Читать книгу Berto's World: Stories - R. A. Comunale M.D. - Страница 7

The coal man arrived one peppermint November day.

I awoke in the chill of a Saturday morning, the cast-iron radiator in my bedroom colder even than the air creeping through the cracks in the rotting window frame—nothing unusual for the decaying buildings in our neighborhood. Today one would call the city’s housing office, and the bureaucrats would drag the absentee landlord downtown and threaten him with fines and court orders, unless he turned the heat on. But in those days the landlord stayed warm in his distant, well-kept neighborhood, fearing only the wrath of his demanding, overweight wife.

Mama and Papa remained in bed, enjoying the respite from work and the luxury of two bodies lying warm together under a patchwork, homemade quilt. But ten-year-old boys were driven by different instincts, and I was no different.

I had slept in my long underwear, having learned that my room would grow icebox cold. Then, in the morning, it was relatively easy to grab my worn, corduroy pants from the floor, slip them under the blankets, and slide my legs inside. A few minutes of shivering to warm both them and me, and I would proceed to the secondhand, argyle socks Mama had gotten for pennies at the charity outlet in the church basement. Quickly checking my brown brogans to shake out any roaches wanting to set up housekeeping, I would shove my head into an outsized, pullover wool sweater. Now fully dressed, I was ready to face my world.

Most kids in my neighborhood, if they made it to adulthood, would remember the wonders of Saturday morning cartoons and serials at the neighborhood movie house. I never had the twenty-five-cent admission fee to the all-cartoon, all-morning shows at the Empire Theatre, so my weekend entertainment was self-made. I knew that Angie and Tomas, my best friends, faced the same predicament, and my first job was to hunt them down.

I savored the crisp air. My pre-pubertal body easily warded off temperatures that would send older folks shivering to the nearest heated building. But I was a kid, invulnerable and immortal. I never worried about the weather. So when I saw the steel-gray sky signaling the impending snow season, my only thought was that it would be a white Thanksgiving.

The marquee at the Empire touted the Saturday cartoon show. In less than an hour hundreds of kids would be lined up, pennies, nickels, dimes, and sometimes quarters at the ready, pushing and shoving to be the first to enter the maroon, velvet-lined movie house with its prized balcony seats. Where else could you watch a movie, chew gum, and throw spit balls, all for a quarter?

But for me this particular heaven was off-limits. So I whistled as I walked past, catching a glimpse of the name of that week’s attraction emblazoned on a poster in the display window: “Sergeant York,” starring Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan.

That was it! My mind raced and I began to run. Angie and Tomas also lived in tenements, four-story, sooty-gray, stone fronts that must have been nice a hundred years ago. Now they held the overflow of the refugees escaping war-torn Europe.

They saw me first and met me halfway down the block. We were twins … no, triplets in appearance, our couture direct from church rummage sales and giveaways, the conscience-salving gifts of the well-to-do.

“Whadda we gonna do, Berto, hmmm?”

I grinned. Angie often tried to imitate Jimmy Cagney when he talked.

Tomas remained quiet. He was an overly thin kid, a follower who later got himself killed by following the wrong crowd. Come to think of it, so did Angie—but that’s another story. He just found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, when another kid’s knife slashed his throat.

“The Old Guys are probably already putting away Rheingolds at Mr. Ruddy’s. Bet their stuff beats anything at the Empire.”

That was our name for the three elders who had fought in the Great War, friends who had left the confines of our neighborhood and enlisted in 1917 to fight the Huns: Harold Ruddy, George Huff, and Tim Brown.

Twice a week, they would meet in Mr. Ruddy’s shoe-repair shop and relive old memories, killing off as many Rheingold soldiers as they could. And on the days when we had no school, chores, or other things like baseball to distract us, we would sit, wigwam style, on the floor and listen to the three recount their days of glory. Like most boys of the era, sometimes we picked up the empty brown bottles and let any remaining drops drain out onto our tongues.

Mr. Ruddy kept photos of himself on the walls—faded photos of him running for touchdowns in high school. He had been a tall, muscular boy, very handsome and no doubt a lady’s man, with wide shoulders suitable even for a lineman topping a triangular torso and tree-trunk-sized thighs.

