A Painful Duty Read online

  A Painful Duty

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  A Painful Duty

  Pierina, Her Early Life

  Gildino

  Rilly As Showman

  Perry in Massachusetts

  Pancrazio's Patriotism

  Nelda, the Dump, and the Doctors

  Cousin Dino and Mr Volpe

  Mike

  La Ciconetta, or the Three-Inch Woman

  Card Games with Little Green Apples

  John Spera

  Carmine di Filippo

  A Thompsonville Tragedy

  Leo the Red, the Early Years

  Sco

  The Swill Man

  Celtic Twilight

  A Fleck of Varnish

  Handlebar Hank and the Little Squirt

  Ronnie and the Jews

  Sebastiano & Son

  Leo the Red and the Scrofa

  On Perry's Shoulders

  Tailpiece

  Copyright

  A Painful Duty

  Norman Thomas di Giovanni

  A Painful Duty

  Della and her brothers had come from northern Michigan, from the Upper Peninsula, and were known as the Michigans. Many others in Thompsonville had also come east from Michigan, but that name stuck only to Della’s family. With gruff voices, rough manners, and a crooked lope as if they were still negotiating snowy board sidewalks, they were a reminder, to those who’d left the Upper Peninsula, of the far north woods and frozen mountains and sparsely settled towns where iron ore was mined.

  The Michigans – even Della – had coarse red faces and blunt speech that was English with the inflection of a foreign tongue. At the butcher’s Della said, ‘Make me a dozen of chops good-good.’ She and her brothers drank orange soda cut with wine at their evening meals. When buying the soda, Della would ask for ‘six bottles of ginger ale – but of the red.’ In the east, where the Upper Peninsula was recalled as a place without refinements, the Michigan name seemed to suit them. It was not a name used behind their backs. It was descriptive, neutral. They called themselves Michigans, and few knew that their surname was Di Natale. There was another mark of the Michigans. In the male line the men were all born with webbed fingers on the left hand.

  The Michigans lived in Thompsonville nearly the same as they had lived in the Upper Peninsula on Milly Street and Milly Street Alley. Now they had a small house with an upstairs and a porch along the whole front. Under the linoleum carpet in the parlor, the cracks between the curled floorboards were wide enough to see the wine barrels and the woodpile down in the cellar. Out back, in a plot with perfect rows, the Michigans grew tomatoes by the bushel. The plot was fenced off from the gardens of their neighbors by strands of wire, bits of timber, pipes, iron bedsteads, and old doors – whatever they could make stand as a barrier. They had a grape arbor. They killed a pig every winter. In early spring Della patrolled the roadside with a shopping bag and a kitchen knife in hand, gathering dandelions.

  The brothers were big eaters who liked salads and always ate three or four helpings at a sitting. They brought home clusters of damp mushrooms when they took the shortcut through the woods. Della fried the mushrooms with seven or eight cloves of garlic and a half-dollar piece to make sure the mushrooms were edible.

  The Michigan men also brought home from work split logs in six-foot lengths that they carried on their shoulders sometimes for a mile or more. Cords of logs were piled in a long row in the backyard. The row grew higher and longer month after month. In the late autumn, after the ground froze and work was slack, they borrowed a sawing machine. In a week the cellar was stacked high with oak logs for the kitchen stove that was meant to heat the whole house. The smell of fresh oak seeped up into the cold parlor, mingling with the muscatel odor of the new wine. The heat never reached beyond the kitchen, and all winter the Michigans lived mostly in that one room. At night in the bedrooms they piled overcoats and sweaters over their blankets.

  Thompsonville was where the Italians lived. It was not a town but a place at the end of suburban Newton along the junction of the main road to Boston. Thompsonville had a couple of gas stations and a flat-roofed brick building known as ‘the Block.’ The Block had a drugstore, a barber shop, a grocer’s, a hardware store, and a bar-room. Every evening for an hour or two young Thompsonville flocked there on the broad sidewalk. The neighborhood comprised half a dozen streets and a dozen crooked lanes that were unpaved and ended abruptly against outcrops of gray ledge. The Irish had once lived here, and before them, Germans. Now there were a handful of Sicilians and Neapolitans but most of Thompsonville was made up of families of Abruzzesi. The Michigans and all the others from the Upper Peninsula who lived in Thompsonville had Abruzzese roots.

