The John Fante Reader

by John Fante

  I had to believe it. Where did my slider come from, and my knuckle-ball, and where did I get all that control? If I stopped believing I might come apart, lose my rhythm, start walking batters. Hell yes, there were doubts, but I pushed them back. The life of a pitcher was tough enough without losing faith in his God. One flash of doubt might bring a crimp in The Arm, so why muddy the water? Leave things alone. The Arm came from heaven. Believe that. Never mind predestination, and if God is all good how come so much evil, and if he knows everything how come he created people and sent them to hell? Plenty of time for that. Get into the minors, move up to the big time, pitch in the World Series, make the Hall of Fame. Then sit back and ask questions, ask what does God look like, and why are babies born crippled, and who made hunger and death.

  Through the whispering snow I saw dimly the small houses along Arapahoe. I knew everyone in every house, every cat and dog in the neighborhood. In truth I knew almost everyone of Roper’s ten thousand people, and some day they would all be dead. That too was the fate of everyone in the house at the end of the street, the frame house with the sagging front porch, paint-blistered, with the slanting peaked roof, home of bricklayer Peter Molise, where the only brick were in the chimney, and even that was crumbling.

  But when it was time to die the condition of your house didn’t matter, and all of us would have to go—Grandma Bettina next, then Papa, then Mama, then myself since I was the oldest, then my brother August, two years younger, then my sister Clara, and finally my little brother Frederick. Somewhere along the way our dog Rex would crawl off and die too.

  Why was I thinking these things and making a graveyard of the world? Was I losing my faith after all? Could it be because I was poor? Impossible. All great ballplayers came from poor folks. Who ever heard of a rich rookie becoming a Ty Cobb or a Babe Ruth! Was it a girl? There were no girls in my life, except Dorothy Parrish, who hardly knew I existed, a mere gnat in her life.

  Oh, God, help me! And I walked faster, my thoughts pursuing me, and I began to run, my frozen shoes squealing like mice, but running didn’t help, the thoughts to the left and right and behind me. But as I ran, The Arm, that good left arm, took hold of the situation and spoke soothingly: ease up, Kid, it’s loneliness, you’re all alone in the world; your father, your mother, your faith, they can’t help you, nobody helps anybody, you only help yourself, and that’s why I’m here, because we are inseparable, and we’ll take care of everything.

  Oh, Arm! Strong and faithful arm, talk sweetly to me now. Tell me of my future, the crowds cheering, the pitch sliding across at the knees, the batters coming up and going down, fame and fortune and victory, we shall have it all. And one day we shall die and lie side by side in a grave, Dom Molise and his beautiful arm, the sports world shocked, in mourning, the telegram to my family from the President of the United States, the flags at half-mast at every ball park in the nation, fans weeping unashamed, Damon Runyon’s four-part biography in the Saturday Evening Post: Triumph over Adversity, the Life of Dominic Molise.

  Under an elm tree I stopped to cry, the bitterness of my approaching death too much to bear; one so young, so talented, cut down in the prime of his life. Oh God, be merciful: don’t take me too fast! Spare me a few years, look kindly upon my youth. By nineteen I shall be ready for the big time. Give me those years and ten more, a total of twelve, no more and no less, I don’t care if it’s with the Phillies or the Cubs, only give me those years and you can strike me down at twenty-nine, which is plenty of time, my sweet Lord, figuring thirty games a year, that’s three hundred and sixty games, a lot of baseball, a lot of pitches to emblazon the name of Dom Molise among the immortals.

  —1933 Was a Bad Year

  THE ODYSSEY OF A WOP

  IV

  DURING A BALL GAME ON THE SCHOOL GROUNDS, a boy who plays on the opposing team begins to ridicule my playing. It is the ninth inning, and I ignore his taunts. We are losing the game, but if I can knock out a hit our chances of winning are pretty strong. I am determined to come through, and I face the pitcher confidently. The tormentor sees me at the plate.

  “Ho! Ho!” he shouts. “Look who’s up! The Wop’s up. Let’s get rid of the Wop!”

  This is the first time anyone at school has ever flung the word at me, and I am so angry that I strike out foolishly. We fight after the game, this boy and I, and I make him take it back.

