“Hey Chester,” he says. “Ya ever hear how Grubby got his name?”
Goose don’t gimme no chance to answer before he says even louder to the whole damn table that when Grubby was little, his name used to be Frank. But he was such a pig at every mealtime that his own father started on calling him Grubby, cause he was out to get all the grub for himself and not leave none for nobody else.
Goose says, “Hell, Grubby likes food so much, he even keeps a little something extra in his straggly beard. Just in case he gets hungry after lunch.”
Everybody laughs pretty good at this ’cept Grubby, who’s looking daggers at me and Goose both. Even Fatty, who ain’t partial to food jokes, rubs his big belly and gives a snort and we start back into our lunch. But by then, them Laskys is done with their own eating and they have me and Mr. Paul get back to the fields and all the other fellas gotta get a move on back over to the orchard.
Later in the afternoon I get took off of potato collecting and put into the barn with Lottie and Pauline and a bunch of old folks to shuck cow corn. They also stick Grubby in there to do the wheelbarrowing, so maybe he made friends as good in the orchard as he done at the lunch table.
Them Laskys got a bunch of us setting round in the circle on top of old crates. We strip the cow corn down to the ear while Grubby hauls what’s shucked over to the other end of the barn to the hen house, so they can put it up as feed for the chickens in the deep winter.
Pulling them brown husks off that corn ain’t much fun, I’ll tell you, but it beats the hell outta trying to catch fifty-pound potato sacks getting tossed off the back of a wagon. Setting there between Lottie and Pauline, a big stack of corn husks in front of me, I see that every time Grubby wheels a load of corn in from the other side of the barn, he gives me the evil eye. I don’t know what he thinks he’s gonna pull in front of all these people, but I’m keeping my eye on him.
After working them corn ears for most of the afternoon, we get a little break at the table outside. They give us maybe fifteen minutes to have some coffee and cornbread and catch our breath. Then they herd us back into the barn to get settled down again to stripping them husks.
None of them old shuckers talk too much while they’re working, but some of the studda babas sing songs in Slovak or Hungarian. Since they’re all about the Blessed Virgin and stuff like that, I don’t really listen much.
Mostly, I’m thinking ’bout what Mr. Paul said about causing trouble not saying much for keeping me on. Like with Grubby at lunch, I wanna make sure to get treated fair, but I don’t want to go get myself fired off of here. Maybe Grubby’s thinking the same thing cause he didn’t even come out with us for the break. Ever since we come back into the barn he quit paying me any mind. He just shovels up them stripped corn ears and dumps them in the bin next to the chicken coop like anybody else. Then he goes back to the other side of the barn for another load.
I keep on at shucking them small ears of hard corn and it’s somewhere in the middle of my third or fourth bushel after the break that I pull the husks off a red ear. All of them old timers are looking at me and they’re laughing to beat the band. They’re all saying, “Now, we’ll see who he likes!”
I don’t understand what’s going on till Lottie explains it to me. She tells me that when any man who ain’t got no wife shucks off a red ear of corn, he can kiss any woman that ain’t got no husband.
“It ain’t that he can,” one of them Slovak women says to her. “It’s that he has to.”
“Has to?” I ask her.
“Has to!”
All of them shuckers agree. Even the one Lasky boy they got keeping an eye on us says so. I gotta pick one of the girls to kiss. And that girl’s gotta let me. So, I’m looking round that barn and my choices are making me a little nervous. If I ask to kiss my own sister, it’s gonna look awful strange, and none of them old Slovak women are looking so good. So, this pretty much leaves me with trying to kiss Pauline, who’s fine as a girl can get, but she looks like she’d rather load six tons of pea coal for free than have my lips pushed up next to hers.
Them old folks is yelling for me to pick somebody. They’re teasing me pretty good, asking me what I’m waiting for. Pauline turns towards me and her smooth skin is white as cow’s milk and her lips are awful full and it looks to me like there’s maybe just the littlest bit of softness sneaking into her blue eyes. She bends over so her mouth is pretty close to my ear. I twist towards her so I can hear what she’s gonna whisper to me.
