What About Reb

by What About Reb (retail) (epub)

  Reb marvelled. Patsy was up again, this time preparing the coffeepot and putting it on the stove. ‘And what about you, Pats. How did you get out of the draft?’

  ‘Some of the compagni went to Mexico. Me I had a good factory job so I din go with them. But I told you you don’t buy the bonds, on the street you go. Try the next town and find they got the blacklist against you. Only one thing to do. Change your name. I change mine four five times and kept on the move one town after another. Was simple.’

  Patsy divided the last of the cognac between them. Reb noted, or thought he noted, that only a short while before the bottle had been half full. ‘Your father still has that Belgian hunting gun of his?’

  ‘Yeah, in the cellar. But it’s gotta be all rusted to hell by now.’

  They heard a car door slam in the driveway. Neither of them spoke. The car drove off and moments later Patsy’s wife came in by the kitchen door.

  ‘Hi, Dora,’ Reb said.

  ‘You must of missed Libero,’ Dora said. ‘He drove me and your mother to the wake. Too bad.’

  ‘Gonna have a cup of coffee with us, Dora? It’s ready in a couple of minutes.’

  ‘No, Patsy. I said I was going to bed early tonight and it’ll keep me awake.’ Dora eyed the table, went to the sink, and washed her hands. ‘I always wash my hands first thing when I come home from a wake.’

  Reb finished his cognac. Dora brought a small cake to the table and cut half a dozen wedges out of it.

  ‘Honestly, Patsy. You and your cold cuts. Why didn’t you offer Reb some cake?’ Dora said.

  ‘Go ahead. Eat the cake, Ribelle,’ Patsy said. ‘Oh, go on.’ Dora put a slice in front of him on a napkin. She took one for herself and ate it standing.

  ‘Night, Dora,’ Reb said.

  ‘Night, Reb. And Patsy, don’t forget.’

  ‘I know, I know. Leave open the driveway light for Libero.’ He turned to Reb as soon as Dora’s footsteps faded. ‘Boy oh boy, that was some nice gun. Belgian, I’m pretty sure. And in them days it said in the Cronica Sovversiva go see if your gun is oiled Emilio went and oiled the thing, porca la madonna.’

  ‘But what the hell did he ever use it for?’

  ‘La caccia.’

  ‘Hunting what, Pats. Rabbits?’

  The coffee percolated. Patsy lowered the gas and got out cups and saucers. ‘Maybe was rats. Lemme go find another bottle now.’ And he dove down the cellar stairs.

  Again Reb marveled. Anarchists. All these hints, all these veiled allusions, but they never really talked. Not about themselves anyway.

  Patsy was breaking the seal on a fresh bottle of cognac. He gripped the cork between his thumbs and out gushed two more glasses. Full. Somehow there was a bottle of anisette on the table too.

  ‘Easy there, Pats baby. Stuff ain’t water you know.’

  ‘And how it ain’t. Heh heh.’ Patsy moved to the stove and poured the coffee.

  ‘Boy, can use it,’ Reb said. ‘Nice and black.’

  Patsy laced his own coffee with a double hooker of anisette and topped it to the brim with cognac. ‘Go ahead, Ribelle. Don’t be bashful.’

  Reb was not bashful.

  For some reason Reb was telling Patsy, and it seemed to Reb he was talking brilliantly too, how the stonework should be done on the front of the house they were building. Napkin spread out with a sketch on it. Last slice of bread, last slice of cake on the table. There was cognac in their glasses but the coffee cups were gone. Reb grinned from ear to ear.

  ‘How do you do that?’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Patsy said.

  ‘Way you drink. Zoop. Up to the lips then gone.’

  ‘Heh heh. Watch.’

  ‘Jeezus, Pats.’ Reb tried it. ‘Really slides down like that.’ Before he could stop him Patsy swooped over his glass with the bottle.

  Laughing, both of them laughing, and tears flowing down the face too. Everything suddenly so goddam funny. In the hall bathroom Reb pissing and feeling the permanent grin on his face.

  ‘Drink,’ Patsy said.

  ‘Can’t,’ Reb said.

  ‘Don’t like the cognac then, huh? Remy Martin. It’s the best. Keep the case a secret down the cellar so Libero don’t get the taste for it.’