  Now school days become fighting days. Nearly every afternoon at 3:15 a crowd gathers to watch me make some guy take it back. This is fun; I am getting somewhere now, so come on, you guys, I dare you to call me a Wop! When at length there are no more boys who challenge me, insults come to me by hearsay, and I seek out the culprits. I strut down the corridors. The smaller boys admire me. “Here he comes!” they say, and they gaze and gaze. My two younger brothers attend the same school, and the smallest, a little squirt seven years old, brings his friends to me and asks me to roll up my sleeve and show them my muscles. Here you are, boys. Look me over.

  My brother brings home furious accounts of my battles. My father listens avidly, and I stand by, to clear up any doubtful details. Sadly happy days! My father gives me pointers: how to hold my fist, how to guard my head. My mother, too shocked to hear more, presses her temples and squeezes her eyes and leaves the room.

  I am nervous when I bring friends to my house; the place looks so Italian. Here hangs a picture of Victor Emmanuel, and over there is one of the cathedral of Milan, and next to it one of St. Peter’s, and on the buffet stands a wine pitcher of medieval design; it’s forever brimming, forever red and brilliant with wine. These things are heirlooms belonging to my father, and no matter who may come to our house, he likes to stand under them and brag.

  So I begin to shout to him. I tell him to cut out being a Wop and be an American once in a while. Immediately he gets his razor strop and whales hell out of me, clouting me from room to room and finally out the back door. I go into the woodshed and pull down my pants and stretch my neck to examine the blue slices across my rump. A Wop, that’s what my father is! Nowhere is there an American father who beats his son this way. Well, he’s not going to get away with it; some day I’ll get even with him.

  I begin to think that my grandmother is hopelessly a Wop. She’s a small, stocky peasant who walks with her wrists crisscrossed over her belly, a simple old lady fond of boys. She comes into the room and tries to talk to my friends. She speaks English with a bad accent, her vowels rolling out like hoops. When, in her simple way, she confronts a friend of mine and says, her old eyes smiling: “You lika go the Seester scola?” my heart roars. Mannaggia! I’m disgraced; now they all know that I’m an Italian.

  My grandmother has taught me to speak her native tongue. By seven, I know it pretty well, and I always address her in it. But when friends are with me, when I am twelve and thirteen, I pretend ignorance of what she says, and smirk stiffly; my friends daren’t know that I can speak any language but English. Sometimes this infuriates her. She bristles, the loose skin at her throat knits hard, and she blasphemes with a mighty blasphemy.

  —The Wine of Youth

  I WENT BACK TO THE BEDROOM and lay down. The kitchen light went out and the floor creaked with his steps as he walked into the bedroom next to ours. There was a boom when his shoe hit the floor, and then another. I heard the tinkle of coins and nails as he pulled off his pants then the twang of bed springs as his weight descended at my mother’s side.

  I pictured them lying there in the darkness of different worlds, sharing the same manger, like a burro and a hen. Man and wife, side by side, in two nests of a sagging mattress, yet separated by the remains of their dead marriage. It had me writhing. Well, all right! So my mother wasn’t much any more, with aching teeth that had to come out and hair streaked with grey that wouldn’t stay in. She owned no rouge or lipstick, and her rear would look ridiculously small on one of those bar stools at the Onyx, but she would never leave the mark of her mouth on another man’s face. She did what had to be done, submissive to
the will of God—the laundry, the cleaning, the cooking, the raising of her family. All in all, it was enough to drive a man out of the house and you couldn’t blame my father for running for his life. But those women! Those big-assed, loafing women! They knew he had a wife and family, yet they smeared their lipstick on him, and he was as bad as they for allowing it.

  Sleep would not come as I twisted and groped, and my hand came upon something under August’s pillow. I drew it carefully from under the weight of his head. It was a large brown envelope. For months I had been searching for that mysterious envelope, knowing he kept it hidden, his most secret possession.

  He slept deeply with his mouth open and I sat up and drew out the contents of the envelope. They were glossy photographs of Carole Lombard, a varied collection, curiously luminous in that cold clear light. They showed her in bathing suits and evening gowns, in wide hats and pirate costumes, on horseback and in speed boats, on tiptoe in lingerie.

