The Fortunate Pilgrim

by Mario Puzo

  Gino pressed his advantage. He became very earnest. “Ma, I gotta get ice from the railroad today, I promised Joey Bianco. I’ll give you free ice before selling.” Then, with a stroke of genius, he added, “And Zia Louche too.”

  Lucia Santa regarded him with an affection that made Vinnie jealous. Then she said, “Good, but remember my icebox must be filled—mine first of all.”

  Vincent flung down his slice of bread and she gave him a menacing look. Then she said to Gino, “But this afternoon be home and help, or you will feel the Tackeril.#8221; Her heart was not in it. He would not have much longer to play.

  GINO CORBO, LIKE any ten-year-old general, had made great plans, not all of which he had told his mother. Looking out the window of the front room, he saw the railroad yards across the street chock full of helpless freight cars. Beyond them the Hudson River sparkled blue. To his child’s vision the air was marvelously pure. He ran through the apartment and out the door, down the stairs and into the August sun.

  It was burning hot, the pavement warm beneath his sneakered feet. His faded blue denims and laddered rayon polo shirt fluttered in the breeze, then stuck to his body. He looked around for his friend and partner, Joey Bianco.

  Joey was twelve, but shorter than Gino. He was the richest boy on Tenth Avenue and had over two hundred dollars in the bank. In winter he sold coal, now in summer he sold ice, and both he stole from the railroad cars. He also sold paper shopping bags in Paddy’s Market, which stretched along the streets on Ninth Avenue.

  Here he came, dragging his great wooden box of a wagon behind him. It was the best wagon on Tenth Avenue. It was the only six-wheeled wagon Gino had ever seen, and the box could hold a dollar’s worth of ice or pull three kids riding. The small, stout wheels had heavy rubber tires; a long tongue of wood steered the two front wheels, and there were four other wheels for the box of the wagon itself. Joey even had clothesline instead of ordinary rope for his steering reins.

  They had a ceremonial cup of lemon ice together to start the day. The Panettiere himself served them, so delighted by their industry he put an extra pat on each cup.

  Joey Bianco was happy when Gino came. Gino let him collect and count the money. And Gino went on top of the cars. Joey liked to go up on the cars, but hated to leave his wagon alone. Now Gino said to Joey, “Come on, get in and I’ll give you a ride.” Joey held the steering line, sitting proudly in the box, and Gino pushed the wagon across the Avenue, past the switchman’s shanty, onto the gravel between the tracks. When they were hidden from view by the towering freight cars scattered around the yard, they stopped. Joey spotted an open hatch and took the ice tongs from his wagon.

  Gino said commandingly, “Gimme those tongs.” He ran to the freight car and climbed its iron ladder to the open hatch on top.

  Standing on that car roof, high above the ground, he felt free. Far off he saw the window of his front room bedroom and the whole wall of tenements. There were stores and people and horses and wagons and trucks. Gino seemed to sail by on an ocean of freight cars—brown, black, yellow, with strange names like Union Pacific, Santa Fe, Pennsylvania. Some empty cattle cars scented the air. Turning, he saw the cliffs of the Jersey Palisades patched with green, and blue water below. Through the hundreds of immobile freight cars a few black round engines chugged quietly, their white smoke adding a fresh burning smell pleasant in the morning summer.

  Joey shouted up to him, “Come on, Gino, throw down the ice before the Bull comes.”

  Gino took the shiny steel tongs and grappled blocks of ice out of the hatch. It was piled to the top and easy to drag out in one heave. He pushed each block over the car edge, watched it fall to the gravel. Great silvery chips broke off and flew back up at him. Joey put his arms around each crystal block and hugged it into the wagon. In no time it was full. Gino climbed down and pushed, while Joey pulled from the front and steered.

  Gino had meant to fill up his mother’s icebox, but the Panettiere caught them as they came across the Avenue and bought the whole first load for a dollar. Then they went back for another. This time the grocer intercepted them and bought the whole load for a dollar, plus soda and sandwich.

  Drunk with wealth, they decided to let their mothers wait, the family iceboxes remain empty. The third load went to the people living on the first floor. It was nearly noon. On the fourth load they ran into trouble.

