Good Blood. K. C. Pastore
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like a chicken with its head cut off—honestly. It takes forever for chickens to die. That past spring we visited Mom’s sister’s family’s farm out in Butler. Yeah, glad I lived in Mahoningtown—that’s all I got to say.
I squinted, trying to see Angelo’s face as he lay there on the ground. Black crap and anger all over it. Then both of them stood up and started screaming at each other. Hands flew all over the place.
Nicky came out from the house across the street and calmly made his way over to the two raging dagos. Hands in pockets, he moved his head back and forth while the other two stopped their ruckus and listened. Then Dad put his arm up around the back of Nicky’s neck. Nice like. While patting Nicky on the chest with his free hand, he continued yelling at Ang. Angelo didn’t seem to take this very well. He threw the tool across the yard and stormed into the house. Next, he slammed the door to the bathroom. I rushed away from the window and continued getting ready for work.
Nicky was Dad’s favorite, and to the rest of us, that was obvious. I didn’t mind it much. It’s just how it was. It’s just Italian fathers and sons. Nicky was the oldest, so he was the favorite—plain and simple. Just like Mugga is his Dad’s favorite, and Marco is his Dad’s favorite and even Dad is Popi’s favorite. Plain and simple. But for some reason Angelo just didn’t get it. I never did understand why. Instances like that forced me to notice that Ang was just a big baby. He took stuff too personally, especially stuff that Dad said. I never had a problem with it; it’s just the way it was. But, then again, I disregarded any ridiculous expectations of Dad. I didn’t think he had many emotions. I sensed that we were alike in that way. But when it came to Dad’s own opinion, disregarding the whole “favorite” systems, he really did like Nicky the best of us.
I heard Angelo’s muffled stomps thudding up the carpeted stairs. When he stepped onto the landing, he slammed his palm against the wall next to his bedroom doorway and slammed the door to his room.
“Ang?” I walked across the hall and knocked on the door. “Ang?”
Silence.
“Ang? You . . . you there?”
“Enough Rosie!” he shouted. “Enough!”
I didn’t have any more words than that. My hand dropped to my side and I turned back to my room. I couldn’t do anything anyway. I slipped on my shoes and started my way over to the shoe shop.
After spinning around the banister at the bottom the stairs, I saw that the back door was open. Just wide open, letting in all the flies. And through the opening, Nicky’s and Dad’s bulbous, strained voices rippled from the front yard: RADIATOR . . . MUFFLER . . . PIECE OF SHIT CATALYTIC CONVERTER . . . and a dozen other crashes of godawful car jargon that I’d never get to know, because I was a girl, and therefore stupid when it came to logic or mechanics or business. And to think that these babbling dagos were the specimens of the “practical” gender sickened me. A fly erratically buzzed back out the door.
“Rosemary?” A strange voice emerged from the living room.
Wide-eyed and quizzical, I slowly walked toward the living room and the voice. It was Mugga, sitting in there, rocking on Grandma’s rocking chair and smoking a cigarette. On the couch, Moon sat opposite of him. A puff of smoke billowed from his nose.
“Ang home?” he asked. Another puff escaped when he spoke.
I just stared at him.
“You stupid, girl? I asked is yer brother home?”
I wondered if they were in there when Ang came stomping up the stairs. I wondered if they were sitting there when I walked up. Grandma emerged from the kitchen with a tray of pitzels and a cup of coffee.
“Umm. Yeah,” I answered. “Yeah, Ang’s here.”
“Well, go get him.”
Grandma set the coffee next to Moon without a word. I plodded back up the stairs.
“Ang?” I knocked on the door again.
“Rosie! I said get the hell out of here!”
“Uh. Mugga’s here for you. And, um, another guy.”
This time I ran down the stairs and sprinted out the back door, leaving it open. When I turned out of the alley onto Cascade, I slowed to my usual pace. It wasn’t my usual M.O. to muse on such events, but Moon’s arrogant eyes and Mugga’s silence spired on an unavoidable trail of uneasy hunches. A couple of women with grocery totes passed me. I kept my eyes down. The one with the baby-blue smock brushed against me, and I feared that some kind of telepathy transferred skin to skin, and that she knew.
I spun into the shoe shop. And the little bell dinged.
Char and I rode the Line, as usual. Our items of discussion included berries, the upcoming festa of St. Peter and Paul, and the likelihood of Donnie Vincini becoming a conspirator with Satan himself.
That evening after I finished my bedtime routine, I opened the bathroom door and proceeded to start up the stairs. The TV murmured in the living room. Its lights flashed shifting scenes on the dingy mauve walls and cast long shadows to my feet. Dad reclined, sideways, on the couch, spitting cherry pits into the ashtray on the end table. Remembering my glass of water, I swung back around and headed to the kitchen. But before I got there, I happened to glance at the back door—something of a sixth sense, one might call it. The door was shut, and locked, but something shuffled around on the gravel outside. It sounded bigger than a cat. I ignored it—mainly to assuage my own fear. To me every sound in the darkness was most likely Frankenstein’s monster and therefore ought to be disregarded before seizing me with its imaginative power.
I topped of my water, perfect, and slurped off the meniscus. I decided to drink it down about an inch, before I attempted the stairs. When I strode back out of the kitchen, I peeked over at the back door. The hinge side of the door gapped open about a half-a-centimeter. Just above that bottom hinge, and in that crack, gleamed a little white sliver. Dad sat silent, minus the rhythmic ding of cherry pits. I walked over to inspect the sliver. Its third dimension revealed that the sliver was actually an envelope, a little white envelope sealed by a circle of red wax. Dad coughed. Alarmed, I sprung straight up. Then the back door flung open, smacked me against the wall, and sent my glass of water flying back into the kitchen. Nick emerged from the darkness, and Ang followed him. I slid the envelope into my robe pocket.
Nicky stiff-armed me into the wall when he passed on his way to the living room. “What are ya watchin’ in’ere?”
Without acknowledging my existence, Angelo slunk past and started to his bedroom. The glass didn’t break. And even though water evaporates, I wiped it up and flung the dampened dish towel over the faucet. I took a swig of the remaining water, and decided on setting the glass back in the cupboard. I mean, it was only water.
Before I climbed the stairs, I snagged an empty toilet-paper roll from under the bathroom sink. I had been saving the empty rolls under the sink for some time—eleven cardboard cylinders tucked beneath the drain pipe. I thought that I might make some craft out of them one day.
Once in the safety and privacy of my own room, I clicked on the light next to my bed. The bright red seal displayed two short swords, or big knives, enclosed by a circle. I ripped open the flap around the seal, so that the seal itself remained securely connected to the envelope. Inside, a message was scrawled on the inside flap of the little card.
In red ink: Family is everything.
That’s an odd note, I thought. Family meant a lot to all of us around there. I wondered why someone thought we needed reminding. Neither the envelope or card had an address on it, nor a name. It didn’t say who it came from or who it was meant for. The only logical conclusion led straight to Mugga. Like Hog said, Mugga had, after all, been wandering around town up to something, however I couldn’t seem to conjure why he would leave such a note. Perhaps it was the slogan of his new trucking company or whatever—quite possible, but that letter being wedged in the door frame seemed too glaringly ominous.
I slipped it into the toilet