“Know all men by these presents,” I read, in a voice that carried to the back of the room over the silence of the jukebox, “that I, Henry Schultz the elder, being of sound mind, do declare that this tavern, built with my own hands in the year 1952, shall never be sold, leased, or placed under the name of any company, chain, or corporation, so long as a person of my blood or a worker of ten years stands behind its bar.” My voice caught on the last words. I had not heard the voice of my father in thirty years, and there he was, in the careful handwriting of an immigrant who learned English from a dictionary.
The lawyer for Big Play Sports Grill, a tall man in a charcoal suit, had been reading over my shoulder. He turned a page, and then another, and went the color of the beer in the pitchers. “Mr. Schultz,” he said, turning slowly to Mark, who was still standing on the bar, “this covenant was recorded with Milwaukee County in 1952 and renewed in 1980. It runs with the land. It cannot be set aside by any sale not approved in writing by all employees of ten years or more.” He took off his glasses. “Your father was very thorough.” “My grandfather,” Mark said in a hollow voice, “was a stubborn old man.”
“He was a stubborn old man,” I agreed. “And he was right.” I turned to Jackie, who stood behind the taps with a dish towel in her hands and her mouth slightly open. “Jackie, how long have you worked behind this bar?” “Twelve years in March,” she said. “Then you are the only employee of ten years or more, and your signature is the only one that matters.” I held up the contract. “I am assuming you did not sign this.” “Hank, I have never seen it in my life,” Jackie said. She took the paper and tore it carefully in half, then in quarters, and dropped it in the trash.
A fifty year old covenant from a tavern founder stopped a sale announced from the top of the bar at a Friday fish fry.
The chain men did not stay. They gathered their coats with the quiet efficiency of men who had run a hundred such evenings, murmured a few polite words to the room, and left through the front door into the cold, taking their briefcases and their ties with them. The band, which had been waiting with their accordions in their laps, struck up the opening bars of a polka, a little hesitantly, and then, when nobody objected, with their usual vigor. Two hundred people sat very still at their tables, holding their beer, looking at the man standing on the bar in a sport coat.
Mark climbed down. He came across the sawdust floor with his hands at his sides, and stopped in front of my stool, and for the first time in his life I saw him afraid of me. “Pop,” he said, “I can explain.” “I know you can,” I said. “I would like you to explain to the whole room.” I did not say it unkindly. A son who has done wrong needs to say it out loud once, in front of the people who matter, or he will say it quietly for the rest of his life.
He had borrowed ninety thousand dollars from a hard money lender, he said, for two commercial deals that went bad. The interest was killing him. He had seen the offer from Big Play as a chance to clear everything, and had told himself that Pop would be fine in a smaller place with Irene gone, and that the tavern was just a building. He had signed my name, with the wrong kind of S, and he had known as he did it that he was doing something wrong. “I never meant to hurt you,” he said. His voice broke. “I just did not think you would ever find out. I did not think you would care that much.”
“Care,” I said. “Mark, I washed glasses at this bar when I was nine years old. My father taught me to pour a beer with an inch of head. Your mother cooked in that kitchen for forty years.” I put my hand on the old oak of the bar. “I have not decided what to do about the forgery, and I will not decide tonight. But here is what I know. Jackie has opened this place on Sundays for twelve years. She sat with me when your mother was dying. I am giving her a quarter of the tavern, as of tonight, and I want the whole room to be a witness.”
Jackie burst into tears and had to be hugged by four regulars at once. The band took it as a signal and played, twice in a row, the most terrible polka I have ever heard. I told Mark that he could stay on, if he wanted. He would wash glasses on Fridays, at nine dollars an hour, like any other kid. He would work the fish fry. If he lasted six months, we would talk about the debt. “I will not pay it for you,” I said. “But I will sit with you at the kitchen table and help you think about how.”
Mark showed up the next Friday in a clean apron. I will remember it as long as I live. He stood at the sink for six hours, in rubber gloves, with the key of his Tesla on a hook in the back, and he did not once ask for a break. At nine the regulars started coming in, and a man named Ollie, who has sat on the same stool since 1974, took one look at him and said, loud enough for the whole bar, “Look who finally came to work.” The tavern howled. Mark grinned. It was the first honest grin I had seen on his face in twenty years.
We found the recipe card of Irene in the bottom of a flour tin, in the kitchen, in the winter. Beer battered cod, with a pinch of mustard powder that I had forgotten. Mark made it himself on a Friday in January, with his tongue between his teeth, and when the first plate went out, the dining room fell silent, and a woman at table six put down her fork and said, “That tastes like Irene.” My son stood in the kitchen doorway, a spatula in his hand, and I saw him cry. The covenant of my father hangs in a frame behind the bar now. Under it, in marker, someone has written: Family and friends.
