Alligator Bayou - Donna Jo Napoli [9]
“Willy Rogers took a different way home.” Francesco unbuttons the top of his shirt and makes a show of scratching his chest, but I know he’s touching the crucifix that hangs around his neck. There’s a small dove in the center—the spirit of the Holy Ghost. “He must have heard I was waiting for him by the tracks.”
Does Francesco know my part in this? I watch their faces, but they don’t look at me.
“Finished, then,” says Carlo.
“He learned his lesson.” Francesco drops onto a bench.
Carlo turns and dumps the pasta into the boiling water, as though this is just an ordinary day.
So that’s the end of it. Squabbles in America end as fast as in Sicily. I’ve seen grown men roll in the dirt fighting, then lean on each other drinking whisky the next day.
“Go call everyone,” Carlo says to me.
In the bedroom the others are playing cards. I poke my head through the doorway. “Carlo says to come.”
We troop into the front room.
Carlo fills the wash pan with hot water from the iron teakettle. We dip in wash cloths and clean our faces and necks and hands, then sit at the table.
Rosario twists the tips of his mustache. All my uncles have mustaches that trail out to each side of their mouths. But Rosario curls his upward, while the others just let them hang. Cirone and I don’t have mustaches yet, but Cirone’s growing sideburns, like Rosario. Rosario points at the gun in the corner. “Someone going hunting?”
“Nah,” says Carlo, serving the food. “Too tired.” He gives me a quick look, but he doesn’t have to. I know how to keep quiet.
Everyone digs in. We eat long, flat pasta—pappardelle. The same as most nights. They’re the easiest shapes to cut.
Carlo does all the cooking. In a way he’s the one who really makes us a family, ’cause that’s what we become when we sit down at this table to eat.
The pasta is covered with fresh spinach and Italian olive oil that we order through New Orleans. So good. We finish and wipe the bottom of our bowls with bread. Then there’s baby artichokes, fried whole. I eat and eat. Someday I should learn to cook. If I ever get a wife, maybe it’ll help to know a little something.
Especially if she cooks ’gators.
I gnaw on the crusty end of the bread.
Carlo serves the meat. We have this kind a lot. Boys trade it for fruits and vegetables. Suddenly I sit up tall as the idea comes: “Is this ’gator?”
“Possum,” says Francesco.
“What’s that?”
“We don’t have them in Sicily,” says Carlo. “Long tails. They hang from trees.”
“Nasty things that run around at night,” mutters Giuseppe.
“But nasty tastes good,” says Carlo. “Eat.”
We don’t talk much. After a long day of work, eating is too important to interrupt with words. We save talk for between courses.
We’re just getting to the salad and the plate of batter-fried zucchini flowers when there’s a thump on the ground out front. Then another. Then lots.
Someone knocks.
My eyes go to the gun in the corner.
But Francesco stays seated; he jerks his chin at me. I get up and force myself to open the door as if it’s nothing special.
Joe Evans stands there, hat in hands. Three goats run around him, butting each other and chasing our rooster off into the bushes.
“Let him in,” says Francesco in Sicilian. We don’t have to use English in front of Joe. He works for Francesco in the fields. Lots of men work for Francesco on and off, but Joe’s worked for him steady for a long time.
Joe comes in.
So do two of the goats—Bedda and Bruttu. Bedda’s our oldest doe and Bruttu’s our only adult billy. I herd them back out with my knees.
“No, no.” Francesco beckons. “Bedda can come in. Not Bruttu. Just Bedda.”
Bedda clambers over my knee and scampers to Francesco. He swears that doe understands Sicilian, and I believe it. I hold back Bruttu and shut the door in his face.
“Evening, sir,” says Joe.
“Evening,” says Francesco, switching to English. He rubs Bedda with a closed fist on the top of her knobby head, right between the ears. She lifts her chin to push up against his hand in pleasure. Francesco laughs at her and gestures to Joe with his other hand. “You want sit? Carlo