The Wine of Youth (20 page)

Those were the days of Prohibition and Papa's routine with guests never changed. Every caller was invited down into the earthen cellar where four fifty-gallon barrels of wine were stored—a hundred gallons matured, and a hundred in the fermentation process.

Through the trapdoor in the pantry he and Father Ramponi disappeared into the cellar. We listened to them down there under the house, their voices muffled, their laughter rumbling in the ground. Patiently we waited for them to reappear, like an audience expecting the return of the players to the stage.

As they came back Papa carried a fresh pitcher of wine, the beaded foam still bubbling. They sat at the table beneath light pouring down from a green metal shade. Papa filled two tumblers with wine and Father Ramponi lit a cigarette.

Raising his glass, the priest proposed a toast. “To Florence, city of your birth.”

Pleased but dubious, my father shook his head. “I come from Abruzzi, Father. From Torcelli Peligna.”

It surprised Father Ramponi. “Is that so? Now where did I get the idea you were a Florentine?”

“Never been there in my life.”

“Maybe your relatives came from there.”

“Maybe,” Papa shrugged.

“You
look
like a Florentine.”

“You think so?”

“A true Florentine, a craftsman in the tradition of that great city.” He drained his tumbler.

We watched Papa expand with a sense of importance. It was as if Father Ramponi had sprinkled him with a holy water of magic powers. From that moment he was Father Ramponi's pigeon, eating corn from the good priest's hand. Then the subject matter changed quickly, and the real reason for the priest's visit became apparent.

“Nick,” he said with a new familiarity, his voice softer than ever. “Why is it that I never find you at Mass on Sunday morning?”

Mamma and Grandma nodded at one another smugly. My father was a long time answering, kneading a kink in his neck, smiling as he sensed a trap.

“I been thinking about that,” he said.

“Thinking about it?

“About going.”

“You should. As an example to your children.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. My father put the tip of his fingernail in the wine glass and twirled it absently. “We'll talk about it some other time,” he said.

“Come to the rectory tomorrow,” Father Ramponi suggested.

“I'm gonna be pretty busy tomorrow.”

“How about the day after tomorrow?”

“I'm pretty busy, Father.”

“In this wretched weather?”

“Lots of figuring to do. Getting ready for Spring.”

“Shall we make it next week?”

Papa frowned, rubbed his chin. “Too far ahead. You never know, one day to the next.”

The priest sighed, lifted his hands. “Then I leave it entirely up to you. When would it be most convenient?”

My father found a cigar butt in the ashtray and went to a lot of trouble scraping and lighting it. “Let me think about it, Father.” He produced clouds of smoke that hid his face. Then, to everyone's surprise, he said, “Let's make it tomorrow.”

Mamma's gulp of delight sounded like a shout.

Father Ramponi rose and offered his hand. He was smiling in triumph and my father shook hands and squinted at him skeptically. Having committed himself, he seemed to regret it.

“Two o'clock tomorrow?” Father Ramponi asked.

“Not possible,” Papa said.

“Three, then? Four?”

“Can't make it.”

“Would you prefer to come in the morning?”

“How can I come in the morning? You don't understand, Father! I got things to do, people to see. I'm a busy man. All the time. Day and night!”

The priest did not press it. “I leave it up to you. Come when you can.”

Papa nodded bleakly. “We'll see. I can't promise anything. I'll do the best I can.”

 

The very next day my father began a series of talks at the rectory with Father Ramponi. The meetings left him in a somber mood, and a brooding calm settled over our house. We tiptoed
around him, we talked in whispers. During meals he was completely silent, tearing bread and holding it uneaten in his hand. Even my little sister felt his melancholy.

“Are you sick, Papa?” she asked.

“Shhh!” Mamma said.

My father exhaled a sigh and stared, his forkful of macaroni dangling limply in mid air.

