The John Fante Reader

by John Fante

  That was Jamie, lover of flowers, cactus and trees, spiders, caterpillars, starfish and sea shells, worms and rats and dogs and cats and squirrels, horses and men. We never worried much about Jamie through most of his life. He simply made no demands. He didn’t ditch school or get into fights or come home in the Sheriff’s car with a deputy lecturing his parents on the seriousness of vandalism, or steal or get drunk or wreck cars or have pot parties on the beach or impregnate chicks or run away from home, or lie or steal or cheat.

  He got fine grades, kept himself clean and neatly dressed, ate everything put before him, spent whole days shooting baskets, and always kissed his mother good night. Who paid attention to a kid like that? To fall within my attention span a boy had to do something significant, like wrecking a car, or steal my shotgun to shoot quail out of the pines, or get arrested by the game warden for setting illegal lobster traps, or fall off the cliff and plummet to the sand below, or chew his fingernails waiting for a girl to make her next menstrual period, or be rescued from drowning, or throw parties wrecking furniture and breaking windows. Not Jamie. A freak, dullsville, out of the mainstream, a square.

  Then from nowhere came the cruncher, and it appeared that our Jamie was not as unsullied and beautiful as we believed. Maybe he was compelled to it in order to call attention to himself. Possibly that was why he had flunked two major subjects at college and deliberately exposed himself to the curiosity of the draft board. But the complexities of his fabrication were more intricate than we imagined.

  To believe it, we had to see it on paper. The letter, addressed to Jamie, was from the Dean’s office. It was propped near the telephone where Harriet knew he would see it. Sensing its importance I peered through the envelope’s transparency and wondered if I dare open it, thus violating a sacred house rule against reading other people’s mail. The moral issue delayed me about ten seconds before I tore the envelope open.

  The information for James Molise was crisp and impersonal. For absences totaling forty-two days he was herewith notified that he was no longer a student at City College.

  “Sacked. Expelled.”

  “You shouldn’t have opened it,” Harriet frowned.

  “Forty-two days! What’s he up to?”

  “It doesn’t matter. You had no right to open his mail.”

  Around dinner time he was home, empty-handed.

  “No books? How come?”

  His eyes sank into me with a quick worried stare before turning away.

  “What of it?” he asked.

  I picked up the letter and handed it to him, and he made a point of fingering the tom envelope, his face darkening. He tossed the letter on the table without bothering to read it.

  “I’ve quit school.”

  “You didn’t quit, you were kicked out.”

  “I quit!” he insisted.

  “A screw-up like your brothers. And all the time I thought you’d be the one who’d break the mold.”

  “Will you please be quiet?” Harriet cut in. “What happened, Jamie? Why did you leave school?”

  “I took a job,” he said, looking at his hands.

  “How many jobs you got?” I asked. “I thought you were working at the supermarket.”

  “Not any more. I’m working at the Children’s Clinic.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Teaching things. Sports, crafts. Whatever has to be done.”

  I began to see an emerging pattern, a clever maneuver, like Denny’s, and it relieved me. He was using his head after all.

  “Not bad,” I said. “It should get you a deferment with the draft board.”

  “I’m just a volunteer,” he said, a little ashamed. “I don’t get paid at the clinic.”

  “You’re working for nothing?”

  “I like what I’m doing.”

  “You’re off your rocker. Charity begins at home.”

  There was no hostility in his greenish eyes, only warmth and sympathy. “I knew you’d say something like that, Dad. That’s why I couldn’t tell you.”

  At dinner we learned more of his job with the Children’s Clinic. He worked fifty hours a week and was given lunch without charge. To reach the clinic in Culver City he hitch-hiked thirty miles there and back each day, except those times when Denny gave him a ride. He pushed crippled children in wheelchairs, gave them whirlpool baths, and massaged their ailing limbs. Those who could walk or run he taught to kick and throw a ball. Otherwise there was nothing to do, except for cleaning toilets, vacuuming rugs and helping with the laundry.

  “Were understaffed,” he said. “We need help.”

