“It’s been a long time, Lucia,” Gaetano said. “I missed you.”
“Si, anch’io. I pray for you every night.” A tear dripped down her face.
“Chi cosa, Lucia?” She forced a smile and he placed his hand on hers.
Gaetano turned towards his son. “Eh, how is my young man?”
“We’ve been very concerned about you, Papà,” Nick said. “Cuginu Paul is outside.”
“I can’t complain.” Gaetano looked at his son. “Petra disprizzata, cantunera di muro. Capisci, Nicolo?”
“The rejected stone will become the cornerstone of the wall.”
“Beni, figghiu miu. You remember everything.”
“I saw a few of your paesani behind the fence.”
“They manage like me. But I hear things are worse in camps run by the Army.”
“How so, Papà?”
“Paesani say they get very angry if you use the enemy language near them.”
Nick lowered his voice. “What happened to your case? Signuri Arcuri l’avvucatu sent letters in your defense.”
“Si, there was this special meeting. Comu si dici?”
“Hearing panel.”
“Si, they ignore tuttu. They saya, Mr. Spataro, we are sorry your past history leaves us no choice but declare you enemy alien. They no sorry!”
“How is this possible, Papà?”
Gaetano glanced sideways.
“You looka pale, Gaetano. Mancia!” Lucia untied a package of sandwiches, a stack of breaded veal cutlets on crusty peasant bread. She gave one to her husband and watched as he ate.
“È bonu, Lucia!”
Nick grabbed one for Paul and put it in his jacket pocket, then took another for himself. “Mamma, eat something.” He held a sandwich up for his mother to see.
“I am no hungry.”
Nick devoured the sandwich and Lucia turned to him. “Go see what you and Paul find out. Avanti!”
“I’ll try to talk sense to them, Papà,” Nick said.
“Figghiu miu!” Gaetano boasted as he bolted away. Lucia took a small bite of her sandwich and swallowed it.
“How you liva with all these strangers?” Lucia asked.
“It not so bad. I even made some new friends.”
“Sicilianu?”
“Si! E altri regioni.”
When Nick stepped outside, he found his cousin leaning on the wall. He took the sandwich out of his coat pocket.
“Catch, Paul.” His cuginu ripped half the paper off, eating in wide bites. While Nick waited for Paul to finish, he realized that he had forgotten something. “I’ll be back in a sec. Forgot my cigarettes.”
Making his way through the cramped quarters, he held back behind some visitors after he heard his mother blurt out: “I told you million times, getta your papers. You no listen to me. Madonna!”
“Mannaggia, already you start in. What, you have a crystal ball that you know so much? You no tella me what to do.” He showed his palms to Lucia. “Look at my hands from pulling nets.”
“But we have to paya the bills. What about the mortgage on the house? We stilla owe for the boat too.”
“Forget about the boat! Navy took it. Then, they tell me later it’ll be converted to a minesweeper. For the war effort, they saya.”
“Chi sacciu? You never tella me.”
Her husband’s eyes reddened and he shouted: “I no want to be cooped up here come un’animale!”
“No raisa your voice,” Lucia pleaded, as she inspected the room, but hadn’t noticed Nick in the crowded room. “You don’t know what they’ll do.” She wiped her tears away with a white hanky.
“Nicolo will take care of everything. No worry, cara mia.”
“Gaetano, you are a good man. No matta what America say, ti amu!”
Nick moved around a few visitors and interrupted. “Scusi, I forgot my cigarettes.” He picked them up and trotted back to his cousin, rubbing his tears away. He couldn’t bear to see his parents arguing like this.
“What took you so long, cuginu?”
“I got lost.”
Paul laughed at Nick. “Like lost in those books you always got your nose in.”
“Cut the crap, will ya!”
“Don’t get so sore. Just jokin’ with you.”
“Let’s find the headquarters.”
Nick and Paul found a guard who directed them to the Post Headquarters of the Immigration and Naturalization Service for the camp. The office was filled with tall file cabinets containing dossiers on all the internees. The INS supervisor, who wore wire-rimmed glasses, sat dead center at his desk, surrounded by his subordinates. After being frisked at the entrance, the two cousins entered.