  To the Michigans what was different in Thompsonville was the absence of Piemontese people, Finlanders, mines, and saloons. But the same as in the Upper Peninsula, Della rose every morning at five to cut up loaves of bread and fry peppers and eggs in olive oil for the sandwiches that made up her brothers’ lunches. It was better to make these sandwiches in the morning than the night before, otherwise the oil went rancid.

  Except for the sister who had stayed in the Upper Peninsula, none of the Michigans had married. Della was forty-four and kept house for her brothers. John Michigan had once worked in the hematite mines. Now he earned a living as a gardener on an old estate a mile or so from Thompsonville. Henry Michigan and Albert Michigan were laborers working for bricklayers and general contractors. They erected stages, prepared mortar, and carried a hod. They also cleared tracts of land, laid drainage ditches, did pick-and-shovel excavating. All three of the Michigan men worked the only way they knew how – hard. Their flawed hands were limiting. For sudden grasping, for quickness, the hand was clumsy. But for rough work their hands gave them little trouble.

  They had always been a bit ashamed of their fingers, concealing them from people they did not know well. They disliked being pointed at. In their work, to overcome what they lacked in dexterity, they used brute force. The inferior hand gave them a tendency to humility. If one of them dropped or broke something because of the Michigan hand, they apologized, silently blaming their condition.

  ‘Poor things with those hands,’ Della thought to herself. She knew they were ashamed of their disfigurement. This made her keep the house just as they liked.

  One summer afternoon John Michigan was on his way home when he heard an approaching vehicle honk its horn at him. He turned to catch sight of his neighbor Sam’s 1925 Autocar, a big dump truck loaded with crushed stone, slowing down to pick him up.

  ‘Wey, Mish,’ the driver called as he braked.

  ‘Wey, Sam,’ Mish called back.

  The vehicle’s heavy chain was whizzing around its sprocket as the truck lumbered past Mish. Mish jogged alongside the high running board. ‘Sam,’ he called again, and without waiting he made a leap for the grab bar by the door to hoist himself up. Mish’s hand with its webbed fingers lost its grip.

  Mish had slipped under the Autocar’s big double wheels. Sam could not see what had happened. He jumped down to the road and peered under his truck. Mish’s legs were pinned under the solid-rubber wheels. The vehicle had come to a stop over Mish’s groin. Sam climbed back into the cab and moved the truck off John Michigan. Mish was dead.

  Sam took to bed, his spirit broken like a string of raw macaroni. The Michigan men said Sam was blameless. Henry Michigan went to Sam’s house when he learned how the driver was taking it. Henry wanted Sam to come to his brother’s wake. When he saw Sam in bed he felt ashamed to ask him. He said, ‘We know you never meant it.’ Henry held up his large hand that was webbed between the fingers. It resembled a paw. ‘Look, Sam, all us
Michigans got these hands.’

  Sam was from the Upper Peninsula too. His father and the Michigans’ father were from neighboring towns in the Abruzzi. They had left Italy to work in the iron mines.

  With Henry at his bedside Sam broke down and cried. Henry cried.

  All Thompsonville said it had been a question of John Michigan’s left hand. Sam kept holding on to that. At the end of the day he left his bed. The Michigans lived five houses away.

  The men on the front porch of the Michigans’ house poured out onto the sidewalk, opening a way to let Sam through. Candles lit the parlor. The perfume from the cascades of flowers hung like a weight in the air. The mourners worked to act cheerless. The man in the coffin had the Michigan wide face and coarse red skin that never browned. In death there was no mistaking him for anyone but a Michigan. His hands were folded together around a chain of beads that hid the webbed fingers. Albert Michigan told a friend the undertaker had done such a good job folding the hands you could not tell.

