The John Fante Reader

by John Fante

  One sin against that fifth commandment that always seethed in his conscience was an incident the summer before, when he and Paulie Hood, another Catholic boy, had captured a rat alive and crucified it to a small cross with tacks, and mounted it on an anthill. It was a ghastly and horrible thing that he never forgot. But the awful part of it was, they had done this evil thing on Good Friday, and right after saying the Stations of the Cross! He had confessed that sin shamefully, weeping as he told it, with true contrition, but he knew it had piled up many years in Purgatory, and it was almost six months before he even dared kill another rat.

  Thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not think about Rosa Pinelli, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, and Clara Bow. Oh gosh, oh Rosa, oh the sins, the sins, the sins. It began when he was four, no sin then because he was ignorant. It began when he sat in a hammock one day when he was four, rocking back and forth, and the next day he came back to the hammock between the plum tree and the apple tree in the back yard, rocking back and forth.

  What did he know about adultery, evil thoughts, evil actions? Nothing. It was fun in the hammock. Then he learned to read, and the first of many things he read were the commandments. When he was eight he made his first Confession, and when he was nine he had to take the commandments apart and find out what they meant.

  Adultery. They didn’t talk about it in the fourth grade Catechism class. Sister Mary Anna skipped it and spent most of the time talking about Honor thy Father and Mother and Thou Shalt Not Steal. And so it was, for vague reasons he never could understand, that to him adultery always has had something to do with bank robbery. From his eighth year to his tenth, examining his conscience before Confession, he would pass over ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’ because he had never robbed a bank.

  The man who told him about adultery wasn’t Father Andrew, and it wasn’t one of the nuns, but Art Montgomery at the Standard Station on the comer of Arapahoe and Twelfth. From that day on his loins were a thousand angry hornets buzzing in a nest. The nuns never talked about adultery. They only talked about evil thoughts, evil words, evil actions. That Catechism! Every secret of his heart, every sly delight in his mind was already known to that Catechism. He could not beat it, no matter how cautiously he tiptoed through the pinpoints of its code. He couldn’t go to the movies anymore because he only went to the movies to see the shapes of his heroines. He liked “love” pictures. He liked following girls up the stairs. He liked girls’ arms, legs, hands, feet, their shoes and stockings and dresses, their smell and their presence. After his twelfth year the only things in life that mattered were baseball and girls, only he called them women. He liked the sound of the word. Women, women, women. He said it over and over because it was a secret sensation. Even at Mass, when there were fifty or a hundred of them around him, he reveled in the secrecy of his delights.

  And it was all a sin—the whole thing had the sticky sensation of evil. Even the sound of some words was a sin. Ripple. Supple. Nipple. All sins. Carnal. The flesh. Scarlet. Lips. All sins. When he said the Hail Mary. Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee and blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. The word shook him like thunder. Fruit of thy womb. Another sin was born.

  Every week he staggered into the church of a Saturday afternoon, weighted down by the sins of adultery. Fear drove him there, fear that he would die and then live on forever in eternal torture. He did not dare lie to his confessor. Fear tore his sins out by the roots. He would confess it all fast, gushing with his uncleanliness, trembling to be pure. I committed a bad action I mean two bad actions and I thought about a girl’s legs and about touching her in a bad place and I went to the show and thought bad things and I was walking along and a girl was getting out of a car and it was bad and I listened to a bad joke and laughed and a bunch of us kids were watching a couple of dogs and I said something bad, it was my fault, they didn’t say anything, I did, I did it all, I made them laugh with a bad idea and I tore a picture out of a magazine and she was naked and I knew it was bad but did it anyway. I thought a bad thing about Sister Mary Agnes; it was bad and I kept on thinking. I also thought bad things about some girls who were laying on the grass and one of them had her dress up high and I kept on looking and knowing it was bad. But I’m sorry. It was my fault, all my fault, and I’m sorry, sorry.

  He would leave the Confessional, and say his penance, his teeth gritted, his fist tightened, his neck rigid, vowing with body and soul to be clean forevermore. A sweetness would at last pervade him, a soothing lull him, a breeze cool him, a loveliness caress him. He would walk out of the church in a dream, and in a dream he would walk, and if no one was looking he’d kiss a tree, eat a blade of grass, blow kisses at the sky, touch the cold stones of the church wall with fingers of magic, the peace in his heart like nothing save a chocolate malted, a three-base hit, a shining window to be broken, the hypnosis of that moment that comes before sleep.

  No, he wouldn’t go to Hell when he died. He was a fast runner, always getting to Confession on time. But Purgatory awaited him. Not for him the direct, pure route to eternal bliss. He would get there the hard way, by detour.

  —Wait Until Spring, Bandini

  MY FATHER’S GOD

  UPON THE DEATH OF OLD FATHER AMBROSE, the Bishop of Denver assigned a new priest to St. Catherine’s parish. He was Father Bruno Ramponi, a young Dominican from Boston. Father Ramponi’s picture appeared on the front page of the Boulder Herald. Actually there were two pictures—one of a swarthy, short-necked prelate bulging inside a black suit and reversed collar, the other an action shot of Father Ramponi in football gear leaping with outstretched hands for a forward pass. Our new pastor was famous. He had been a football star, an All-American halfback from Boston College.

