The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (158 page)

In January of 1908, Vincenzo brought home a paper printed and
distributed by the American Woolen and Textile Company of Three Rivers, Connecticut. That day at the tavern, Vincenzo reported, there had been much excitement about the paper from the saloon customers. “Read it, Domenico!” Vincenzo ordered me. “
Read!
”

The paper said the company had just received a contract from the Government of the United States of America for the manufacture of cotton and wool for sailors’ coats and uniforms. American Woolen and Textile paid a fair wage and they were hiring, the paper said. They ran a company store that sold goods to workers at low prices. They welcomed Italians to their ranks. Three Rivers, Connecticut, Vincenzo had heard that day, already had a sizable and growing population of
siciliani
and, no doubt, an eligible
siciliana
or two as well. According to Vincenzo, half a dozen customers at the
taverna
had already left Brooklyn to take jobs there.

My brother Pasquale, usually the most passive of men, was resistant to the idea of relocating. “Where is this Three Rivers, Connecticut, anyway?” he asked. “If it is in the Wild West, we could be shot in our hearts with arrows!” Pasquale, who was sometimes as dim as dust, had been watching out for Indians since we set foot in
Stati Uniti.

That evening both of my brothers accompanied me to the New York Public Library. Both stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed as my finger traced on the page of the atlas the short distance from New York to Three Rivers. My friend, the one-eyed librarian, confirmed that the town was only a four-hour train ride away. We two whispered in English of the opportunity of working at the mills and of Pasquale’s fear of being killed by wild Indians. The librarian smiled and told me to tell Pasquale that he would have to travel further than Connecticut to live the life of a cowboy! There were no savages hiding in the hills of Connecticut.

Pasquale and Vincenzo smiled, too, though neither spoke much English beyond “Please” and “Thank you” and “How much?” Vincenzo said to Pasquale in Italian, “This one-eyed hag must be
negotiating with Domenico the price of spending an evening of joy in my bed.”

Pasquale’s laughter echoed loudly enough in the hushed, high-ceilinged room to raise the heads of several patrons and to put a frown on the face of my friend the librarian.

“Please!” I warned my brothers in Italian. “You are in a hall of great books! Act in a manner befitting the honor of the name Tempesta!”

I resumed my conversation with the librarian.

“My robust parts and my good looks are so exciting this hag,” Vincenzo told Pasquale, “that she is undressing me with her one good eye. Better be careful,
bella donna
, or the big sausage hiding in my pants will stir and poke out your other eye as well!”

Now Pasquale’s loud guffaws all but shook the books off the shelves. Librarians and patrons stared crossly at us from all points in the massive reading room. “I apologize for the stupidness of my brothers,” I told One-Eye.

“The
stupidity
of your brothers,” she corrected me. “Say it: the
stupidity.
”

“Yes, yes,
grazie
, the
stupidity
of my brothers,” I repeated. Then I yanked both brothers by the ear and pulled them toward the library’s main entrance.

The following afternoon, a Saturday, we boarded the train from New York to Three Rivers. We liked what we saw of both the mill and the town. Wages were good, rent was cheap, and a meal downtown of steak and potatoes cost twenty-five cents less than it did in Brooklyn. More on the plate, too!

The three of us—my brothers and I—were hired as dyers in Plant Number 2 at American Woolen and Textile. We rented a room at
Signora
Saveria Siragusa’s boardinghouse on Pleasant Hill.
Signora
Siragusa had herself grown up in the foothills of Sicily and was happy to share her house with us for the sum of one dollar, fifty cents apiece, to be paid each week after breakfast on Saturday mornings.

21 July 1949

I worked second shift at American Woolen and Textile and quickly impressed the mill bosses with my industry and seriousness of purpose. My friend the librarian had been both right and wrong. No Indians hid in the trees in Connecticut, but one of them worked alongside me at the mill. His name was Nabby Drinkwater. He was my partner at the dye vat, but he was a lazy son of a bitch and slowed me down. We were paid for piecework and Drinkwater’s sluggish pace reached in and stole money from my pocket. “Faster!” I used to tell that
figliu d’una mingia
. “Work faster!”

Drinkwater tried to make me his friend—tried to get me to go to his house or out to a tavern sometimes—but I ignored his foolish talk and pretended not to understand him.
Siciliani
trust family first, then villagers, then fellow countrymen. I trusted no one else, especially not shifty dark-skinned Indians whose idleness stole money from my pocket!

