When they married, Etta was a pretty exciting catch, tall and ripe-bodied and country fresh, though making a family had quickly ballooned her into the big woman she was now. Together, the two of them had brought off seven kids, all of them still alive and all well reared — well, all but Charlie maybe. The first five were married, living in different parts of the United States, and Angie, the youngest, was still in high school. It was Charlie who really burned Vince’s ass, just swaggering around all day, snapping his fingers, cracking his knuckles, dangling a butt in his thick lips — but still, goddamn it, Vince understood. He understood how it was to grow up in a house where the old man was out of work half the time and where there didn’t seem to be any real future. As Charlie himself had put it, hurting Vince more than the kid knew: “You saw how Ange got it. That’s the real future, man!”
A chair scraped behind him, someone called out his name. Vince took a drink, lazed around, keeping one elbow on the bar. Rattle of cards. “Chair open, Bonali,” came the twang. Chester Johnson, toothy hillbilly, another guy from Vince’s shift, but a different part of the mine. They were all hanging around up here, Jesus, the whole damned mine. What there was left. Johnson fluttered the cards in a loose-wristed shuffle. “Wanna sit in as my partner a hand or two?”
No, thanks, Vince thought, but there was something in the soft tease of the shuffle, persuasive presence of jacks in that thin deck, that could set the moment aright if not the times … and next thing he knew, he found himself straddling an old metal folding chair, staring half-blind at harsh little cardboard faces who this night said just nothing to him. Johnson kept yakking away, couldn’t keep his goddamn mouth shut five seconds, talked off every play he made, kept overbidding. Vince lit a cigar, glared through the hovering smoke at Johnson.
“What really grinds my ass,” Johnson was whining, “is that outa ninety-eight possible guys, that fuckin’ crybaby had to be the lucky dolly.”
Vince looked up sharply. The other two guys said nothing, stared at their cards. So at least he wasn’t the only one, that was plain. He’d been feeling guilty about his resentment at the fanfare surrounding Bruno, but maybe if the other guys like Lucci and Johnson felt like he did, there was cause. Still in his miner’s clothes, still black with that stinking soot, Vince had made his visit that night to the gymnasium, had gone there to see Ange Moroni’s cadaver. One of four long black lumps laid out side by side with a fifth in a rubber bag. On a tarp on the basketball floor. Ange’s uppers were missing, black eyelids half open, showing a watery white stuff below that didn’t look like eyeballs. Vince, though he rarely did now, had prayed for Ange. And for himself and all the other guys.
“Jesus, Bonali!” cackled Johnson. “You remember that fuckin’ poem?”
“Three,” snapped Vince, cutting him off. Both red jacks.
“Aw, four,” Johnson drawled, topping him. Tipped his scrawny head one way, then the other, shrugged, grinned. “Spades, I reckon. Sure hope you got the jig, buddy.” They went down fast. Vince shuffled, cracked the cards roughly. “They makin’ all this big fuss, but shit, I bet he never knowed what hit him.” Johnson pushed on, the others nodding absently. Theme of the week apparently. Harsh nasal voice that pricked the ear: “Too many good goddamn guys got it.” Vince’s hands shook as he dealt the cards around. Johnson watched. “Guys like old Lee Cravens and old Ange Moroni and—”
“One good thing about Moroni,” Vince butted in. “He knew how to keep his fucking mouth shut in a card game.”
Johnson leaned back on two chair legs, stared at his cards a moment, then flipped them down on the table. “I dunno, boys, I think I’ve had enough,” he said, flicker of a grin crossing his wide lipless mouth. “Air’s got a mite sour.”
“Suits me,” said Vince, and shoved his chair back. Tossed down the rest of his whiskey, walked out. Friday the thirteenth. Felt rotten, really rotten. Hated Johnson, hated Bruno, hated even himself. Down the hill, man. “What a fucked-up world!” he muttered.
Even with the welcome money in his hand, Vince got no fun out of the idea of visiting the Minicucci and Cravens homes next morning. Stirring up the ashes, that’s all. He’d seen nearly all of the families at the mass funerals about a month ago, had steered clear of them since. Just didn’t feel comfortable, didn’t know what to say, knew they couldn’t help but resent that he had got out.
Pooch wasn’t married — as old Ange used to say: why waste all that artillery in just one little mousehole? — but his folks more or less depended on him, so the charity committee had awarded them a full share of the money. Vince tried to take care of the business out on the front porch, but they dragged him on in, said it was too cold, sat him down in one of their overstuffed chairs, gave him wine, talked about Pooch and how he’d looked so fine at the funeral, and how badly they did need the money.
The room was overheated, bore that weighted odor of old people, old food, old dust, made Vince recall his Mama the last couple years before she died. Vince only understood about half the Italian. Slipping away from him. The old woman sucked her dry withered lips, spoke of God’s ominous ways, how important it was to be ready at all times, one never knew, un giorno o l’altro, life was brief and inscrutable. Vince nodded gravely, growing sleepy. Si, una bolla di sapone, he acknowledged, a soapbubble, his Mama’s pet commentary on life in this world. Vince fidgeted in the chair to keep awake, covered up best he could, finally had to admit he hadn’t been to Mass in over three years. Tre anni! Ever since the kids had grown up, he said, but, yes, she was right, he figured to get started back, you never knew, any moment, a qualsiasi ora.
“Ecco il momento!” the old woman said, wagging her finger. And as she rattled on, Vince remembered his old blind grandmother telling him about hell when he was a boy. She was an expert on hell. If Vince ever ended up there, he was sure he’d find his way around, she’d imbedded forever in him a mental map of the place. He had nearly forgot, but now he found he was missing not a word of the old lady’s Italian, it was all there, he felt once more the claws on his flesh, the pincers plucking out his nails, foul mouths sucking out his eyes. Rapt but edgy, a boy again, he listened. The dwarfish television set pitched a silent nervous image into the room. Pooch’s old man was nodding off. “Tre anni!” He apologized, thanked her for the wine, left somehow oddly grateful.
But in West Condon’s old housing development, hell lost its charm, turned gray, and he grew old again. Old and tired and cold. He’d got overheated in the Minicucci living room, and the cold was bitter. Get this over with, get home, take a hot bath. Wanda Cravens met him at the tattered screen door with a baby in her arms, toddler hanging on from below. Another kid whined somewhere inside. Never a very big girl, she now seemed more drawn than ever. Must not weigh even a hundred pounds, Vince thought. He felt sorry for her, glad he was bringing some money. He told her what he was there for, and she asked him on in.
Her living room was a wreck of cluttered junk, far from clean, far from warm, winter crawling across the bare floor, cockroaches scrambling alongside the wallboards. It looked more like a house after somebody had moved out than a place someone was living in. Vince found an arm of a waddy chair he thought would hold him, sat down gingerly against it. Wanda dropped the baby and toddler on a ragged throw rug in a corner with the cockroaches, shooed the older one, boy about three or four, on out the door, turned wearily toward Vince. She sure had it tough, okay. With a thin white hand, she pushed back a snarl of sandy-colored hair from her forehead, accepted the check he held out to her. They exchanged only a few words. Her voice was thin, had a hopeless lost distance about it.