Every day he wore his Sunday clothes with a white shirt and a necktie. So intent was his concentration that he stopped talking altogether and merely gestured when he had some request. A wave of his hand could clear the room. A nod at his feet summoned his slippers. A flat stare and talking ceased among us. Moving furtively in the background, my mother and grandmother watched him with sympathetic, adoring eyes. The man of the house was in crisis, grappling with the devil, and the decision was in doubt. Every night at bedtime we left him alone in the dining room, seated under the light, sipping wine and writing on a jumbo school tablet with a stubby pencil.

A week of this, and suddenly the saturnine atmosphere of our home was shattered and my father was himself again. We awoke to hear him in the front yard, shoveling snow. Mamma called him to breakfast. He bounded into the house with scarlet cheeks and purple ears, his eyes snow-bright as he slapped his hands hungrily and sat down before his scrambled eggs. One mouthful and he scowled.

“Can't you even fry eggs?” he said.

We were happy again. Papa was complaining like his old self.

As I prepared for school, my mother followed me into the living room and brought my mackinaw from the closet. She buttoned me up while my father stood watching. He had a bulky envelope in his hand.

“Give this to Father Ramponi,” he said, handing it to me. I said okay and folded it to the size of my pocket.

“Not like that,” he said, taking it from me. He opened the mackinaw and stuffed the envelope under my T shirt. “Guard it with your life,” he warned.

“What the heck is it?”

“Never mind. Just give it to Father Ramponi.”

“Tell him,” Mamma said. “So he'll know how important it is.”

“You talk too much!” he snapped.

“It's your father's confession,” Mamma said.

I suddenly felt it there against my flesh, and sucked in my stomach. It was incredible, impossible, sacrilegious.

“You can't
write
your confession!” I wailed. “You have to
tell
it. In the confessional!”

“Who says so?”

“It's the rule. Everybody knows that!”

“He won't get me in that confession box.”

“It's the rule!” I cried, ready to burst into tears. “Mamma! Tell him, please! He doesn't understand!”

“That shows how much you know,” Papa said. “He told me to write it: so what do you think of that!”

I searched my mother's face for the truth. She smiled. “Father Ramponi said it was all right this way.”

I looked at my father accusingly.

“Why can't you be like everybody else?”

“No, sir. You can't get me in that box!”

Dazed and angry and disgusted, I walked out into the cold morning, my lunch pail rigid in one hand, my books in the other, my father's cold envelope freezing my stomach. Who the hell did he think he was? Why didn't he take his damned confession to the priest himself? Why should I be forced to walk the streets with it? They weren't
my
sins, they were his, so let him carry them to the priest.

The frozen air took my breath and whirled it into ostrich plumes and I walked afraid, like a glass vial, fearful of spilling my burden. I knew my father had not been to confession for thirty years, not since he was a boy of my age.

All of this wickedness, every human being he had injured, every sin against God's commandments were congealed in a block of ice burning against my stomach as I crossed town, under dripping maple trees, around grey mounds of mud-splattered snow, my toes picking their way with the delicacy of bird's feet, across the town, the awful responsibility of my burden hurting my flesh, too sacred, too heavy for my life.

As I reached St. Catherine's Father Ramponi drove up and parked in front of the stone steps leading to the main entrance. I waited for him to step out, pulling the envelope from under my shirt as the bell sounded and stragglers raced up the stairs.

“Oh, yes,” he smiled, taking the envelope. “Thank you.” He seemed in a great hurry and at a loss as to what to do with the envelope. Opening the car door, he tossed the envelope on the seat and dashed away, taking the stairs three at a time.

I watched in dismay as he disappeared. How could he do such a thing? That document was no trifling thing. It was my father's confession, a matter sacred to God, and there it lay on the car seat, cast aside like a rag.

What if someone came by and filched it—one of the older boys? The school was full of thieves who stole anything not nailed down. Suddenly I was in a panic as I imagined the confession being passed around, being read in the lavatory, touching off raucous laughter spilling into the halls, the streets, as the whole town laughed at my father's sins.

