CHAPTER 20

WHERE WERE THOSE wretches who cursed America and its dream? And who could doubt it now? With the war in Europe, English, French, Germans and even Mussolini lavishing millions for murder, every Italian along the western wall of the city had his pockets full. The terrible Depression was over, a man no longer needed to beg for his bread, home relief investigators could be cursed down the stairs. Plans were made to buy houses on Long Island.

True, it was money earned to help people kill each other. The war in Europe made all the jobs. So grumbled those with a fresh head begging for troubles. But in what other country could even the poor get rich on the world’s misfortune?

Natives of the south, Sicily, Naples, the Abruzzi, these Italians on Tenth Avenue did not concern themselves about Mussolini’s winning the war. They had never loved their country of birth; it meant nothing to them. For centuries its government had been the most bitter enemy of their fathers and fathers’ fathers before them. The rich had spat on the poor. Pimps of Rome and the north had sucked their blood. What good fortune to be safe here in America.

Only Teresina Coccalitti was displeased. She could no longer declare her sons not working in these good times, and she had been kicked off the home relief. Now she went about secretly, buying great bags of sugar and tins of fat and endless bolts of cloth. She said mysteriously to Lucia Santa, “There will come a day—ah, there will come a day . . .” but then she zipped up her mouth with her fingers and would not say another word. What did she mean? True, there was a military draft, but only one boy from Tenth Avenue had been called. Nothing grave.

Lucia Santa was too busy to let the Coccalitti’s words buzz in her head. Floods of gold were washing over the tenements. Children were working after school. Sal and Lena had part-time jobs in the new drug factory on Ninth Avenue. Vinnie worked seven days a week. Let the people in Europe kill each other to their hearts’ content if that was their pleasure. The village of Lucia Santa’s parents was so small, the land so worthless, that none of her relatives could be in danger.

Only that scoundrel Gino did not work. But this was his last summer of idleness. He would graduate high school in January and there would be no more excuses. There was no profit in asking friends to find him jobs. Lucia Santa had tried, and Gino always got himself fired.

But there was one thing that mascalzone could do. Vinnie had forgotten his lunch bag again; Gino could take it to him. Lucia Santa blocked Gino’s way as, baseball bat under his arm, that midwife’s glove on his hand, he sought to get past her bulky form. Like a duke with cane and hat. “Bring this to your brother on the job,” she said, holding out the greasy brown bag, and she could have laughed to see his finicky disgust. How proud he was, all people are who do not have to sweat for bread. How tender.

“I’m late, Ma,” Gino said, ignoring the bag.

“Late for what?” Lucia Santa asked impatiently. “Late to get married? Late to put all the money you earned this week in the bank? Late to see a friend about some honest work?”

Gino sighed. “Ma, Vinnie can get something to eat in the diner.”

It was too much. Lucia Santa said bitterly, “Your brother is giving his life away for you—he never plays or runs in the park. You never even ask him to go out with you, and he is so lonely. But you can’t even bring him his bread? You are a disgrace. Go play your baseball and bum around with your friends. I’ll bring it myself.”

Shamed, Gino took the lunch bag. He saw the light of victory in his mother’s eyes, but he didn’t care. He really wanted to do something for Vinnie.

He trotted easily along Tenth Avenue up toward 37th Street and then down to Eleventh Avenue. He loved the full freeness of his body moving through the heavy summer air. When he was smaller he had taken giant leaps to see if he could fly as it seemed he might, but he was too old now. Just before he reached the freight building, he threw the brown paper bag high in the air in front of him, then put on a dazzling burst of speed to catch it before it hit the ground.

He rose slowly through the old rat-smelling building in an iron-grilled elevator. The operator, in a gray dirty uniform with wormy yellow insignia on the lapels, opened the metal doors with that mysterious contempt some adults have for the young, and Gino stepped out into a loft office that stretched away to the far end of the building.

