The Brotherhood of the Grape

by John Fante

  The area was in ruins, like a deserted battlefield. It badly needed cleaning up, if only to lend a little dignity to the loony smokehouse. Planks were scattered about, odds and ends of lumber and chunks of stone, tools, empty wine jugs, cement sacks, paper plates and napkins, half-eaten sandwiches, clothing. The more my eyes fell upon the smokehouse the crazier it seemed.

  It didn’t look like a building at all, but more like a load of stone carelessly dumped there. Tired, drunk and hallucinating, I began to see it as an ancient Indian burial. Then an iceberg. I blinked and looked again. It was a polar bear. Now it was Mount Whitney, now a rocky formation on the moon. A mist settled over the clearing as I rolled up the hoses and gathered the tools. When I looked at the thing again it was a ship moving slowly across a fogbound sea. Disquieting and vague alarms sent me hurrying toward the cabins.

  Through the mist Sam Ramponi’s Cadillac entered the motel driveway. He pulled up beside me. He was in his working clothes, Reno black silk suit, white shirt, black bow tie.

  “How you doin’?” he asked.

  “All finished.”

  He sighed. “Good. How does she look?”

  “It’s a smokehouse, Sam. There’s no denying that.”

  “It sure ain’t no Taj Mahal.”

  “Couldn’t be avoided,” I said professionally, echoing my father. “You ordered the wrong stone. Alabaster quartz is for tombstones. It’s not suited for walls. Too heavy, too hard to maneuver. All things considered, we did a remarkable job.”

  His fat eyes fell upon me.

  “You can say that again.”

  “That smokehouse will outlast these mountains. If you’d asked for the Acropolis the old man would have built it. You wanted a smokehouse and that’s precisely what you got.”

  Big as a walrus he was, shrugging his silken shoulders, not putting up an argument. Then he suddenly blurted it out:

  “Looks like a shithouse to me.”

  He pulled a wallet from inside his coat pocket, removed a check, and handed it to me.

  “Give it to Nick. Paid in full.”

  The check confused me. Everything about it seemed wrong. It was written in the amount of fifteen hundred dollars, but not to my father. On the contrary, my father had written the check payable to Sam Ramponi on the Reno Bank and Trust Company. I racked my head trying to make some sense out of the transaction.

  “What in the hell’s this?” I asked.

  “It’s your old man’s IOU from the poker game.”

  I laughed. “Absurd. My father hasn’t got fifteen hundred. He hasn’t got fifteen cents. He hasn’t had a bank account for years, and he’s never had a bank account in Reno.”

  Sam touched the check with his thick finger. “Isn’t that your father’s signature?”

  “The one he uses when he’s drunk, yes.”

  “Drunk or sober, it’s legal tender.”

  “It’s not legal and it’s not tender. It’s just a bad check.”

  He turned his palms in a shrug.

  “So he wrote a bad check. That’s against the law. I don’t want to make trouble, Tony. Me and your father, we go back a long ways. He owes me fifteen hundred from the poker game and I owe him for that thing out there. So,” he smiled with blameless eyes, “we’re even.”

  He had us, my father and me. Euchred. It was staggering. My God, how long had I been tumbling around in this nightmare? Dragged from the peace and quiet of my home by the sea, tricked into becoming a stonemason’s helper, hauled off into the mountains with three tosspots, to spend six wretched days building a hunchbacked monstrosity?

  Oh, the pain! The blisters! The screaming backache, the tortured feet, the dead weight of those stones, the delirium of our exhaustion, our wraithlike deaths! How long, O Lord, how long? Why was I being punished so? I scanned the past. Was it the waitress in Paris? The three Naples hookers? I have paid, O Lord, I have paid and paid like a credit card that revolves and revolves. Close the account, O Lord. Give me a break. Give me peace. I am wiser, I have learned my lesson. There shall be no more transgressions. I shall return to the church, for I am old now, too fucking old.

  Ramponi, my tormentor, crook, card cheat. Rage. I lunged at him through the car window, my fingers around his thick neck, my mind searching for cruel, obscene curses—something better than motherfucker. But the fat man, like most fat men, was quicker than a bird, twisting from my grasp, and the best I could get off was, “All right for you, Sam Ramponi! You’ll be sorry!”