  My father studied the pictures at the supper table.

  “A Sicilian,” he decided. “Look how black he is.”

  “How can he be a Sicilian?” my mother asked. “The paper says he was born in Boston.”

  “I don’t care where he was born. I know a Sicilian when I see one.” His brows quivered like caterpillars as he studied the face of Father Ramponi. “I don’t want any trouble with this priest,” he brooded.

  It was an ominous reminder of the many futile years Father Ambrose had tried to bring my father back to the church. “The glorious return to divine grace,” Father Ambrose had called it. “The prodigal son falling into the arms of his heavenly father.” On the job or in the street, at band concerts and in the pool hall, the old pastor constantly swooped down on my father with these pious objurgations which only served to drive him deeper among the heathens, so that the priest’s death brought a gasp of relief.

  But in Father Ramponi he sensed a renewal of the tedious struggle for his soul, for it was only a question of time before the new priest discovered that my father never attended Mass. Not that my mother and we four kids didn’t make up for his absences. He insisted that it had to be that way, and every Sunday, through rain, sleet and snow he watched us trek off to St. Catherine’s ten blocks away, his conscience vicariously soothed, his own cop-out veiled in righteous paternalism.

  The day after the announcement of Father Ramponi’s appointment, St. Catherine’s school droned like an agitated beehive with rumors about our new priest. Gathered in clusters along the halls, the nuns whispered breathlessly. On the playground the boys set aside the usual touchball game to crowd into the lavatory and relate wild reports. The older boys did all the talking, cigarettes dangling from their lips, while second graders like myself listened with bulging eyes.

  It was said that Father Ramponi was so powerful that he could bring down a bull with one punch, that he was structured like a gorilla, and that his nose had been kicked in on an historic Saturday afternoon when he had tom apart the Notre Dame line. We younger kids stiffened in fear and awe. After the gentle Father Ambrose, the thought of being hauled before Father Ramponi for discipline was too ghastly to contemplate. When the first bell rang we rushed to our
classrooms, dreading the sudden, unexpected appearance of Father Ramponi in the halls.

  At 11:30, in the midst of arithmetic, the classroom door opened and our principal, Sister Mary Justinus, entered. Her cheeks shone like apples. Her eyes glittered with excitement.

  “The class will please rise,” she announced.

  We got to our feet and caught sight of him in the hall. This was it. The awesome Father Ramponi was about to make his debut before the Second Grade class.

  “Children,” Sister Justinus fluttered, “I want you to say ‘Good morning,’ to your new pastor, Father Bruno Ramponi.” She raised her hands like a symphony conductor and brought them down briskly as we chanted, “Good morning, Father,” and the priest stepped into the room.

  He moved forward to stand before us with massive hands clasped at his waist, a grin kneading his broken face. All the rumors about him were true—a bull of a man with dark skin and wide, crushed nostrils out of which black hairs flared. His jaw was as square as a brickbat, his short neck like a creosoted telephone pole. From out of his coat sleeves small bouquets of black hair burst over his wrists.

  “Please be seated,” he smiled.

  The moment he uttered those three words the myth of his ferocity vanished. For his voice was small and sibilant, surprisingly sweet and uncertain, a mighty lion with the roar of a kitten. The whole class breathed a sigh of deliverance as we sat down.

  For twenty seconds he stood there lost for words, his large face oozing perspiration. With the uncanny intuition of children we were on to him, knowing somehow that this colossus of the gridiron would never loose his terrible wrath upon us, that he was as docile as a cow and harmless as a butterfly.

  Drawing a handkerchief from his pocket, he dabbed at his moist neck and we grew uneasy and embarrassed waiting for him to say more, but he was locked to the spot, his tongue bolted down.

  Finally Sister Justinus came to his rescue, breaking the silence with a brisk slap of her hands. “Now children, I want each of you to rise and give Father your name so that he can greet you personally.”

  One at a time we stood and pronounced our names, and in each instance Father Ramponi nodded and said,” “How do you do, Tom,” or “How do you do, Mary,” or “How do you do, Patrick.”

  At my turn I rose and spoke my name.

  “Paisan,” the priest grinned.

  I managed a smile.

  “Tell your folks I’ll be around to meet them soon.”

  Even though he told most of the students the same thing, I sat there in a state of shock. There were some things I could tell my father and others I preferred to delete, but there was one thing I didn’t dare tell him—that a priest was coming to visit him.

  With my mother it didn’t matter, and upon hearing that Father Ramponi was coming she lifted her eyes to heaven and moaned.

  “Oh, my God,” she said. “Whatever you do, don’t tell your father. We might lose him for good.”

