Full of Life

by John Fante

  “He didn’t want any dinner,” I blurted. “I mean, he had his dinner with him.”

  He was tight-lipped, noncommittal. He removed the stubs and handed the tickets back to me. His eyes were as cold as oysters.

  “Honor thy father and thy mother,” he said.

  “I don’t like goat’s cheese.”

  His lips curled. He hated me.

  Back in Car 21, Papa was breaking their hearts. I found him partaking of a simple repast of bread, cheese and salami, and washing it down with occasional sips of wine. He ate with mincing delicacy, a gentleman at table. His pocketknife lay open in his lap, and his food was spread across the opposite seat. Mr. Randolph had provided a napkin, and he hovered in the aisle, listening with gentle eyes as Papa spoke. He was talking about the hard bitter days of his youth back in Abruzzi; how he had gone to work at the age of ten, apprenticed to a cruel stonemason who cheated him of his wages of three cents a day; how his own mother used to come to the job and help him carry big stones up a ladder to the scaffolding on the estate of the Duke of Abruzzi. It was a tragic story, and a true story, for I had heard it many times before; had been raised on it, in fact; a tale of peasant misery that turned one’s blood to tears, and those near him in Car 21 were deeply moved by the words of this simple old man who found contentment in a bit of bread and cheese and salami while his son gorged himself riotously on rich foods.

  I sat down beside him, hunched my shoulders, and wished I’d worn a hat to hide my face. Papa’s humble voice, rich now with gratitude, went out to Mr. Randolph and everybody else.

  “But God Almighty’s been good to me. I’m an American citizen. Been one for twenty-five years. I got four fine children. I raised them and sent them out into this great country of ours. She’s a wonderful place, this America. She’s been good to all of us. God bless the United States of America.”

  A large man in tweeds across the aisle now leaned toward us and offered Papa a cigar. It was an expensive cigar, packed in a bullet-shaped humidor. With a simple dignity Papa accepted it, bowing from the waist.

  “Thank you, Mister. I’ll save it for when my grandson’s born. She’s too good to smoke now.”

  It was very touching. The man in tweeds looked to his big blond wife, whose bosom heaved, whose face was framed in tenderness. She whispered something, and the man in tweeds now produced a second cigar. Papa protested that this was too much, too much, but he let them force it upon him. Mr. Randolph urged him to go back to the men’s room and enjoy the gift, and Papa agreed. Carefully he put away his bread, wrapped his salami in a dishcloth, and tucked up his goat’s cheese in a sack. Not one crumb was wasted. He closed the suitcase and got to his feet. He was tight, but it took an experienced filial eye to notice it. Mr. Randolph assisted him down the aisle. Heads turned to watch him go. He left a trail of love in his wake.

  I leaned against the window and stared straight ahead. I was very lonely and friendless. Papa’s absence created an hiatus distinctly felt. The train pounded ahead. The man in tweeds and his wife rose to go to the diner. I was not worthy of his glance, but his wife looked down at me with flaring nostrils. Mr. Randolph returned.

  “The old gentleman wishes his black suitcase.”

  I handed Mr. Randolph two garlic-scorched dollars.

  “See that he gets whatever he wants.”

  “Don’t you worry about that.”

  He sniffed the garlic and looked at me suspiciously.

  A few minutes later he was back in the car, making up the berths. I went into the men’s room. Papa sat red-eyed at the window, mumbling to himself. The room was full of expensive cigar smoke.

  “The berths are being made, Papa. You better go to bed.”

  “Go on, son. Have a good time. Laugh and play, don’t worry about your father.”

  “I think you ought to go to bed.”

  “Not me. No train beds for Nick Fante. I’ll stay right here.”

  And there he stayed. I went back to the club car and had a brandy. When I returned to Car 21 Mr. Randolph had made up all the berths. The men’s room was crowded, passengers washing their faces, scrubbing teeth, preparing to retire. Everybody called my father “Dad” and wished him good night. Nobody had a word for me. I gritted my teeth and brazened it out, smoking cigarettes and gasping for tomorrow morning, when the black journey would come to an end.

