Читать книгу Every Man for Himself - Mark J. Hannon - Страница 11

CHAPTER 7

BUFFALO, 1918

Torreo balanced on his spindly right leg and pushed with his left foot to roll the two-hundred-pound beer barrel up the ramp onto the wagon, then gripped the top and tilted the oak keg upright against the others. Last one today, he thought, the middle kegs stacked straight, the outside row of barrels tilted inward for balance, as the old Germans had taught him.

He hopped down from the wagon and watched a boy lead the team of horses slowly to the front of the great, heavy, wooden vehicle. Torreo mopped his brow with a big, red kerchief, thinking, Better you than me to the lumbering Percherons as they were readied to drag the heavy, oak wagon and the barrels of beer out to Buffalo’s countless saloons.

A small, blond-haired boy came running up to Torreo with a tankard of cool water. The boy, a grandson of the brew master, found the horses; the immense vats of frothing beer; and the incredibly strong men who would lift and move the wooden kegs of beer all day fascinating. Torreo was his favorite of all of them—the exotic dark Italian amongst the fair Germans, the one who seemed to be busting out of his shirt when he flexed, and whose one leg was as strong as most men’s two. He had seen him do tricks at company outings when the men would try feats of strength, balancing picnic tables while standing on one leg, or seeing how many people they could lift off the ground hanging from their mighty arms. “Being big is good,” Torreo would whisper to him as they watched the other competitors, “but the one that can balance the weight is the strongest.”

Torreo took the water and tousled the boy’s hair, and the two

of them followed the other men into the beer garden, where they relaxed over the free beer the owner supplied at the end of the day. Torreo always drank a couple of pints of water first, especially in the summertime, or his head would spin on the walk home. The boy, Phillip, ran up to the serving table, refilled Torreo’s water tankard, and grabbed one of the beers, which he carefully carried over to the long tables where the men sat. Running back to the serving table, his cousin Marta tried to give him a tumbler of birch beer, which he hesitated to take.

“No, no,” one of the other bartenders said, “put it in a tankard, girl, like the men have!”

Marta complied, worrying how long it would be before the boy started drinking beer, like the men. Returning to the table, Phillip squeezed in between Torreo and Hans, a special place at a special time of day for him, when he was among the strong men he hoped to become.

After a few minutes of work talk, the subject turned to sports, with arguments bolstered by quotations from the newspapers. Some men liked baseball, some horses, and some boxing, but the favorite sports in this crowd were wrestling and bowling, by far. The company had several bowling teams. They played on the grass in summer and indoors in the winter. The wrestling matches were arranged with workers from other breweries, and rivalries between their individual champions were the talk of the town.

“So, Torreo, what do you think of Steinegar’s chances against Getman next week?”

“I hope he’s learned to go for the legs, or Getman will twist him into a pretzel.”

Hearing this, several others expressed surprise and guffawed, as young Steinegar was the one among them who would hold up a corner of a wagon as they changed a wheel and was thought to be invincible.

“Awf, that’s silly. When Heinz Steinegar gets hold of Getman’s wrist, even, the match will be over!”

“Charge, get him around the waist, throw him, and it’ll be over, I say,” another said through a gathering cloud of cigar smoke.

“He’d better watch out for Getman’s dodges, because I’ve seen him do it to lots of stronger men,” Torreo continued to Phillip’s rapt attention. “He’ll feint you and keep escaping until you get tired, then sneak around behind, grab a leg and an arm, and tip you over like a turtle.”

The discussions went on like this for some time, the beer flowing and the smoke filling the place. Phillip ate it all up, tilting the tankard of fresh birch beer back until its effervescence got in his nose. When the men started moving the tables off to the side to practice the moves they spoke of, Torreo finished his beer and slipped out of the place quietly. He had tried wrestling with them, but the others had learned that his gimpy leg would sooner or later betray him, despite the might in his other three limbs. As he walked down Niagara towards his house, he went past the Rowing Club. He hadn’t been back there since the battle with the South Buffalo boys. Silly Irishmen with their rowing. Silly Germans with their wrestling. He had too much to do to waste time on games. The sun was still strong in the summer sky as he walked, and he paused to wipe his brow again with his kerchief, when he thought he would stop by the café, where his brother worked, and get a glass of wine. He smiled that Rafaele was working and wasn’t drinking as much.