  ‘Ha ha. I feel lousy, Pats.’

  ‘Your father?’

  Reb nodding.

  ‘Listen to me, Ribelle.’ A long pause. ‘I like you same as my own son so I’m gonna talk like you was my Libero now. Din me and Emilio give you the name ourself? You’re a good boy, Ribelle. The best all around here. Patsy means this with the heart now.’

  ‘Ow, Pats. You’re pulling my cheek off.’

  ‘Heh heh. Sometimes I wish my Libero was a good boy like you. Oh, he’s good but he don’t have the ambition for the job the way you do. You was born with the tools, you son of a gun. But.’ He shook his head from side to side.

  ‘But what, Pats?’

  ‘Don’t have the understanding of the social question.’

  ‘The what?’ Reb said.

  ‘The same like all the young boys of today,’ Patsy said. ‘My Libero and Vinnie and your brother too. You all nice boys but you don’t understand the social question.’

  ‘That my fault?’

  ‘Not saying whose fault. Saying that’s how it is.’

  ‘Then Patsy please. Do me one favor.’

  ‘Wait a minute and let Patsy talk. Maybe it’s cause we sovversivi don’t force our ideas on nobody. We say it’s up to the individual, it’s voluntary. That’s our honor.’

  ‘Then.’

  Patsy raised his hand. ‘But I’m telling you things change, Ribelle. Sometimes slow, sometimes fast, but they change. You understand?’

  ‘Yeah, I understand.’

  ‘Okay. They change for you and you ready for a hand don’t be afraid to come to Patsy. Don’t forget that, come to Patsy.’

  Come to Patsy. Reb letting the words sink in. ‘Pats, just do me one favor now, will you. Say all that to him for me.’

  ‘Front of your father?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘About you don’t understand the social.’

  ‘Yeah, that.’

  ‘Soon as he asks me, yes. But he don’t ask me I mind my own business.’

  ‘You mind your own business,’ Reb said, ‘Then you won’t do it.’

  ‘Unless he asks me. That’s our ideas. Where you going?’

  Reb stood there in the hall. There was the front entrance. Patsy snapping on the light. ‘Oh, thanks,’ Reb said. ‘Be seeing you, Pats.’

  ‘See you on the job, Rebbie.’

  ‘This last question, Pats. I mean all these years and I still don’t understand ha ha. What the hell is an anarchist anyway?’

  ‘Come here, Ribelle.’ His hand on Reb’s shoulder, Patsy lowered his chin, swayed, and stared at the knot of Reb’s tie. Reb got a warm wind of garlic and cognac. ‘By a anarchist I mean a man who goes his own way.’

  ‘Goes his own way. So simple.’ Reb was at the door, his hand in his jacket pocket.

  ‘What have you got there?’ Patsy said. Reb showed a handful of pears.

  ‘Your mother still puts them in the jars?’

  ‘No more. Too much work now. What kind are they, Pats?’

  ‘Seckel.’

  They stood in the doorway, each with a hand on the other’s shoulder. ‘Sure, I remember. Sickle pears. Here.’ Reb pushed the fruit into Patsy’s hand. Reb and Patsy rocked. They rocked to keep the pears from dropping. A couple of shiny leaves were still attached to the stems.

  ‘Every year your mother bring us the bushel full and Dora used to put them in the jars too,’ Patsy said. ‘No more now. Today it’s all can goods and the frozen stuff.’

  17

  Reb quit work after lunch one day at the end of that week, drove the sixty miles from Putnam, and opened up the cottage. He felt odd being there alone but at the same time he knew he had to get away from everyone to think. He wandered from room to room.
r />   Within an hour he was up along the shore gathering firewood. The only sound anywhere was that of the surf and a steady wind that blew off of the sea. Peace reigned, a kind of silence reigned, and Reb told himself there was something healthy about being there on his own. Before loading his armfuls of sticks and boards into the Buick, he got out the gray blanket to spread over the back seat upholstery. When he opened it he found there was still sand in it from that night. Rosalind’s face came to him in a blur, distant and unreal. Beach houses out of season, their windows boarded up like bandaged eyes, not a person in sight. Something eerie and end of the world about all this. He drove the few hundred yards back to the cottage thinking shakily that there were different kinds of peace and that this one was too grim.