  By eleven o’clock all the passengers in Car 21 were in bed except Papa and me. He slept by the window, snoring. I shook him awake.

  “Come to bed.”

  “No, sir.”

  “You can’t sleep here. I got a nice bed for you.”

  “No, sir.”

  Mr. Randolph entered.

  “Poor old fellow. He’s so tired.”

  “He won’t sleep in a berth.”

  “Mighty fine old man.”

  “Help me get him to bed.”

  We tried to lift him, but he kicked with such energy, and he was wearing heavy work shoes, that it was useless. I pleaded and argued.

  “No, sir.”

  It defeated me. I went down to our section and got into the lower berth. Since Papa refused to stretch out, I saw no reason for climbing into the upper. I had trouble sleeping. The berth was hot and stifling. Three times I rose, pulled on my pants and went down to the men’s room. Papa lay full length on the seat. Each time I shook him, he growled and started kicking. I went back to my berth. It was choked with heat. I rang for Mr. Randolph. He was asleep in a lower near the men’s room. He had little patience with me.

  ‘It’s too hot in there,” I said. “Close up the upper berth so I can get some air.”

  He did as I asked. Now I had the whole section opened up and it felt much better when I lay down. In a little while I was asleep.

  It was morning when I awoke. The train was leaving Castaic in the mountains and we were a little more than an hour out of Los Angeles. I dressed with wonderful freedom, for I could stand up now that the upper had been closed. Then I stepped into the aisle. Every other passenger was awake and dressed. Every berth save mine had been made up. Mr. Randolph busied himself with a whisk broom. All eyes were upon me. If these people disliked me the night before, they were now ready to lynch me. Their animosity was like a stultifying hot wind, unmistakable and frightening. Then I realized what it was that angered them. The berth above me was closed; it had been unused through the night. Only the lower had been occupied, and by none other than myself. Papa, they knew, was in the men’s room. The implication was wretchedly obvious: while I slept in luxurious ease, occupying the space allotted for two people, my poor old father had been forced to spend the night in the men’s washroom. With a tight jaw I staggered down the aisle, ten miles through hostile Indian country, to the men’s smoker.

  And there was Papa. He had the black suitcase open in his lap, and he was eating a simple breakfast of goat’s cheese and apples. The man in tweeds stood over him.

  “You sleep well, Dad?”

  Papa’s smile implied that he hadn’t slept too well, but well enough under the circumstances. I wanted to cut out his heart, and the man in tweeds wanted to cut out mine.

  Not until we reached Los Angeles, until we were away from his loyal train comrades, until he had shaken hands with all of them and bade a fond good-by, not until then did I have my revenge. Our luggage had been checked through to the taxi stand outside the Los Angeles Union Station. In grim silence we walked down the passenger subway and through the depot to the taxi stand. I gave a redcap our claim stubs and he pulled the luggage off a hand truck. Papa had his coin purse out, ready to offer a tip. A thin dime was poised between his thumb and forefinger.

  “Don’t take his money,” I told the redcap.

  He was only too glad not to, seeing the dime. Then I knew how I would have my revenge. I pulled out my wallet and slowly counted out five one-dollar bills into the palm of the grinning redcap. Papa watched in unbelief, his tongue out.

  “What’s going on?”

  Redcap beam
ed. “Thank you!”

  I hailed a cab. Papa looked around, stunned, expecting something unusual to happen for five dollars, but the redcap walked away counting the money. A cab drew up. The driver piled our luggage into the front seat. Still Papa stood there, waiting for some kind of action. The redcap drifted away through the throng.

  “What happened? Where’s he going?”

  “Let’s go, Papa.”

  “You have change back coming.”

  “I gave it all to him.”

  “You crazy?”

  Before I could stop him, he was running after the redcap, jostling the others, fighting his way through the crowd, yelling, “Mister! Hey, Mister! Come back.”

  But the redcap was gone, devoured in the swirl of people hurrying to and from the trains. Papa stood crestfallen, almost in tears, his quick eyes darting everywhere.

  “He’s gone. He took your money.”

  “I wanted him to have it.”

