Alligator Bayou - Donna Jo Napoli [63]
“I thought about the things God lets happen, and decided I didn’t want to be His voice on earth. So I left after only a year. I painted my way down the Mississippi, staying with rich people while I did family portraits—and they had libraries that I lost myself in for days.” Frank Raymond crosses the road to a blackberry thicket. He drops berries in my palm. “The Mississippi is just the start. There’s a whole world out there, Calogero. Travel. Don’t let men like Snyder define how you see things. He wears blinders, like a horse.” His voice breaks. He presses his lips together. “Don’t let them put blinders on you: travel.”
First, Miss Clarrie and now, Frank Raymond. Maybe travel is the religion of all teachers.
We pick berries till the mosquitoes come on fierce. We slap like crazy. “You ever gambled on one of the steamers?” I ask.
“Never had anything to gamble with.” He looks at me sideways. “But I’ve watched. Once, I saw a man lose a whole plantation.”
“Really? He must have wanted to shoot himself.”
“No. He shot the man who won.”
I stare. “He killed him?”
“No, but he went to jail for shooting him.” He chews on his bottom lip.
And I notice now—his face really does look thinner than it did last week.
“All that imaginary food you painted in my head was good. But I’m wondering, you hungry for real food yet?”
“Ha!”
“Let’s go home.”
twenty-three
Bang bang bang!
Cirone and I jump up and out of bed. We stand in the hot, dark night turning in circles, stupid as chickens.
Bang bang bang!
“Who’s there?” calls Carlo in Sicilian.
“Who?” shouts Francesco in English.
“Open this damn door before I bust it down.”
“Dr. Hodge? That you?” Francesco goes to the door.
Rosario lights a candle and we all follow Francesco.
Francesco opens the door and Bedda comes skittering in.
“Goats! You and your cursèd goats! There were three of them on my porch tonight. Three! How many times do I have to tell you? You keep your goats at home or I’ll shoot them. This is the last warning. You hear me?”
“You shout. Everybody hear you. God, He hear you.”
“It’s Tuesday, God’s working day, my working day, your working day. So He better hear. And you better hear. Tie up those infernal goats!” Dr. Hodge stumbles off the edge of the porch. He brushes at his cloak and disappears into the night.
Francesco closes the door. “Get back to bed,” he says to us all in Sicilian.
We stand here.
“Bedda’s still inside,” I say at last.
“She can stay inside. Tomorrow after supper you tie her back legs together. That way she won’t go wandering.”
Carlo makes the sign of the cross, then he looks upward with gratitude on his face. That’s how I feel, too.
“What about the other two?” says Rosario. “Dr. Hodge said there were three.”
“The others are idiots. They follow Bedda. She doesn’t go, they don’t go. Get back to sleep.”
Rosario blows out the candle.
I fall onto the bed and roll on my side, away from Cirone’s feet.
Bedda jumps onto Francesco’s bed. He pushes her off. She clomps around the room, around and around. Finally, she makes a loud snort and drops clunk on the floor beside Francesco’s bed. She groans. Francesco sits up and looks at her. “Oh, damn. All right.” Bedda jumps onto his bed and settles down. “Nobody’s going to shoot you,” murmurs Francesco. “Dr. Hodge was just angry. Nobody shoots goats. Goats are too important. And Dr. Hodge is a decent man. He wouldn’t do that to me; he likes me. But from now on, you stay here at night. Understand?”
The room goes quiet.
After a while a whisper comes: “Calo.”
I roll to face Cirone.
“You think Hodge had on his nightdress under that cloak?” He’s speaking English. That’s all he ever uses with me these days.
“I don’t know,” I whisper back. “But it sure must be hot under there in this weather. Hot enough to make me glad I’m no gentleman and I don’t wear cloaks.”
“Maybe he ain’t got nothing on at all under it.” Cirone laughs softly. “He looked like a big loggerhead, he was so angry.”
“Like the one that mashed your foot?”
“Nah, that one was little. He looked like a giant snapper.