Gangster Read Free Page B

eyes half-open, dead from his father's hand.
        Now he belongs to no one, Paolino said.
        He tossed aside the lupara and walked toward the fireplace. He bent down, picked his son up in his arms, turned and left.
       
         *     *     *
       
    I KNEW THIS part of the story well. Its emotional impact had been used by many of the old man's supporters to explain the harshness of his ways. A brother he would never know had been killed by a father he would never understand in a land he chose never to visit. No one could be expected to carry those wounds without scars. As I listened to Mary tell her tale well into the quiet of the night, I wondered how different it all might have been had Paolino Vestieri simply turned his back and not given in to his most primitive urge, not surrendered to the fear of having a son raised in time-honored ways. I wondered still if the old man had found his brother's death the least bit ironic given the path of his own life. For there was never a doubt that Carlo's murder was the seed that fostered the old man's destiny.
         *     *     *
       
    PAOLINO VESTIERI BURIED his father and son on a hill overlooking the Bay of Naples. They would rest there, protected from the hot summer sun and chilly winds of fall by the same two large pine trees Paolino had once climbed as a boy. As the gravediggers shoveled dirt over the caskets, Paolino looked across the serene landscape and knew he was seeing it for the last time. Gaspare had reported Carlo's murder to the local constable, making Paolino Vestieri something he never dreamed he would be--a wanted man.
        He quickly and quietly sold his land, his winter clothes and what remained of his flock to a local merchant. The sum he collected was just enough to cover passage for himself and his wife aboard La Santa Maria, scheduled to depart Naples on the night of February 17, 1906. The doctor had warned Paolino that it would be best to delay the voyage until spring, after his wife had given birth.
        Each day we stay is a risk, Paolino told him. We must leave now.
        It is not a way for a woman to bring in a new life, the doctor said.
        There is no life here, Paolino replied. New or old.
        Give your wife and child a chance, the doctor pleaded.
         Taking them away is their chance, Paolino said.
       
         *     *     *
       
    HIS WIFE, FRANCESCA, sat against a grease-stained wall, her face half-hidden by thick strands of brown hair. She rubbed her inflated stomach, her eyes squeezed shut, hoping to will away the constant pain. She was a farmer's daughter, an only child raised like a son, toiling on ungiving land from first light of sun to last. Hardship was as familiar to her as the fresh tomatoes from her mother's gardens. Yet nothing she had endured would be enough to harden her for the days ahead.
        She had spoken her first words to Paolino at a town gathering to celebrate the final days of the harvest. She was sixteen then, her body as much woman as it was girl, her warm smile quick and easy enough to draw glances from a selection of interested young men. Her relaxed manner convinced even the most hesitant to approach and ask for a brief dance or extend an offer for a cup of homemade wine. She had seen Paolino in the town square on a number of occasions-- picking up lumber with his father, laughing and joking with friends on his way home from school, standing in silent prayer in the back of the old wooden church. He was rugged and handsome and, at eighteen, his actions were more those of a man than most of the other boys in town.
        He didn't ask her to dance nor did he offer a cool drink. He didn't think either would be the proper first approach. Instead, he handed her a white rose plucked from his mother's garden, smiled and walked away. She returned the smile and the warm feeling in the center of her stomach told her that soon she would be a married