Guard it with your life, my father had warned, and guard it I did. For three hours I posted myself beside Father Ramponi's car, my feet numbed with cold, my ears burning like ice cubes as I stayed out of school and scorned the wrath of Sister Justinus.

At last the noon bell sounded and the students burst from the doors and down the stairs. I concealed myself as Father Ramponi appeared. He slid under the steering wheel and drove away, and the minuscule pinching pain in my stomach vanished at last.

That night Father Ramponi made his second visit to our house. It was very late and Papa was turning out the lights when the priest knocked. Papa welcomed him and they came into the dining room. Through the open bedroom door I saw them as I lay beside my sleeping brother. Father Ramponi stood huge as a black bear under the green lampshade. Then my father noticed the open bedroom door and he closed it, and I was in darkness save for a ribbon of light under the threshold. I slipped out of bed and peered through the keyhole.

Papa had seated himself before the wine, but Father Ramponi was still on his feet. He drew the envelope from his overcoat and tossed it on the table.

“You deceived me,” he said quietly.

My father lifted the envelope and tested it in his fist. “It's all there, Father. I didn't forget a thing.”

“It's long enough. God knows.”

“Some things I wrote, they were very hard, but it's all there, over thirty years, the bad things in a man's life.”

“But you wrote it in Italian…”

“What's wrong with that?”

Father Ramponi sank gloomily into a chair, his hands thrust deeply into his overcoat pockets. “I don't speak Italian,” he sighed. “Or read it. Or write it. Or understand it.”

My father stared.

“Bruno Ramponi, and you don't speak Italian? That's terrible.”

The priest sank deeper in his chair and covered one eye. “It simply never entered my mind that you'd make your confession in Italian.”

“The pope speaks Italian,” my father said. “The cardinals, they speak Italian. The saints speak Italian. Even God speaks Italian. But you, Father Bruno Ramponi, don't speak Italian.”

A moan from the priest. He pushed the envelope toward my father. “Burn it.”

“Burn it?”

“Burn it. Now.”

It was an order, angry and incontrovertible. My father rose and took the envelope into the kitchen. I heard the lid of the stove open, then close, and then he returned to the dining room where Father Ramponi now stood and draped a purple stole around his neck.

“Please kneel for penance and absolution,” he said.

My father's joints cracked like sticks as he knelt on the linoleum. He clasped his hands together and lowered his eyes. Father Ramponi made the sign of the cross over him and murmured a Latin prayer. Then he touched my father's shoulder.

“As a penance, I want you to say The Lord's Prayer once a day until Christmas.”

My father lifted his eyes.

“Until Christmas, Father? That's sixty days.”

“You can say it in Italian.”

It pleased my father and he lowered his eyes. Father Ramponi absolved and blessed him, and the little ceremony was concluded. My father got to his feet.

“Thank you, Father. How about a glass of wine?”

The priest declined. They moved toward the front door. Suddenly my father laughed. “I feel good,” he said. “Real good, Father.”

“Next time I'll expect you to come to the church for your confession.”

“We'll see, Father.”

“And I'll expect you at Mass Sunday.”

“I'll try and make it, Father.”

They said good night and the door closed. I heard Father Ramponi's car drive away. My father returned to the dining room. Through the keyhole I watched him pour a glass of wine. He raised it heavenward and drank. Then he turned out the light and all was darkness.

S
ISTER
M
ARY
A
GNES HAD BEEN
my principal for eight years at St. Vincent's. She knew more about me than my mother. But Mamma was like that.

For instance, it was Sister Agnes who got me out of jail for breaking street lamps. The police sergeant called Mamma, but Mamma didn't believe him. Sergeant Corelli had caught Jack Jenson and me red-handed. I was standing right there when Sergeant Corelli telephoned Mamma. I could hear her voice in the receiver.

“There must be some mistake,” she said, “my son Jimmy would never do a thing like that.”

“I tell you this is your boy,” Sergeant Corelli said, “he's right here. James Kennedy.”