It was like a nightmare in which a man sees a prison that he knows he will someday come to live in. There were long rows of desks with billing machine typewriters spewing forth rolls of multiple lading accounts. The men who operated these machines were all in vests and white shirts and loose, dangling ties. They were older than Vinnie, and they were very quick. The machines clattered blindly. Each desk had its own yellow lamp; the rest of the office was in darkness except for a long counter heaped with printed bills. At this counter a long thin bent man with the grayest face that Gino had ever seen was sorting out bills under a huge spotlight. There was no sound of voices. There was no hint of daylight outside. It was as if these people were all entombed above the rumbling of the coupling freight trains that moved below in the pit of the building. Gino looked, and at last he spotted Vinnie.

Vinnie was the only man without a vest, and he wore a colored shirt so he could use it two or three days without changing. His curly black hair looked damp under the yellow steel-armed lamp. Gino saw that Vinnie was slower than the others and that his face was screwed up with intense concentration to his task. The others had the blank expressions of sleepwalkers.

Suddenly Vinnie looked up. He stared at Gino without expression. He lit a cigarette. With surprise, Gino realized that Vinnie couldn’t see him, nor could any of the others. He was standing in darkness outside their world. He walked past the first line of desks into the living yellow square. As if he had blocked out the sun, heads snapped up. Vinnie raised his eyes.

There was a heartbreaking gladness on Vinnie’s face. His smile was sweet, as it had been in their childhood. Gino raised the lunch bag and threw it. Vinnie caught it expertly and Gino went to stand awkwardly by his desk.

“Thanks, kid,” Vinnie said. The men on either side of him stopped typing, and he said to them, “This is my kid brother, Gino.”

Gino was embarrassed at the pride in Vinnie’s voice. The two men said “Hiya, kid,” and gave him cold, appraising looks. He became conscious of his blue dungarees and white wool sweatshirt and felt foolish, as if he had come to some grave assembly frivolously attired. The gray-faced man called out, “Bill freight, you guys, we’re running behind.” Then he shambled over to Vinnie and gave him a sheaf of bills. He looked like a lean old rat. “You’re behind your count now, Vinnie,” he said.

Vinnie said nervously to the retreating back, “I won’t take my break later.” Gino turned to leave. Vinnie got up and walked him out of the circle of light to the elevator. They waited, listening to the grind of iron cables and the growl of the ascending cage.

“Take a short cut through the railroad yard,” Vinnie said. “But watch your ass when those engines come down.” He rested his hand on Gino’s shoulder. “Thanks for bringing my lunch. You got a game Saturday?”

“Yeah,” Gino said. The elevator was taking a long time. He wanted to get out. He saw Vinnie glance nervously toward the clattering machines in the circle of light and flinch as the gray rat face turned, blindly seeking them in the darkness.

“If I get up in time I’ll come watch,” Vinnie said. Then the elevator was there, its two iron doors sliding back, and Gino stepped in and began the slow descent. The smell of decay, of rats, and of old shit made him sick. When he stepped out of the building he lifted his head to the warm, lemon, September sunlight. He stood still in almost joyful relief and freedom.

He didn’t give Vinnie another thought. He started to run slowly through the railroad yard, a great field of gleaming white steel that alternately fanned out and converged mysteriously in the sun. He cradled his right arm as if he were carrying a football and sped over the wooden ties, slipping around the steel rails that came together to trap his flying feet. Black locomotives came toward him and he slipped away easily to the left and right, picking up speed. A locomotive came up behind him, its engineer seated at the window on Gino’s side. Gino raced it, going full speed across the wooden ties alongside the engine, flying ahead, until the engineer gave him a casual glance and then the black engine chugged louder and clacked past him. When it swerved off into a maze of stationary brown and yellow freight cars, Gino stopped, exhausted. He felt a little sweat beneath his white woolen jersey and he was ravenously hungry, thirsty—and then suddenly he found himself strong and fresh again. He swung into a long, loping run to Chelsea Park. There he saw his friends tossing a baseball and waiting for him.