  He stepped on the gas and the car moved fifty feet to the motel office and stopped. I wasn’t through. I pursued him, walking grimly as he got out of his Cadillac, ready for my onslaught, waiting, fists doubled, big as a walrus, prepared to fight.

  Maybe he could have taken me, maybe not. He was ponderous as a hippo, fat, a pasta man. I was short, runty, and strong as an ox. I had been preparing for this without knowing it. Six days on the rock pile. I was like iron. He was older, over seventy. I was a youth of fifty. He had no chance. Quickness was on my side. A generation separated us.

  I took my stance, fists raised. I spoke:

  “You cheated my father, Ramponi. Now you have to reckon with his son.”

  He brought up his fists.

  “I didn’t cheat. When you play cards with your old man you don’t have to cheat. There’s no way you can lose.”

  “You take him for fifteen hundred, and you don’t call that cheating?”

  “It was three thousand, Tony. I settled for half.”

  “Who changed the stakes? When I left you were playing for nickels and dimes.”

  “Your father raised the stakes. He wanted action. He said he’d quit unless we made it a no-limit game.”

  “You jerk! The man was drunk.”

  “He was no drunker’n me. We were all drunk.”

  Then silence. Cold statues we were, facing one another, Greeks in stone. Staring, fearful of movement. Who would strike first—the crucial blow, the first? We began to circle, slowly round and round. It became tedious. Then it became clear. We didn’t want to fight. We had one thing in common: cowardice.

  But Sam was first to back off. Dropping his hands, he groaned, turned his back, and stepped into the motel office. It gave me a sense of victory. As he disappeared, I put my hands on my hips and sneered. I felt pretty good walking back to our cabin.

  The old man was taking a shower. I pulled the phony check from my pocket and studied it. The dilemma was, should I give it to him, or would it be better if I pretended not to know? Besides, it was really none of my business. It was a private transaction, a gambling debt between him and Sam. I should not have accepted the check in the first place. Then a way out occurred to me. I took an envelope from the motel stationery, slipped the check inside, and sealed it. Presently he emerged naked from the bathroom and scrambled quickly into bed.

  I handed him the envelope.

  “Sam said to give you this.”

  He sat up and looked at it. The fact that it was sealed reassured him and he tore it open. His lips broke into a false smile as he examined the check.

  “Been a long time since I had a real good paycheck,” he said.

  20

  THUNDER AND lightning wakened me. The slant roof rumbled as the rain buried it. The wind howled. The cabin creaked. Someone pounded at the door. It was Sam Ramponi, shouting, “Open up, open up!”

  I stumbled out of bed and opened the door. Rain rushed in like an assassin. Ramponi and his wife stood in the deluge, he in a white plastic raincoat blowing up around his face and she in a red one. He shone a large flashlight in my face.

  “Where’s Nick?” he yelled.

  “Asleep.”

  “Get him up. We got big trouble.”

  He rushed away, the flashlight beam spearing sheets of rain as he struggled to pull the raincoat away from his face. Birdlike, Mrs. Ramponi followed, hopping over rain puddles as they ran in the direction of the smokehouse.

  I drew on my pants and shook my father, shouting,
pulling off the bed covers. He shivered, naked and quivering, and squeezed himself into a fetal ball and refused to waken to the clamor around him. I left him that way, in the path of the marauding rain. He floundered, wet and asleep, as I pulled on a windbreaker and dashed out into the black, thundering night.

  Toward the smokehouse I ran, the rain peppering my face and slapping my body with water bullets, gleeful and shrieking with delight, telling me the smokehouse was down in the storm, down, down, down. I laughed with joy. I hoped it was true. The monster was down, it had to be down. And it was. Down. All the way, flat on its ass, down.

  It lay sprawled, dead in the rain, a pile of bones, a Godzilla breathing its last—the walls collapsed, washed out at the foundations, rain beating it unmercifully, thunder exploding boom boom, lightning flashing zip zip, lighting up the forest as bright as the sun.

