West of Rome Read online

  The sky was gray and mounds of dirty snow still clung to the canyon walls. Frank and Papa stayed warm in the cab, passing the jug back and forth and smoking cigars. The more they drank, the slower the truck moved.

  After the turnoff the road dipped steeply along an auto trail pocked with deep holes. Each time the solid rubber rear tires hit them I got bounced into the air with the pipe, lumber and paint cans, and with every bound the drinkers glanced back through the rear window and laughed. A gleam of retaliation flecked Frank’s little red eyes, for he hated my presence.

  Finally the trail came to an end beside a small creek. Frank shut off the engine and a mystical silence filled the gorge. I dropped to the ground, my feet stinging with cold when they hit the earth. It was a lonely, desolate place, brush and willows along the creek that sang with bullfrogs, misty stands of pine and spruce stretching up and away, sighing, breathing deeply as if in sleep.

  The men hoisted boxes of supplies on their shoulders and we moved along a footpath for a hundred yards beside the creek bank to a clearing where a cabin stood, a shack with a tin roof and a tin door which was wide open. There was a single window with four glass panes, two of which were patched with cardboard.

  Crowning it all was the sign on the roof over the door. It was painted on a sheet of plywood, the figure of a devil done in red and black, with horns, hooves, and a speared serpentine tail. His eyes were slanted and his mouth was screwed into a grin. Beneath was the inscription:

  RED DEVIL MINING CORP.

  VICO STEFFANINI AND FRANK GAGLIANO, PROP.

  “Why, it’s the devil,” I said.

  Frank looked up at him, pleased.

  “That’s old Red. He’s my buddy.”

  I kept staring. You didn’t show off a devil. Not over your front door. It was daring. It was frightening. It was madness.

  “Frank’s idea,” my father said guiltily. “It don’t mean a thing.”

  Maybe not, but as I glanced at him again he looked like the king of the mountain and a long time resident of those parts. I followed my father into the shack.

  A stench almost pulled me under as I stepped inside. Not a simple animal smell, but the smell of humans, of sweat and urine and bowel gas, of mouldy mattresses and cooking grease. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. The place was a one room dump. The floor was unboarded, hard-packed earth. It smelled of sour parmesan cheese. The beds were bare mattresses set upon boards next to the damp floor. In the center of the room stood a cookstove with a chimney through the roof. There was an old couch with its guts hanging out and a couple of crippled chairs. The table was a glut of dirty dishes.

  I could believe the disorder, the squalor, for there it was, and I knew that people were sometimes forced to live in a place like that. But my old man, my own father? He lowered the box of provisions to the floor and got to his knees before the stove. He looked happy, a stub of cigar in his teeth as he hummed to himself and laid pieces of kindling inside the stove.

  He was a poor man, and that for sure, but I only knew him as a clean poor man, always neat, even dapper in the few clothes he owned. He liked his shirts carefully ironed, and even his khaki work pants had to be precisely creased. Above all, he demanded good order in our home. Coats and sweaters had to be hung up and things had to be in their proper places. Yet there he was, on his knees amidst all that squalor, as cheerful as a rat in a sewer.

  Frank lit a kerosene lamp and the dark shack glowed a feeble amber as he turned up the flame. Though it was mid-afternoon the sun was already sliding down the other side of the mountain and it was twilight down in the gorge.

  Frank said, “All right, kid, you wanted to come, so now you got to earn your keep. Get out there and bring in some firewood.”

  I went back and forth four times, stacking the wood beside the stove. Positioning themselves on the gutted sofa, their feet close to the little stove which was now red hot, Frank and my father prepared themselves for a long siege with the dark red wine. They passed the jug back and forth, the wine gurgling in their throats. The shack became stiflingly hot. After a while my father turned and seemed surprised to find me sitting in a chair, bored, watching the wine vanish.

  “Why don’t you go out and play?” he said.”

  “Play? Play what?”

  “Cowboys and Indians,” Frank said.

  “Oh, shit,” I said.

  “Now, now, none of that stuff,” Papa said.