She says, “Just get it over with trapper boy.”
I gives Pauline a quick peck on the cheek and hope that will put the whole thing to rest, but all the people in the barn are hooting and jeering, saying, “Whatta hell!” and “What kinda kiss izzat?” and such. Folks are teasing Pauline even more than me, calling her Prude-line and stuff like that.
This must make Pauline awful mad, cause she reaches out and grabs hold of the back of my head by the hair and pulls my face right into hers, pressing her lips hard to mine. I don’t even get no chance to think about it, the whole thing happens so fast. All I know is that I want it to happen again.
When Pauline pulls her face back away, she looks plain flat beautiful with that long blonde hair reaching down to her shoulders and eyes blue and bright as the summer sky after coming outta 40 mine on a double shift. The people around us are cheering and laughing. Some are clapping and one of them old Slovak men says, “Now there’s a girl with spirit.”
But this don’t last long neither, because old Farmer Lasky comes running into the barn. He got that damn Grubby Koshinsky with him and they’re both hollering blue murder ’bout something. That’s when I notice Grubby is pointing his finger straight at me and there’s only one word coming outta his mouth, “Thief!”
Fourteen
So, I guess Grubby had a good reason to be smiling instead of giving me the evil eye after we finished up the afternoon break. The sunafabitch swiped a half-dozen eggs outta Lasky’s hen house and snuck every one of them into the waist pockets of my Peacoat when I left it setting in the barn to have that coffee. Then he slid off and told Farmer Lasky that he seen me creeping into the hen house when folks was sitting at the table eating their corn bread.
Damn Lasky chased me and Lottie outta that barn so quick, half the people there probably thought it was for kissing Pauline. We had to hoof it the whole way back to Tent City without even getting no potatoes or nothing for stacking potatoes and stripping corn ears the whole blessed day.
My ma sure ain’t jumping for joy when she sees me and Lottie come strolling up through the scrub woods before dark empty handed. I spin her out the whole story while she twists herself up on the flat of a moss carpeted rock in front of our tent. Darning Esther’s Sunday dress with flour sack pieces she bleached out down Paint Creek, she’s sewing faster and faster listening to what happened. By the end, she’s cursing Grubby and cursing damn Lasky too.
But my ma is serious as a snapping brace when she says she don’t know what we’re gonna do come next week, cause all the money we got in the world is the three dollars she got when she sold our furniture to the Slovaks. Lottie smiles with her lips squished together and says we’ll think of something. Then she snatches up one of them acorn buckets and heads off into the woods.
I take account of what we got left foodwise. My ma’s right—maybe five, six days at most. I plop down onto a seat over by the cook fire trying to stay warm and waiting for Mr. Paul to come back from Lasky’s and see what he’s got to say ’bout this whole mess.
Watching the dark smoke curdling out of the fire pit, I huddle myself there till it’s full dark. Missing Buzzy so much it’s hard to look at anything without it reminding me of him, I mostly keep my eyes squinted into the pit. I stare at them thick logs catching fire in the heat coming off the coal and think about how some things in this world ain’t got no choice, they just gotta turn into whatever’s closest to them. I can see now how come Buzzy was so worked up about the curfew coming down. That l
iquor money wasn’t just keeping us fed, it was the only thing keeping us in the house. How was he gonna head up a family that’s tented out in the scrub woods like a pack of gypsies?
When Mr. Paul does come, he don’t look none too happy neither. He says Lasky damn near fired him and Pauline both off the farm just for recommending me.
It surprises me some, but Pauline is taking my side. She’s wagging her finger at her pa, arguing that I couldn’t have stole them eggs cause I was setting next to her for the whole break. She’s flat out sure, cause it was damn near making her stomach turn to watch the way I was pushing my corn bread down to bring up the dregs of my coffee cup.
“I really don’t know what to tell ya, Chester,” Mr. Paul says to me.
He says that he believes me and all ’bout not stealing them eggs, but it don’t matter much one way or the other. Even if there was other farms looking for hands, between me being labeled a thief and my brother being shot down as a murderer, I got as good a chance of being named Burgess of Windber as I do getting hired on by any of them farmers.