  Holding hands, the Ramponis stood beside the fallen ogre with bowed heads, paying their last respects. I went to Mrs. Ramponi’s side. Her face was saddened in disappointment, her eyes moist at the loss of her beloved smokehouse and all that it had promised. There was no way to conceal my delight. I took her hand and squeezed it, and when she turned to me I smiled, and she could see the demons dancing in my eyes.

  “Too bad,” I smiled. “What a shame.”

  Ramponi speared the ruin with his flashlight and I caught sight of a number of troublesome stones that we had had to tight in order to set them in the wall. Fallen enemies now, heaped on the battlefield, a Waterloo of rocks, grotesque in the falling rain.

  “Hell of a mess,” Ramponi breathed. “Ah, well, I guess it’s for the best. It was a terrible eyesore. Ruined the property.”

  He took his wife’s arm and they slogged off in the rain. Turning, she looked back at the devastation. It reminded me of Lot’s wife.

  “Tell Nick I’ll see him in the morning,” Ramponi called.

  Back at the cabin I found Nick Molise sound asleep under a pile of blankets. Even his head was buried. But he had risen during the excitement, for a fresh jug stood at the bedside table, the last jug from the purchase Ramponi had supplied.

  21

  IN THE MORNING the storm was gone and so was my father. I checked the jug. Down another pint. I dressed and stepped outside. The rain had washed the giant forest, settled the dust, cleared the air, and changed the world. Birds shrieked and chipmunks with plumed tails leaped from branch to branch like circus aerialists. The whole earth had put on its Sunday best to celebrate the smokehouse fiasco. The news must have reached far into the sky, for curious clouds drifted past, surveying the ruins.

  Angry voices came from the smokehouse area. I hurried over. My father stood in the rubble, hurling aside small stones, trying to clear away the glut of debris. Sam Ramponi was yelling at him. He was in his black silk work clothes and chewing a cigar.

  “Don’t be a horse’s ass,” he was saying. “Quit while you’re ahead.”

  “I ain’t ahead!” my father yelled, heaving a stone. “I’m behind.”

  “What’s the trouble?” I said.

  “Damn fool wants to start over.” Then to my father: “Quit, you dumb son of a bitch! Get your stuff together and I’ll drive you home!”

  Old Nick went right on heaving stones. His bleary eyes showed him a very tired man.

  “What’s the deal?” I asked.

  “No deal. We do it right, that’s all.”

  Ramponi screamed: “I don’t want it right and I don’t want it wrong! I don’t want it period. I never wanted a smokehouse. It was my wife’s idea. I hate deer meat. I hate beef. I hate pork. I like chicken, and I like fish. So leave it alone. Ruined. Don’t touch it! Pack up your gear and I’ll drive you back.”

  “No, sir,” Papa said. “We’re staying right here. We’ll build it again, if it takes all winter.” Pooped, he eased himself upon a flat stone.

  Let them argue, let them destroy one another; I was through. I would do no more. I left them hollering and walked back to the cabin. I took a shower. I packed our clothes. I read an old paperback. Occasionally I went to the open door and put my ear toward the smokehouse, invisible through the trees. I heard nothing. But I knew he was there, the jug on his knees. I told myself I was doing the right thing, and yet I was troubled and wondering if I were wrong in not helping him.

  Around noon Mrs. Ramponi rushed up to the door.

  “There’s something wrong with your father.”

  She ran toward the forest and I followed. Nick lay on his back beside the creek, his face to the sky, eyes closed, his breathing deep and difficult. I dropped to his side and he opened his eyes and moaned. Mrs. Ramponi sank to her haunches and touched his flushed face.

  “Heart attack,” she said flatly. “I’ve seen it before. My own father.”

  “How about just plain drunk? I’ve seen that before too.”

  “Let’s try artificial respiration.”

  She got to her knees beside him, took a deep breath, and pressed her mouth to his, pushing her breath down his throat. It wakened him with a start. He opened his eyes, saw her face, and loosed a cry of protest, fighting her off. She grasped his head firmly and tried again.

  “No!” he growled. “Leave me alone, goddamnit!”

  I scooped water from the stream and dashed it into his face. He licked the water from his lips.

  Mrs. Ramponi got to her feet.

  “The man’s dying.”

