AN EMPTY CHAIR ON HANOVER STREET

THE first thing you’d notice when he greeted you was his eyes, the kindness in them. They’d twinkle as a smile creased his face and you knew he was genuinely happy to see you. You also knew that his youth was spent prizefighting; it was in the scar tissue that swelled his brows and the collapsed bridge of his nose. You felt it in the vice grip of his handshake, in the lingering power that had knocked out 32 men between the late 1940s and the early 1960s.

I used to see him sitting out front of cafés in Boston’s North End watching tourists meander by. Some would nod at him as he took in the sun, never suspecting that the bronze statue they passed at the top of Hanover Street was his image. He’d wink at their children as if sharing the secret.

He was happy to see everyone, though he didn’t always say so. He didn’t say much. He didn’t have to. The best of men, said a poet long ago, are those of few words.