  I listened and marveled at how little I understood him and what a mystery he had suddenly become. So now we had another martyr in the family. Dominic immolating himself before the altar of Katy Dann, and now Jamie dedicated to maimed children. How different from their father, who wrote cop-out scenarios for fifteen hundred a week (when employed)! No wonder I understood my dogs and not my children. No wonder I couldn’t finish a novel any more. To write one must love, and to love one must understand. I would never write again until I understood Jamie and Dominic and Denny and Tina, and when I understood and loved them I would love all mankind and my harsh view of the world would soften to the beauty that surrounded me, and it would flow smooth as electricity through my fingers and upon the page.

  —West of Rome (My Dog Stupid)

  Peace.

  What is peace?

  She lives in the east wing and I live in the north wing. We have three bedrooms apiece. I mow the lawn. I start a new novel. My style has changed. I don’t like it. She makes pottery. She studies the occult. I play golf. I have these nightmares. Some blacks roasting Dominic in a pot. She has nightmares. Jamie courtmartialed, blindfolded, shot. I change bedrooms. She changes bedrooms. We sleep together. She snores. She claims I snore. We shift bedrooms. The novel collapses. I start a new one. What happened to my style? She gives me a Tarot reading. The cards are sinister. She cannot finish the reading. The Tower. The Hanged Man. My cards, Death, Catastrophe, Ruin.

  Jamie writes daily, phones weekends. His voice is weak, pathetic. He has a severe cold. He hiked eighteen miles. How’s my dog? He’s okay. Don’t worry about your dog. How’s the food up there? Awful. He vomits all the time. Are you warm at night? No. They don’t give us enough blankets. They made him crawl through a field on his belly, shooting live ammo over his head. Look, Jamie, do you want me to write the post commander? No. It will only increase the persecution. He has a temperature. Go see the medic. No. Absenteeism will mean doing the whole thing over again.

  I mow the lawn. Harriet weeds the flower beds. We call the real estate people. They put up a sign. Hordes of strangers arrive. They troop through the house. They hate the place. The kitchen is old-fashioned. The closets too small. The ceilings need paint. The windows need screens. You hear them sneering as they leave. You see the real estate man agreeing with them. We take down the sign. We are alone again. I hear strange footsteps at night. I put a pistol at my bedside. I give Harriet a pistol. I clean and oil my rifles. The place is an armed fortress. There was a time when every door was open day and night. Not anymore. I check the doors, the windows. Harriet paints Easter eggs. She goes on an egg kick. She puts tiny animals inside the eggs. She makes little scenes inside the eggs, a deer at a waterfall, a rabbit under a bush. The living room fills with strange eggs. Friends congratulate her. She has plans with larger eggs. I play golf. We are a little crazy, unraveled, flaky. Not ashamed to admit it.

  Denny writes from New York. He is a waiter, he is at acting school. Send a hundred. Tina phones from New Hampshire. She is pregnant. Rick is a carpenter. They are buying a house. Send a hundred. Jamie phones. Send some cookies. Still has a temperature. Hiked twenty miles today. Sergeant is out to break him. Must get up at four to clean every latrine on the post. I’ll take care of everything, I tell him, I’ll write to Tunney and Cranston and Reagan. Don’t. It’ll only make things worse. How’s my dog?

  Let�
�s have a party, people around, old friends, we should entertain more now. We throw a party, people come. Writers and wives. Knives drawn. Booze. Screenwriters versus television writers. Bad scene. A woman calls me a fascist pig. I hit her. Her husband belts me. Big rumble on the patio. Neighbor calls the Sheriff. A drunken actress runs to the edge of the cliff, threatens to jump. Jump, you bitch! A deputy grabs her. Party breaks up. Broken friendships, broken glasses, spilled booze, vomit on the lawn. In the dining room some beast has pissed against the wall. We vow no more parties.

  —West of Rome (My Dog Stupid)

  THE ONLY CHANGE IN THE CAF$EA ROMA in over a quarter of a century was the clientele. The old men I remembered were planted in the graveyard, replaced by a new generation of old men. Otherwise things were as usual. The long mahogany bar was the same and so were the two dusty, fly-specked Italian and American flags above it. A touch of the modern was displayed above the bar, a blowup of Marlon Brando as the Godfather, four feet square, in a frame of gold filigree.