I couldn’t cuff Drinkwater on the head to make him work faster, but I could cuff my brother Pasquale or my brother Vincenzo. If one of my brothers was my partner at the dye vat, I calculated, we would show these
‘Mericani
what hard work looked like. One Saturday, at the end of my shift, while the other workers ran home to their sleep and their amusements, I followed the boss dyer, Bryce, to the agent’s glass-walled office. All that afternoon and evening, I had been rehearsing in English my reasons why it would be wise for American Woolen and Textile to pull one of my brothers away from his assigned work and put him to work with me instead. Now I knocked on the agent’s door. I would have not only Bryce’s ear, but the ear of the big boss, too. Flynn, the agent—the
pezzo grosso.

Bryce and Flynn smirked when they saw me standing there. Their cigar smoke hung in the air like clouds over Mount Etna. “Who’s
this
organ-grinder?” Flynn asked.

The two both smiled and stared at me. “New dyer,” Bryce said.
“Just hired him this week.” He turned to me, asking me what I wanted, addressing me in a voice meant to scare me away.

“That Indian slows me down,” I said. “I can earn a better wage if my work is not tied to his work.”

“Who’s he talking about?” Flynn asked.

“Nabby Drinkwater,” Bryce said.

“Well, well, this is just what we need,” the boss mumbled. “Some wop calling the shots around here. Call his bluff, why don’t you? Teach this dago a lesson. Just don’t fuck with production.”

My brain raced.
Call his bluff? Call his bluff?
I didn’t know
Call his bluff.
Goddamn crazy English language.

Bryce put his arm around my shoulder in a gesture of false friendship. He said he was glad that he had hired such a dedicated worker as I—and a genius besides. “You’re so smart, maybe
you
should be boss dyer instead of me. What do you think?”

Dangerous for me if I told him what I really thought: that it was a good idea. Instead, I stood there and shut my mouth.

“So Drinkwater slows you down, eh?” Bryce said. “Well, I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. Starting tomorrow, we’ll transfer Nabby to the finishing department. You can work all by your lonesome—do your job
and
his at your superior rate of speed. How does that sound?”

Their laughter at my expense began even before the door closed behind me. “I’ll have the Indian clean the storage room and then get him the hell back in there before this arrogant wop keels over,” Bryce told Flynn,
sotto voce
. “He won’t know whether he’s coming or going by the time an hour’s up. That’ll shut him up.”

That morning I went home to the boardinghouse but could not sleep. Now they were out to get Domenico Tempesta. To break the man who only wanted to make good money for doing good work. Jealousy of superior men was everywhere, I realized—on both sides of the sea. Even foremen and agents were jealous of me.

The first shift without the Indian was the worst. I worked through dinner break, soaked in my own sweat, not even taking the
time to look up at the other workers. Still, I knew they were laughing at me. I
lost
money that night. The second night went a little better (broke even). The third night was easier still. By the end of that week, I had conditioned myself for the two-person job they had given me to break me down. Working alone, I had increased the second-shift production of two men! After that, the snickering stopped, all right. The other dyers resented my industry. Bryce, too. But I had gotten Flynn’s attention. Flynn began to regard me as a worker to watch and consult.

Gradually, I rose through the ranks from laborer to second hand. Then, in 1916, a blood vessel burst inside Bryce’s brain. Good riddance to that son of a bitch. At his funeral, I approached Flynn and asked for the dead man’s job. “We’ll see,” Flynn said. “But Jesus Christ, man, wait until he’s cold.” Through three long nights’ worth of work, I waited for Flynn’s decision. Then the good news came. Flynn called me into his office so that he and I could have “a little chat.” By the time I left, I had been named American Woolen and Textile’s first boss dyer of Italian heritage!

Sons of Italy, how had this great thing happened? It had happened through hard work and seriousness of purpose. These are the keys to success in
Stati Uniti
! Industry like mine is what has made America great!

24 July 1949

Bad cold for third day. I told that good-for-nothing daughter of mine to cut up an onion and wrap it up in cheesecloth for me to wear on my head and draw out the mucus, but she says, “Go lie down, Papa. Take a nap.”

