Black Sheep, White Lamb

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

“And you?”

  “Sometimes I would gladly give him away,” Johanna said, a trace of a smile at the corners of her mouth.

  The old lady gave a brief spate of laughter. But she was not to be diverted from the question. “You would like to live with your mother, Johanna?”

  The girl lifted her head. She had a finely shaped head and a lovely neck. Just looking at her made the old woman ache with the memory of the mirrors of her youth.

  “Oh, yes,” Johanna said.

  If she had not known the family better, the old lady would have believed her. “You are a good girl, Johanna,” she said.

  The girl looked at her sharply—and then away, a look, the old woman thought, in violent protest to such praise. The mea culpa of her father, all over again, as though his wife’s infidelities were his fault.

  “Your father always blamed himself. And he was wrong to do that. Don’t you make the same mistake, Johanna.”

  “My father was a good man,” the girl said without raising her eyes.

  “In this world that is not enough. I am not sure it was enough in any world. The saint always stands alone. The rest of us live together—and we are the world, plain men and women. We keep each other warm. It is a terrible thing to have to beg—to be kept warm.” She was thinking of Johanna’s father again, saying that. “Virtue is a cold companion.”

  Johanna pressed her teeth against her lip. For all the girl’s attempt to forestall it, the old woman had provoked again memory of the moment in the hallway. Father Walsh had held her for that moment. He had! She could still feel the hard ring of his arms about her.

  Mrs. Tonelli said, “When will you and Martin marry?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The old woman had been trying—by way of warming herself—to fetch a confession of love from the girl: that was all. Johanna’s uncertainty gave off cold comfort. It put the old woman in a momentary pet. At her time of life she wanted the emotions simplified, and much as she thought herself interested in complicated people, age had robbed her pitilessly of the concentration, which in her younger days would have held the strands of complication till she could see the pattern in them.

  Johanna stared at her plate. The grease had congealed around the uneaten portion of her hamburger—the flesh within the bread—and all of it spoiled by her one solitary bite. She rose abruptly, taking her plate. “Excuse me. May I clear the table for Mrs. Grey?”

  The old woman made no sign, simply scowling at her own thoughts.

  Johanna returned. She had thrown off the sickening image. She felt sorry for the old woman, alone. “Don’t you think there’s such a thing as spiritual love, Mrs. Tonelli?”

  “In church,” she said, “but not in bed.” Then she laughed. “You will find that out after you are married.”

  11

  BOTH NEWPORT AND HILLSIDE High Schools came to the game undefeated in four starts, and both schools were keyed up for the contest. The Hillsiders always prided themselves on being the underdog, even when they weren’t, for they considered all the other schools in the county snobbish, class-conscious, and determined to keep Hillside in its place. And the fact was that the Hillside team did bring out the worst in its opponents; sportsmanship was never the feature of either win or loss. In every football game Hillside fought a little war and made, each boy of his opponent for its duration, a mortal enemy.

  Bassett knew this from the moment of kickoff, Hillside to Newport, just listening to the howling exhortations from the stands. Newport was the faster team, Hillside the heavier, and when they hit, they hurt. They hurt, and he observed with some curiosity, they reveled in being hurt: their pride was in being able to take it quite as much as in dishing it out. Johnny Bassett was fleet of foot and lithe, much to his father’s relief. Throughout the first quarter, he managed to dodge the bulldozers. But neither was he effective. He was outrunning his own passers, intent on outrunning the opposition. Bassett could imagine the invectives being snarled at him across the line. He dreaded the moment the boy’s pride would take over—or worse, the moment the Newport coach would take him out of the lineup. And he realized that the latter dread made him quite as savage as any of the murderous baiters in the stands or on the field. He swore at himself for yielding to the instinct that made men kill, and wished to God he had never moved his family to so healthy an environment.