  The same propeller fan droned from the ceiling, spinning slowly enough not to disturb the warm air, with sportive flies landing on the propeller blades, enjoying a spin or two, then jumping off. Green shades over the front windows gave the dark interior an illusion of coolness, as did the fragrance of tap beer. But this aroma was knifed by the gut-slashing pungency of olive oil and rancid parmigiana cheese mixed with the piney tang of fresh sawdust deep on the floor.

  Something else had changed: when I was a lad the patrons of the Caf$eA Roma spoke only Italian. Now the new breed of old cockers spoke English, the English of the street, but English all the same.

  Eight or nine of them were crowded around a green felt table in the rear. The low-hanging lamp lit up five card players seated around the table, the others standing about, watching and kibitzing. My father was one of the spectators. They were a cranky, irascible, bitter gang of Social Security guys, intense, snarling, rather mean old bastards, bitter, but enjoying their cruel wit, their profanity and their companionship. No philosophers here, no aged oracles speaking from the depths of life’s experience. Simply old men killing time, waiting for the clock to run down. My father was one of them. It came to me as a shock. I never thought of him that way until I saw him with his own kind. Now he looked even older than the gaffers around him.

  I moved to Papa’s side and said “Hi.” He grunted. The baldheaded dealer never took his eyes off the cards as he spoke to my father.

  “Friend of yours, Nick?”

  “Nah. This is my kid Henry.”

  I recognized the dealer: Joe Zarlingo, a retired railroad engineer. Though he had not operated a train in ten years, he still wore striped overalls and an engineer’s cap and sported all manner of colored pens and pencils in his bib pocket, as if serving notice that he was a very busy man.

  I looked around and said “Hello” to everybody, and two or three answered with preoccupied growls, not bothering to look at me. Some I remembered. Lou Cavallaro, a retired brakeman. Bosco Antrilli, once the super at the telegraph office, the father of Nellie Antrilli, whom I seduced on an anthill in a field south of town in the dead of night (the anthill unseen, Nellie and I fully clothed, then screaming and tearing off our clothes as the outraged ants attacked us). Pete Benedetti, formerly postmaster. The game ended, the chips were drawn in, and the players finally took time to study me while Zarlingo shuffled the cards. They were not impressed.

  “Which boy is this one, Nick?” Zarlingo asked.

  “Writes books.”

  Zarlingo looked at me.

  “Books, uh? What kind of books?”

  “Novels.”

  “What kind?”

  “Take your finger out of your ass and deal the cards,” Antrilli said.

  “Fuck you, you shit-kicker,” Zarlingo fired back.

  The profanity embarrassed my father, for in his mind I was still fourteen, the kid he dragged around on his tours, and he wanted to shield me from the vulgarity of his more mature friends. He whispered, “Come on,” and drew me away, and I followed him out into the trembling sunshine.

  “What you hanging around here for?” he said. “No place for you.”

  “Come on, Papa. I’m fifty years old. I’ve heard just about everything. I came to tell you I’m staying in town for a while.”

  It was like poking a stick into a hornet’s nest. He squinted at me with his little hot red eyes. “Suit yourself, but don’t do me no favors. I don’t need any of you people. I been working since I was eight years old. I was laying stone on the streets of Bari twenty years before you were born, so don’t think I can’t do it myself.”

  “Do what?”

  “Never mind.”

  I lifted my palms. “Papa, listen. Don’t get sore. Let’s get out of this heat and talk it over.”

  His hands plunged from one pocket to another until he found it—the stub of a black cigar. He struck a wooden match against his thigh and lit up, a cloud of white smoke burying his face.

  “Okay. Let’s talk business.”

  “Business?”

  I followed him into the Roma to the bar. They had no hard liquor, only beer and wine. The bartender was the youngest man in the place, a kid of around forty-five, with hair down to the small of his back and a hip mustache that curled over his cheeks like quarter moons.