“How can I help you gentlemen?” the supervisor asked.
“My father, Gaetano Spataro, is being held here. It’s gotta be some kind of mistake.” An assistant pulled out his father’s file and the supervisor glanced at it.
“Sorry, but this is not a case of mistaken identity. Your father is still a citizen of Italy and never renounced his allegiance to that country, now our enemy. That’s what it means to be an enemy alien.”
“That’s my uncle. He ain’t no alien!” The supervisor curled his lip.
“My father is just a fisherman.”
“His fate has been determined by Presidential Order, Proclamation 2527, signed by the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.” He peeped over his glasses and stated: “That’s President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”
“I know that. All I’m saying is that my father’s an honest family man.”
“He’s already had a hearing here. I was present. Your father belonged to the Federation of Italian War Veterans. It was duly noted in his record.”
“He’s no Fascist.”
The supervisor began straightening out the papers on his desk.
Paul reached into his jacket. “Look! My enlistment papers for the Army. I’m willing to fight, even against Italians!”
“That’s very patriotic, young man, but there’s nothing I can do for your uncle.”
“It’s not right!” Nick shouted.
“Lieutenant General John DeWitt is running the show. Complain to the War Department. They placed the general in charge of the Western Military Command. We’re just following his guidelines.”
The supervisor placed his glasses into a black case and eyed the guard at the door. “I have already said more than I’m obliged to. You’ll have to leave now or I’ll have you two shown the camp gates.”
Paul grabbed his cousin’s arm. “Let’s get out of here, Nick.”
When they got outside, they went back to the visitors’ reception area. They stopped for another smoke. Paul struck a match and lit his cousin’s cigarette first and then his.
“It’s a rotten deal, Nick.” Nick turned away from his cousin as he dragged on a cigarette. “Is there anything I can do, cuginu?”
“I’m thinking.” From a distance, Nick stared at the rows of identical buildings, neat enough but foreboding in their battleship gray stain. He failed to convince the administrator to reconsider his father’s internment. “Cuginu, go inside, you haven’t seen your uncle. Tell my parents that I’m going to scout around this joint to see what else I can find out.”
“Beni.”
The camp maintained a casual attitude, but Nick sensed there were different stories behind every face, all of them caught up in the war and thrown together. No one stopped him from walking down a treeless, dusty road where he encountered a group of Japanese Americans tending a garden. They were busy in their teamwork, grooming the soil and planting with a definite design in mind. On the surface, it would make a good photo for the newspaper, but Nick saw something else. They were isolated by their race, even though the English he overheard was better than his father’s paesani. Some of them glanced in his direction and their eyes revealed sadness so poignant that Nick turned away for a moment. His curiosity overcame his diffidence, so he approached the man who had continued to follow hi
m with his eyes.
“I don’t mean to bother you … but can I ask you a question?” The man, old enough to be his father, remained silent and dug his spade in the ground. “My father’s Gaetano Spataro. Um, he’s penned up here like you. Well, I was just wondering… how the guards act towards everybody in this place.” The man handed his spade to another gardener and walked away from the group then pivoted, waving him over.
“I prefer speaking privately,” he said, averting his gaze from Nick who looked directly into the man’s eyes. “You have to be careful what you say.”
“I understand. So what’s it like here?”
“The guards treat us okay. I supposed you could say that you can get used to anything. They even let us grow our own vegetables and prepare our food.”
“I can see. That’s why I was curious.”
“This is not a life I ever imagined. My wife and children are American. Born and reared in California. But the U.S. government wouldn’t give me citizenship. Even after 40 years living in the same state.”
“That’s a crummy situation.”
“I put on my stoic mask as if I am in a Kabuki. I try to meditate but that doesn’t help. I drink a lot of homemade sake but that does not help. I want my family back. I want my farm back. I am dying here even though they’re not torturing me to confess something I am not, something I didn’t do, something I don’t believe in.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Even though your father is a prisoner like me, it will always be worse for us. We don’t look like you.”
“Something like Negroes.”
“Yes.” The man looked into Nick’s eyes for the first time.