  On the bench Georgie Rocco alternated his bellowed advice with prayers that he would himself soon get into the game. Christ, Christ, Christ! With every player on the Hillside team that went down, he suffered exquisitely, and prayed that the boy would not be able to get up. He wanted Hillside to win, of course, but not as much as he wanted to win for Hillside, he, Georgie Rocco. Fatso! He’d make them eat his fat, by Christ. He kept saying “Please,” to the coach, and under his breath calling him all the foul names he could think of, for he knew the bastard didn’t like him. Christ, let me in and I’ll bury them, all the Catholic-hating, dago-hating, mother-loving muck of them!

  Pererro, the Hillside quarterback, had to take time out—and for himself. He was bleeding at the mouth. Something—a stone, a toe—had got through the chin-guard. The coach wanted a big man in the secondary as well as on the line. He cast his eye over his bench. Newport, running scared in the open field, was going more and more to the line, throwing in a fresh line every few minutes: they had the depth in men that Hillside lacked, being numerically the smaller school.

  “I know the signals,” Georgie begged. “I know the plays. Please, sir!”

  “Shut up, Georgie,” the boy next to him said. “You never played quarterback.”

  “We don’t need a quarterback! We need a brick wall,” Georgie shouted.

  And for his having hit it exactly on the nose, the coach sent him in at a position he had never played before. Hillside was leading 6 to 0, and the coach was willing to settle for that score.

  Georgie galloped onto the field, trying to concentrate on his instructions. Only in his dreams had such an opportunity ever come his way before. With every number he barked, his heart sang, smash them, smash, smash, smash! Hillside held and Georgie then began to pray for the spectacular, the hero’s chance.

  Instead, he boneheaded, falling for a power decoy through center. Johnny Bassett got loose around end and ran the distance. Newport converted the extra point and led, 7 to 6.

  Georgie knew his chance for fame hung low. When he saw Pekarik running in from the sidelines he thought seriously of defying his own coach, of refusing to leave the field. Pekarik, of all people. Christ, he couldn’t go out for him, not after last night. But Pekarik went into his regular position in the line, left end. The instructions were to hit hard, every man, and try for a fumble. The coach left the man in to carry out that particular strategy better than any other: Georgie Rocco. And in the last two minutes of play he had his chance: he hit the ball carrier himself, a shoulder block that lifted the Newport youngster three feet in the air and numbed him. The ball squirted from his arms, back toward his own goal, and Georgie, striving to keep his footing, simply deflected the ball with his hand, but by grace of whatever fortune shone on him that afternoon, he deflected it—ostensibly by his design—into the hands of Pekarik. Pekarik stood for a split second, and Georgie screamed at him, “Run, you bastard! That way!”

  Pekarik ran, and Hillside won the game, 12 to 7.

  The whole valley reverberated with the noise of automobile horns as the cavalcade of cars left the field and wound its brassy way back to the village. Shopkeepers came to their doors and waved, sharing in the great victory; the barber stood, razor in hand, and beside him on the step his bibbed, half-shaven customer, stripping the lather from his chin with his forefinger. The butcher’s dog, the hungriest on the street, leaped to lap up the froth, no doubt confusing it with ice cream. Gerosa came out of his tailor shop and nodded happily as his daughter screamed, “Papa! Georgie won the game for us!” She was riding in the open car at the head of the parade, pointing to the hero. Gerosa shook his hands in t
he air, clasped in congratulations. It was the first time to his knowledge Georgie had won anything more than a can of peas at the firemen’s raffle. Looking out from his second-floor window, Martin Scully counted the years since he had played for Hillside, and allowed himself a moment’s self-pity—yesterday’s hero. Beneath his window Billy Skillet was propelling himself along the sidewalk, cloppity-clop with his wooden discs, trying to keep up with the parade, and streaming the air with his oaths, not at his fate but at the interference by people with legs every time he got himself rolling.

  “We did it! We did it again! Bravo, Rocco! Three cheers for Pekarik!”

