Rosa, my Rosa, I cannot believe that you hated me, for there is no hate where you are now, here among us and yet far away. I am only a boy, Rosa, and the mystery of where you are is no mystery when I think of the beauty of your face and the laughter of your galoshes when you walked down the hall. Because you were such a honey, Rosa, you were such a good girl, and I wanted you, and a fellow can’t be so bad if he loves a girl so good as you. And if you hate me now, Rosa, and I cannot believe that you hate me now, then look upon my grief and believe that I want you here, for that is good too. I know that you cannot come back, Rosa my true love, but there is in this cold church this afternoon a dream of your presence, a comfort in your forgiveness, a sadness that I cannot touch you, because I love you and I will love you forever, and when they gather on some tomorrow for me, then I shall have known it even before they gather, and it will not be strange to us …
After the services they gathered for a moment in the vestibule. Sister Celia, sniffling into a tiny handkerchief, called for quiet. Her glass eye, they noticed, had rolled around considerably, the pupil barely visible.
‘The funeral will be at nine tomorrow,’ she said. ‘The eighth-grade class will be dismissed for the day.’
‘Hot dog – what a break!’
The nun speared him with her glass eye. It was Gonzalez, the class moron. He backed to the wall and pulled his neck far into his shoulders, grinning his embarrassment.
‘You!’ the nun said. ‘It would be you!’
He grinned helplessly.
‘The eighth-grade boys will please gather in the classroom immediately after we leave the church. The girls are excused.’
They crossed the churchyard in silence, Rodriguez, Morgan, Kilroy, Heilman, Bandini, O’Brien, O’Leary, Harrington, and all the others. No one spoke as they climbed the stairs and walked to their desks on the first floor. Mutely they stared at Rosa’s dust-covered desk, her books still in the shelf. Then Sister Celia entered.
‘Rosa’s parents have asked that you boys of her class act as pallbearers tomorrow. Those who wish to do so will please raise their hands.’
Seven hands reached for the ceiling. The nun considered them all, calling them by name to step forward. Harrington, Kilroy, O’Brien, O’Leary. Bandini. Arturo stood among those chosen, next to Harrington and Kilroy. She pondered the case of Arturo Bandini.
‘No Arturo,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid you’re not strong enough.’
‘But I am!’ he insisted, glaring at Kilroy, at O’Brien, at Heilman. Strong enough! They were a head taller than himself, but at one time or another he had licked them all. Nay, he could lick any two of them, at any time, day or night.
‘No Arturo. Please be seated. Morgan, please step up.’
He sat down, sneering at the irony of it. Ah, Rosa! He could have carried her in his arms for a thousand miles, in his own two arms to a hundred graves and back again, and yet in the eyes of Sister Celia he was not strong enough. These nuns! They were so sweet and so gentle – and so stupid. They were all like Sister Celia: they saw from one good eye, and the other was blind and worthless. In that hour he knew that he should hate no one, but he couldn’t help it: he hated Sister Celia.
Cynical and disgusted, he walked down the front steps and into the wintry afternoon that was growing cold. Head down and hands shoved in his pockets, he started for home. When he reached the corner and looked up he saw Gertie Williams across the street, her thin shoulder blades moving under her red woollen coat. She moved slowly, her hands in the pockets of her coat that outlined her thin hips. He gritted his teeth as he thought again of Gertie’s note. Rosa hates you and you make her shiver. Then Gertie heard his footstep as he mounted the curbing. She saw him and began walking fast. He had no desire to speak to her or to follow her, but the moment she quickened her steps the impulse to pursue her took him, and he was walking fast too. Suddenly, somewhere in the middle of Gertie’s thin shoulder blades, he saw the truth. Rosa hadn’t said that. Rosa wouldn’t say that. Not about anyone. It was a lie. Gertie had written that she saw Rosa ‘yesterday.’ But that was impossible because on that yesterday Rosa was very sick and had died in the hospital the next afternoon.