Now his thick biceps and powerful forearms propelled him around his machine-filled shop, and the first time I saw him my mind refused to accept the fact that there was nothing below his waist. His legs and most of his pelvis had become trophies of a German artillery shell. He used a specially cushioned, swivel stool and hand bars strategically placed in his shop and bedroom in the back to help him move—as well as a keen mind, a strong sense of ironic humor, and flashing blue eyes highlighting an always-smiling face.

It took me sixty years to understand.

We liked Mr. Ruddy, but we secretly made fun of him. It was hard for us not to make fun of Mr. Huff as well. He operated the only electric-motor shop for miles and was considered a marvel at all sorts of repairs. Friendly, honest and soft spoken, his picture also adorned Mr. Ruddy’s gallery of honor.

Back then kids like us idolized baseball stars like Joe DiMaggio. But when we stared at the photo of the young George Huff, standing, bat in hand, the champion hitter of his 1916 high-school baseball team, we couldn’t comprehend it was the same man before us. He had aged far beyond his time, his face drooping slightly to the right, a gift of shell shock and a severe concussion sustained in the trenches of Lorraine. I later learned that he never slept without awakening in screaming fits.

The third man, like Mr. Ruddy confined to a wheel chair, always tried to stand and shake our hands when we entered the shop. Mr. Brown was our neighbor. He lived in the tenement next door. He was younger than Mr. Ruddy and Mr. Huff—though only by several months—but the mark of time and the effects of German gas warfare had aged him in ways that the other men could only observe from a distance.

His sepia-tinted photo on the wall showed a slender, long-legged track star with shags of dark-brown hair cow-licking his forehead. Now we saw a sunken-chested, white-haired old man with scarred skin and labored breathing from almost non-existent lungs. Even the missing legs and wandering mind of his friends proved no match for the living death he endured: perpetual breathlessness, a near-suffocation that never ended.

It was to Mr. Huff’s credit, and the friendship bordering on love among the three men, that twice weekly he would push Mr. Brown’s wheelchair slowly down the street to Mr. Ruddy’s shop. Often I wondered whether Angie and Tomas and I would be friends so much later in life.

Surviving them both by more than five decades, I still wonder.

The fourth Old Guy in the room appeared only by photo. The first time we stared at the picture-laden wall we saw four strapping boys—perhaps young men is more appropriate—standing close together in athletic clothes, arms interlocking across shoulders, smiling and staring out into an unknown future. When Mr. Ruddy saw us, he hoisted himself, monkey-like, onto the counter where he would place the repaired shoes for pickup by their owners.

“Boys, I know you’re wondering, so I’m gonna tell you. See that other kid? That’s Tommy Seidletz. The four of us signed up together, and together we all faced down the Huns in France. And at one turn or another, Tommy saved each of our lives.”

He paused for just a second, and I thought I saw his eyes begin to water, but maybe it was just a trick of the light. Then he smiled, and those blue eyes flashed, as he raised a beer bottle in salute, and the two other Old Guys did the same. He spoke very quietly.

“Tommy took a bullet for me the day before my legs decided to walk away.”

He looked out his storefront window pointed.

“Boys, see that lady there?”

We looked. It was the Crazy Lady. Everyone knew her. White-haired, pushing a baby carriage with a watering can under a baby blanket, she walked up and down the street, stopping passersby and asking if they had seen her little boy. Even Papa knew her and would tell me at the dinner table always to respect her. She had lost a son in the Great War. And even in that neighborhood of want, the Crazy Lady never went without food or shelter.

Mr. Ruddy touched my shoulder. In a whisper he said, “That’s Tommy’s mother.”

We sat for a while longer, as the Old Guys drank and reminisced. Their war stories always excited us and conjured up images of our charging a machine-gun nest or hurling grenades over barbed-wire barricades. But we were also ten year-olds, and long attention spans were not our strong suit.

Mr. Brown saw us fidget, and he reached into his vest pocket, gasping out in his oxygen-starved and chemically scarred voice, “Here, guys, catch!”

Ah, the memory of us scrambling for those pennies makes me laugh even now. I still have mine. They were special pennies, with the head of an American Indian or an eagle in flight. It wasn’t until much later in life that I found out they were collectors’ items. I wonder what happened to Angie’s and Tomas’s pennies.

