West of Rome Page 14

  “Don’t ask me to buy stock,” he said, handing it back. “I’m a poor man.”

  “It’s not stock,” Speed said, pushing the paper away. “It’s the claim to a mine.”

  “A mine.”

  “A gold mine.”

  “Gold!” My father breathed it like a holy word, then shook his head sadly. “I can’t afford it.”

  “I’m giving it to you!” Speed said. “I done signed it over. It’s yours, free and clear.”

  My father’s smile faded doubtfully, for nobody had ever given him anything before, least of all a gold mine. What he owned he had earned by the sweat of his brow. He gave Speed a suspicious smile, pushing the paper toward him. Speed grinned and would not accept it. My father’s doubts drove me wild. I wanted to kick him.

  ‘Take it, Papa!”

  “Where’s this mine at?” he asked.

  “Eighteen miles up Boulder Canyon.” Speed opened the document to a map, showing him the site of the mine. Towering over my father, he pointed a pink fingernail at the bottom of the page. “See that, right there? That’s your name. The new owner.”

  “By God, you’re right!” my father exclaimed. “That’s my name!” Pleased now, he held out his hand. “Much obliged.” They shook hands.

  “What do I do now?”

  “You dig,” Speed said. “And you keep diggin’, because there’s good ore in that hole, and the only way to find it is with a pick and shovel. Something else you do, is pray. You pray and you dig, but you dig more’n you pray, and leave the rest to old Yellow Belly.”

  “Yellow Belly?”

  “That’s her name.”

  We said goodbye and Speed drove away. From the curb we watched his Marmon turn left on 12th Street.

  “Nice fella,” my father said.

  He dug into his pocket and drew out a fistful of matches, coins, nails and toothpicks. Probing through this trivia, he plucked a nickel and gave it to me.

  “Buy yourself something,” he said.

  “Mud!” Frank Gagliano yelled.

  FIVE

  My father had two reasons for making Frank Gagliano a partner in the Yellow Belly venture, and the first was transportation, since he had no car, whereas Frank owned a Reo truck, a bone-rattling machine with solid rubber tires and chain-driven wheels, slow but sure on mountain roads.

  My mother was revolted by the partnership.

  “An atheist’s car!” she said. “I’d rather walk.”

  “You think the car don’t believe in God, either?”

  “It’s not the car. It’s the man.”

  He explained the second reason for the partnership. “Frank knows mining. He use to work in Cripple Creek.”

  “He’ll ever find gold,” Mama said emphatically. “As sure as God made the world, he won’t let that man find it. I don’t care if he digs a million years.”

  This depressed my father. He said, “It’s what I get for telling my troubles to a woman.”

  At noon on the job, Frank and my father drew away from the other workmen for private discussions of their plans. I was permitted to sit in on these conversations, provided I just listened and offered no suggestions. Frank had researched the mining possibilities in the Yellow Belly area and found them promising.

  “Plenty of silver up there too,” he said. “Let’s keep our eyes open.”

  “It’s the gold we’re after,” Papa said.

  “You gonna turn up your nose at a silver strike?”

  My father smiled and admitted that he didn’t know one from the other.

  “Good thing you got me for a partner,” Frank said. “By yourself, you’d be digging fool’s gold, sure as hell.”

  My father had to admit that he didn’t know anything about fool’s gold either.

  “Pyrite,” Frank smiled mysteriously. “Many a man broke his heart believing pyrite was the real thing. You live and you learn. I been fooled myself a couple of times.”

  They made plans for their first trip to the mine on Sunday.

  “Can I come?” I asked.

  Neither man answered, so that was that.

  Frank drained the last of the wine from his thermos.

  “One thing I don’t like about that mine,” he said, smacking his lips. “The name. Yellow Belly. I don’t like it.”

  “What’s the difference?” Papa shrugged.

  “Yellow Belly means a coward. It’s an unlucky name for a gold mine.”

  “How about Bella Napoli?” Papa suggested.

  ‘That’s a restaurant,” Frank said.