  The full length of the River Road the youngsters drove, shouting the news of victory, the score, waving pennants, sweaters, and in the front car—Tommy Lodini’s convertible—Georgie’s girl friend, Rosie, took off her wrap-around cheerleader’s skirt and waved it like a bullfighter’s cape. Her chubby buttocks, stuffed into red tights, were bouncing like twin balloons. Georgie, sitting in the back seat as might a politician on Decoration Day, got a nudge from Pekarik to look at Rosie’s bottom. Pekarik was bug-eyed. Georgie lunged forward in his seat and slashed the girl’s behind with his fingertips. She screamed with pain, and the pain ran up his own arm, a shock of it starting from the tips of his fingers.

  “Put your skirt on, Rosie! You trying out for burlesque or something?”

  Rosie sullenly obeyed him and sat down on the floor of the car at his feet. He wound his fingers through her hair and pulled it now and then, grinning and shouting and all the while waving with his free hand to the cavalcade behind him, urging more, more noise. The chain of cars U-turned under the bridge and snaked back toward the village. On the return trip Georgie glanced by accident at the MacAndrews house. Miss MacAndrews was standing on the porch, her arms folded. “Mafia!” Georgie shouted, though his voice was lost in the blast of horns. A wreath of flowers hung on the blackened door.

  The cars edged, one after the other, into the Graham parking lot next to the Crazy Cat. Once inside, the whole gang, over Pete’s gesticulated protests, writhed in what they called the Victory Twist, the jukebox going full blast. Georgie stood a round of Cokes for everybody in the house.

  Bassett, his son beside him—it did not take the Newport team long to get out of the visitors’ shower room that day—watched the Hillside celebration from his car where he had parked it in the alley next to the police station. Johnny was slumped down in the seat—not that anyone in Hillside was likely to recognize him if they saw him. “What squares,” he said when the victory chain finally twisted into Pete’s.

  “But they won the game,” Bassett said, irritated at Johnny’s air of superiority. He realized when the words were out that at one stroke he had probably undone twelve years of liberal education. He did not even go into the stationhouse, but drove home intent on clearing his mind and spirit of Hillside for the rest of the weekend.

  12

  GEORGIE WENT UP THE hill to his supper at Mrs. Tonelli’s confident that his fame had preceded him. If it had, there weren’t any flags out or bands playing. He could smell meat roasting, but Mrs. Tonelli was sitting in her black dress—her whole wardrobe was a variety of blacks—reading the County News in the living room. Johanna had got herself another batch of wool and needles and had started knitting again. There was a clack-clack-clack in the room as Georgie listened outside the door, and you couldn’t tell whether it was Jo’s needles, the clock, or the old lady’s false teeth. Man, talk about lively!

  He tiptoed back to the mirror, touched up the crest of his hair, and then saw that he had spilled something down the front of his new orange sweater.

  He thrust his shoulders back and marched into the room. “Hey, everybody! Haven’t you heard the news?”

  Mrs. Tonelli looked at him over the tops of her rimless glasses. “I have been reading it,” she said. “What more has happened?”

  “We won. Didn’t you hear the cars?”

  “I thought it was a wedding. With so much noise it should have been a wedding.”

  He looked at her, on the verge of asking, Are you kidding? Instead he turned to his sister. “Hey, Jo?”

  She looked up. “I went to see Mr. Mancuso.”

  “All afternoon?”

  “Most of it.”

  “How come?”

  “I had to make out a list for him of everything that was in the house.”

  “Ha! That shouldn’t’ve taken long. One word: junk.”

  “They do not pay very much for junk, Georgie,” Mrs. Tonelli said, still looking over the tops of her glasses at him.

  “Yeah,” Georgie said. “That’s right. They don’t. Couldn’t you’ve waited for me, Jo? I had some stuff in the basement that was pretty valuable.”

  “We can go over the list. I kept a copy of it,” Johanna said.

  “You will have time enough,” the old lady said. “They will investigate.”

  She was needling him about something, Georgie thought. It was hard to dig old people, one minute giving you something and the next, sore because you took it. “Let ’em,” he said. “It shouldn’t take them long in that mess.”

  “You would be surprised at the things that don’t get destroyed—even in a mess like that.”