  “Where’s the mine?” I asked.

  “Mine?” Frank said. “What mine?”

  My father laughed. Frank joined him. Both were sweating. They guffawed until tears ran from their eyes. I stared grimly, until the last of the laughter spent itself. Papa wiped his eyes with a knuckle.

  “You mean, the gold mine?” he said.

  They laughed again, a torrent of it, rolling on the sofa, slapping their knees, howling hysterically on each other’s shoulders, choking, blurting wine from their mouths as the seizure abated.

  “Sonny boy,” my father said (he had never called me that before), “you’ll find the mine up the creek a ways. Just follow the trail.”

  I stood up.

  “You’re drunk,” I said bitterly. “You’re both drunk!”

  They began to howl like coyotes again and I ran outside to the trail along the creek bank. In a little while I was at the mine.

  Loose boards, rotten and ravaged by termites, covered the entrance to the shaft. I squeezed through an opening and stepped into the dank diggings. The scene was not impressive to the son and heir of a mine owner. The shaft only penetrated to a depth of fifteen feet. Rusted picks and shovels lay on the muddy floor, long disused and so rotten the handle of a shovel collapsed like a mushroom when I stepped on it. Water oozed from the cave’s top and sides, and from a dark invisible place I heard the merry trickle of running water. This was no mine, it was a hole in the side of a mountain that produced spring water. No wonder my father had gotten the mine for nothing. No wonder he and Frank found no gold. No wonder they laughed and drank themselves silly. For the joke was on them. Owning a bonanza like this, what else could they do?

  TEN

  I started back to the cabin. Clouds of white smoke tumbled from the chimney below, drifting through the trees, filling the gorge with the fragrance of pine. From the road came the purr of a motor. I thought it might be Speed in his Marmon and I ran to greet him.

  It was a woman in an old black Cadillac pulling up alongside Frank’s truck. She looked about forty, dark-haired, a red scarf about her head and wound around her neck, the ends trailing to her lap. She stepped from the car and I saw that she was tall with large hips and chest beneath a green skirt and blouse. Gathering her coat and purse, she slammed the door shut and started down the path to the cabin. She smiled when she saw me.

  “You must be Nick’s kid,” she said.

  “He’s my father.”

  She glanced at the sky. “What time is it?”

  “About four.”

  “A.M. or P.M.?” she smiled, her large mouth stained with lipstick. “God, I could sure use a drink.”

  “Plenty in the cabin.”

  She made a face. “Dago red. It gives me the runs.”

  She went past me along the path, wobbling on high heels. As she disappeared, I made a tour of her Cad. It was pretty beat up, the leather upholstery worn and burst in many places, the wiring under the dashboard hanging down like tangled spaghetti. The speedometer showed 97,000 miles. I looked and the car was registered in the name of Rhoda Pruitt of Slocum, a coal mine town east of Boulder. She was Frank Gagliano’s kind of woman.

  She wasn’t there when I went back to the cabin. Neither was my father. Frank sat at the table, drinking wine and eating bread and cheese.

  “What happened to that lady?”

  “What lady?”

  “Rhoda Pruitt.”

  “Oh, her.”

  “Where’s my father?”

  “He’s showing her the place. She’s thinking of
buying it.”

  “I didn’t know it was for sale.”

  “That depends.”

  I started for the door.

  “Where you going?”

  “To find them.”

  “What for?”

  “No special reason.”

  “Sit down. Have some ricotta.”

  “I hate that damn ricotta.”

  ‘Then eat the salami.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Sit down, punk. Don’t gum up the works.”

  “What works?”

  “Your father’s taking Mrs. Pruitt on a tour of inspection. You keep your nose out of it.”

  He had a special way of enraging me, and that was it. I threw the door open and marched outside. If my father was conducting an inspection tour, he had to be at the mine. I tramped off in that direction.

  Sitting on a rock at the mine entrance was Rhoda Pruitt, her shoes in her lap as she massaged her stocking feet. My father wasn’t to be seen.

  “Hi, there,” Rhoda said.