  They lapsed into silence, thinking of names. Then I remembered Shasta Glory.

  “How about something with Shasta in it?” I offered. “How about Shasta Victory?”

  ‘That’s a racehorse,” Frank scowled. “I lost my shirt on that goat.”

  Another silence. They smoked and pondered.

  “How about Bella Roma?” Papa said.

  “You got Bella on the brain,” Frank said.

  “Okay then,” Papa said. “Let’s leave it just plain Yellow Belly.”

  Frank got to his feet instantly. “You better get yourself another partner, cause I won’t work no mine with a name like that.”

  Papa was furious. “Name it then! Call it anything you want!”

  A far-off stare filled Frank’s eyes.

  “We’ll call her Red Devil,” he said. “Old Red Devil.”

  My father shrank from it, but he had committed himself.

  “Okay,” he said. “It’s settled. Red Devil it is.”

  Frank picked up his lunch pail and moved toward the tool house.

  “Mama won’t like it,” I said.

  “Do you have to tell your mother everything?”

  I promised I wouldn’t.

  SIX

  On Sunday morning, all dressed for eight o’clock Mass, we stood around the kitchen table watching my father making preparations for his trip to the mine, stacking provisions into a wooden box—bread, cheese, tomatoes, onions, salami, and a couple of jugs of wine.

  My mother looked in surprise at all the provisions.

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “Back tonight. And don’t forget what Speed said: you dig and you pray. I want everybody to pray for good luck. I’ll dig, and you pray. If we find gold, everything changes. I’ll buy a new house first thing.”

  “Can I have a new bike?” my brother Frederick asked.

  “You got it.”

  Hairpins in her mouth, my mother ran a comb through her long hair. “My prayer is that you don’t get into trouble with that no-good Frank Gagliano.”

  “Never mind Frank. All you got to do is pray for the gold.”

  “I’m going to offer up my communion,” my sister Clara said.

  “Me too,” Frederick said.

  “Who you going to offer it to?” Papa asked.

  “God.”

  “No good,” Papa said. “Not lucky.”

  My mother caught her breath. “God—not lucky? Now you are talking like Frank Gagliano!”

  “I’m almost fifty years old, and God never done a thing for me yet.”

  “He gave us everything,” Mama said. “Our family, our home, the food on our table, good health. What more do you want?”

  “That’s plenty. It’s all I can handle.”

  “I want you to stop criticizing the Lord in front of your own children.”

  “All I’m saying is, He don’t bring luck. Why not try somebody else for a change? What’s wrong with Saint Anthony? Or San Rocco? Or San Gennaro?” He glanced at us kids. “Anybody here ever pray to San Gennaro?”

  “Never heard of him,” I said.

  ‘The patron saint of Naples, that’s who. Did me a lot of favors when I was your age.” He nodded solemnly. ‘You try him today. Tell him about your father’s mine. Tell him to show us the gold.”

  “I’m praying to Santa Clara,” Clara said. “She’s awfully nice.”

  “Give her a try. Must be somebody up there
willing to give your father a break.”

  “I’m gonna try St. Joseph,” Frederick said. “I bet he’ll help you, Papa. He used to be a carpenter.”

  “I don’t like carpenters,” Papa said. “Best thing is to find some old saint who never gets any business. Some old saint everybody forgot for the last five hundred years.”

  From the alley came the clatter of Frank’s truck, a racket that almost drowned out the beep of his horn. Through the kitchen window we watched his truck come to a stop in the alley. My father hoisted the box of supplies to his shoulder and hurried out the back door.

  Suddenly, anxiously, Mama ran after him, calling, but the noise of the truck swamped her voice. Papa stepped into the alley and lifted the box into the back of the truck. Turning, he saw her waving. He came back to the house, annoyed.

  “What do you want?”

  From the porch she stared down at him with enormous melancholy eyes. “Last night I had the most awful dream,” she told him. “It was a sign from God. You were down at the bottom of the mine, and he was throwing big rocks at you, burying you alive.”

  My father gaped.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Him,” she said, looking toward Frank.

  “Frank? You’re crazy.”