He broke into a run and so did Gertie, but she was no match for his quickness. When he caught up with her, standing in front of her and spreading his arms to prevent her from passing, she stood in the middle of the sidewalk, her hands on her hips, defiance in her pale eyes.
‘If you dare lay a hand on me, Arturo Bandini, I’ll scream.’
‘Gertie,’ he said. ‘If you don’t tell me the truth about that note I’m going to smack you right in the jaw.’
‘Oh, that!’ she said haughtily. ‘A lot you know about that!’
‘Gertie,’ he said. ‘Rosa never said she hated me, and you know it.’
Gertie brushed past his arm, tossed her blond curls into the air, and said, ‘Well, even if she didn’t say it, I have an idea she thought it.’
He stood there and watched her primping down the street, throwing her head like a Shetland pony. Then he started to laugh.
Chapter Ten
The funeral on Monday morning was an epilogue. He had no desire to attend; he had had enough of sadness. After August and Federico left for school, he sat on the steps of the front porch and opened his chest to the warm January sun. A little while and it would be spring: two or three weeks more and the big-league clubs would head south for spring training. He pulled off his shirt and lay face down on the dry brown lawn. Nothing like a good tan, nothing like having one before any other kid in town.
Pretty day, a day like a girl. He rolled to his back and watched the clouds tumble toward the south. Up there was the big wind; he had heard that it came all the way from Alaska, from Russia, but the high mountains protected the town. He thought of Rosa’s books, how they were bound in blue oilcloth the color of that morning sky. Easy day, a couple of dogs wandering by, making quick stops at every tree. He pressed his ear to the earth. Over on the north side of town, in Highland Cemetery they were lowering Rosa into a grave. He blew gently into the ground, kissed it, tasted it with the end of his tongue. Some day he would get his father to cut a stone for Rosa’s grave.
The mailman stepped off the Gleason porch across the street and approached the Bandini house. Arturo arose and took the letter he offered. It was from Grandma Toscana. He brought it inside and watched his mother tear it open. There was a short message and a five-dollar bill. She pushed the five-dollar bill into her pocket and burned the message. He returned to the lawn and stretched out again.
In a little while Maria came out of the house carrying her downtown purse. He did not lift his cheek from the dry lawn, nor answer when she told him that she would return in an hour. One of the dogs crossed the lawn and sniffed his hair. He was brown and black, with huge white paws. He smiled when the big warm tongue licked his ears. He made a crook in his arm, and the dog nestled his head in it. Soon the beast was asleep. He put his ear to the furry chest and counted the heartbeat. The dog opened one eye, leaped to his feet, and licked his face with overwhelming affection. Two more dogs appeared, hurrying along, very busy along the line of trees bordering the street. The brown and black dog lifted his ears, announced himself with a cautious bark, and ran after them. They stopped and snarled, ordering him to leave them alone. Sadly the brown and black dog returned to Arturo. His heart went out to the animal.
‘You stay here with me,’ he said. ‘You’re my dog. Your name’s Jumbo. Good old Jumbo.’
Jumbo romped joyfully and attacked his face again.
He was giving Jumbo a bath in the kitchen sink when Maria returned from downtown. She shrieked, dropped her packages, and fled into the bedroom, barring the door behind her.
‘Take him away!’ she screamed. ‘Get him out of here.’
Jumbo shook himself loose and rushed panic-stricken out of the house, sprinkling water and soap suds everywhere. Arturo pursued him, pleading with him to come back. Jumbo made running dives at
the earth, whizzing in a wide circle, rolling on his back, and shaking himself dry. He finally disappeared into the coal shed. A cloud of coal dust rolled from the door. Arturo stood on the back porch and groaned. His mother’s shrieks from the bedroom still pierced the house. He hurried to the door and quieted her, but she refused to come out until he had locked both front and back doors.
‘It’s only Jumbo,’ he soothed. ‘It’s only my dog, Jumbo.’
She went back to the kitchen and peeked through the window. Jumbo, black with coal dust, was still rushing wildly in a circle, throwing himself on his back and rushing off to do it again.
‘He looks like a wolf,’ she said.