  Della Michigan stood at the foot of her brother’s open coffin. Two lines of tears ran straight down her round red cheeks. From that spot she could see who came and who did not come. Sam came in. Della saw the enemy. She trembled and the tears welled in a steady flow.

  Della knew what she had to do. Her brothers were in the kitchen drinking. If they were ashamed of their hands, she did not have their webs. She was free.

  A moment’s hesitation. Now her arms opened wide in a gesture that sent a potted fern flying. She thought she was close enough to the truckdriver to lunge for his throat. Sam was still ten feet away. Della toppled. Women and men rushed from their chairs to rescue Della Michigan from a fall and to cut off her attack. Some of the mourners flocked around Della, others went to support Sam. The room was mayhem.

  ‘Grab a hold of her,’ men shouted.

  ‘Get her out of here,’ screamed the women.

  ‘Make her lie down before she passes out.’

  ‘Get the bottle of vinegar if she faints.’

  They held Della. They kept Sam from collapsing. No one paid attention to the shouted orders. They wanted to see what would happen.

  An old widow, seated in the second line of chairs, craned her neck. She said, ‘See how she’s suffering, poor thing.’

  Sam was unable to approach the coffin.

  ‘Take it easy,’ someone told him. ‘She don’t know what she’s doing.’

  Someone else told him, ‘You know how Della is, Sam. A Michigan inside and out.’

  Henry Michigan broke through from the kitchen. He and Albert had been drinking coffee royals. Henry tilted back his red face. He had sized up the situation and wanted to smooth things over.

  ‘What are you trying to pull, Della?’ he said. The bootleg whisky in his throat made the gruff Michigan voice even gruffer. He put an arm around Sam’s neck and led him to the coffin. From the kitchen doorway Albert Michigan watched.

  Della was confused. Why was Henry throwing her down in front of the people? She tried to move. Six pairs of hands held her tight. They drew her back to make space before her brother’s coffin. They made room for the man who had killed John Michigan.

  Della Michigan’s ears rang with the words of comfort and the shouted orders of those who gripped her. She heaved her body in the direction of her enemy.

  ‘He killed one of my meat,’ she screamed. Her voice was big and raucous. She drowned out the noise of the room. The cords of her neck strained.

  ‘He killed one of my meat,’ she repeated.

  The words had power. Della Michigan had everyone’s full attention. She breathed with labor. She shouted. ‘He killed one of my meat.’

  She said it again. She said it again. She said it again. ‘He killed one of my meat.’

  Weights were shed. Della Michigan felt surer, freer.

  Henry Michigan lowered his arm and stood a step behind Sam.

  ‘He killed one of my meat,’ Della screamed. She wanted the mourners in her house and on her porch and out front on the street to hear. She was giddy now. She looked at Sam on his knees before her brother’s coffin. Della did not want to stop. She repeated her cry. ‘He killed one of my meat.’

  Della Michigan had been seen and heard by all. It could end. A few more times, just a few more times, and she would be rid of her painful duty forever.

  She howled. ‘He killed one of my meat.’

  Pierina, Her Early Life

  To C. H.

  Pierina dragged a big galvanized pail by its handle. The grass was long and wet. She was barefoot. She owned no shoes. Her dress was quickly soaked and clung to her legs.

  The dress was a flour sack slit at the top for her head and at the sides for her arms. The grass came up to her waist. She plucked at the faded dress but it still stuck to her. The dragged pail left a wake in the grass. The dew would not burn off until midday.

  She was six. Every morning she went out to milk the cow and bring the half-filled bucket home, fearful of losing a drop. The cow kicked at the bucket. Trying to save the milk, Pierina got her thumb clamped under the handle. There was a blood blister. She was in dread of spilling the milk. She would get a thrashing for it.

  Pierina’s mother had died in childbirth. Before that a younger sister had died of diphtheria. Pierina knew the words Wakefield and Bessemer. She did not know these were towns in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

  * * *

  Lucy was Pierina’s older sister. Lucy was eight. Lucy cooked and washed the clothes for the family. She was smaller than Pierina and had to stand on a stool to reach and stir the boiling vat on the stovetop. There was a boy, Silvio, the eldest. Silvio delivered the milk in a dog cart. None of the three ever got a drop of the milk to drink.