  Georgie felt himself turning sick. Whatever she was talking about … He had meant to dig out the electrical tape from the bushes and get rid of it. He should have done it during the fire … But she couldn’t mean that. It wouldn’t mean anything to anybody but him anyway. He tried to be casual, crossing the room and sitting down beside her. It was like walking on wet sponge. But he said earnestly, and looking at her eye-to-eye so that she had to take off her glasses, “I don’t understand what you mean, Mrs. Tonelli. Was there something in the house I didn’t know about?”

  “I’d be surprised at that,” she snapped, telling him nothing.

  But Johanna finally enlightened him. “It’s just that they try to salvage the fuse box and certain things that might help determine what caused the fire,” she explained.

  The old witch, Georgie thought, trying to scare hell out of him just to see if she could get a reaction. “Well, we’re just going to wait. That’s all.”

  The old lady said, “Now. What about this great victory? You were a hero?”

  She’d sure managed to take the polish off that, Georgie thought. “I played quarterback,” he said.

  “Only quarterback. You should play fullback.” She sat back and chortled at her own corn.

  Man! “Anyway, we won,” he said. “What’s in the paper?”

  “Not much. A man was murdered. An anti-gambling committee was organized. They will be raiding every place in the county soon. But nothing about the football game.” She tossed the paper toward the table. It fell on the floor.

  Wait till Monday, Georgie thought. He picked up the paper and read the account of MacAndrews’ murder. He glanced now and then at the old lady who was just sitting, rubbing her rheumatic knuckles. He wasn’t going to show himself eating up newspaper print in front of her. He could feel a tingle of excitement, nonetheless, reading of the discovery of the body … He made himself stop there and look at the old woman. She looked as though she was trying to crack one of her knuckles. If she did, he thought, his own nerves would snap. He finally got to the last line of the story and he liked that: Police Chief Reams and County Detective Bassett admitted that the motive of revenge could not be ruled out.

  “Hey,” he said, “that Bassett is all right. Man, can his kid rum! He got loose around our end today and I thought we were washed up.”

  The old lady made a clucking sound of mock sympathy.

  Georgie started reading the gambling story. A lot of it was directed toward Hillside. You didn’t have to read between the lines to get it either. The county committee was going to give the local authorities time to clean up. If, within a reasonable time …

  “Johanna, tell me,” the old lady said, “why do you knit?”

  “I don’t know,” Jo sai
d. “I like to—and I like to see the things I make afterwards.”

  “Don’t you see them before you make them? I mean, in your mind’s eye?”

  “Oh, yes. But they never come out quite that beautifully.”

  “Most things don’t,” the old lady said and heaved a great sigh. She was bored, Georgie suddenly realized. That’s all that was wrong. The poor old cluck was bored silly. He remembered now how glad she had been to have him and Jo come to her house, just for a piece of excitement. And there Jo sat. Knitting. She might as well be saying her rosary. And maybe she was … inside. Jo did a lot of things inside. And of course the old girl didn’t understand football. He could remember hearing how she used to dance. In the old days. There used to be a fiesta in Hillside, the streets all hung with lanterns. He couldn’t remember it, but he remembered his mother telling about when she was a girl. Everybody dancing on the street, a band. And wine. They made good wine once in Hillside. Now the grapes were puny and the vines half-withered. Like Grandma Tonelli. He wondered why all her kids had moved away.

  “How come they don’t have a fiesta any more?” he said.

  He was right. The old lady’s head shot up. “Ha! Lazy,” she said. “Television. No conversation. The women sit and cry … over Doctor Casey … and Man’s Other Woman … And the men …” She made a disparaging gesture with her hand, and Georgie noticed the jewels glittering on her fingers. “It is all in the paper there, dice and wheels, cards and the numbers racket … and things they don’t put in the paper.”

  Georgie moistened his lips. An idea sprang almost full bloom into his mind. He knew what she meant about the things they didn’t put in the paper: the Sunday morning cockfights behind the fence at the Graham plant. “Yeah,” he said inadvertently.

  “I wish you wouldn’t ‘yah’ like a goat,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Georgie said. “I’ll try and remember.”

  Mrs. Tonelli reached across to the table at her side, picked up the bell there, and shook it vigorously.