While we’re talking, my ma comes round dishing up slices of that black acorn bread and plattering out some of the corn and beans that Mr. Paul brung from Lasky’s. It’s starting to get colder and there’s a bit of rain drizzle coming down, so most of the Tent City families is either setting in their tents or huddled up under the big tarp next to the cook fire.
There’s maybe twenty of us clustered there and we’re lucky cause a Hungarian fella tossed a bucket of pea coal into the wood fire before he called it quits for the night, so there’s a pretty good blaze reaching up outta the fire pit. I’m setting next to Lottie and watching Mr. Paul talking to Pauline at the other side of the fire. That Pauline really looks like something in that fire light. I’m thinking about her lips and the way she stuck up for me about getting fired off of Lasky’s. Even the way her hair catches that light flickering is like to get me six different kinds of distracted.
“Ya know she likes ya, Chet,” Lottie says to me.
“Who?”
“Don’t ya ask me who!” Lottie laughs.
Then Lottie pops up away from the fire saying she’s going to help ma with Esther’s dress. I keep setting there trying to figure out what I’m gonna do. Another week of living in this tent camp with nothing coming into the kitty, we’ll be broker than a Chinaman’s clock.
Setting there with my ass flat on that cold rock, watching the fire die down I’m thinking ’bout what Buzzy would do to get us ahead if he was here. But I can’t go hitting nobody over the head with a rail spike and taking their wallet. And it ain’t just a matter of morals. Buzzy was a hell of a lot bigger than me.
Then I realize that ain’t what Buzzy would a done at all. At least it ain’t what he did do. I’m picturing Buzzy jawing with Facianni down the 40 Hotel about the curfew and that twitch-lipped Coulson clueing me in on how we kept our house for so long during the strike. When the chips was down, Buzzy saw clear how to keep us outta the tent camps—hauling liquor for the Black Hand.
I stare again across the fire at Pauline and her pa. She’s looking real fine to me, but I know that if my family’s gonna get outta this camp with our asses intact, she ain’t the one that I gotta go have a word with.
Fifteen
Next morning, my ma gives me a dime outta what money we got left, and I hoof it up over the bony piles, edge the Slovak cemetery and head back down into the West End of Windber to Dago Town, where I ain’t been anywhere near since that night with Buzzy. I almost feel like I’m on the lookout for ghosts when I pass by them wops’ markets and bakeries. The sun’s in the middle of a blue sky and it’s warm as September, but I keep both my hands buried down deep in my britches pockets, fingering that silver and thinking ’bout just how I’m gonna try to talk Facianni into giving me a job.
When I pass Leone’s Market on Twelve Street and come up on Facianni’s barbershop, my legs want to just keep hiking, maybe take the dime and head on up to Kinjelko’s and buy some stew beef, then hoof it quick and quiet back to 40 to cook up some dinner, but I figure with the spot we’re in, I ain’t got no choice. I slow to a shuffle and try to catch a gander inside of the shop before I pull open Facianni’s door.
First off, I spot the fella what come chasing after us to warn Buzzy about the Pinkertons the night they got him. Both him and the other Eye-tie what was with him when Facianni come down to see Buzzy at the 40 Hotel are setting in two red leather chairs at the window. Facianni’s got some baldheaded, flabby wop plopped down in his barber chair, setting for a shave, but when I yank open the door to his place, he looks up from that dago’s neck long enough to give me a good once over.
I stroll past his big dagos, fat and thin, without looking at them and set myself down in the next leather chair, closest to the razor strap. Easing my dupa down into that highback chair, I watch Facianni draw that straight razor cross the face of that heavy set dago. He’s real quick with the shimmering blade and don’t miss a beat stripping the lather off of them big old jowls.
When the bald dago gets up, he digs a few nickels outta his britches and trickles them into Facianni’s hand. Facianni keeps his mitt right where it is. He stares at that dago like he oughtta know better, till the fella reaches his hand deep into his hip pocket and busts out a greenback.