  “Hi. Is my father here?”

  “Here? I don’t think so.”

  I crossed to the mine shaft.

  “He’s not in there.”

  I peered inside anyway, looked around, then turned and faced her. “Which way did he go?”

  “Did you try the cabin?”

  “I just came from the cabin. Frank said he was with you.”

  “He isn’t here.”

  She didn’t look at me as she spoke and suddenly I knew that my father was somewhere close by. I could almost smell him behind one of the trees, or the cluster of boulders beyond the mine, or concealed in the thick manzanita.

  “Papa!” I called. “Hey, Papa! Where are you?”

  Off through the gorge the echo carried, repeating my call time after time. Then silence.

  “You see?” Rhoda said, slipping on her shoes. Her face shriveled with pain as she stood up. “Don’t ever get bunions,” she added. Then she went rigid from a quick, mysterious pang, one hand pressing her bottom. “Or hemorrhoids.”

  I wanted to plunge into the brush and flush out my old man, but she looked so forlorn and worn out, like her old Cadillac, that I couldn’t stand to be around her, and I turned and started back to the cabin.

  Frank sat in the doorway.

  “Hey, what’s going on around here?” I said.

  “You didn’t find him?”

  “He’s ducking me. I know he is.”

  “You’re crazy. He was just here.”

  “Here. Since when?”

  “He just left.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “Where’d he go.”

  “Fishing.”

  “Fishing! What for?”

  “To catch fish, stupid.”

  “Oh, shit. Here we go again. More atheist’s lies.”

  He shrugged and killed a mosquito on his arm.

  “What’s hemorrhoids?” I asked.

  He wouldn’t tell me. “Why should I? You’d say it was just another atheist lie.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry. Just tell me where he went.”

  “Downstream.”

  That was a lie too, it had to be, but I had to keep moving, knowing they were playing games with me, I had to keep spinning around, it was no good just standing there and thinking about it, so I trotted along the creek bank, knowing it was a futile journey, plunging on all the same, hordes of minnows sweeping away as I approached, bullfrogs diving for cover. Already the sun was on the western side of the gorge and darkness was rolling in.

  I heard something and stopped. A motor starting up, Rhoda’s Cadillac. I slanted through the brush in a short cut to the road. The Cadillac had backed around and was moving out in boiling dust as I came to the clearing. Rhoda was driving, and I was sure the man beside her was my father. They shot forward, along the narrow trail, bouncing off ruts and holes, headed back to the highway.

  Pooped and disgusted, I flopped on the ground. It was a conspiracy. All afternoon they had tricked me, sending me off in different directions. Why? What was happening? Why was that woman here? I blamed her and Gagliano. They were plotting something against my father, and they wanted me out of the way. Maybe they planned to rub him out. Maybe they’d hit a new gold strike and were afraid I’d find out.

  Well, they weren’t getting away with it. There had to be a confrontation. I got to my feet and marched toward the cabin. It was showdown time. Cards on the table, Gagliano! What’s your game, atheist? Let’s have the truth!

  I kicked open the cabin door and got a surprise.

  Sitting there drinking wine was my father.

  “You raised in a barn?”

  I closed the door carefully.

  “Where you been?”

  “Looking for you,” I said. “Where you been?”

  “Right here.”

  “All the time?”

  “All the time.”

  “Didn’t you hear me calling?”

  “When?”

  It was useless to ask any more questions. I sat down and he poured me a little wine. “Eat something,” he said, pushing the bread and cheese across the table.

  “What’s hemorrhoids?”

  He told me, and I had to push the food away.

  “You’re too young for hemorrhoids.”

  “Not me. That woman.”

  “She’s got her troubles.”

  He rolled some wine in his cheeks, staring thoughtfully. His eyes seemed dipped in blood.

  “Your mother’s a wonderful woman,” he said.

  I just looked at him.

  “Finest woman in the world.”

  He stood up, lurching, and drifted heavily to the door and outside. I went to the door. He sat on a log a few feet away, talking to himself.

  “An angel,” he said.

