Читать книгу Twentieth Century Limited Book One - Age of Heroes - Jan David Blais - Страница 13

I HAD BZ ON WHILE I WAS SHAVING,” I say. Jonathan and I are just settling into the study. Another rainy morning, too wet for the deck. “Some General’s telling Congress to bug off, let the Army handle the investigation.”

“No surprise there. Incidentally,” he laughs, “I notice you’ve stopped complaining about seeing the Times on a daily basis.”

That is true, I even suspended my subscription for the duration. “It fits the urgency you’ve introduced around here.”

“My apologies for disturbing your routine.”

“Don’t worry about it. Speaking of urgency, how about Paul’s deadline training?”

“Outstanding, and I say that from experience.”

“I take it they extended yours. You and your editor are still on speaking terms?”

“Oh, sure. It’s one particular prick tried to pull a fast one. My guy backed me up.”

“Incidentally, how are you doing? I’m ready to read.”

“Another week, I’ll have something presentable.”

I reach for the next stack of material. “A couple more high school sections coming up. I don’t know about you but I like seeing the young man being tested, making his way.”

“Testing,” Jonathan grunts. “I’m well acquainted with that.”

* * * * * * *

“EH, CUMPAR’!”

Sweat stinging my eyes, I wrestled a case of canned peaches onto the conveyor belt. “Move it!” the figure at the top of the stairs yelled, “I don’ got all day!” I jabbed the button and the cartons began their ascent to the shopping level, to the fine ladies and gentlemen wheeling their carts in air-conditioned comfort, ignorant of the poor souls toiling in the heat and dust below. “On its way to you, Tone.”

I wiped my eyes on my sleeve, muscling up the No. 6 Canned Peas, Heinz Ketchup, Mott’s Applesauce, Cott ginger ale, pale dry and golden. I’d like to mix it all together, I muttered, slamming the last of my crazy stew onto the belt. Beefaroni.

Saturday afternoon was Pit time for DiLorenzo’s junior workers. A hundred-twenty down there. Smart of them, no thermometer on the wall. I ought to bring my own. Only thing kept me going was the Leica, the thought of my finger on the focusing ring, my eye to the eyepiece, but until my deposit grew to seventy-five dollars, in the display case it stayed. At a buck-thirty an hour that meant a lot of Pit time. Years later the Inferno’s sulfurous realms brought canned pears to mind, and Sisyphus’ hill, it looked a lot like that conveyor belt.

My hours were Friday four to nine and all day Saturday, also Thursday nights. When some kid’s family went on vacation I got extra time. The more the better. Sundays the market was closed, Friday nights were the most sociable. As a bagger I enjoyed seeing what people bought, how much they spent. I became an actor, a master of the significant pause. After putting the customer’s bags in the trunk of her car (men never used baggers) I’d stand there and smile. Usually it was a dime, a quarter was exceptional. Younger women tended to be more generous. The old ones, crotchety and some of them so huge you wondered how they’d ever squeeze behind the wheel, they had this strange idea a thank-you was enough. Maybe in the old days, but this was 1956 and things were darned expensive.

One pretty, dark-haired woman with two little kids drove a red Fairlane convertible. She was always good for a quarter. Sliding behind the wheel her skirt would creep up her leg and when I shut the door and she’d give me this long stare, finally squeezing my hand and pressing a coin into it. I guess I was more muscular from all that lifting, but my underdeveloped imagination didn’t put this particular two and two together, not at first. Also it threw me off, her being married and a mother at that.

My usual restocking partner was Frank Pezzulo. Tommy and Phil (Tomasso and Filippo) DiLorenzo owned the store their father Guiseppe started. Guiseppe was about a hundred and ten and still came around to complain that the boys were doing everything wrong. We griped about the rotten conditions, the pay, the torture chamber those slave drivers stuck us in. A store legend had a family of tarantulas nesting in the canned Sicilian tomato crates. Supposedly one time a crate was dropped and splintered, and a bunch of them scattered in all directions, but I never saw one and neither did anybody else I knew.