“Next!” Facianni says.
He stands there clutching the handle of that straight razor while the lumpy wop slips his arms into his coatsleeves and makes for the door. I watch little white dollops of shaving foam slide off the business edge of Facianni’s silver and plop down onto the linoleum. The fatter of the two chair setting wops says something about if a fella’s gonna play them numbers he better be ready to pony it when they don’t come up.
Facianni got a round face and small dark hands and his thin, black hair is all slicked back onto the flat of his head with some kind of barber oil. He ain’t wearing no necktie, but he’s got a white collar fixed to his shirt. When I get up standing right next to him, I can see he ain’t but an inch or two taller than me.
After I lower myself down into the barber chair, he gives it a few pumps with his foot, raising me up and says to me that I’m looking too young to shave, so I must have come in wanting a haircut.
“Just a little off the sides,” I tell him. I’m hoping this might cost less than a full hair cutting.
Facianni says he ain’t never seen me in his shop before.
“That’s true,” I tell him. “Most pollocks don’t come down this way for a haircut.”
“Most pollocks ain’t got no money for a haircut,” one of them big fellas laughs.
I don’t pay no mind, but I tell Facianni that he seen me before.
“You got a look at me in the 40 Hotel,” I says, “when ya come down to talk to my brother about the big curfew coming down.”
Facianni pulls a big white bib off a hook on the wall and snugs it round my neck. He snatches up a big ol pair of silver barber shears off the counter, sets my head straight with his fingers and starts clipping away at the blond hair round my ears.
“Buzzy was yer brother?” he asks me.
“That’s right,” I says, “I’m Chester Pistakowski.”
“Wuzza damn shame what happened ta him,” he says. “Wuzza good boy, Buzzy. Good man.”
Facianni keeps on with them shears, trimming up the back of my hair, snipping a little off the top. I watch his face in the big square mirror in front of the barber chair. His thumb twists my ear sideways and the sharp tip of them scissors scrapes at against the skin behind. Cutting slow, he bends down so close I can smell the old man breath stinking outta his mouth. I hear them metal scissor blades scraping quick together while he clips one side of my head, then the other.
My mouth’s getting dry and I can feel my heart speeding up and my back dampening the leather back of his barber chair. I think to myself this is what ya come for Chester. Don’t make no hash of it now.
“My brother used to do a little work for ya,�
�� I says to Facianni.
Facianni don’t say nothing to this, just turns my head to the side and keeps them scissors snapping away at pretty good clip as his moves along to the front of my head.
“Course he never told me nothin ’bout what he done,” I tell him.
“Buzzy could keep his mouth shut.” Facianni nods to me. “Maybe that runs in the family?”
“I ain’t sayin.”
Facianni smiles and steps away from the barber chair over towards the counter. He grabs a round silver mirror. He moves the mirror around behind my head showing off to me different angles of where my hair meets the back of my neck.
“Whatcha think, Chester Pistakowski?”
“I think maybe you might have some kinda job for me,” I says. “I mean with the big curfew done with and all.”
One of them big dagos setting by the door starts up laughing, saying that I got pretty big balls coming in here and talking like this.
“Angelo Facianni don’t offer no jobs to just any pollock what comes stumbling in off the street.,” he laughs.
But Facianni, he ain’t laughing one bit. He’s just looking at my reflection in the mirror—like he’s doing some kind of math in his head and I’m one of the numbers.
“Ya drive a horse wagon alright, Chester?” he asks me.
I tell him that I’m a real good driver. Facianni nods and takes them scissors over to the razor strap. He runs them up and down that strap fast and slick, smooth. Bringing them up to his eye to look them over, he tells me he just might have some kinda job for me. I better come back tonight after dark and give a holler round the backdoor of his shop.
It’s like I’m right on top of the world marching outta that barbershop into the sunshine, but I try not to let any of them chair-sitting dagos see nothing of what’s in my head at all. It ain’t till I round the corner outta Dago Town and get back to Swede Street that I even let a smile come cross my face.
40 Patchtown Page 10
