They got a letter one day from the Marine Corps, inquiring into the whereabouts of their son Charles Josef, who, the letter said, had been AWOL since the seventh of April. Vince groaned and Etta bawled, but they’d both pretty much guessed as much. They wrote back that he had visited them on Easter weekend but that they had no idea where he had gone afterwards; then sent letters to the other kids in the family to let them know about it, in case he showed up with one of them. “Shit, I’m sorry,” Vince said that day, rocking all alone out on the front porch, and he cried awhile by himself.
It was all empty, the town was falling all apart, soon there wouldn’t be anybody left around but him. No mines, no paper, businesses closing. The clubs would go soon. He looked across the table and there was Ange Moroni, hat tipped down to his nose, grinning at his cards. Mike Strelchuk and Carlo Juliano playing with them. Why did he remember that? He didn’t know, but it was plain as day. There was a big crowd, loud music, and they were winning. Where did it go: that excitement?
One evening just as the ten-o’clock newscast was coming on, all they had to keep plugged into the world now that the Chronicle was closed, Vince stood to stretch, chanced to gaze out the window just in time to see Ted Cavanaugh’s red Lincoln swing up at the curb. He ran into the bedroom, woke Etta up. “Hey! Wake up! Ted’s coming! I just saw his car out front!” Looked frantically for a tie.
“Angie’s got a date with his boy,” Etta replied sleepily, and rolled over hugely.
Vince went back to the door, peeked out. It was true, nobody was getting out. He went in to watch the news and sports. Began to understand a few of the remarks Angie had been making of late, why she’d seemed almost to hate him. Hours passed. He watched the midnight movie, old swashbuckler, hardly followed it. Time it was over, having watched all those flashing swords, he was in a sweat, imagining just about every grotesque perversion conceivable. When she finally came in, he called to her. “I’m tired, Dad,” she snapped, sounding tough. Whorish. “Let’s have confessions tomorrow.”
The kid might not have laid her, but he’d sure mussed her up. “Who you been wrestling with?” he asked dully, then saw that her face was all streaked with tears.
“Oh, please!” she cried, and ran into her room. For a long time, he heard her sobbing in there. It naturally occurred to him what the matter was. He’d have Etta ask tomorrow. “Ted, old buddy, I hate to tell you, but you and me is about to become related, in a manner of speaking.” But shit, the bastard would find a way out of it, buy off the doctors or the judges or something. It’d be Vince who’d wind up in the jug afterwards, and little Angie to raise a bastard. Things were bad. In fact, they were so bad that when he found out the next day that this had not been the problem, that it was just a routine breakup, he almost found himself feeling let down.
That was the kind of mood he was in when Wally Brevnik and Georgie Lucci came by his house to say good-bye. They told him they were going up North together, get some kind of factory work. They’d both been in his gang at the mine, and they said they still thought he was the best goddamn faceboss that mine had ever had. They didn’t say anything about mayors, but told him they sure as hell hated to say good-bye.
Vince told them it hurt him to see them go, too. Seemed like just about everybody in town was bugging out on him. Again, he wanted to tell them about the big hole he was looking into, about how afraid he was.
Wally said that by God they’d write for him when they found something good, figured it would only take them a couple weeks. “Shit, a man of your ability and experience, Vince, you’ll have no trouble.”
Vince got a little excited about that, said for them not to forget now, hell, it’d be just like down in the mine, all of them working together, and they all laughed about that, and then they were gone. Last thing he heard, as he walked them out to their car and saw them off, was Ben Wosznik on the car radio singing that Brunist song that was such a big hit these days. They waved at each other until they turned a corner a couple blocks down. He turned around, that hillbilly melody still ringing in his head, and there was the old house. Angie’s bike up against the bright yellow porch. On the rocker: a new calico pillow that Etta had made for him. Stop kidding yourself, he said. You ain’t going nowhere.
Then one night, he went for a walk. He was trying to get a new outlook. He had made mistakes, but who in this town hadn’t? He walked under leafy trees, past flowering bushes and lawns with a new green nap, the air laden with vegetable renascence. This town wasn’t through yet, and neither was he. Why couldn’t he make a new start? The ballooning May moon smiled down on him as though to say: it goes on; only men quit.