  Lucy and Pierina had picked up few words of English. To each other they spoke their father’s Abruzzese dialect. They had no near neighbors.

  * * *

  Francesco worked from time to time in the iron mines. He was known as Frankie. He liked to drink and to prowl the fields and woods with his hunting gun. Once in a while he brought home a rabbit for the table. Squeamish Lucy would make Silvio skin and gut it. The sisters were terrified of Francesco.

  Winter nights a friend or two came around to drink. They were Finlanders from the mines. They never knocked but stood some yards back in the snow and called out. ‘Frankie, open door tonight. Pretty cold outside.’ Frankie let them in.

  The school authorities visited Francesco about Lucy and Pierina’s long absences from school. He played for sympathy, telling the authorities he was on his own, a widower. He spoke in exaggerated broken English. He dropped into peasant cunning. He did not understand the rules. One of the girls was sick, he said, and the other looked after her. He prevaricated. He invented flimsy pretexts. He needed his daughters to run the house. He had no money for school books. He had no money for their shoes.

  His gun stood in a corner of the room.

  ‘You seem to have money to buy shot,’ the school visitor said.

  Francesco had no answer. Lucy and Pierina got shoes and went to school.

  * * *

  Francesco’s ambition was to own a horse and wagon. What they were to be used for he never said. He got them and was proud and handsome prancing along the roads. Pierina had to milk the cow and sickle the long, wet grass, wheelbarrowing it back to feed the horse. Lucy, who was like a sparrow, could not help. She was busy kneading the lumps of dough and rolling them out to make the sagna. They ate sagna every night.

  They carried the new shoes to the school gate and then wiggled into them. When school was over the shoes came off and were carried home. Pierina was jumping rope in the schoolyard. Lucy looked on. Pierina wore her new shoes. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Francesco riding by in the wagon. She went bloodless.

  Francesco asked Pierina to show him her shoes. She got them. He studied the soles.

  ‘Is this what I send you to school for?’

  No answer.

  ‘Answer me.’

&
nbsp; Before Pierina could utter a word he was smashing the shoes against her face. To protect herself, she leaned forward. Francesco brought his hand up and clutched at her throat. He threw her backward. Pierina landed on the floor. She was too frightened to show any tears.

  ‘Is this what I send you to school for?’ he said.

  No answer.

  He kicked her. He kicked her ribs. He kicked her head. Lucy screamed, trying to stop him. He threw her down and kicked her.

  Lucy scrambled away. Pierina dared not move. The next day she was unable to cut grass for the horse. She was unable to attend school.

  * * *

  Classes ended. Pierina and Lucy milked the cow and made hay for the horse. They cut the grass and turned it over in the summer sun. Francesco stumbled about in and out of the woods, in and out of the shadows. He shot a few rabbits. He shot a pheasant. He pondered.

  Francesco passed the summer planning and plotting. In the end peasant guile came to his aid. One morning before first light he piled the wagon full of the family’s chattels and tied the cow behind. Off they trudged to another school district. Some time would pass, Francesco figured, before the authorities caught up with him.

  Gildino

  For a piece of chocolate Rilly did it. Rilly, they’d say, go see what Gildino’s up to. Va vidè che fa Gildino. Rilly’d trot around to their place all the way from Benzo’s Hall, where the dances were held. There was a stunted apple tree in the side yard of their house. Gildino would be under it.

  ‘Wey, Gildino,’ Rilly called in the dusk. If Gildino was awake he’d moan. He knew Rilly. The moan would be excited.

  That was all they asked Rilly to do. Make sure little Gildino was okay. But Rilly stayed an extra minute. With a couple of waves of his hand he swished the swarm of flies from Gildino’s face. Another wave rid the flies from the slaver dribbling down Gildino’s neck. Before Rilly could take a step the flies were back, thick and black and noisy as ever. Rilly ran all the way to Benzo’s to get his piece of chocolate.