This particular Saturday Tony Andreozzi, Tone, grabbed me as I punched in. Frank had called in sick so he had to work The Pit with me unless they brought in someone else which they wouldn’t, being so cheap. Tone had worked his way up at DiLorenzo’s and he protested Pit duty, but today he found himself at the top of the stairs, barking at me through his cigarette. Fat chance he’d come down and give me a hand. In fact more than once he bawled me out, saying don’t work so hard, you’ll make everybody else look bad. The younger kids looked up to Tone. At nineteen he was a man with a life. Tall and swarthy, he often stood at the mirror next to the time clock, combing his pomaded hair and sharpening his D.A. He wore tight T-shirts that bulged at the left bicep where his Luckies were rolled up even if the shirt had a pocket. Suede shoes matching his pegged pants completed the look, rust or dark blue, unsuitable for heavy lifting, like their wearer.

Tone was Captain of the DILORENZO MARKET – FINE MEAT AND PRODUCE panel truck, green with gold block letters, both sides. He made deliveries for elderly shoppers and women like my convertible lady. Then there were the girls who hung around, never buying anything. You’d see one or another in the truck, perfecting her face in the rear view mirror as Tone finished loading. First time I rode with him on a delivery I noticed the pillow and blanket in back. With a job many would kill for plus tips and side benefits, Tone was proof even a Mt. Pleasant dropout could make it big.

The owners’ youngest sister Maria was in charge of the registers. Maria was plump and cheerful, somewhere between thirty and forty, hard to tell. Her marital prospects were a topic of loud and frequent debate. “You see that guy checking you out?” This from Tone, the expert. Maria had just rung up a middle-aged couple who were wheeling their cart out the front door. “If I ever saw a guy with the hots for you that’s him, take it from me.” Maria turned crimson and started in on the next customer. She had a really sweet disposition. The only time you ever saw her sad or mad was when they picked on her like this.

This was my first summer lost to duty, but griping aside, it was not a burden. Some of my friends gave me a hard time, Angelo especially, who made a big deal of my being an honorary wop. I was the only person in the store whose name didn’t end in a vowel. People were always singing and whistling Italian songs, Bacia Me Bambino, Way Marie and so on. DiLorenzo’s was a hotbed of rabid Yankee fans, insufferable at all times but impossible in the fall when they won the World Series. Thank God, Don Larson who pitched the perfect game that year was a Swede or something like that.

That summer I saw a lot of Benny. First time he came to my house my mother made a point of quizzing him about Classical, his classes, how much homework, all the time glaring at me. She told one and all my betrayal had ruined not just my life but hers as well. Like me, Benny had done a year of Latin, but his class read the entire Aeneid while we plodded through excerpts from Cicero and vocabulary drills. Next year he would begin Greek, and when you add in Hebrew I wondered how he kept it all straight. Benny wanted to be a historian because of what Hitler did to his relatives, which if people didn’t pay attention, he said, could happen again. While I, scripted by my elders, would save our country through science. Better things for better living through chemistry, or physics, or math, whatever. It remained to be seen where I would alight, into which jar the specimen labeled Paul Bernard would tumble before somebody screwed the lid on and that would be that.

Everybody said technology was how our country solved big problems like the war. It made me uneasy that Benny truly loved History, in fact he was passionate about it. What did I love? Sports, true, but that didn’t count any more. Photography, but that was just a hobby and, as my father reminded me at every opportunity a damned expensive one at that. For my mother, taking pictures was neither an art nor a science, and it certainly wasn’t a sufficient outlet for the ability God had given me, with a large assist from Fiona Kelley. But first and foremost, taking pictures was not A Profession. And so it was, I found myself with no clear object for my hopes and dreams.

IT WAS A DIFFERENT PAUL BERNARD who showed up that fall, twenty pounds heavier and five-eight, meaning that six feet, my goal, was in sight. I was shaving every day, though only my chin needed it and not that desperately. I pondered my appearance, I admit, but to deliberately create a look like Tone, to mess with your natural self seemed somehow affected and wrong. Whatever I was I would continue to be, without artifice. I had recently heard the expression – “you make your own face.” Puzzling. For my round face, the large dark eyes, what might that mean? But the real difference was my attitude. I knew I could make my way at La Salle as well as anybody and better than most, and it didn’t hurt I finally acquired my Leica and was able to put it to work. Thank you, Pit.

