“What is it?” asked Clara, though she had already begun to grasp it. Though frightened, she was ready: she had been tested, she realized, and found true.
“I don’t know exactly, Mrs. Collins.” Then: “May I”—she fingered a small gold medallion that hung around her neck on a chain—“may I explain something to you?”
Clara nodded. She sat, in awe, but feeling Ely close at her side once more.
7
Vince Bonali stopped up at the Eagles one night for a whiskey, keeping nothing at home but beer these lean days. From the minute he walked into the place, he was reminded of old Angelo Moroni, and from then on he couldn’t get his mind off him. They had gone to school together, hunted women together, broken into mining and drunk together, were best men at each other’s weddings, had worked their ways up simultaneously to be facebosses out at Number Nine. And they had always teamed up to play pitch and pinochle. Ange with his hat tipped down to his nose, Vince deadpan with a mouthful of cigar, unbeatable goddamn combination: that was mainly what hit him when he walked in.
Sal Ferrero was shooting pool with Georgie Lucci. Vince carried his whiskey over, sat down on a stool to watch. They bandied sober hellos around. Sal and Angie and he used to make a trio, ever since Sal married Ange’s sister. In recent years, Sal only worked as a repairman in the mine, and in a different section at that, so they’d kind of split apart, but family functions always saw them together again, and he and Sal had seen a lot of each other since the disaster. Sal was a small wiry guy, kind of Jewish-looking, but a good goddamn man, knew how to joke around with the best of them, always on hand when help was needed. He was one of the first guys down into the mine after the explosion, told Vince later he’d mainly gone down to look for him and Ange. He’d found Ange, okay. Lucci was one of the four guys in Vince’s gang who’d panicked after the blast and run out without knowing where they were going. Lucci and his buddy Brevnik had lucked out. Lee Cravens and Pooch Minicucci had gone the wrong way. Tomorrow, Vince had to deliver the relief checks to their families. Happy Valentines. He didn’t look forward to it.
“Want in?” offered Sal, straightening up. He had just muffed a shoo-in on the ninespot.
“No, thanks,” said Vince. “I get a bigger charge outa watching the exhibition.”
“Then keep your eye on this’n, Vincenzo old culo,” growled Georgie down the length of his cue. With a soft thuck, followed by a tight pair of clicks, he pocketed both the nine and the fifteen, then proceeded to clean the table.
Sal plunked a half dollar on the table while Georgie was still lining up the last ball. “Never could do any good on Friday the thirteenth,” he said.
So it was, Friday the thirteenth.
“Find anything yet?” asked Georgie, leaning into his shot.
“Not yet.” Vince had found himself caught up in an odd sense of nervous exhilaration the past week or so, but it was starting to fade on him. What kicked it off was saying out loud what he’d wanted to say for thirty years: he was through with coalmining. He’d put in a couple applications around town, talked to different people, boasted how he was commencing the new life, fifty years or no. Everybody’d agreed that yes, by God, he was doing the right thing. Took a lot of nerve to try to learn new tricks when you were staggering into your second half century, too; they all appreciated that. In fact they sometimes harped on it so much, Vince would get a little jittery. Just what the hell could he learn to do? he’d ask himself; then, just as quickly, he’d shove the dumb question aside: let’s see what they ask him to learn first.
Georgie plucked the coin off the felt, emptied the far pockets as Sal racked. “I hear Guido Mello got on at the garage where Lem Filbert’s working,” he said, and chalked his cue.
“Yeah, that’s right,” Vince said. He’d tried there, asked too late. Awful lot of guys seemed to have the same idea he had.
Vince’s kids, the two still at home, Charlie and Angie, had showed right off they were pleased, had talked up the change, they made big plans for the future. Charlie, actually getting halfway friendly to him for the first time in the kid’s useless life, would flash his big toothy smile and ask from time to time what had turned up. Vince always returned the boy a healthy line. Give the kid a little ambition by example. Began to consider taking him fishing when spring came on, Charlie had never taken an interest like the other boys, go upstate for a couple days maybe, sleep out. If he’d just stop snapping his goddamn fingers.
Georgie broke the racked balls with a tremendous splat. Vince himself preferred to break soft, but Lucci liked the wide-open game. “Pretty big show last week,” Lucci said.
“Yeah?” asked Vince mechanically. Heard some cards rattling loosely against each other over near the bar, then the flick flick flick of the deal. Caught himself glancing around for Ange.
Lucci, trapped in the wide scatter of balls, had to use two cushions to get at the one, sitting like a pale orange near a sidepocket. He escorted the ball with twists of his hips, grunts and Italian obscenities, but missed just the same. “Yeah,” he said, picking up the chalk. “I think the least our Big Number One Hero could’ve done is share some of that fucking loot with his old buddies.”
At first, Vince didn’t know what the hell Lucci was talking about. Wasn’t paying attention. “Oh, you mean Bruno,” he said after a moment. “Well, buddy, those are the breaks.”
Sal stared across the green expanse of the table toward Vince, then looked down as though studying his shot. Vince knew what it meant. Sal was feeling it, too. Things were upsidedown. Self-consciously, Vince swallowed down his whiskey, moseyed back to the bar for another.
He leaned on the bar awhile, staring glumly into his sweating glass, wondering why the hell he didn’t just go on home. Felt out of place. Like an old man at a kids’ party. What was wrong? He had tried to talk it out with Etta, but she never said anything. That’s the way she was, he hadn’t expected otherwise, been just like that for the thirty years they’d been married. She’d absorb his harangues and projected joys into her big-spread 300-pound body, return some little joke or other, then leave him to make his own decisions. True, he sometimes wished she’d turn on a little enthusiasm once in awhile, but on the other hand, whenever the kids with their interminable questions began to get to him, it was a large relief to have her friendly silence around.
They had both of them broken all the old family traditions, Etta the German ones, Vince the Italian, when they got married. Her folks over in Randolph Junction weren’t so bad, though they hardly ever got over to see them, but Vince’s old man had nearly pitched him bodily right out of the goddamn house when he found out. Finally, things had settled down, of course, as they always do. Etta was Catholic at least, helluva lot better one than Vince or most of his family for that matter, and that had made it easier on Mama. She worked hard, had got all the kids through their catechisms and their schoolwork, kept them clean and looking neat even through hard times — and they’d known plenty — never failed to keep hot food in the whole family. So, eventually, his family had got used to her, made stale jokes about the difference between potatoes and pastas, even slipped and spoke Italian at her sometimes, and then they’d all laugh. Underneath, it probably pissed Etta off a little, Vince figured; she was still a German, even if her name did come to be Bonali, and it seemed like sometimes she got the idea they did it as a kind of insult. But Etta had decent manners, always knew when to take it easy; really, by God, they got along fine. And he felt troubled now that he couldn’t give her more to hope for in her old age.