‘He’s half wolf, but he’s friendly.’
‘I won’t have him around here,’ she said.
That, he knew, was the beginning of a controversy lasting for at least two weeks. It was so with all his dogs. In the end Jumbo, like his predecessors, would follow her around devotedly, with no regard for anyone else in the family.
He watched her unwrap her purchases.
Spaghetti, tomato sauce, Roman cheese. But they never had spaghetti on weekdays. It was exclusively for Sunday dinner.
‘How come?’
‘It’s a little surprise for your father.’
‘Is he coming home?’
‘He’ll be home today.’
‘How do you know? Did you see him?’
‘Don’t ask me. I just know he’ll be home today.’
He cut a piece of cheese for Jumbo and went out and called him. Jumbo, he discovered, could sit up. He was delighted: here was an intelligent dog, and not a mere hound dog. No doubt it was part of his wolf heritage. With Jumbo running along, his nose to the ground, sniffing and marking every tree on both sides of the street, now a block ahead of him, now a half behind him, now rushing up and barking at him, he walked westward toward the low foothills, the white peaks towering beyond.
At the city limits, where Hildegarde Road turned sharply to the south, Jumbo growled like a wolf, surveyed the pines and underbrush on both sides of him, and disappeared into the ravine, his menacing growl a warning to whatever wild creatures that might confront him. A bloodhound! Arturo watched him weave into the brush, his belly close to the earth. What a dog! Part wolf, and part bloodhound.
A hundred yards from the crest of the hill, he heard a sound that was warm and familiar from the earliest memories of his childhood: the plinking of his father’s stone mallet when it struck the dressing chisel and split the stone asunder. He was glad: it meant that his father would be in work clothes, and he liked his father in work clothes, he was easy to approach when in work clothes.
There was a crashing of thickets at his left and Jumbo rushed back to the road. Between his teeth was a dead rabbit, dead many weeks, reeking the stench of decomposition. Jumbo loped up the road a dozen yards, dropped his prey, and settled down to watching it, his chin flat on the ground, his hind quarters in the air, his eyes shifting from the rabbit to Arturo and back again. There was a savage rumble in his throat as Arturo approached … The stench was revolting. He rushed up and tried to kick the rabbit off the road, but Jumbo snatched it up before his foot, found the mark, and the dog dashed away, galloping triumphantly. Despite the stench Arturo watched him in admiration. Man, what a dog! Part wolf, part bloodhound, and part retriever.
But he forgot Jumbo, forgot everything, even forgot what he had planned to say as the top of his head rose above the hill and he saw his father watching him approach, the hammer in one hand, the chisel in the other. He stood on the crest of the hill and waited motionless. For a long minute Bandini stared straight into his face. Then he raised his hammer, poised the chisel, and struck the stone again. Arturo knew then that he was not unwelcome. He crossed the gravel path to the heavy bench over which Bandini worked. He had to wait a long time, blinking his eyes to avoid the flying stone chips, before his father spoke.
‘Why ain’t you in school?’
‘No school. They had a funeral.’
‘Who died?’
‘Rosa Pinelli.’
‘Mike Pinelli’s girl?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s no good, that Mike Pinelli. He scabs in the coal mine. He’s a good-for-nothing.’
He went on working. He was dressing the stone, shaping it to lay along the seat of a stone bench near the place where he worked. His face still showed the marks of Christmas Eve, three long scratches traveling down his cheek like the marks of a brown pencil.
‘How’s Federico? he asked.
‘He’s okay.’
‘How’s August?’
‘He’s all right.’
Silence but for the plink of the hammer.
‘How’s Federico getting along in school?’
‘Okay, I guess.’
‘What about August?’
‘He’s doing all right.’
‘What about you, you getting good marks?’
‘They’re okay.’
Silence.
‘Is Federico a good boy?’
‘Sure.’
‘And August?’
‘He’s all right.’
‘And you?’
‘I guess so.’
Silence. To the north he could see the clouds gathering, the mistiness creeping upon the high peaks. He looked about for Jumbo but found no sign of him.