French was my most personal course, not that we spoke it much at home. My mother’s French dated from high school, embellished by songs and plays. Naturally it was graceful and Parisian. Joual, the patois of my father’s québécois, she dismissed as coarse, rude and unworthy of her home. Of course, my father rubbed it in whenever he could.

Most of my classmates were nervous when they had to display their knowledge. I knew these Irish and Italian kids could pronounce nous avons or les animaux because they did when I practiced them, which they often asked me to. They did fine until it counted, then they’d mess up, it looked like on purpose. Some of them were against learning, especially anything different, as if the process was somehow unmanly. I discovered which of my classmates weren’t afraid to be known as “brains.” The other camp knew, too. Lines were being drawn.

Until now I haven’t said much about religion at La Salle. It was pervasive but in a quite different way. During my first year I had quit the altar boy corps, uncomfortable around the younger kids and tired of the priests treating me like I was ten years old. So I was no longer immersed in church life, though it goes without saying I still attended Mass Sundays. Religion at La Salle was more about accumulating knowledge and, it was hoped, understanding the various aspects of our Faith, plus of course, character formation.

We learned why the Church was “One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic” and about the Pope’s infallibility. I was impressed to learn what a hell-raiser young St. Augustine was, and about the “Dumb Ox” Aquinas who had a knack with tough problems such as does God exist and how could the world be created out of nothing. We studied our Faith’s opponents – Atheists, Pantheists, Materialists and Rationalists, also the Jewish religion and Mohammedanism. We were trained in the unfortunately-named art of “Apologetics,” arguments to use against those people if we ever got the chance. Amazing, how the commandments, the sacraments and liturgy all fit together. The Brothers took this perfect whole to a level that made your head spin, adding explanations far beyond our old, childish ideas. Everything explainable, everything explained. Our most dangerous enemy, of course, was Communism. We rejoiced as the Hungarians rose up against the tyrant, but our hopes were dashed as tanks rolled into Budapest. We had seen the face of evil and it was not pretty.

We dwelt on Christian morality, rules for living your life. For every situation there was an answer and a rule that applied, and thanks to the sacraments, help when you needed it. The trick was finding the rule that applied, then applying it, again and again. Thus morality becomes second nature, you were forming a “right conscience” and becoming a better person. One, two, three – A, B, C. Trouble is, it wasn’t all that simple. Compared with faith and reason, morality was a whole different ballgame.

My reading tastes expanded greatly, thanks to Brother Robert whom I had really grown to like. He cared about books and appreciated the few of us who did, giving us an outside reading list after pledging us to secrecy. “Keep this to yourselves, gentlemen. I believe your immortal souls are up to the challenge but around here I am in the minority.” Some were already part of our underground library – Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies – Others were on the Index of Forbidden Books, by nobody you’d ever heard of. Brother Robert had guts. Not that Holden Caulfield was such a great person, but it was thrilling to see in black and white things I thought about a lot and my friends must have also.

Though pure at the core, certain tentative and furtive areas existed around the edges of the school. Big Sal’s Academy Variety was a hole in the wall a few blocks from the school that sold candy, soda, cigarettes, newspapers, magazines, and not just any magazines but on the wall below sports and fishing, movie magazines. Photoplay, Modern Screen and so on. Ava Gardner and Janet Leigh in low-cut gowns or bathing suits, leaning forward and showing a lot of what I learned was called cleavage. The black and white pictures inside were always better than the covers. It bothered me that Big Sal put these magazines near the floor, making a film fan such as myself struggle just to flip through them. Though maybe he wanted to see who cared enough about such things to make himself look ridiculous. YOU READ IT YOU BUY IT, the sign said, but nobody paid any attention. There were also certain comics like Wonder Woman, featuring female heroes or women in distress and not much else. Big Sal’s was an occasion of sin, and no less so if you told yourself you were going in for a Coke or a candy bar, because God knew why you went in and He knew why you stayed.