  “Frank,” Papa said. “This here’s my son. Give him a beer.” To me he said, “This is Frank Mascarini.”

  Frank drew me an overflowing stein from the tap. He served my father a decanter of Musso claret from one of the wine barrels beneath the bar. Papa took his decanter and a glass to one of the tables and I followed with the beer and we sat down. He sipped his wine thoughtfully. Whatever was on his mind, he was carefully tooling up to speak it.

  Finally he said, “I got a chance to make some real money.”

  “Glad to hear of it.”

  He was a poor man but not a pauper. Social Security and checks from Virgil and me took care of him and Mama. They lived frugally but well, for my mother could make a meal from hot water and a bone, and dandelions were free in any empty lot.

  “What’s the job?”

  “A stone smokehouse, up in the mountains.”

  “Can you handle it?”

  He chortled at the foolishness of such a question. “When I was fourteen I built a well in the mountains of Abruzzi. Down through solid rock. Thirty feet deep and ten feet wide. Cold spring water. I did it myself. Carried rock out of the hole, then carried it back. I worked in water up to my ass. It took me three months. I got paid a hundred lira. You know how much that was, in those days? Forty-five cents. Fifteen-cents-a-month wages. Now I got a chance to make fifteen hundred dollars in one month, and you want to know if I can handle it!” This amused him. He laughed. “Of course I can handle it! All I need is a little help.”

  “Papa, you’re a liar. Nobody works for fifteen cents a month.”

  His fist banged the table.

  “I did. And I’ll tell you something else. I put away half my wages.”

  “What’d you do with the other half?”

  “Squandered it. Gambled. Got drunk. Slept with some woman.”

  He quaffed a couple of large mouthfuls of the Musso claret as I studied him. There was no questioning the man’s years, especially the eyes. Their sparkle was gone, as if behind a yellowish film and a net of small red veins.

  I said, “Papa, I don’t think you should take that job.”

  “Who says so?”

  “You’re too damned old. You’ll have a stroke, or a heart attack. It’ll finish you off.”

  “My mother was ninety-four. My father was eighty-one. All I need is a first-class helper, somebody who knows how to mix mortar and carry stone.”

  “You got anybody in mind?”

  He sipped the claret. “Yep.”

  “Is he reliable?”

  “Hell no, but you take what you can get.”

  I realized whom he had in mind.

  “Papa,” I smi
led. “You’re out of your tree.”

  “How long can you stay?”

  “A day or two.”

  “We can do it in three weeks”

  “Impossible.”

  “Easy job. Little stone house up at Monte Casino. Ten by ten. No windows. One door. I’ll lay up the walls, you mix the mortar, carry the stone. Nice place. Good country. Forest. Big trees. Mountain air. Do you good. Get the fat off.”

  “Fat? What fat?”

  “Fat. Out of shape. I pay ten dollars a day. Board and room. Seven days a week. We’ll be outa there in two weeks if you don’t waste time or quit on me. You want the job? You got it. But remember who’s boss. I do the thinkin’.”

  “Papa, I want you to listen carefully to what I am about to say. I want you to stay calm, and I want you to be reasonable. My business, as you know, is writing. Your business is building things. All I know how to do is string one word after another, like beads. All you know is piling one rock on another. I don’t know how to lay brick or mix mortar. I don’t want to know. I have certain things to do. I have a commitment. A commitment is a contract. There’s a man in New York, a publisher, who’s paying me to write a book. He is waiting for this book. He has been waiting for over a year. He is losing his patience. He sends me angry letters. He telephones and calls me filthy names. He threatens to sue me. You understand what I’m saying, Papa?”

  “I’ll tell you one thing about Monte Casino,” he said. “You’ll feel better. You’ll get healthy. What are you worrying about? Did I say anything about not writing? Bring some pencils and paper. Ask Mama: she’s got lots of paper in the closet. Write any time you want. Write something about the mountains. Write at night, after work. It’s quiet up there. You know the owls? You can hear them. And the coyotes. Peace, quiet, purify the mind. You’ll write better.”