  He started back toward the truck.

  “Be careful!” she called. “Something awful’s going to happen.”

  Shaking his head in despair, my father climbed into the truck beside Frank. There was a roar of gears as the machine pulled away.

  SEVEN

  My father’s idea of praying to some long forgotten saint fascinated me. A wonderful notion that made a lot of sense. Saints were pure-hearted, generous beings who longed to help the suffering souls on earth. But as my father pointed out, the more popular ones were too busy with thousands of requests.

  The secret to having a prayer answered was in directing it to some ancient, unremembered patriarch of a thousand years ago, a kindly, compassionate old fellow who waited in vain up in heaven for somebody—a nobody like myself to just sing out for whatever my heart desired. Moreover, I knew exactly where to find the name of such an exalted and forgotten person. In the school library, in The Lives of the Saints.

  In the crowd gathered at the church door I slipped away from my family and crossed the playing field to the school. I tiptoed upstairs to the library on the second floor. Immediately, in the first volume of the Lives, I found what I wanted.

  His name was Saint Stephen, Bishop of Sweden. He had died in 1075. His biography read: “Nothing is known of his birthplace, parentage, or his early life; in fact, very little is known about him at all.”

  Bull’s eye! A saint from time out of mind, an abandoned, forgotten holy man, a prince of God from so deep in the past that his birthplace and even his mother and father were obscured from memory. And yet he was a saint, alive in heaven among the great and famous of the Church. For almost nine hundred years he had been gone from this earth, yet how many of the living had prayed to him? Not many. Hardly any. Maybe nobody at all. Until I came along. For me, a treasure. Old Saint Stephen, Bishop of Sweden, a part of the community of saints, lost in paradise, waiting, white-haired, a Rip Van Winkle with cobwebs stringing from his ears as he waited for a cry from earth, a plea, a prayer for help.

  I closed the book, enchanted, inspired. I had tuned in on the magic of immortality. I was invincible, deathless, drugged with mystic power. At the first flutter of prayer my man in heaven would sweep the dust from his beard and his venerable face would break into a sunny smile for the one human being in all the world who remembered him, a boy in Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A.

  Spellbound, I hurried away, hawk wings lifting my heels as I dashed downstairs and around the church to the front door. In one of the rear pews I knelt and began to pray.

  I prayed like a flame, a torch. I crackled. I hissed. I was consumed. It seemed that from that moment my life was changed and I was reborn, a new person. It was hardly necessary to tell the Bishop about my father’s gold mine. Even before it shaped itself into an idea I knew Papa had struck it rich, a mountain of glittering ore, and we were incredibly wealthy and powerful, and our old brick house was changed to a castle of white stone with turrets and pennants and a staff of servants—butlers, maids, cooks, gardeners and chauffeurs.

  After Mass I rushed outside to wait for my mother, searching the departing congregation for her face, wondering if the mystique of Saint Stephen had reached her too. Then I saw her with my brother and my sister. She came toward me with the same harried countenance, studying my face sharply, asking, “Are you all right?”

  I said I was fine and walked away. The flame was fast burning out, the magic flaking away. The people around me were too real, too mortal, fat women on the arms of their husbands, prune-faced old ladies on unsteady legs, kids yapping and shoving, and puddles of mud from last night’s rain.

  But the castle, and my father’s gold—were they illusions too? I ran for home. Down Twelfth Street I ran, across the tracks, across the bridge. To the west, the red stones of the mountains stood out harshly, cruelly hacked by new roads and excavations. Nothing had changed. The world, our house, was the same. Wearily I sat down on the top of the porch stairs.

  EIGHT

  Next morning at breakfast my father certainly didn’t behave like a man who had struck it rich. His eyes were like crushed grapes, his face flushed with wine, and he had very little to say.

  “Did you bring home any gold?” Frederick asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Aren’t we rich now?” Clara said.

  “Nope.”

  “Maybe you dug in the wrong place,” Mama said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Shall we keep on praying?” Clara asked.

  “Might as well.”