  He swung around, his hands exhorting me, his face purpling with anger. “You don’t know what you’re doing. Money’s hard to get. You need it—every penny—to buy shoes, to buy milk and bread. For your wife, for the baby.”

  Aye, he was right, my Papa. Mine had been the vengeance of a fool. Too soon I had forgotten the lean years that were past, the lean years that were surely coming again. We walked back to the taxi. I got in. Papa hesitated at the door.

  “How much it cost?”

  “Not much, Papa. A few cents.”

  He climbed in and I explained how the meter determined the amount of the fare. I gave the driver our address and he pushed the lever setting the meter in motion. The cab moved out of the Union Station. The meter showed the minimum fare.

  “It’s only twenty cents,” Papa smiled. He sat back, satisfied. We moved up Aliso to Los Angeles Street, the first block signal. There was a sharp click and the meter jumped to thirty cents.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Take it easy, Papa. We got about eight miles to go. It won’t cost much.”

  He leaned forward in his seat. The streets of the city, the downtown throngs, had no interest. Only the meter held his attention. We reached Main Street. I pointed to the massive City Hall. The meter clicked.

  “It’s forty cents,” he said.

  We moved into Spring Street, with the Plaza not far away, and the Los Angeles tenderloin. Not many years ago I had walked these streets lonely and penniless. I had slept in the Sunshine Mission and snipped cigarette butts from the sand jugs in front of elevator shafts. There were days when I walked around without socks. Once I had been a bus boy in Simon’s on Hill Street, hosing out garbage cans, polishing brass rails. Those days had long since lost their appeal. I was glad to be away from cheap Temple Street hotels, two-cent coffee, and shaves in public lavatories with cold water and old razor blades. There had been days on those downtown streets when a single dollar bill in my pocket meant a time to relax from the fever of keeping alive, a time to slacken the pace, to take it easy for twenty-four hours. We passed Pershing Square. The meter clicked. Papa mopped his face with a large blue handkerchief.

  “She’s up to seventy cents. Let’s get out.”

  Beyond the Square was the all-night movie house where, for a dime, I used to sleep until five in the morning. Then they kicked us out, and I always used the fire exits, but the rubes staggered sleepily through the front door to be grabbed by cops and hauled off to Lincoln Heights Jail on a vagrancy charge. Once it had happened to me, and it could happen again, unless I worked hard, unless I took Papa’s advice and saved my money. The cab cruised up Seventh Street, the meter clicking every now and then, with Papa getting more and more panicky as the figures mounted.

  Pretty soon it got to me too, and I began to stare at that meter, frightened and fascinated. When we swung into Wilshire Boulevard it was nearly two dollars, and I was sweating it out with Papa. I had over a hundred dollars in my wallet but I was thinking about the old days, the desperate urgency of thrift now that the baby was coming, the irrevocable loss of pennies wasted. When the meter reached two dollars, Papa groaned in pain, swaying his head.

  “How much we got to go?”

  “A mile or two.”

  It was more than that. I had taken the trip by cab before and it was a five-dollar fare, or thereabouts, and it seemed fabulous now, too dear for such as I. We traveled on a few blocks more, and suddenly I could not bear it. I pounded the glass separating us from the driver.

  “Stop this cab. Right here.”

  Instantly he pulled over to the curb.

  “You ain’t there yet, bub.”

  “This is as far as we go.”

  “That’s your privilege.”

  He tore the price ticket out of the meter. It was $3.20. I paid it to the penny, no more and no less. The driver piled our luggage on the sidewalk and drove away. Let him sneer! A penny saved was a penny earned. Today it was fashionable to scoff at the homely wisdom of a Carnegie or a Rockefeller. I saw now that those great men were right.

  “Let’s go, Papa. It’s not far. Only a couple of miles.”

  He spat on his hands.

  “Now you’re talking, boy.”

  All credit were credit is due. But for Papa I might have been ground under, to fall there in some hot and unclean gutter, never to see my Joyce again. But for him the safari might have ended in complete demoralization, Mama’s heavy jars of tomato and fig preserves and an uncut chocolate cake abandoned along the trail.