One stormy Sunday our pickup game fell apart, so Omer and I decided to hit a movie. I wanted to see, Fire Down Below, or more precisely Rita Hayworth in Fire Down Below, which I had researched at Big Sal’s. I’d never gone as far as to see on the big screen what was so intriguing in small doses of black and white, but when I told Omer there was this great action picture at the Majestic, for want of a better idea, he agreed.

It was everything I’d hoped and more. From time to time I glanced at Omer who sat transfixed but with this frown on his face. As we walked to the bus, he was quiet. Finally he said, “I don’t think we should have seen that.” I knew what he meant because I had a hard-on the whole two hours. At confession the next Saturday, to my own sin I had to add one that made me feel guilty and ashamed. I had led a friend into an occasion of sin. For all I knew, I had set him on the slippery slope to damnation. This was the first time my weakness hurt someone else, and I felt as sorry as I had about anything, ever. I vowed never again to invite anybody else along on my cloudy and uncertain course.

MY JUNIOR YEAR BEGAN ROUTINELY ENOUGH, but a thousand miles away the Governor of Arkansas tried to block Negro students from Little Rock high school and it took President Eisenhower sending federal troops to get them in. The pictures in the Journal and on TV floored me. People full of hate, screaming at little kids, spitting on them, throwing rocks. Kids my age running a gauntlet up the steps and into the school. I went looking for Terry Grimes.

“This surprises you?” he said. “Just shows you don’t know what’s going on.”

“I admit, I had to check where Arkansas is.”

“No, no, I’m talking right here. Scratch the surface in Providence R - I and you get Arkansas. Maybe even worse, ’cause white people here hide it better. Keep you off balance, you never know where you stand.”

“C’mon,” I replied, “nothing like that would ever happen here.”

“Like I told you, you don’t have a clue,” he said with a thin smile.

I didn’t accept that, but it was on my mind when I sat down to write that fateful column. Midway through freshman year I had joined the Maroon and White, wrote a bunch of news stories and had some photos published. This year I asked Norm McDermott, now Editor-In-Chief, and got the go-ahead to write an occasional column. In this one I asked what would it be like if instead of being at La Salle, we were students at that Arkansas high school? How would we have acted? As Catholics, clearly we couldn’t be in the racist camp, but what if we just stood around and did nothing? I wound it up this way (I’ve kept a copy all these years).

If we had been there, how would we have acted? Hopefully as La Salle men we would have stood tall and supported these brave kids. But on our calm campus far from that troubled scene, do you or I really know what we would have done? Easy to say we’d do the right thing, but how can we be sure?

Well in fact, there is a clue, a test we take right here every day. How do we treat those among us whose skin is a different color? Or our classmates who don’t drive the finest car, or any car at all? Or who don’t live in that great a neighborhood? Do we go out of our way to be friends with them? Or are we afraid of what “the others” might say? Do we go our own way, stick to our own crowd and say nothing? Give it some thought. I know I am.

Although students put the Maroon and White together, the Brothers had the final say on what went into it. A few days after Norm submitted my column to our faculty advisor, I got a note summoning me to a meeting in the Vice-Principal’s office. I had a hunch why. Brother Adalbert was sitting behind his desk. Brother William, our advisor was there, and Norm. The office was imposing, dimly lit with blinds drawn against the bright afternoon sun. Brother Adelbert was tall and broad, built like a wrestler, completely bald, his eyebrows permanently knitted in a scowl. Not for nothing was he the Dean of Discipline. I’d never had any business with him, though from Jim’s ordeal I knew his reputation. He told me to be seated, then handed me a piece of paper. Sure enough, it was my article, double-spaced, neatly typed with a couple of eraser smudges, just as I had handed it in.

“I’m told this is your work, Mr. Bernard.”

“Yes, Brother, it is.”

“You know we can’t publish anything like this. Were you not told at orientation that news and opinion must pertain to matters pertaining to the La Salle community?”

I shook my head. “But this is about La Salle. It’s about how we need to see what’s happening and not ignore it.”

“We have never printed anything like this and we’re not about to start now.” Brother Adalbert’s face relaxed and he leaned forward. “Paul, personally I agree with what you say, I even admire you for putting it so well, but there’s a time and place for everything and this is not it.” He sat back and steepled his fingers. “We have to avoid causing unnecessary strain in our community. Everyone here gets along and it’s my job to see that continues.”