  The railroad cop had spotted them earlier, as they moved deeper and deeper into the yard, opening up fresh ice cars so they would not have to take ice from a depleted source. They foraged like an animal that kills three or four victims and takes a bite from the best part of each. So the cop waited and then walked toward them from the Tenth Avenue side, cutting off their retreat.

  Joey saw him first and hollered up to Gino, “Butzo, it’s Charlie Chaplin.” Gino watched from his perch as the bandy-legged Bull grabbed Joey by the shirt and cuffed his face lightly.

  Still holding Joey fast, the Bull called up to Gino, “O.K., kid, get down here or I come up and break your ass.”

  Gino looked down, his face grave, as if he were really considering the offer, but scheming. The sun was very hot and warmed his blood, giving the world a special, fearless light. Gino quivered with excitement, but he felt no fear. He knew he was safe. The Bull would kick Joey out of the yard and break the wagon. But Gino had read a story about mother birds, and from it he made a plan as he looked down at the Bull: he would save Joey and the wagon.

  Deliberately, he leaned his dark angular almost-man’s face over the car and hollered down, “Ha, ha. Charlie Chaplin can’t catch flies.” Then he ducked away and started down the ladder on the freight car’s other side. But took just a few steps and waited.

  The Bull said ferociously to Joey, “You stay here.” Then ducked under the car to intercept Gino. He was just in time to see Gino scramble back up the ladder. The Bull crawled back to guard Joey.

  Gino jumped up and down on top of the box car, chanting, “Charlie Chaplin can’t catch candy.”

  The Bull made his face mean, his voice menacing. “Kid,” he said, “I’m warning you. Get down off that car, or when I get you I kick the shit outa you.”

  That seemed to sober Gino and he stared down gravely. He thumbed his nose at the Bull and ran slowly, awkwardly, along the top of the freight car, jumped, teetered to the next car. On the ground the Bull kept pace easily, glancing back with a threatening face so that Joey would not try to escape with his wagon. The string of cars was only ten or eleven long.

  Gino jumped a few cars, then pretended to climb down the other side. The Bull ducked underneath. He could not keep track of Joey if he did this, but he didn’t care. He had made up his mind the kid on top of the cars was going to get his ass broke.

  Beckoning with his small hopping form, Gino ran along the car tops deeper into the yard, and then waited for the Bull to catch up, staring down at him. Then, raising his head, he could see Joey running and pulling the wagon toward freedom across the Avenue.

  “Kid, you better come down,” the Bull said. “You make me chase you and you’ll get this.” He waved his club. He thought of drawing his gun as a bluff, but Italian laborers on one of the yard gangs might see him and he would be a marked man. He ducked back underneath the railroad car just in time to see Joey and the wagon cross safely over the Avenue. He became so angry that he shouted up to Gino, “You little black guinea bastard, you don’t come down and I’ll break your hump.”

  Gratified, he saw the threat working; the kid was walking back along the car tops to stand directly over him. But then that dark, grave child’s face leaned out above him. He heard the little boy shout in sudden angry contempt that assumed equality of strength, “Fuck you, Charlie Chaplin.” A great dazzling white rock of ice went whizzing past the Bull’s head and the boy teetered clumsily along the car tops deeper into the maze of the yard.

  The Bull, really angry now, but confident, ran hard to keep pace alongside, his head tilted upward comically. The kid was trappin
g himself. He was angry not at the curse, but at being called Charlie Chaplin. He was vain, and his bowed legs made him sensitive.

  Suddenly Gino disappeared. The Bull ducked quickly under the freight car to catch him coming down the ladder on the opposite side. He tripped on the rails and lost a precious second. When he got to the other side, he saw no sign of his prey. He backed up to enlarge his field of vision.

  He saw Gino almost literally flying along the top of the box cars, soaring from one to the other with no teetering awkwardness, up toward Tenth Avenue, and then disappearing over the side of the car away from the Bull. The Bull sprinted but was only in time to see the boy cross Tenth Avenue to the safe shade of the tenement wall, where, without a backward glance, Gino stopped to rest and get a lemon ice. There was no sign of the other kid.

  The Bull had to laugh, he couldn’t help it. The balls on the kid, a little shit like that. But just the same, his day would come; he’d be Charlie Chaplin, O.K.; he’d make ’em scream, but not laughing.