  His was the strength of ten as we slugged along, the madness of the heat twisting my reason, the choking fumes of monoxide gas burning my parched lips. He carried his tool kit in one hand, a suitcase in the other, and a third suitcase under his arm. Twenty paces behind, I fought through beneath the awful weight of the roped carton and my own grip. Unflinchingly he bore the hardships of that desperate trek, calling out words of encouragement to the younger man who wanted to quit before every drugstore that wafted its aroma of ice-cold cola and chocolate soda. But a penny saved was a penny earned. I was in this thing to the bitter end. I was a goddamned fool and I knew it.

  At last we reached the house. Papa was fresh as a bull. I threw myself on the lawn. From the window Joyce saw us and rushed out. One look at her, the lush roundness of her waist, and Papa dropped his luggage and began to cry. He held out his arms.

  “Ah, Miss Joyce! The baby, he’s beautiful.”

  “Papa Fante!”

  She ran to meet him, her arms out, looped around his neck, the soft pressure of the bulge against his waist, so that he backed away discreetly, but she clung to him and he was embarrassed and awed by the wonderful balloon.

  “We’re so glad you came,” she smiled. “We need you very much.”

  He laughed and patted her clumsily, adoring her and the voluptuous roundness that contained a part of him too. You could see him tremble before it, giddy with joy, this extension of himself, the projection of his life far beyond the limits of his years upon the earth. Sitting on the grass and watching him, I knew suddenly that even the birth of his own children had not held the romance and excitement of this child’s coming. Over his shoulder Joyce looked down at me with startled eyes. I just sat there, glad to be home, too tired to speak.

  “John…what happened?”

  “We walked.”

  I got up and we kissed.

  “Why didn’t you take a cab?”

  “We did that too.”

  I did not wish to discuss the matter further. I wanted a bath, some clean clothes and a chance to go on living, to forget that black passage. Papa was kicking the lawn with the thick toe of his shoe.

  “Devil grass. All devil grass. No good, this country.”

  His gaze followed two lanes of tall palms marching down both sides of the avenue, their sleek trunks soaring, their fronds like feather dusters on long handles.

  “No good, them trees. No shade, no fruit, no nothing.”

  We gathered the luggage and carried it into the house, piling it in th
e hall before the staircase. To the left of the hall, and one step down, was the living room, with wide French windows and cool green walls, a large pleasant room with a beige carpet and carefully selected white oak pieces. Standing there, I felt again that it was a good house in spite of the hole in the kitchen floor; yes, a fine house, a happy house, and it made me proud to be the owner, and I put my arm around Joyce.

  “Here she is, Papa. My house.”

  He turned his head here and there as he bit off the end of a fresh cigar, struck a match against his thigh, and lit up.

  “Floor ain’t plumb.”

  “Oak floor, Papa. Very good floor.”

  “Ain’t plumb.”

  We looked down at the floor. It seemed flawless.

  “Tool kit,” he said again.

  His kit was piled with the other things.

  “Tool kit,” he said again.

  “It’s right here.”

  “Tool kit,” he repeated.

  It was several moments before I realized what he meant—that I should open his tool kit. Even as I became aware of this, I knew that the man had taken over, that our relationship had suddenly changed, that he was the boss of the job. I remembered it from a long time ago when I lived under his roof with my brothers and worked as his helper on building jobs. It was the worst part of working for this man, and we never liked it, my brothers and I. In those days he would say, “Pencil,” and it meant: give me a pencil. Or he would say: “Two-by-four, three feet long.” It was a part of the mystery of working for him, because he never explained why he wanted the thing. He never explained anything, and we used to walk off the job in a fury of frustration and anger, because he treated us like slaves. And here it was again, after sixteen years, this man standing in my house and saying, “Tool kit.”

  I unbuckled the kit and pulled it open.

  “Half-inch pipe. Foot long.”

  I burrowed at the bottom of the kit and found several pieces of pipe. He paced back and forth studying the floor. I gave him what he wanted. But he only glanced at it and did not take it.

  “Wrong pipe.”

  “That’s what you asked for.”

  “Half-inch pipe. Foot long.”