Elizabeth Street - Laurie Fabiano [20]
Two-Toed Nick opened his flask of wine. “Nunzio, where you go after this joba?”
“Joba.” “The job.” The word was always said with such reverence that Nunzio envisioned it as a satin-coated deity. He had been on this job eight weeks, and it was coming to an end. “I don’t know. But I want a big one so I lose no days and return to Scilla.”
“You Calabresi, always thinking you’re going home.”
“Sicilians are so different?” Nunzio nodded to another man at the fire. “Saint Carmine told me he counts the days on his bedroom wall.”
Two-Toed Nick looked offended. “Saint Carmine is not Siciliano. He’s Napolitano. And besides,” he said with a smile, “he’s not right in the head.”
“Don’t tell that story.” Carmine didn’t move as he spoke and continued puffing on his cigar.
“Nunzio, didn’t you ever wonder why they call him Saint Carmine? It’s certainly not because he worships at a certain house on Mulberry Street.”
The laughter started.
“It’s not funny,” protested Carmine, who got up in a dramatic huff and pretended to go back to work.
Two-Toed Nick took Carmine’s exit as permission to continue.
“Like I said, Saint Carmine is Napolitano and every few years the Napolitanos have to deal with Vesuvius coughing up hot lava. One time the lava, it was coming straight for Carmine’s village. Carmine went to the church, and he ripped the statue of Saint Gennaro from the altar and carried it halfway up the mountain. Then he takes Saint Gennaro, and he puts him down in the path of the lava.”
Two-Toed Nick stood to reenact the story, shaking his finger and mimicking Carmine’s gruff voice. “Carmine says, ‘Saint Gennaro, we pray to you, we give you a big festival, we give you money. Now, you do your job—make this lava go away from our village.’ Then Carmine, he stood and waited as the hot rock flowed. The lava, it headed straight for Saint Gennaro and Carmine’s village. Carmine, he sees the saint is doing nothing, and he goes pazzo. He starts throwing rocks at the statue screaming, ‘You dirty bum! You freeloader!’ Carmine keeps throwing those rocks as he’s running for his life down the mountain.”
The men, despite having heard the story before, cried from laughing so hard. Nunzio, who kept trying to catch his breath, laughed hardest and at the same time debated whether to write Giovanna to tell her this story. He knew she would let loose the throaty laugh that he loved, but he could also imagine her crossing herself, filled with guilt for laughing when a saint was involved.
When Nunzio caught his breath and ended his silent debate, he asked, “And what of the village? Cos’è successo?”
“Who knows? Carmine, he kept running right onto a boat and came here!”
The men collapsed again into laughter as the foreman walked by. “Hey, you gang-o-dagos, enough lounging around. Get your sorry garlic asses back to work.”
Nunzio had started on the job as a laborer. He mixed mortar and loaded wheelbarrows with piles of bricks, delivering them to the bricklayers. He hadn’t done such mind-numbing, backbreaking work since he was a child.
The foreman who had hired Nunzio called him to his “office,” the misshapen wood shanty. “So, hotshot, you can drive a wheelbarrow. Now we’re gonna see if you can lay brick.” The foreman stood up, and Nunzio almost smiled, not because he was being “promoted,” but because the man so lived up to his nickname. Carmine called him “Linguine con Pomodoro” because he was tall and thin with red splotches all over his white skin. Linguine con Pomodoro handed him pointing and bricklaying trowels. “Borrow these today; tomorrow you bring your own.”
Nunzio had spent two weeks watching the fluid movements of the bricklayers, so it didn’t take him long to master the bricklayer’s art. He stayed out of Linguine con Pomodoro’s eyesight until he could dip his trowel and ice the brick like a seasoned artisan. He missed the freedom of movement he’d had as a laborer, but he loved climbing the scaffolding and working high off the ground. This warehouse was