  It was our secret, my mother’s and mine, and we paid the price, specially Mamma. All that was required of me was to keep the front yard clean, raking the October leaves and sweeping the front porch every day. She took on the rest of the house alone, and in the days that followed she washed the walls and ceilings, she washed the windows, she laundered and ironed the curtains, she waxed the linoleum, she dragged the frazzled rugs out to the back yard, flung them over the clothesline and beat them with a broom.

  Every evening, home from work, my father strode through the house and paused, the smell of ammonia in his nostrils as he looked around and found some small new change. The gas heater in the living room polished and shining, its chrome gleaming like a band of dazzling silver, the furniture luminous as dark mirrors, the broken rocker repaired, the worn needlepoint replaced with a piece of blue wool from an old coat.

  He crossed the linoleum that sparkled like a sheet of ice. “What’s happening?” he asked. “What’s going on around here?”

  “House cleaning,” my mother said, her face careworn, her hair coming loose from the bun in back, her bones aching. He frowned at her curiously.

  “Take it easy. What’s the good of a clean house if you end up in the hospital?”

  Days passed and November showed up, bringing the first snow of winter. But Father Ramponi did not visit us. I saw him almost every day at school, and he always tossed a word or two my way, but he made no mention of the visit.

  The snow fell steadily. The streets disappeared. The windows frosted. My mother strung clotheslines around the stove in the living room, in order to dry the washing. The cold weather confined the little ones indoors. Crayons were crushed underfoot, toys kicked beneath the furniture. My brother spilled a bottle of ink on the linoleum, my sister drew a pumpkin face with black crayon on the best wall in the front room. Then she melted the crayon against the side of the hot stove. Mama threw up her hands in defeat. If Father Ramponi ever visited us, he would have to take us for what we were—just plain, stupid peasants.

  The snow was my father’s deadly enemy, burying his job in desolate white mounds, engulfing brick, cement and scaffolding, robbing him of his livelihood and sending him home with an unopened lunch pail. He became a prisoner in his own house.

  Nor was he the loving husband a woman could enjoy through long winter days. He insisted on taking command of a ship that was already on course through rough waters. Lounging in the kitchen he watched my mother’s every move as she prepared meals, finding fault with everything. More salt, too much pepper, turn up the oven, turn down the oven, watch the potatoes, add some onion, where’s the oregano, fry some garlic, and finally, “Let me do that!”

  She flung down her apron and stalked out of the kitchen to join us in the living room, her arms folded, her eyes blazing. Oh God! If Father Ramponi didn’t arrive soon she would be driven to the rectory to see him herself.

  Our house on Sunday morning was chaos. I can still see my frantic mother dashing from bedroom to bedroom in her pink slip, her braided hair piled atop her head, as she got us dressed for ten o’clock Mass. She polished our shoes, fashioned knots in our neckties, sewed buttons, patched holes, prepared breakfast, ironed pleats in my sister’s dress, raced from one of us to the other, picking up a shoe on the way, a toy. Armed with a washcloth, she inspected our ears and the backs of our necks, scraping away dirt, my sister screaming, “You’re cruel, cruel!”

  Lastly, in the final moments before we departed, she slapped talcum powder over her face and came out to the front room where my oblivious father sprawled reading the Denver Post. She turned her back for him to button up her dress.

  “Fix me.”

  Chewing a cigar, he squinted as the curling smoke blurred his eyes and he worked the buttons through the holes with blunt fingers. It was the only contribution he made to those hectic mornings.

  “Why don’t you come to Mass with us?” she often asked.

  “What for?”

  “To worship God. To set an example for your children.”

  “God sees my family at church. That’s enough. He knows I sent them.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better if God saw you there too?”

  “God’s everywhere, so why do I have to see Him in a church? He’s right here too, in this house, this room. He’s in my hand. Look.” He opened and closed his fist. “He’s right in there. In my eyes, my mouth, my ears, my blood. So what’s the sense of walking eight blocks through the snow, when all I got to do is sit right here with God in my own house.”

  We children stood listening enthralled at this great and refreshing piece of theology, our collars pinching, our eyes moving to the window as the silent snow drifted down, shivering at the thought of plowing through the drifts to the cold church.

  “Papa’s right,” I said. “God is everywhere. It says so in the catechism.”

  We looked imploringly at my mother as she put on her wool coat with the rabbit fur collar, and there was a sob in my sister’s voice as she begged, “Can’t we all just kneel down here and p
ray for a while? God won’t mind.”

  “You see!” my mother glared at my father.

  “Nobody prays here but me,” he said. “The rest of you get going.”

  “It’s not fair!” I yelled. “Who’re you?”

  “I’ll tell you who I am,” he said threateningly. “I’m the owner of this house. I come and go as I please. I can throw you out any time I feel like it. Now get going!” He rose in a towering fury and pointed at the door, and we filed out like humble serfs, heads bowed, trudging through snow a foot deep. God, it was cold! And so unfair. I clenched my fists and longed for the day I would become a man and knock my father’s brains out.

  In the seventh week of his pastorate Father Ramponi finally visited our house. He came in the darkness of evening, through a roaring storm, his arrival presaged by the heavy pounding of his overshoes on the front porch as he kicked off the clinging snow. It shook the house.