Mr. Huff took the hint and strapped Mr. Brown into his wheelchair. Then he picked up the empty bottles and lined them up like the dead soldiers that they were. When we were sure the men had finished with them, we picked up the bottles—worth two cents each at the local beer distributor—and headed out the door into the cold. Mr. Huff tucked a blanket around Mr. Brown’s chest and wheeled him outside. Mr. Ruddy, ever smiling, waved goodbye to all of us.

Walking home, Tomas, who had been quiet all the while, suddenly smiled.

“Hey, guys, doesn’t the coal man come today?”

I had forgotten about it. Maybe the numbing cold in my bedroom had frozen my brain. Sure, that’s what happened! The building had run out of coal. It wasn’t unusual. The only time owners paid attention to their tenements was when rents were due.

“Let’s go! Maybe he’s still there.”

We ran across the bridge over the small river running through the neighborhood. Then we heard it: the groaning motor and grinding brakes of the big truck carrying tons of coal to fuel the tenement furnaces. It was stopping in front of my building.

We saw the big, soot-covered, glove-wearing man extend the metal sluice from the back of the truck. He walked toward a heavy, cast iron cover that concealed a chute into the basement. As we approached, he lifted the cover and guided the sluice from the truck into the opening. When he noticed us he flashed a gap-tooth smile.

“Stay back, kids, lotta soot gonna come out soon!”

His moon-round face reminded me of the members of the Polish family down the street.

Like magic we saw him pull a lever, and the back of the truck started to rise. As it did the thunderous hoofs of thousands of coal lumps funneled down the sluice and into the chute, colliding and bouncing and raising a thick plume. Despite his warning we got closer and cheered the black diamonds rolling downward.

Soon the moon-dark man pulled the lever again and truck’s bed settled back down. He took a shovel and pushed the remaining pieces into the open chute then took a rounded-fringe broom and brushed the sluice. When he had finished he folded it back into the truck, climbed in, and waved to us, as he moved it to the next building.

Now it was nearing lunchtime, and each of us felt the rumblings in our guts. We waved each other away, yelling out that we’d meet later.

I ran inside, climbing the four flights of stairs and pushing open our apartment door. I remember the look on my mother’s face: a mixture of disapproval, laughter and feigned horror at my sooty face and hands.

“Berto, go wash your hands and change your clothes. Now!”

I went to my room and stripped to my long johns. I paused and looked out the window. Down on the street the coal man again was replacing the sluice onto his truck after finishing next door. Then he looked up and, to this day, I swear he saw me standing at the window and waved at me. He climbed into the truck and drove off.

Only minutes later, when I had put on relatively clean clothes and was heading toward the kitchen, I heard shouting coming from outside. My mother went to the window and opened it, and the voice of Mrs. Brown, Tim Brown’s wife, shrieked in the cold air.

Mama ran to the living room, where my father was sitting, feet, propped up, and whispered in his ear. He stood up more quickly than I thought possible, grabbed his coat, and ran out the door. I heard his feet stomping down the squeaky stairway and the front door of the building open and slam shut.

I went to the kitchen and saw my mother sitting at the table, her head in her hands.

“Mamma, che ha torto?”

Mama, what’s wrong?

She shook her head and said nothing.

In a little while I heard Papa’s heavy steps, slower now, climbing the stairs. When he entered the apartment, Mama looked up at him. He shook his head

“Il vecchio Signor Brown appena è morto.”

Old Mr. Brown just died.

To this day I remember those words.

The memories they stir in me are a mixed and varied lot. By the time I was ten I had seen death in the knife fights on Hamilton Street. I had even tried to help, to stop the outflow of the red river of life from those slashed and cut. But these were the deaths of strangers.

I knew Mr. Brown. I liked Mr. Brown. He was one of the Old Guys. And now there would be one fewer member at those meetings in Mr. Ruddy’s shoe-repair shop.

Later in my life, my father’s words from that day struck another chord.

He had called him “Old Mr. Brown.” Back then, old meant someone in their forties, maybe even fifty. It was not usual for men to live too long, whatever that meant. Old Mr. Brown wasn’t more than forty-eight.

But, dear reader, there is one final memory, one that haunts me even now. Was it a trick of the imagination, an overactive ten-year-old boy’s flight of fancy? Or did I really see it?

That moment, when the coal man looked up at me and waved, another person in his truck also looked up, smiled, and waved: Timothy Brown.