“Oh no,” Mamma said, “I know you've made a mistake. There are lots of Kennedys in this world. My Jimmy isn't like that.”

She hung up. Sergeant Corelli shook his head.

“You sure got her buffaloed,” he said. Then he asked me where I went to school.

I told him I was in the eighth grade at St. Vincent's. He telephoned Sister Mary Agnes because she was principal and Sister Superior. She hopped into a cab and came right down to the city hall.

Jack Jenson's father got there about the same time. We didn't get along, Mr. Jenson and I. He shook his finger at me. “You're responsible for this.”

“I broke two lamps,” I said, “Jack broke the other two.”

“That's a lie,” Jack said, “I got that one on the corner of Ninth and Pine, and you know it. You only got one. I got three.”

“Why Jack,” I said, “that ain't so.”

“Heck it ain't.”

“I don't know who busted what,” Sergeant Corelli said, “all I know is—four lamps is broke. City property.”

Sister Agnes clucked like a hen. “It's scandalous,” she said to me, “perfectly scandalous. To think that you, a Catholic boy, of Catholic parents, educated in a Catholic school, should go around destroying public property. James, if I've warned you once, I've warned you a thousand times—stay away from bad company.”

Mr. Jenson's mouth and eyes popped open. “Now wait a minute, miss,” he said, “you can't call my boy ‘bad company.' You may be a holy lady, miss, but I'm not going to stand here and let you call my boy a criminal.”

Just then Jack stuck out his tongue at Sister Agnes.

“I didn't
say
he was a criminal,” Sister Agnes said.

“Let's quit arguing and get to the bottom of this,” Sergeant Corelli said. “Now then: Why did you kids do it?”

Jack looked at me. “Go ahead and tell him.”

“To settle a bet,” I said.

Sister Agnes took a deep breath. “Why, James Kennedy. Gambling too. You know gambling is a sin.”

“Not a very big sin,” I said. “We were gambling for small stakes.”

“Of all the brazenness!” she said.

“What was the bet?” Sergeant Corelli asked.

Jack told him: “I bet him a couple of cigars against a pack of cigarettes that I could bust more lamps than him.”

“Cigars!” Mr. Jenson said. “So that's where my cigars been going.”

“Cigarettes!” Sister Agnes said. “So you've been smoking again.”

We didn't say anything. We were being honest, but nobody seemed to pay the least attention or to appreciate it at all.

“There you are,” Sergeant Corelli said. “They admit everything. Now—what's to be done with these kids?”

Mr. Jenson opened his mouth and his teeth were like wolf fangs. “I know what
I'm
going to do,” he said.

Jack swallowed and rolled his eyes around.

“And I think I can handle this young man,” Sister Agnes said.

Jack left the city hall on tiptoe. Mr. Jenson had a strong grip on his left ear. I felt sorry for poor Jack. He was so sensitive, so easily hurt, and his father wasn't. Jack could play the piano and he sang in the choir at the Methodist Church. Mr. Jenson was foreman of a construction gang with the state highway.

“I'm taking you to see Father Cooney,” Sister Agnes said to me. She asked Sergeant Corelli to call a taxi. The sergeant said he would be glad to have someone drive us back in the police car. This shocked Sister Agnes.

“I couldn't do that,” she said, “but thank you so much, Sergeant. You've been very kind.”

The sergeant picked up the phone and called for a taxi. Sister Agnes and I sat on a bench in front of the window and waited. I was slumped forward, trying to think of something pleasant to say. Sister Agnes kissed the crucifix at the end of the brown beads which hung from her belt and began to say the Rosary.

“Sit up straight,” she whispered.

I sat up and folded my arms.

“Aren't you going to pray?” she asked. “You ought to be grateful to Almighty God that you're not behind bars. You should be on your knees, offering up thanks and begging Him to forgive you for this day.”

“Right here?” I asked. “In the police station?”

“At least pray in your heart,” she said closing her eyes.