  Then I found the real reason for August’s secrecy. Some of the portraits were signed in his own handwriting. “For my darling August, adoringly—Carole.” “To August, with undying love—Carole.” “For Augie, passionate memories of Malibu nights—Carole.” “Dear August: do with me what you will. I am yours body and soul. Your Carole.”

  You were supposed to laugh at such things, for they made you out a fool. I looked at him with his open mouth, his breath puffing steam into the frigid air. The autographs were not funny. He had written sad things, intimate things, too sacred for anyone else to see. He was fifteen, and I had got used to treating him as though he was no more than five or six. Yet there he was, only two years younger than myself, dreaming of Carole Lombard as fiercely as I dreamed of baseball. Tenderness filled me. I bent over and kissed his cold forehead. Then I put the pictures back into the envelope and slipped it under his pillow.

  I lay there in the white night watching my breath escape in misty plumes. Dreamers, we were a house full of dreamers. Grandma dreamed of her home in faroff Abruzzi. My father dreamed of being free of debt and laying brick side by side with his son. My mother dreamed of her heavenly reward with a cheerful husband who didn’t run away. My sister Clara dreamed of becoming a nun, and my little brother Frederick could hardly wait to grow up and become a cowboy. Closing my eyes I could hear the buzz of dreams through the house, and then I fell asleep.

  All at once I felt myself lifted awake out of the depth of sleep and feeling a presence close by. It was not a dream. Someone was in the bedroom besides my brother and myself. I opened my eyes.

  The room was glacier cold, my breath funneling carbon monoxide into the frozen air. At the bedside stood a woman so near I could have reached out and touched her. Her gown was a flowing blue velvet, and her slender waist was cinched with a golden cord that matched her yellow hair. Her feet were in blue sandals with golden thongs. She looked down on me and smiled. For a moment I thought it was Carole Lombard. Her hand held a luminous globe, the planet earth, the land bodies in gold, the oceans and rivers a bright blue.

  Suddenly it came to me who she was, and the shock pushed me trembling under the blankets. She was the Virgin Mary. She had to be. The bed throbbed with the beat of my heart and I was afraid to look again.

  I shook my brother. “Augie.”

  “What?” He rolled away from me.

  I shook him again and crawled closer.

  “Somebody’s here,” I whispered.

  He bolted to a sitting position, suddenly wide awake and afraid. “Where?” he said. “I don’t see anybody.”

  I sat up and looked at the place where she had stood. She was gone. I pointed. “She was right there. I saw her plain as day.”

  “Who?”

  “The Blessed Virgin.”

  “Oh, shit!” he said, sinking back in disgust and pulling the covers over his head.

  —1933 Was a Bad Year

  ARTURO BANDINI WAS PRETTY SURE that he wouldn’t go to hell when he died. The way to hell was the committing of mortal sin. He had committed many, he believed, but the Confessional had saved him. He always got to Confession on time—that is, before he died. And he knocked on wood whenever he thought of it—he always would get there on time—before he died. So Arturo was pretty sure he wouldn’t go to hell when he died. For two reasons. The Confessional, and the fact that he was a fast runner.

  But Purgatory, that midway place between Hell and Heaven, disturbed him. In explicit terms the Catechism stated the requirements for Heaven: a soul had to be absolutely clean, without the slightest blemish of sin. If the soul at death was not clean enough for Heaven, and not befouled enough for Hell, there remained that middle region, that Purgatory where the soul burned and burned until it was purged of its blemishes.

  In Purgatory there was one consolation: soon or late you were a cinch for Heaven. But when Arturo realized that his stay in Purgatory might be seventy million trillion billion years, burning and burning and burning, there was little consolation in ultimate Heaven. After all, a hundred years was a long time. And a hundred and fifty million years was incredible.

  No: Arturo was sure he would never go straight to Heaven. Much as he dreaded the prospect, he knew that he was in for a long session in Purgatory. But wasn’t there something a man could do to lessen the Purgatory ordeal of fire? In his Catechism he found the answer to this problem.