  “The man’s drunk.”

  “Don’t move him. I’ll get a blanket. We’ve got to keep him warm.”

  She dashed away. I pulled him to a sitting position, but he was as limp as a string, his head flopping. Hoisting him to my shoulder I expected a great heaviness, but he was alarmingly light, no heavier than a sack of toys as I carried him toward the motel. Mrs. Ramponi saw us coming and became very agitated.

  “Put him down, man. You’re killing him!”

  I carried him past her into the office and lowered him upon a leather couch. She covered him with a light blanket and went for his mouth again with artificial respiration. He gagged and twisted and grimaced and pushed her away.

  “Water,” he said.

  Water? Incredible. He rarely drank water. He had to be very sick indeed. Mrs. Ramponi brought him a glassful from the kitchen and held it to his lips, and he sucked it down greedily.

  “More.”

  He drank two glassfuls more and sank into a deep sleep. His face was hot and dry against my fingers. He was not drunk. He seemed very tired and flaccid, overcome with weariness. Mumbling, he opened his eyes and tried to rise.

  “Water closet…”

  He threw off the blanket and stood up, swaying. I steadied him through the kitchen to the bathroom and he stood before the bowl, asleep and rocking. As I steered him back to the office he veered toward the kitchen sink.

  “Water.”

  He drank three glassfuls, then returned to the bathroom. I held him erect with my arms around his waist. It was the same interminable business. Finally he was on the leather sofa again, confused by a sinister lethargy, his breathing loud.

  Watching, Mrs, Ramponi said, “You know what I think? Cancer of the bladder. My uncle had it. We better call an ambulance. I don’t want him dying here.” She pushed the desk phone toward me. “Tahoe Ambulance Service.” She gave me the number.

  Dialing the operator, I asked for Dr. Frank Maselli in San Elmo. For more than forty years my father had been Maselli’s reluctant patient, avoiding him as much as possible, for he had but one unvarying prescription for my father’s good health: stop drinking.

  Maselli’s first question over the phone was: “Is he drunk?”

  I said he was not drunk, and as I began to explain my father’s condition Dr. Maselli cut me off.

  “Is he thirsty?”

  “Very.”

  “I hope you’re not giving him wine.”

  “Just water.”

  “Does he piss a lot?”

  “Gallons.”

  “Smell his breath.”r />
  “What?”

  “Smell your father’s breath.”

  I put the phone down, bent over my old man, and sniffed his heavy breathing.

  “Smells sweet,” I said into the phone.

  “So it finally happened.”

  “What, Doc?”

  “Where are you?” I told him.

  “How far from Auburn?” “About fifty miles.”

  “Get him to the Auburn Hospital as fast as you can. I’ll meet you there.” He hung up. I turned to Mrs. Ramponi.

  “Can you drive us to the Auburn Hospital?”

  “Lord God, yes.”

  22

  IT WAS a diabetic coma.

  He had drifted into it slowly over a period of days and it was five hours before Dr. Maselli and a staff physician at the Auburn Hospital could raise him from the abyss of coma and back to consciousness. They purged his bloodstream with intravenous saltwater and infused him with insulin. He had a severe reaction to the insulin, going into shock, and they had to counter with sucrose. The sucrose shot up his blood sugar and they injected insulin again, this time in smaller amounts, until his sugar level was more or less stabilized. Meanwhile I waited in the reception room at Auburn Hospital, watching an angry sun go down.

  About eight that night Dr. Maselli walked in. He was small, fat, cherubic and seventy-three; a textbook medic, a good family doctor, with the rosy cheeks of an Angelo Musso boy. He always managed to look cheerful and concerned, but he was actually a cold professional who gave out as little information as possible.

  He liked being mysterious. When he took your temperature or your blood pressure he never gave you the numbers. He had treated the Molise family for many years now—their broken bones, measles, mumps, strep infections, clap, colic, influenza, Mama’s gall bladder, her backaches and her bizarre female disorders. From time to time he massaged my writhing father’s prostate and prescribed pills for unstated ailments. My father liked Maselli not for his healing technique but because he told my mother nothing. One thing was certain: Maselli knew more about my father than anybody in the world.