The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Volume 1 Read Free Page B

to deliver hundreds of insulting French soliloquies and stood one last time at my mother’s side. Even in sleep she was disgruntled. She clawed her pillow and gnawed her bottom lip. Curiosity got the best of me and I leaned over the bed, as careful as a lad of that age can be, and placed a kiss upon her troubled forehead. It was as nice as the books said, though a bit salty. I licked my lips clean and moved with some reluctance toward the door. I was sorry I could not be the boy that Abigail Finch had wanted, but glad that she might finally rest easy in my wake.
    Au revoir, Maman.

III.
    A ND THAT, DEAREST READER , IS how I ducked the drab future aimed squarely between my eyes and began to ramble exciting ethnic neighborhoods, stealing every strange, spicy morsel I could, much of which fell out of a mouth agog in constant wonder. This boisterous, cantankerous, pugilistic city had hidden from me for too long.
    Chicago of 1893 was a sensory carnival. The striped cloth awnings of taverns, druggists, and shoemakers snapped in lakefront wind; meat markets stank of hot blood; the glass bottles of milkmen made music as they were lifted from dairy wagons; locomotives coughed up oily clouds that settled as soot upon your skin; and horse-drawn undertakers’ carriages clacked and clacked and clacked—the only sound that did not change in a town that was always changing.
    Those first weeks were quite a challenge for the baby-fleshed Zebulon Finch! I slept in barns, on sidewalks, inside of factories that had left windows open. I became acquainted with creatures I’d never before met: lice, mice, roaches, and rats. Many a night I held back sobs while dreaming of my clean and comfortable bed, and yet I refused to go home. My sense of self-respect was a foundling, but born with a pair of strong knees.
    Hunger gave me the boldness required to seek employment. I placed brick, scraped a hog-house floor, and scrubbed smelly horses.My tender palms grew callouses of which I became obsessed. At night I’d stroke these rough patches in wonder. Look at me now, Mother! A proper hooligan at last! A lonely one, though, until a stint operating a paintbrush brought me into federation with a young Italian by the name of Giuseppe Fratelli.
    Fratelli was my opposite. He spoke enthusiastic but patchy English and had no formal education at all, but possessed a rat’s instinct for survival. After a long weekend spent painting a firehouse, he invited me to his uncle’s tavern for a carafe of red wine, a drink with which I was unfamiliar. I found it sour, but Fratelli guzzled it like water, and soon enough we were arm in arm singing songs from the old country. It was my first bender, and despite the morning-after head-pounding, I enjoyed the hell out of it. My future, as I saw it, was filled with drunken binges and the resultant blotting away of unwelcome memories of my mother and father. I could not wait.
    Never before had I a companion, and for a goodly while I behaved as Fratelli’s shadow. He was but a handful of years older than I, but I idolized his fearless swagger, disrespect of elders, and forceful animalism, whether it be in pursuit of violence or amore . I endeavored to improve his English and in exchange he taught me where to find the nearest hostels, the cheapest markets, the warmest baths, and the least revolting outhouses.
    Little Italy was a hazardous place for a boy of my refinement. Try as I did to ply the slang of the street, the truth was that I sounded like a blue blood looking to get mugged. Thus I took Fratelli’s lead and focused upon the physical. I engaged in my first fist fight; the pummel upon my flesh was frightening, but when it was through each bruise panged in the most invigorating way. The desperado fantasiesI’d spun while shooting my stick-gun in Abigail’s house had prepared me quite well for these rowdy new habits.
    The painting work eventually dried up (so to speak) and I did not see