar I heard something that sounded like a cat choking on a hairball. I looked over and Jack was passed out, the side of his face drowning in the beer foam. Big John shook his head in disgust and said, “Just look at him.”

Despite the awful sound coming out if his nose, Jack looked so peaceful, like a little baby. He was far far away in dreamland. I walked over and motioned to slam my fist down, but at the last minute I held back. I figured I’d just let him stay like that for a while.