  GINO DID NOT bother to look back once he had crossed the Avenue. He wanted to find Joey Bianco and the ice money. He heard his mother yelling from the fourth-floor window, “Gino, bestia, where is the ice? Come, eat.”

  Gino looked up, and above his mother he saw the blue sky. “I’ll be up in two minutes,” he shouted. He ran around the corner to 30th Street. Sure enough he saw Joey sitting on a stoop, his wagon tied to the iron railing of the basement.

  Joey was brooding, almost in tears, but when he saw Gino he jumped in the air. He said excitedly, “I was gonna tell your mother—gee, I didn’t know what to do.”

  Thirtieth Street was dusty and full of sun. Gino got into the wagon and steered, with Joey pushing him. On Ninth Ave-nue they bought hero salami sandwiches and Pepsis. Then they went on to 31st Street, where it was shady, and sat with their backs against the wall of Runkel’s chocolate factory.

  They ate their sandwiches with the contentment and good appetite of men who have had a completely satisfying day: hard work, adventure, and their bread sweet with their own sweat. Joey was admiring and kept saying, “Boy, you sure saved me, Gino. You sure outfoxed that Bull.” Gino was modest, because he knew he had learned the trick from a book about birds, but he didn’t tell Joey.

  The summer sun vanished. There were quick dark clouds. The dusty, heated air and the smell of hot stone pavements and melting tar were swept away by a rushing sheet of rain released by great claps of thunder; faintly, there was an elusive ghost and smell of something green. Joey and Gino crept under the loading platform. The rain pelted down, some of it coming through cracks in the platform floor, and they turned their faces up to the cool drops.

  In the shaded, cellar-like darkness there was just enough light to play cards. Joey took the greasy pack out of his trousers pocket. Gino hated to play because Joey won a lot. They played Seven-and-a-half and Gino lost the fifty cents ice money. It was still raining.

  Joey, stuttering a little, said, “Gino, here, here’s your fifty cents back for saving me from the Bull.”

  Gino was offended. Heroes never took pay.

  “Come on,” Joey said more firmly. “You saved my wagon, too. You gotta let me give the fifty cents back.”

  Gino really didn’t want the money. It would spoil the adventure if Joey paid him to do a job. But Joey was nearly in tears, and Gino saw that for some reason he had to take the money. “O.K.,” Gino said. Joey handed it over.

  Still it rained. They waited quietly while Joey restlessly riffled the cards. The rain kept coming down. Gino spun the half dollar on the pavement.

  Joey kept watching the coin. Gino put it in his pocket.

  “You wanta play Seven-and-a-half again double stakes?” Joey asked.

  “Nope,” Gino said.

  Finally the rain stopped and the sun came out and so did they, crawling like moles from beneath the platform. The washed sun was far in the west, over the Hudson River. Joey said, “Jesus, it’s getting late. I gotta go home. You comin’, Gino?”

  “Ha, ha,” Gino said. “Not me.” He watched Joey pull his wagon toward Tenth Avenue.

  The late shift came out of Runkel’s factory. The men smelled of the chocolate they made and the smell was sweet and sticky like flowers, heavy on the rain-freshened air. Gino sat on the platform and waited until no one came out.

  He was deeply pleased with everything he saw—the tenement bricks dyed deep red by the ripening sun, the children coming out again to play in the streets, the few horses and wagons slowly wending toward the Avenue, one leaving a spotted trail of grainy, gold-flecked manure balls. Women came to opened windows; pillows appeared on ledges; women’s faces, sallow, framed in black bonnets of hair, hung over the street like gargoyles along a castle wall. Finally Gino’s eyes were caught by the swiftly flowing stream of rain water in the flooded gutters. He picked up a small flat piece of wood, took out his half dollar, balanced it on the wood, and watched it sail down toward the Avenue. Then he ran after it, saw he was nearing Tenth, picked up the wood and coin and walked back up toward Ninth Avenue.

  On the way, passing a row of empty houses, he noticed a bunch of boys as big as Larry swinging on a rope hung from the roof four stories above them. They jumped from the ledge of the second-story window and swung high over 31st Street, riding through the air like Tarzan to the window of an empty house farther up the street.