  Before six he drove into town, bought some groceries, and ate at a diner. After that he crossed the street to the one bar open year round and drank two bottles of beer. Then once more the cottage. What should he do? He built a fire. What should he do next? By ten o’clock he gave up and went to bed.

  A fine chill rain came slanting against the windows like pellets of hail. He raised the shade and peered through the streaked glass. A gray gloom. The road was full of puddles. He dashed to the bathroom, then back to his warm bed.

  On their return to Putnam to claim Chub’s car, Chub and Vinnie had fumed at Reb’s suggestion that they go in and talk to Sal before driving off. ‘I only want my car, I don’t wanna shake hands with the guy,’ Chub said. So Reb was abandoned there in his Buick on the spot where the purloined car had stood. In the picture window above the garage Reb saw kids’ faces pressed against the pane. As he stepped onto the driveway, Sal came out of the house to meet him.

  ‘Guess I said a lot of crazy things last night.’

  ‘Everybody had a big squash this morning. Didn’t you?’

  ‘A little,’ Sal said.

  ‘There you are. Nobody’s thinking about last night. Everybody’s thinking oof, my squash.’

  ‘Was Chub tear ass?’

  ‘Nah. It was understandable, it was natural.’ Reb smiled to make Sal smile.

  Sal faintly smiled.

  ‘Sure,’ Reb said. ‘You came home, it was late. You’d had a few drinks and you got excited. So you slapped her around a little. That’s life. Am I right?’ He clapped Sal on the back. ‘Hey, come on. Then what ha ha. Got it up after all, didn’t you?’ Out of nowhere came Sal’s big fist to catch Reb on the neck just under the jaw. Down he sat, hard, helpless, his whole head bursting into pain, and when Sal went to help him up Reb clung in confusion to the tire trying to shield his face.

  Sal kept saying he didn’t mean it and wouldn’t Reb come inside and have a drink with him. Steadying himself, Reb groped his way into the car. He did not want to have to look at Sal. He backed the Buick out into the street and tore off. He and Sal had not spoken to each other since.

  Lying in bed at the cottage now, Reb felt the gloom press in from all sides. Gloom of the weather, of the place, of his own life. What had happened there with Sal? Reb had gotten a little too familiar, had said too much. When would he ever learn? Like the rain falling now beyond the window the record of his failures came sifting down on him.

  18

  Early one morning a few days later Reb reported to the Putnam draft board where he was given thirtyfive cents for the train fare to the Army Base in Boston.

  The nickels and dimes, he noted, were not handed out by Sam Mazzoni, the lone Italian on the board. Reb was convinced that Mazzoni’s idea of chairing the draft board was to show a Protestant town that the Italians who lived there, though they made up less than a quarter of its population, not only pulled their weight in the community with regard to the war effort but also, by actual numbers, ranked first in filling Putnam’s quotas for the staffing of the armed forces of the United States of America.

  Sure, because the prick never lets one of us slip through his fingers. No deferments, no rejects. Italians are just meat for his sheet of statistics. They say never trust your own kind. Reb wondered whether the rest of the board knew that Sam Mazzoni’s father made all his money bootlegging.

  At the station Vinnie and some of Reb’s family saw him off. His mother, his sister, and Teo’s wife Ann. Except for Reb and Vinnie there were tears all around and it seemed, or so Reb judged, that even Vinnie came close.

  ‘He’ll only be thirty miles away, Ma,’ Ann said, trying to comfort herself as well as her mother in law.

  ‘Right near Leominster,’ Livvy added. Angelina had cousins who lived in Leominster.

  ‘Yeah, Ma,’ Reb said softly. ‘It’s not like they’re shipping me out to.’ He curbed himself from saying Korea. ‘Not like they’re shipping me out tomorrow.’

  ‘I don’t want to embarrass you in front of those other boys,’ Angelina said, sniffing and dabbing at her nose with a wadded handkerchief.

  A half dozen other draftees were waiting for the train but they meant nothing to Reb. He wanted to tell his mother he would have felt worse if she had not been crying. Vinnie said nothing. Once his eyes met Reb’s and Reb read a stricken look in them, mirroring what he imagined were his own. Secretly Reb glanced at the ramped path that came down to the platform from the street. When he scanned the path a second time Livvy said, so no one else would hear, ‘Don’t take it personal. You know how he is.’