  The following weekend he and Frank were off to the diggings again, leaving Saturday afternoon with their box of food supplies, blankets, and jugs of wine. They were back late Sunday night, Frank stopping the truck at the curb and Papa bumbling wearily toward the house, his clothes stained with reddish mud and so exhausted Mama had to undress him and tumble him into bed. He reeked of wine.

  Thereafter it became a weekly ritual. As the summer sailed past we forgot the dreams of gold and settled back into comfortable poverty enlivened every now and then by a catch of trout Papa brought back from the mountains, or mushrooms, or wild strawberries.

  Once he surprised us with a sackful of gleaming yellow stones the size of baseballs, shimmering chunks of amber quartz flaked with black crystalline veins.

  Awed, we held the pieces in our hands. They were very heavy. They seemed priceless.

  “Gold!” Frederick breathed.

  “Iron,” Papa said.

  “How much is it worth?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Not even a nickel?”

  “Not even a penny.”

  In a burst of generosity we gave the whole sackful of the rocks to my little sister and she dragged it off to a corner of the kitchen and lost herself in fantasy.

  My mother was worried now. Her disastrous predictions about the mine were coming true. My father was tired and sullen, growling at everything. She blamed Frank Gagliano and saw the mine as a satanic hole in the side of the mountain where an evil atheist lured a good Christian man to knock out his brains with wine, and though she never spoke of it, I knew she suspected they brought women to the place. Shaking out the soiled blankets Papa brought back, she sniffed them with loathing, holding them at arm’s length like dead cats as she dropped them into the washing machine. They were filthy things, wine-stained, damp and disgusting.

  “Next week you’re going up there with them,” she said.

  I refused.

  “I’ve got a right to know what’s going on up there.”

  ‘Two bricklayers getting drunk—that’s what’s going on.

  “Just the same, you’re going.”

  “It’s up to Papa.”

  My f
ather wouldn’t hear of it.

  “You must be crazy. That mine’s no place for a kid. It’s dangerous.”

  “What’s so dangerous about it?”

  “Rattlesnakes, falling rocks. He might break a leg. It’s wild country.”

  She laughed bitterly.

  “Dangerous, my foot! Then suppose you take me?”

  “It’s no place for women and kids.”

  “You’re taking him!”

  Papa looked at me, pleading. ‘You want to go up there and dig in all that muck, get all tired out, aching in every bone, is that what you want? You like pains in your back from pick and shovel, rocks falling on you, slipping in the mud, blisters on your hands from working fourteen, fifteen hours, and then come home with nothing to show for it? Is that what you want?”

  “God, no,” I said.

  “He doesn’t want to go,” Papa said.

  “He’s going, and that settles it.”

  This news hardly filled Frank Gagliano with joy. On the job next day he took my elbow and marched me over to the lumber pile. His eyes were cold and glassy.

  “Why don’t you keep your nose out of other people’s business?” he said.

  “What’re you talking about?”

  ‘The Red Devil Mine is no place for a snot-nosed kid.”

  “Who you calling a snot-nosed kid?”

  “Why don’t you leave us alone? Ain’t it enough that your old man has to feed you and buy your shoes without having his weekend loused up babysitting for a punk?”

  “You can’t talk to me like that. You’re not my father.”

  He waved a flat palm.

  “I wish to God I was.”

  I wanted to haul off and kick him.

  “Just for that I’m coming with you Sunday. I wasn’t, but now I am!”

  NINE

  The mine was a mile off the Boulder Canyon Road, down a sudden turnoff barely wide enough for Gagliano’s bouncing truck. It was only eighteen miles from town, a steady uphill grade all the way, and it took more than an hour to make the trip, for Frank kept his coughing Reo in low gear, the radiator hissing and funneling a plume of white steam into the cold mountain air. I sat shivering in the truck bed, bouncing with pieces of pipe, assorted lumber, cans of paint and miscellaneous tools. When cars tried to pass us, horns screaming, Frank grudgingly gave them the right of way, thrusting out his arm and jabbing his finger in the air, shouting, “Up your bucket, mister!”