  A blond kid in a red shirt soared in his great half-circle, missed the window, pushed against the wall he hit with his feet and, twisting, soared back the way he had come. For a moment he gave the illusion of really flying. Gino watched with burning envy. But it was no use. They wouldn’t let him do it. He was too small. He went on.

  On the corner of Ninth and 31st, in the light-shot oblong shadow of the El, Gino put his stick of wood with its rider coin back in the gutter and watched it sail down to 30th Street; bobbing, riding little wavelets, snagged by soggy bits of newspaper, fruit skins and cores, eroded smooth remains of animal turds, scraping the shining blue-black tarred street bottom beneath the water. The wooden stick turned the corner and started down 30th Street to Tenth Avenue without losing the coin. Gino trotted watchfully beside it, keeping an eye sideways for the kids who had chased him the night before. His boat sailed around tin cans, whirled around piles of refuse, but always fought free to sail finally through a succession of tiny gutter rainbows. Then Gino grabbed his half-dollar piece as the boat sailed down through the grates of the sewer beneath the bridge on Tenth Avenue. Thoughtfully he walked around the corner onto the Avenue and was hit in the stomach by little Sal, who, head down, was running away from a game of “Kick the Can.” Sal shouted excitedly, “Ma’s lookin’ for you. We already ate and you’re gonna get killed.”

  Gino turned around and went back toward Ninth, searching for rainbows in the gutter. He backtracked to the empty houses, and found the rope dangling alone. Gino went to the basement and entered the house, climbing crumbling steps to the second floor. The house was gutted, the plumbing stolen for lead, the lighting fixtures gone. The floor was treacherous under a shale of plaster. Everything was still and dangerous as he tiptoed through the ghostly rooms and through doorless doorways. Finally he reached the window and could see the street. The square frame for the windows was only an empty stone socket. Gino stepped onto the ledge, leaned out, and grabbed the rope.

  He pushed away from the ledge, and for one glorious moment he had the sensation of really flying of his own will. He soared through the air, out over the street, and, completing the arc, landed on the ledge of a window three buildings up the block. He pushed and sailed back, pushed and sailed out again—faster and faster, soaring back and forth, hitting the window ledges and the wall, then thrusting back out with his feet as if they were his wings, until his arms could no longer sustain him and he slid down the rope in midsail, burning his hands as he braked himself to the pavement and landed in a running movement toward Tenth Avenue, specially timed.

  It was twilight. Gino was surprised, a
nd purposeful with the knowledge that he was now in trouble, he trotted down 31st Street to Tenth Avenue, trying hard to keep the look of surprise on his face. But no one in his family was among the people already sitting before the tenements, not even Sal. He ran up the four flights of stairs.

  Passing the second floor, he heard Octavia and his mother screaming at each other. Worried, he slowed down. When he came into the apartment he saw them both nose to nose, red spots on their sallow cheeks, eyes flashing black. They both turned to him, quiet, menacing. But Gino, fascinated, had eyes only for his brother Vinnie, already seated at table. Vinnie’s face was powdered dead white with flour, his clothes were caked with it. He looked very tired, his eyes enormous and dark in that floury face.

  “Ah. You’re home,” his mother was saying. “Bravo.#8221; Gino, noting that the two women were looking at him like judges, hurried to sit at the table so they would bring him food. He was starving. A stunning blow on the side of his head made him see stars, and through the dizziness his mother was shouting, “Sonamabitch. You escape the whole day. What did you do? And then the signor sits at table to eat without washing. Go. Figlio de puttana. Bestia. Vincenzo, wash also, you’ll feel better.” The two boys went to the kitchen sink to wash and came back to the table.

  Tears were in Gino’s eyes—not because of the slap, but because of the terrible end to such a beautiful day. First a hero, then his mother and sister angry as if they hated him. He hung his head, shamed as any villain, not even hungry until his mother put a platter of sausages and peppers under his nose.

  Octavia gave Gino one burning look and said to Lucia Santa, “He has to do his share. Why the hell should Vinnie work for him when his own father doesn’t give a damn? If he doesn’t work Vinnie quits the bakery. Vinnie’s going to have fun on his summer vacation, too.”

  Without jealousy, Gino noticed that Octavia and his mother watched Vinnie with pity and love as he ate tiredly, listlessly. He could see that his sister was close to tears for some reason. He watched the two women fussing over Vinnie, serving him as if he were a grown man.