  The train rumbled in, hissing and steaming.

  The conductor signalled. Reb climbed aboard, his mother at his elbow, afraid he might slip, helping him up. Hankies waved, there were last instructions, goodbyes, and the station slid past. All resolution gone he let himself be swallowed by his fate.

  During the course of the day Reb received a serial number and took part in an induction ceremony. Right hand up, he swore to something. He was not sure what but he mumbled it the same as everyone else. No matter. It was all happening to another person anyway, to a stranger. Late that afternoon the swarms of recruits were herded onto busses. Reb studied the long number he had been told to memorize. US 513304435.

  It was seven o’clock when they rolled in sight of their destination. Rigid and remote, Reb sat by a window. In the velvety dusk Fort Devens was a blaze of light.

  Part Two

  Catching Up

  19

  Nine weeks later, thinner, hair shorn, haggard from a recent bout of flu and an all night bus ride up from Fort Dix, Reb was home on a two day pass.

  On arrival he went straight upstairs to his room for a nap but even before he had settled on the bed his father stuck his head in the door and told him not to go back. No hello, no other greeting, three words and Soderini withdrew.

  When after a couple of hours Reb came down he found their nextdoor neighbor Jennie in the kitchen telling Angelina she happened to be looking out the side window across the hedge that morning and the minute she saw Reb coming home she had tears in her eyes. Reb’s mother laughed to see him now and told Jennie all he wanted was macaroni. Fill the bathtub up with pasta, she quoted, and let me sit there the whole weekend with a fork in my hand.

  With Angelina standing behind him, one hand on his shoulder, the other brushing his hair, he was made to repeat for Jennie why he would not be sent to Korea. The old football injury to his knee. Because of it he could not be sent into combat.

  Later, when Vinnie burst in, Reb had to repeat the explanation. Chirping like a bird, Vinnie told them all with glee how he had failed the army physical the week before. He never asked why, he did not want to know why. He just said thank you and that night went out and got roaring drunk. Angelina beamed and told Vinnie she was glad for him and glad for his family too. ‘I know how a mother feels,’she said, stroking Reb’s hair again. The day progressed. Everyone wanted to know what the army was like.

  ‘Up early, busy all day. Same as a job only longer hours,’ Reb said.

  ‘I laid Dom ten to one you wouldn’t see a nail or a board,’ Teo said.

  ‘Infantry basic, you kidding a hammer,’ Reb said.

  ‘Even after the
C-profile they put you through infantry basic?’ Vinnie said.

  ‘Typical dumb army,’ Teo said.

  ‘You and Ma would love it,’ Reb said to Livvy. ‘They’re always scrubbing everything and making inspections.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with cleanliness,’ Livvy said.

  ‘The kids were disappointed not seeing Reb in uniform,’ Ralph said.

  ‘Bring them back tomorrow if they want to see it,’ Reb said. ‘It’s hanging on the closet door.’ That night out alone with Vinnie Reb was less cheerful, less glib. He said he had spent five days in the hospital and missed the last part of basic. Now he feared he’d be recycled and have to do the end of the training period again, which was why he was home on a two day pass instead of a two week leave. It was a gamble. Going back to Dix early he hoped to pull strings and get an immediate permanent assignment. A personnel clerk in the next hospital bed had promised to help.

  ‘Didn’t nothing good happen to you?’ Vinnie said.

  As if he had not heard Reb said, ‘Nobody wanted to come out of that hospital, Vin. The fear of getting shipped to Korea. Every morning before the doctor came around you’d see guys warming their thermometers against the radiator, trying to buy more time. Unless your temperature’s over a hundred and two the army says you’re fit for duty.’

  ‘What about women?’ Vinnie said.

  ‘Just the one time I got me a pass.’

  ‘Good stuff ?’

  ‘Pfff,’ Reb said. ‘Tramps. What can you expect around a place like Dix.’

  ‘But any good.’

  ‘If I don’t come down with a dose of nothing.’

  ‘That reminds me,’ Vinnie said. ‘You heard any more from that blonde down the beach?’

  ‘That was three months ago. Nothing could of happened.’

  ‘How do you know she didn’t get an abortion?’