‘Everything all right at home?’
‘Everything’s swell.’
‘Nobody sick?’
‘No. We’re all fine.’
‘Federico sleep all right at night?’
‘Sure. Every night.’
‘And August?’
‘Yep.’
‘And you?’
‘Sure.’
Finally he said it. He had to turn his back to do it, turn his back, pick up a heavy stone that called for all the strength in his neck and back and arms, so that it came with a quick gasp.
‘How’s Mamma?’
‘She wants you to come home,’ he said. ‘She’s got spaghetti cooking. She wants you at home. She told me.’
He picked up another stone, larger this time, a mighty effort, his face purpling. Then he stood over it, breathing hard. His hand went to his eye, the finger brushing away a trickle at the side of his nose.
‘Something in my eye,’ he said. ‘A little piece of stone.’
‘I know. I’ve had them.’
‘How’s Mamma?’
‘All right. Swell.’
‘She’s not mad anymore?’
‘Naw. She wants you home. She told me. Spaghetti for dinner. That isn’t being mad.’
‘I don’t want no more trouble,’ Bandini said.
‘She don’t even know you’re here. She thinks you live with Rocco Saccone.’
Bandini searched his face.
‘But I do live with Rocco,’ he said. ‘I been there all the time, ever since she kicked me out.’
A cold-blooded lie.
‘I know it,’ he said. ‘I told her.’
‘You told her.’ Bandini put down his hammer. ‘How do you know?’
‘Rocco told me.’
Suspiciously: ‘I see.’
‘Papa, when you coming home?’
He whistled absently, some tune without a melody, just a whistle without meaning. ‘I may never come home,’ he said. ‘How do you like that?’
‘Mamma wants you. She expects you. She misses you.’
He hitched up his belt.
‘So she misses me! And what of that?’
Arturo shrugged.
‘All I know is that she wants you home.’
‘Maybe I’ll come – and maybe I won’t.’
Then his face writhed, his nostrils quivering. Arturo smelled it too. Behind him squatted Jumbo, the carcass between his front paws, his big tongue dripping saliva as he looked toward Bandini and Arturo and made them know he wanted to play tag again.
‘Beat it, Jumbo!’ Arturo said. ‘Take that out of here!’ Jumbo showed his teeth,
the rumble emerged from his throat, and he laid his chin over the body of the rabbit. It was a gesture of defiance. Bandini held his nose.
‘Whose dog?’ he twanged.
‘He’s mine. His name’s Jumbo.’
‘Get him out of here.’
But Jumbo refused to budge. He showed his long fangs when Arturo came near, rising on his hind legs as if ready to spring, the savage gutteral muttering in his throat sounding murderously. Arturo watched with fascination and admiration.
‘You see,’ he said. ‘I can’t go near him. He’ll tear me to ribbons.’
Jumbo must have understood. The gurgle in his throat rose to a terrifying steadiness. Then he slapped the rabbit with his paw, picked it up, and walked away serenely, his tail wagging … He reached the edge of the pines when the side door opened and the Widow Hildegarde emerged, sniffing precariously.
‘Good heavens, Svevo! What is that awful smell?’
Over his shoulder Jumbo saw her. His glance shifted to the pines and then back again. He dropped the rabbit, picked it up with a firmer grip, and strolled sensuously across the lawn toward the Widow Hildegarde. She was in no mood to caper. Seizing a broom, she walked out to meet him. Jumbo raised his lips, peeling them back until his huge white teeth glistened in the sun, strings of saliva dripping from his jaws. He released his gurgle, savage, blood-curdling, a warning that was both a hiss and a growl. The Widow stopped in her tracks, composed herself, studied the dog’s mouth, and tossed her head in annoyance. Jumbo dropped his burden and unrolled his long tongue in satisfaction. He had mastered them all. Closing his eyes, he pretended to be asleep.
‘Get that goddam dog outa here!’ Bandini said.
‘Is that your dog?’ the Widow asked.
Arturo nodded with subdued pride.
The Widow searched his face, then Bandini’s.