I closed my eyes and thought out a prayer: Dear Lord, thanks a lot for getting me out of this mess. I think the whole thing is a bluff and they can't do much to me because I'm only fourteen. But things could have been a lot worse. So thanks again. And please, dear Savior, try to fix it up so Sister Agnes won't phone my old man. Please, Lord. If you ever did a fellow a favor, please, please, don't let her tell my old man.

 

Bill Callen owned the Boulder Taxi Company. He drove it up to the curb and we went outside and down the city hall steps. A long time before, Bill had been one of Sister Agnes' pupils. He opened the cab door and helped her inside.

“Anything wrong, Sister?” he said. “Anything I can do?”

“Nothing, Bill,” sister smiled. “Nothing at all. Just take us back to the convent, if you please.”

“Him too?”

She smiled again.

I got in beside Sister Agnes. Bill looked at me and said it all over again—“If there's anything I can do, Sister, just any little thing at all, just let me know.”

“Thank you, Bill.”

He kept looking at me and I knew he was remembering the time we put the goat in his cab on Halloween. “Don't forget now, Sister. Just any old time.”

“You heard her,” I said, “you drip. Get this jalopy up to the convent—if it'll go that far.”

“Listen,” he said, “I don't like you.”

“Aw,” I said, “now my feelings are hurt.”

“I don't like any little rat who commits a crime and has to have a sister of our Lord keep him outa the penitentiary.”

It made me mad but I didn't let him know it.

“You cad,” I said, “you nasty man.”

He slammed the door and got into the driver's seat. Sister Mary Agnes sat with her long white hands folded. We drove down Pearl Street and through the middle of town. It was almost summertime, the last week of school, just a few days before graduation.

“What are we going to do now, Sister?” I asked.

“First I'm going to take you to Father Cooney.”

That wasn't bad. Father Cooney didn't deliver very good sermons but he was a sucker for penitence. All you had to do was hold your head down and make a sad face, and he'd give you the shirt off his back.

“Father Cooney'll be very disappointed in me,” I said. “I'd rather do almost anything than face him.”

“It's my duty to report this,” she said.

“I know. I'm awfully ashamed. Poor Father Cooney.”

“And then of course I must tell your father.”

“My father? You mean, my father?”

“Your father.”

Father Cooney was one thing, but my father was something else again. My father was the strong silent type. He was mostly
strong and he liked to throw his weight around. He wasn't particularly silent, either. Something else: he lacked imagination. There was only one way he dealt with situations of this kind. It was very unpleasant to think about.

“I'll phone him tonight,” she said.

I laughed. Not a loud laugh. Softly.

She glanced at me. “Why are you laughing?”

“It's kinda funny,” I said shaking my head. “Just a little while ago I said a prayer to our Lord. I asked Him to please not let my father know about this. And now you're going to tell him.”

“Of course I am.”

“I know,” I said. “You have to. It's your duty. It wouldn't be right if you didn't tell him. Still, at the same time, the Catechism says that all things come to him who prays. I know you have to tell my father. I know that. But still, it only goes to show that sometimes the things you learn in the Catechism don't work out in real life.”

She watched me with her big blue eyes. I curled my mouth and slouched down in the seat and smiled like a man who is sad but not afraid, and ready for anything. All the way up the hill to St. Vincent's she sat there watching the trees and houses floating past, not saying a word. Now and then she bit her lip and looked at me. I didn't say anything either.

 

Father Cooney was eating supper. He told his housekeeper, Mrs. Hanley, she could be excused. Sister Mary Agnes and I watched her go away. Father Cooney had started his dessert, which was chocolate cake. He was a tall heavy man with a bald spot on the top of his head. He pointed to the other chairs around the table.

“Sit down,” he said, “please do. You like chocolate cake, Jimmy?”

“Boy—do I!”

Sister Agnes did not sit down. Father Cooney took up the cake knife and cut off a big slab for me.

“After what this young man has done,” Sister Agnes said, “I don't think he should be rewarded with a piece of chocolate cake.”