In the silence that followed, I replayed my conversation with Terry. I felt my neck getting warm. This was wrong, not letting people think for themselves on something this important. Suddenly I knew what I had to do. “So you’re not going to let it run,” I said, looking at Brother William.

“I’m sorry,” Brother William said, holding out his hands, “but that’s our decision.” His face brightened, “but give me another column by Friday, we’ll hold the presses for it.”

I nodded slowly, looking for the right words and the courage to say them. “I’m sorry too. But if that’s the way things are, I’ll have to resign from the paper.”

Brother William frowned. “What did you say?”

“I said, I resign from the paper. I’ll clear out my desk this afternoon.”

“Why would you do that?”

“You say the Maroon and White’s a student newspaper, let it be a student newspaper.” Now I was up to my neck in it. “If it’s not a student newspaper, it’s wrong to call it one.”

Brother Adalbert exploded. “Watch your tongue, young man, or you’ll find yourself on suspension.”

Norm had been silent til now. He had encouraged me when I told him about the idea but his concern was how the students would take it. It never crossed our minds the Brothers might refuse to print it. Norm had a squeaky, high-pitched voice but a reputation for being fearless. He turned to Brother William. “You know we’re going to have to redo our front page.”

“What do you mean?”

“An Editor of the Maroon and White resigns over a censorship issue. That’s a major news story, and no question it pertains to the La Salle community...”

“But you can’t...”

“...and people will ask why, so we have to print the column as a news item.”

Brother Adalbert pointed his finger at us. “Very clever! I’ll bet you cooked this whole thing up, the two of you.”

Norm shook his head. “Not at all. Farthest thing from our mind.”

“Watch it, mister, or you’ll have the shortest tenure of any editor in history!”

He laughed. “Sounds like another story in the making.”

Brother Adalbert stood up, his face lighting up the room. “You two are dismissed. I mean, leave! We’ll let you know about your discipline. Rest assured there will be some.”

Norm and I walked out, not looking back. “Jeez,” I said, “what’ll we do now?”

“Hey, don’t worry, they can’t afford to let this get out.” He laughed. “They’re right, we couldn’t have written a better script if we’d tried. Going down to the office?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I replied. “I said I’d get my stuff – guess I’d better do it.”

It wasn’t like I could avoid telling my parents, bringing home a gym bag full of gear and dumping it on my bed. My mother was outraged. “You did absolutely the right thing, Paul. Never have I been prouder of you! They should send that idiot Adalbert back to the Middle Ages where he belongs!” It was all my father could do to keep her from driving to the school and beating on the Brothers’ door, but true to form, he was practical.

“Things have a way of sorting themselves out,” he said, pulling on his pipe, “but let’s see if we can’t help them a little.” Beneath his composure, he was still nursing his wounds from the battle to save Jim. “Paul, get me the phone book.”

He leafed through it then picked up the phone. “Dave LaPointe,” he said firmly. “Hello, Dave! Comment ça va, you old bastard! Bien, bien. Well actually not so good. We got a situation at the high school, maybe you can give us a hand.”

Dave LaPointe was the Providence Journal’s ace photographer. He and my father went back a long way. Thanks to Dave I had visited the newsroom a few times, even went on assignment with him once. My father recounted what had happened, then fell silent a moment. “Yes, yes, that’s the way to go. I’ll owe you one if you can pull this off. Right... right. Merçi bien. À bientôt, mon ami.” He turned to us. “Here’s what we’re going to do. Dave knows your Brother William pretty well and he’s got this idea...”

“What idea?”

“Hey,” he said with a merry look I rarely saw, “let’s let Dave handle it. His editor doesn’t wear a black dress but he has to work around him sometimes, too.”

Later that night the phone rang. It was for me. “Paul, Brother Robert here. I just heard about your little problem, news travels fast in our community. I’m not surprised what you wrote, I saw a lot of your writing when you were a freshman, you’ll remember. Nor does our reaction surprise me.” He coughed several times, then cleared his throat. “Sorry. What I’m saying, La Salle is a great place but once in a while it needs to be shaken by the scruff of the neck. I’ll do what I can to see it comes out right. Don’t worry, and whatever you do, stick by your guns. As we say in the trade, keep the faith.”