  Though the twilight was still warm, I put some logs in the stove and stretched out on the couch. Leaning on an elbow I watched my father through the open door. He was like a statue, chin in both hands. It was very quiet but beyond the silence you heard the uproar out there, bullfrogs croaking, birds and crickets singing, bugs buzzing, and the trees sighing in the wind. The crackling fire splashed the ceiling with wild shadows and filled the cabin with warmth.

  ELEVEN

  It felt like midnight when I wakened. Someone had slipped off my jeans and shoes and laid a blanket over me. Shafts of moonlight poured through the windows. The fire was a mound of ashes in the stove. The other two beds were not occupied. I was alone.

  I put on my shoes and jeans and went outside. The moon was gigantic. From the direction of the mine I heard Frank Gagliano’s drunken gravel laughter, then the voice of Rhoda Pruitt, then a roar from my father. I told myself not to go up there, to stay in the cabin, to leave them alone, but I would not listen to myself, and the presence of evil coming from there drew me up the trail, running eagerly on tiptoe enchanted by the sense of evil.

  They did not hear me, nor even the thunder of my heart, nor did they even see me in the frenzy of their cleaving together, grunting and sucking and squirming in the naked heavy slithering of arms and legs, caught up like a ball of squirming white snakes, bodywhite under the moon, grinding on a blanket all knotted together with them, clawing, gasping, groaning. Then I saw my father’s face. It was the face of the devil on the door. I turned and ran.

  I ran to the cabin. I was cold, shivering. I threw wood into the fire. I shuddered, wrapped in a blanket by the fire, teeth clack, clack. Then I was thirsty, drink anything, the wine! I drank and drank. Shivering, hungry, famished. But not their cheese, their hemorrhoid cheese, their bread.

  I found the box with the sandwiches my mother had made for me, and I ate, and it was good in my mouth, sweet and good, but I shivered all the same, the blanket around my shoulders, their fire burning in my face. Then I discovered the bottle she had placed there, wrapped in a cloth, a pint of holy water. She had written upon it, written: “Holy water. Use as nee
ded.”

  Now I knew it, now I would do it. I went up there, running, with the bottle of holy water, a fool with holy water, I knew it, I knew I was a fool, but I didn’t care.

  They had to know I was coming. It was only fair to let them know, they were entitled to that.

  I yelled, “Holy water!”

  I ran, yelling, “Holy water!”

  “Holy water on its way!”

  “Here comes the holy water!”

  Into the shaft I rushed, and they were there on the ground still, white and naked and paralyzed, rigid like white dead people.

  “Look out for the holy water! Here comes the man with the holy water! It’s powerful stuff!”

  I whipped it around, spewing it from the bottle, splashing their dead white bodies. “It’s holy water, folks! It’s powerful stuff!” On their faces, their chests, their hairy parts, throw the holy water, drive the devil out, kill the devil, save my father, free my father!

  Run now run, and I ran down the trail and through the trees along the creek. I awoke sleeping birds, and they flew. I silenced crickets. I brought everything to silence in my path, until I could run no more and threw myself down beside a tree, hiding my face, crazy with shame.

  He found me, my father. He lifted me up and looked me in the face and said, “Are you all right?” He took my hand and we walked in silence back to the cabin. Dimly, vaguely, I heard a car start up and drive away. My father spoke only once.

  “Everything’s going to be fine,” he said.

  I held his thick calloused hand, and it was like the hoof of an animal. But he was my father and he could not have done that, for he was my father and some things were not possible.

  Frank had done it, Frank Gagliano, sitting on the bed, buttoning up his shirt. I went to him, up to him, and hit him in the face with my fist, and he only stared. I began to cry, and I hit him some more. I went crying to the stove, clawing like a dog through a pile of wood until I found a stick, and I hit Frank with it. I saw blood trickle from his nose and I kept hitting. I hit at his eyes, his cheeks, his ears, cutting him with small cuts, and he sat and did not move, and finally he said, ‘That’s enough,” and he took the stick and broke it and threw it into the stove and wiped the blood away with his shirt.