“What I do is my business,
Signorina
Stupid-Head!” I told her back. “Do as you’re told and get me my goddamned poultice!” I don’t want her snooping around these words of mine. . . . Where was I? My promotion? Ah, yes.

No more piecework for Domenico Tempesta! In addition to my work at the mill, now at a fixed salary of thirty-five cents an hour, I took small masonry and repair jobs during the spring and summer months. Little by little, one penny after another penny, I saved my money rather than wasting it on pleasures like women and drink and stage shows. I made it my business to befriend an old Yankee dairy farmer named Rosemark. Rosemark’s time was running out; he had property at the top of Hollyhock Hill but no sons to inherit it. He told me he had been talking to the big shots of the town of Three Rivers—Shanley, that goddamned crooked mayor, and his cronies. He wanted to make sure his wife would be provided for. I saw opportunity approaching. If Rosemark sold his land to the town, he told me, the town would divide the property into half-acre city lots. I had my eyes on these.

Too sick today, too much mucus in my head. I’ll go listen to those no-good Dodgers on the radio and take a nap now, but not because that useless daughter of mine told me to. I thought of it before she said it.

26 July 1949

Neither of my brothers lasted at the mill. Soon after he was hired, Vincenzo was moved to the picking department, a demotion, and then was fired for running a small numbers game for American Woolen and Textile workers. Some of the foremen were regular players in Vincenzo’s games of chance, but they acted the parts of pious saints when the police sergeant came to ask questions with Flynn, the agent, by his side. Of course, I was above suspicion during this little
investigazione
. I would never have wasted my money on gambling when good land would soon be up for sale. But my brother Vincenzo got the boot.

Vincenzo next became a greengrocer at Hurok’s Market, where his good looks and foolish antics bedeviled lady customers into
buying more bananas and beans than they needed. Customers of Cranston’s Market, on the opposite side of the street from Hurok’s, began to walk across the road just to buy their produce from my crazy brother. The Huroks were Jews—happy to put up with Vincenzo’s nonsense if it meant ten pennies in their pocket instead of nine. “He’s a nice boy, your brother,” Mrs. Hurok told me once, when I stopped in for a pound of roasted peanuts. “He’s a stupid-head,” I responded, but not without some small sense of pride at her remark. Compliments about Vincenzo were as rare as hen’s teeth, but perhaps, at long last, my good example had begun to sink into his stubborn
cocuzza.

Customers would follow Vincenzo around the store, staring or calling his name—this much I witnessed myself. Vincenzo would whisper flattery into the ear of one woman, turn and sing a snatch of Verdi to another. His fruit-peddling each day was a performance!

“Hurok has increased my wage to seven dollars a week!” Vincenzo boasted one night at the boardinghouse. “It’s because I’m so good for business!”

“Pfft,” I said, waving my hand at him. “I make twenty-three dollars and fifty cents a week. What talent does it take to polish and pile fruit?” Still, I wrote a picture postcard to Mama, telling her of Vincenzo’s modest success and my own more substantial achievements. That farmer up on Hollyhock Hill had died suddenly and I’d heard that the town was going to go ahead and buy his land and resell. I wrote to Mama that someday soon I would be a property owner just as my grandparents, the Ciccias, had been.

Bah! My pride in my brother Vincenzo was a boat that sank soon enough. Many of those women who visited him by day at Hurok’s invited him to visit them after dark as well. Although my own good name was above reproach, tongue-wagging
siciliani
began to buzz like mosquitoes about my brother’s life under the sheets with a regular League of Nations of willing women—not only Italians, but also Irish, Polish, Ukrainian—even that pockmarked Hungarian widow who ran the saloon on River Street. That one was
not much younger than Mama and had a mustache thick enough to twirl on the ends! It was shameful but true: Vincenzo would poke his thing anywhere.

One day, that son of a bitch McNulty, monsignor of the Church of St. Mary of Jesus Christ, came to the dye room at American Woolen and Textile for the purpose of speaking to me. At his arm was Flynn, the agent—the big boss. Like my brothers and me, Flynn was a parishioner of St. Mary’s. He was also a friend of the monsignor and a big contributor to the church. The monsignor reminded us of this every Sunday, nodding and smiling at Flynn, who sat with his family in the front pew reserved specially for Mr.
Pezzo Grosso
.