“Indeed?” Father Cooney said looking at me. “What's this Jimmy? What've you done?”

“I got into trouble.”

“Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

I hung my head and didn't say anything. Father Cooney put the piece of cake on a dish in front of me. Sister Agnes folded her arms. The look on her face said: Leave the cake alone. I sneaked down into the chair and sat with my hands in my lap. Father Cooney was watching us. I lifted my hand from under the table and picked up a fork. The cake was devil's food, with about a foot of chocolate icing. I took one quick look at Sister Agnes. She was daring me to try it. When I moved the fork toward the cake she stepped up to the table and put her hand on my arm.

“You haven't told Father Cooney why you're here,” she said.

I didn't put down the fork but I hung my head in shame. “I was arrested, Father. Another kid and me got picked up for busting street lamps.”

“Indeed,” Father Cooney said.

I told him how it had happened.

“He wasn't a Catholic boy,” I said. “I should of known better than associate with him.”

“There's no reason why you shouldn't associate with non-Catholics,” Father said, “provided they're good boys.”

“He wasn't exactly a bad boy,” I said. “Only thing is, he said he could break more lamps than any Catholic kid in town.”

“Who won?” Father said.

“It was a tie. Two apiece.”

“Humph.”

He ate another mouthful of cake and sipped some coffee. He was thinking it over. I moved my fork toward the dish again. This time Sister Agnes didn't stop me. The cake melted in my mouth. I sat back and tasted the thick sweet chocolate on my teeth and tongue, tasted it all the way down into my stomach.

“Super,” I said.

Father Cooney tried again to make Sister Agnes sit down.

“Do try this cake,” he said. “It's marvelous.”

“No thank you, Father. My own supper is waiting for me at the convent. I brought this young man here because I feel he should be reprimanded. Destroying public property is a very serious offense.”

“It
is
a serious offense,” Father Cooney said. “It most certainly is. And I intend to punish him severely.”

Right away Sister Agnes felt better. But I wasn't worried. We had a man named Phipps in our parish who was arrested for beating up his wife. Father Cooney said he was going to punish him severely too. But all he did was get Phipps out of jail and pay for his rent and grocery bills.

“I shall phone Mr. Kennedy immediately,” Sister Agnes said.

“A splendid idea,” Father said.

All at once the cake had a flat taste. I couldn't swallow any more. Sister Agnes said good-by to Father Cooney. At the door she stopped to say she wanted to see me before I went home. I felt better after she was gone. Father Cooney got me a glass of milk, and he gave me another piece of cake. For a long time we ate without talking. Then I finished my cake and sat back. Father Cooney lit a cigar.

“Last night I was reading the life of St. Paul,” he said. “A wonderful man—truly wonderful.”

It was coming. It was going to be a sermon about St. Paul and everybody in the parish agreed that Father Cooney's sermons were the worst of any priest in the whole diocese.

“The Apostle Paul believed in the doctrine not of faith alone, but of faith by good works. Not mere lip service to our Blessed Savior, but piety as well, and good works; setting a fine example among the early Christians as well as the heathen.”

“Yes, Father.”

He tipped the ash off his cigar and leaned forward. “Let me put it this way, my boy: How would it have been if, in the early days of the struggling young Church, the blessed apostle, instead of setting an example by good works, had gone about the countryside breaking street lights? What chance would Christianity have had?”

“Not a chance,” I said.

“Indeed not.”

“Did they have street lights in those days, Father?”

“Perhaps they did, and perhaps no. Nevertheless the Light of Faith in Christ shone in the hearts of St. Paul and his loyal followers. They were willing and even glad to brave persecution and death in His name. In those humble men the light of Christian charity and brotherhood was nourished by the goodness in their hearts. Everywhere they traveled, they set an example that endeared them to God and man. It was not the light of destructiveness, of breaking things. It was the light of faith, of gentleness, of human brotherhood. You see what I mean, son?”