He found he had wandered into the old housing development where Wanda lived. Quiet, empty, badly lit, yet bright in the moonlight. Decided to stop by, what the hell, make some sort of apology. She must be feeling about as cruddy as he was. It didn’t matter much anymore who saw him or what they thought. And he felt like a wrong had to be righted, no matter how it was misread afterwards. He even thought about going home to get Etta and bringing her with him, but it was a long walk. He located Wanda’s house, but it was dark. He didn’t see curtains up, remembered then that she had given everything away. Jesus, the poor kid, all she had was the bare walls! Then he saw the FOR RENT sign sticking up in the clay of the front yard. Gone. With the rest of them. Like Sal said, hard to believe it had really happened. He felt relieved, but vaguely disappointed at the same time. “Well, God bless her,” he said, not knowing quite what he meant by it.
Moseying back, he chanced to pass the old Bruno house. It sat like a spook there in a tunic of moonlight, no longer protected. They sure got Bruno and the old lady put away fast, had to give them credit for that much. Vince noticed that the windows and doors were broken. He wandered up … then once on the porch, on in. A pale ghostly light hung dustily throughout. Things looked pretty busted up. He stood in the front room and looked about him on the melancholy scene. Did they see it would come to this? In the dining room, a huge glass chandelier lay splattered all over the floor, so that it crunched wherever he walked. His eyes were adjusted to the dark now, and he saw that the drapes had been slashed, chairs broken up, upholstery ripped, and he remembered his own demolition of the Church of the Nazarene. “What do we do it for, God?” he asked aloud, and wouldn’t have been too surprised to get an answer. “Do You understand what makes it happen? Can You forgive it?”
He felt he needed something by which to remember his coming here, to remember the whole Brunist story, and, since it was the nearest at hand, he picked up a fragment of the broken chandelier. He held it up toward the moonlight and, miraculously, a rainbow danced and shimmered in it. He wandered through the other rooms, and throughout there was the sound of glass underfoot like slate in the mine, wallpaper stripped and hanging in spectral shreds, black distorted objects silhouetted against the pallid light. In the kitchen he found a staircase, mounted it. Things upstairs were no different. In the bathroom, even the fixtures had been torn out and robbed.
He heard sirens. He thought it might be another fire. The last one had brought him so much luck, he couldn’t resist chasing this one. And this time there’d be no screwing up. He started for the stairs, but realized the sirens were wailing up right out in front. No bells: must be an ambulance. Or the cops! Somebody had seen him come in! He looked frantically for a hidingplace, but the rooms were mostly barren. Heard them on the porch, heard the rattle of the door and the crunch of glass as they shoved on in. “This way!” That was Dee Romano! “The guy who called said we’d find him upstairs.” Vince’s heart raced, his mind seemed frozen. A back window. Might be a chance. Maybe a porch roof below. Heard them rumbling up the stairs. Window in the back bedroom, big one, but also a bed. He ducked under … and ducked right out again. Somebody already under there. Galloped on hands and knees to a closet, rolled inside. The light came on. Closet door was half open, but he couldn’t close it now. He huddled, shaking, in a corner. “I smell it,” said Romano. He could hear them bumping to their knees. “And here he is!” said Monk Wallace. “Jee-ee-zuss!” Old Willie scrambled out of there. “Boys, I’m retirin’!” he said. “What should we do?” asked Wallace. “Not our job,” said Romano. “We don’t have to pick it up.” They followed Willie out, leaving the light burning. Vince heard them talking down the stairs. More people down there. He supposed they’d keep coming all night. It’d be a long time before the place emptied out and he could leave. Meanwhile, he lay curled up there in a corner of the closet, bawling like a newborn baby. “Don’t leave me again!” he sobbed. “Without You, God, it’s horrible!” He had to still his sobs from time to time, because others, curious, came up to look, to shudder, to shrink away. “Boy, you never know, hunh?” “You said it, man!” “Like he just stretched out there and kicked off.” “Really weird.” “They all were.” Vince fingered the small piece of glass from the chandelier, pressed shut his eyes. Santa Maria, madre di Dio, pregate per noi peccatori, adesso e nell’ ora della nostra morte. Così sia.