What a great person, I thought, putting the phone down. All of a sudden, my knees weren’t so wobbly.

A few days later Brother William collared me in the corridor and said they’d decided to run the column with a statement that it was a personal opinion and did not represent the views of the paper, La Salle, or the Brothers. He seemed a bit sheepish but didn’t say any more so I figured, let well enough alone. When the paper came out, the “it didn’t represent the views” part was missing. The column ran on the editorial page over my name with “A Personal Opinion” in bold. Otherwise there it was, word for word. I moved my equipment back to a big round of applause. Norm shook my hand and clapped me on the back. I told him I was grateful how he backed me up. He grinned. “I figured I’d be cleaning out my desk too, but we heard somebody put the pressure on. Know anything about that?”

I thought a moment then shook my head. “Not really... just glad to be back.” I put the treasured Leica back in my desk and locked it. When I told my father, he nodded knowingly and shook my hand. That was all. Some people told me they’d read the column, a few thanked me, it made them think, some said it took guts to do it. Some sideways looks too, but Terry Grimes took me totally by surprise.

“I saw what you wrote.” He glared at me. “Why’d you do it?”

“I wanted to get people thinking. Like what you said made me think.”

“No way! That was between us two, but this? In the paper? Just ’cause you see something on TV that makes you an expert? This has been going on for-ever! Where you been, man? Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, ever hear of them? And by the way, who appointed you to fight our battles? I sure didn’t.”

“I never said you did,” I replied, my face reddening. “Anyway those are my words, not yours. It’s my name on it.”

“But that’s my life you’re messing with! And Jerome’s! Plus the grand total of two other Negroes in this place. Did it ever occur to you, you could make things bad for us, doing something like this?”

“Bad?”

“Yes, damnit!” He shook his head. “Look, we get along okay, you and me, but what I’m saying, some kids have it in for us, they’d like nothing better than see us back in the jungle. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Given the chance, that type person is just as bad as those Arkansas honkies, and here you go stirring them up! We’re on trial, we’re out front here, acting twice as good as everybody just to keep it together. That is one heavy load, bro, one very heavy load.” Terry’s eyes glistened and he seemed on the verge of tears. “I don’t want anything happening to me and my brothers. We’re just trying to get by. Get along, get by, get out.”

I was floored. I took a deep breath. “Terry, most of the people here are decent. If they think about these things they’ll be on your side These are the people I wanted to reach. I’ll take your word there are others, too...”

“Take my word? TAKE MY WORD! You ever been called nigger? You ever had fuck you black boy painted on your locker like Jerome? Next time stick to stuff you know. Don’t go sticking your nose in other peoples’ business!” He turned and strode away.

That night after dinner I confronted my mother, Catherine was there, too. I forgot to mention she had started at Brown and was living on campus, though she came around often.

“I thought I was doing the right thing,” I began, “now I’m not so sure.”

“True, as a family we don’t really know any Negroes, not to socialize with, at least. I hope you and Catherine will do better along those lines than we’ve done...”

“My friend Genevieve, she says Brown is the friendliest place she’s ever been.”

“Good for her,” I said, “what about the others, how do they feel?”

“I don’t know the others well enough. Anyway, Mama, how can you say what Paul did is right or wrong? People look at the same thing differently. According to Hume...”

My mother shook her head. “You surprise me, Catherine. Have you forgotten morality isn’t measured by results but principles? Clearly what applies here is love your neighbor as yourself for the sake of God.”

I shook my head, “but if my neighbor’s not interested...?”

“That doesn’t alter the fact you need to try, you have to make people aware of evil and cruelty. In fact, with your position of influence, it would be wrong not to try.”

“I don’t know. I just don’t know anymore.”

“Well, I do. Thinking isn’t enough, you have to act! Catherine, you have opportunities your father and I never had,” she glowered at me, “as Paul will if he makes the right choice for his college. Make the most of them!”