“I have seen your father at soccer games. Everyone seems to like him, so I see that the apple does not fall far from the tree. I have a son who’s 21. He’s joined the 442nd Infantry Regiment. It was his idea. Made up of all Nisei—Japanese Americans second generation, born in this country. They’ll release Akio soon from Camp Manzanar in eastern California. A so-called Relocation War Center. That is where he is held with the rest of my family.” He looked off in the distance. “But my son will restore the honor of our clan, the Minamoto.” He raised his right fist as a boxer. “He has the blood of the samurai. My great-great grandfather was the last of the noble warrior class in Japan.” He lowered his arm. “They will show America what Japanese Americans are made of.”
“Do you think the authorities will set your family free?”
“I have no reason to think so, but who can predict anything now? So, in the meantime, I rot like vegetables that are not properly taken care of. Your father travels in the same boat with me, for now. You might say Noah’s ark.” He let out a quick laugh. “Go to your father. He must be wondering why you are missing.”
As Nick shook the man’s hand, he thought that their encounter layered another dimension to this internment business. He was ignorant about many things it seemed or maybe just naive. Even so, Papà was still trapped in Missoula and there was nothing he could do about it, which made him anxious to stand in front of his father without a sliver of hope.
Nick walked past the rows of barracks reserved for alien enemies, traipsing through the middle of them. Up close, the washed out buildings squatted on a hardened ground that could have been an outpost on Mars. Nothing green growing between these buildings. Nick came across a group of young Italian men who were chatting in standard Italian on the three-stepped entrance to one of these battle gray structures. From their vantage point, they could view of the mountains fronted by the Bitterroot River which curved around Stevens Island.
One guy with a full head of dirty blond hair called out to Nick as he passed by: “Bella vista! Camp Bella Vista!” The others laughed. Nick nodded and approached him, speaking in the Italian he learned at the Italian government’s sponsored Dopo Scuola, an after school program shut down at the start of the war. When he mixed in some Sicilian phrases, they looked puzzled, so he switched back to the language of Dante. They had worked on a luxury cruise liner that had been seized in the Panama Canal at the onset of the war. Judging by their carefree attitude, they didn’t seem to mind being there, since they wouldn’t have to fight for Mussolini. Nick thought these Italians were lucky, but they weren’t interested discussing Italian politics in any language—they weren’t taking any chances, which was a sign for Nick to move on.
As Nick passed by the Post Headquarters, he stopped for a moment. He had been in such a rush the first time that he hadn’t notice the Courtroom, so he squinted through a pair of double hung windows. So this is where they had held the ‘Enemy Alien Hearings.’ He winced at the sight of the place where Papà had been denounced, a peculiar sense of self-reproach caught in his gut. Nick argued with himself as if he were a poet composing verse. But he had nothing to do with his father’s incarceration. He even got the lawyer to intercede on his father’s behalf, but it kicked right back at Nick. He had failed his father, at least that’s how he saw it. Gaetano would never have left him to rot here. He had delayed long enough, knowing it would be very difficult to face Papà with no good news.
On the way back to the Visitor Center, Nick recalled his conversation with the young Italian who jested about “Camp Bella Vista.” The view was beautiful but Italians love to joke around. He guessed they were laughing at this crazy world. But for Nick he saw it as a cruel joke on his father, marooned in this miserable place looking out on this free, quintessential American landscape, a daily reminder of what he had been cut off from, the freedom to be with his family taking in the sight of San Francisco Bay and its world famous bridge, setting out on the majestic Pacific ocean and netting the silver-glittering fish that fed the city and his way of life in North Beach con tutta famigghia.
Lucia got out of the car in front of their home without saying a word and the cousins stared out the windshield. It was raining and damp, so they rolled their collars up in the front seat, the compartment filled with smoke and the dank smell of nicotine.
“You want another smoke, Paul?” Nick popped one out half way from the pack. They both lit up again and sat motionless.
“I told you it wouldn’t work, Nick. They don’t care about breakin’ up families.” He took a drag. “Why don’t you come with me to meet my recruiting sergeant? Sez I have some more papers to fill out. Maybe we could stick together through this war, like when we were kids playing on the same baseball team.”