As he turned the corner on Jersey, his joy turned to concern, for Raffie had been from job to job, and he wondered if his older brother would ever be able to take care of himself. His pace quickened as he walked under the canopy of maple leaves that covered the street, and when he saw the café’s glass front window, he stopped and looked in from an angle where he wouldn’t be observed. The front door was open, and the voices inside were boisterous and laughing. He saw two men sitting at a small round table in the corner. They were wearing black suits with white shirts buttoned up to the neck and no neckties. One was young with slicked-back hair and darting eyes. The other was older, with a big mustache and a wide-brimmed fedora. Rafaele stood in front of them, his back to Torreo, who quietly entered the plank-floored shop and stood in the doorway. The younger man stared at Rafaele, then swept the small coffee cups in front of him to the floor. Rafaele tried to step back, but stumbled off balance and crashed into the table behind, knocking the cups there all about as the occupants jumped out of the way.

“This isn’t café,” the younger man said with a thick accent from the old country, “It’s mierda! Can’t you damned Americans make decent espresso?”

Rafaele sat on the floor and started to push himself up as the older man laughed.

“I’m sorry . . .,” Rafaele began, and the young man’s black eyes danced. He grabbed a sugar bowl off another table and threw it at Rafaele, who sat back down and crossed his arms before himself and started to weep. No one else in the cafe moved or said anything, and the older man continued to laugh.

“Damned drunk, clean up this mierda and get us some real café,” the young man screamed, his face reddening.

Torreo couldn’t move at first. He couldn’t believe what he saw. He took a deep breath, and then the raging man with the slicked back hair saw him.

“What do you want, you stumbling fool?” he said as he reached into his pocket. The older man looked up and his laughter slowed. Torreo leapt across the floor just in time to backhand the young man’s knife across the room with his left arm as he slammed his right fist against the man’s face, driving it into the wall behind him, where it ripped the wallpaper. He then seized the man’s face with his callused hand, covering it from jaw to eyes, and slammed the sputtering man’s head against the wall three, four, five times as the crumbling plaster fell to the floor. The people in the cafe started to scream, and the older man struggled to get out of his seat, reaching into his jacket pocket. Torreo caught this out of the corner of his eye and let the wounded man slide down the wall, unconscious and bleeding. He grabbed the older man’s arm at the wrist and the elbow, and twisted his arm ninety degrees until it snapped, and a revolver fell to the floor. As the mustachioed man crumpled to the floor, moaning, Torreo punched his face as hard as he could, cracking his jaw.

The aproned cafe owner ran over and threw his arms around Torreo. “No, Torreo, stop! You must stop or you’ll kill them!” Torreo threw him off; looked at the battered men; the shocked customers bailing out in all directions; and his brother, sobbing on the floor.

“I’m sorry, Torreo. I’m sorry. I failed again,” he wept.

Torreo stopped, and then helped his brother to his feet. Brushing him off with his hands, Torreo put his arms around him and led him out, saying, “It’s ok, it’s ok. I’ll take care of it,” as they went home to the flat where they were raised.

Twenty minutes later, the owner of the cafe came through the Monteduros’ backyard, hustled up the back steps, and knocked rapidly on the kitchen door. Rafaele sat at the kitchen table, a glass of water in front of him. Torreo stood at the sink, massaging his hands silently.

“Torreo, it’s me, Frankie, from the cafe.”

“C’mon in.”

“Torreo, we gotta talk about this. Those two guys, they’re bad men. They’re mano negro. The young guy, he’s still out. They took him to the hospital; he may not live. The other guy, he’s Pietro Sciandra; everyone knows him.”

“Shit on them; they’re garbage,” Torreo said, getting mad again.

“In that case, here,” Frankie said, and, opening a towel, dumped the knife and the gun from the cafe onto the kitchen table. “You, cazzo motto, are going to need them.”

Rafaele stared at the heavy weapons on the table, and Torreo came over and picked up the big revolver, looking it over. Frankie stepped back, edging towards the door.

“Don’t worry, Frankie. Those bums aren’t going to bother you, or us, anymore.”