  The way to shorten the awful period in Purgatory, the Catechism stated, was by good works, by prayer, by fasting and abstinence, and by piling up indulgences. Good works were out, as far as he was concerned. He had never visited the sick, because he knew no such people. He had never clothed the naked because he had never seen any naked people. He had never buried the dead because they had undertakers for that. He had never given alms to the poor because he had none to give; besides, “alms” always sounded to him like a loaf of bread, and where could he get loaves of bread? He had never harbored the injured because—well, he didn’t know—it sounded like something people did on seacoast towns, going out and rescuing sailors injured in shipwrecks. He had never instructed the ignorant because after all, he was ignorant himself, otherwise he wouldn’t be forced to go to this lousy school. He had never enlightened the darkness because that was a tough one he never did understand. He had never comforted the afflicted because it sounded dangerous and he knew none of them anyway: most cases of measles and smallpox had quarantine signs on the doors.

  As for the ten commandments he broke practically all of them, and yet he was sure that not all of these infringements were mortal sins. Sometimes he carried a rabbit’s foot, which was superstition, and therefore a sin against the first commandment. But was it a mortal sin? That always bothered him. A mortal sin was a serious offense. A venial sin was a slight offense. Sometimes, playing baseball, he crossed bats with a fellow-player: this was supposed to be a sure way to get a two-base hit. And yet he knew it was superstition. Was it a sin? And was it a mortal sin or a venial sin? One Sunday he had deliberately missed mass to listen to the broadcast of the world series, and particularly to hear of his god, Jimmy Foxx of the Athletics. Walking home after the game it suddenly occurred to him that he had broken the first commandment: thou shalt not have strange gods before me. Well, he had committed a mortal sin in missing mass, but was it another mortal sin to prefer Jimmy Foxx to God Almighty during the world series? He had gone to Confession, and there the matter grew more complicated. Father Andrew had said, “If you think it’s a mortal sin, my son, then it is a mortal sin.” Well, heck. At first he had thought it was only a venial sin, but he had to admit that, after considering the offense for three days before Confession, it had indeed become a mortal sin.

  The third commandment. It was no use even thinking about that, for Arturo said “God damn it” on an average of four times a day. Nor was that counting the variations: God damn this and God damn that. And so, going to Confession each week, he was forced to make wide generalizations after a futile examination of his conscience for accuracy. The best he could do was confess to
the priest, “I took the name of the Lord in vain about sixty-eight or seventy times.” Sixty-eight mortal sins in one week, from the second commandment alone. Wow! Sometimes, kneeling in the cold church awaiting Confessional, he listened in alarm to the beat of his heart, wondering if it would stop and he drop dead before he got those things off his chest. It exasperated him, that wild beating of his heart. It compelled him not to run but often to walk, and very slowly, to Confessional, lest he overdo the organ and drop in the street.

  “Honor thy father and thy mother.” Of course he honored his father and his mother! Of course. But there was a catch in it: the Catechism went on to say that any disobedience of thy father and thy mother was dishonor. Once more he was out of luck. For though he did indeed honor his mother and father, he was rarely obedient. Venial sins? Mortal sins? The classifications pestered him. The number of sins against that commandment exhausted him; he would count them to the hundreds as he examined his days hour by hour. Finally he came to the conclusion that they were only venial sins, not serious enough to merit Hell. Even so, he was very careful not to analyze this conclusion too deeply.

  He had never killed a man, and for a long time he was sure that he would never sin against the fifth commandment. But one day the class in Catechism took up the study of the fifth commandment, and he discovered to his disgust that it was practically impossible to avoid sins against it. Killing a man was not the only thing: the by-products of the commandment included cruelty, injury, fighting, and all forms of viciousness to man, bird, beast, and insect alike. Goodnight, what was the use? He enjoyed killing bluebottle flies. He got a big kick out of killing muskrats, and birds. He loved to fight. He hated those chickens. He had had a lot of dogs in his life, and he had been severe and often harsh with them. And what of the prairie dogs he had killed, the pigeons, the pheasants, the jackrabbits? Well, the only thing to do was to make the best of it. Worse, it was a sin to even think of killing or injuring a human being. That sealed his doom. No matter how he tried, he could not resist expressing the wish of violent death against some people: like Sister Mary Corita, and Craik the grocer, and the freshmen at the university, who beat the kids off with clubs and forbade them to sneak into the big games at the stadium. He realized that, if he wasn’t actually a murderer, he was the equivalent in the eyes of God.