“You know I have a problem fighting Italians.”
“I know. We’ll fight somewhere else.”
“It’s not just that. What about Papà? Am I supposed to run off and leave him in that place? What about my mother? Look at the way she reacted after leaving Papà sealed in with his paesani like anchovies in a tin. One way or another, he’s still in the can to me, no matter how decent they may treat him.”
“Geez, cuginu. I feel real bad for Ziu Gaetano too. But sooner or later you’re goin’ to have to make a decision.” Paul looked out the window. “You know what I’m getting at.” He took a long drag on the fag. “I thought we’d stick together through this big mess. You know, watch out for each other like we was brothers.”
“Right now, all I can think about is my father. I can’t erase that look on his face when we left him there in Montana.”
“I feel it in my bones. They’ll let Ziu Gaetano out before I get to boot camp.”
Nick didn’t believe the crap Paul was peddling but he would always be famigghia. “Minchia, you’d better drive ‘black beauty’ back to Mike’s shop, or he’ll come looking for us with that thick leather strap from his barber chair.” Nick smiled thinly as he drove away.
That night Nick sat in the backyard near his father’s fig tree, still protected with its galvanized, bucket hat, wrapped in tarpaper crisscrossed with twine. He turned his head when a light switched on and saw his mother gazing from her bedroom window. When she realized that Nick noticed her, she closed the wooden, venetian blinds. He imagined that he had interrupted an astral
projection of his mother, while lighting up a Lucky Strike, and then through rings of smoke Nick began to see faces.
The first one was Paul, their last conversation still in his thoughts. His emotional ties to his cuginu went as far back as he could remember. He spent more time with his cousin than kids from the neighborhood. From the very beginning Nick would win all the academic awards, while Paul just got by in school. Even in baseball, Nick could hold his own in competition with Paul. But when it came to street fighting, it was the other way around. Many times Paul interceded for his cousin. Though his feelings never cooled for Nick, he sensed Paul could not accept his Jesuit school ways. They had two divergent mindsets that intensified throughout their high school days. They had this symbiotic relationship but Nick reflected whether they could maintain any relationship at all, if he refused to go off to war with his cousin, which brought Nick to a second face in the smoke when he lit up again. It was Deborah’s but her soft looks disappeared before his eyes as if in the trail of a magician’s vapor.
And then there was the visage of his father, more like a death mask. Nick could not comprehend how they could have imprisoned Papà who was bonu come lu pane, an accolade fit for Sicily or America. His own nephew volunteered to fight for America but that did nothing for his father. Maybe if he joined up, the Feds would let his father go. Nick didn’t know what to think, but felt it was his only shot at freeing his father. Then he remembered an old Sicilian proverb his mother used to repeat: ‘’ U Signùri rùna ‘u viscuottù a cu nun’ avi rienti’—‘God gives biscuits to those with no teeth.’ He didn’t know where to go with all of this, like he was in a constant state of confusion at a time in his life when all he wanted to do was to have some fun. Maybe all his cuginu wanted was for them to be inseparable again, like when they were kids, except this time they would be playing a deadly game they couldn’t possibly conceive of.
Nick had a premonition that other things would come chugging after them from nowhere, like the nightmare he had after his father was abducted, the two cousins wildly pumping a hand cart on a deserted spur with a black locomotive steaming right behind them. They came to a switch track and a grinning, bespectacled trainman diverted them onto another track, while the locomotive raced passed them by, its violent airwaves almost sucking them in. They pumped their way through a dark forest and came out the other side, which gave them a sensation of safety. They rambled along until they spotted a tunnel bored through a hill. Nick noticed the headlight of another black locomotive curving into the same hole. He yelled at Paul to jump before they entered the tunnel, but his cuginu didn’t listen to him. Nick’s voice turned faint and no matter how wide he opened his mouth, no sound came out. He tried to drag Paul off but his cousin resisted, and right before the entrance Nick jumped into a river, whose current bashed him around the rocks jutting before a precipice. He woke up screaming so loud, Lucia came running in, crossing herself over and over. ‘Figghiu miu, figghiu miu.’
Somewhere in the Stars Page 5