Rose's Garden Read Online Free PDF Page A

he’d lost—child’s wages. His enemy had Conrad’s pigeons and his money. Sooner or later, if he was a gentleman, he’d give the birds back. But meanwhile, Conrad had nothing.
    He had not a cent to his name that particular day. He kicked through the gutters for a penny or a glinting nickel, to no avail. He lifted his mother’s pocketbook from the hook in the hall, took it to the bathroom, and locked the door. He unfolded the faded bills from her little change purse but couldn’t bring himself to steal from her. He importuned Mrs. Findley, his neighbor, for an odd job, with no luck. And
il nemico
, his nameless enemy, had added another pigeon to his roost.
    â€œI want to meet him,” Conrad told Mr. Pittilio, banging his fist at last upon the counter at the Marion Street Pigeon Exchange, tears in his eyes. “I want to meet this man who is ruining me.”
    â€œAh,” said Mr. Pittilio, softening. “Such dramatic words for such a small boy.” And he came out from behind the counter to kneel in front of Conrad, cuff his shoulder, take his chin in his hand. “It’s only
di buona guerra
. It’s just a game,” he said gently.
    But Conrad burst into tears then, for all his birds now lost, for all the feed he’d held out hopefully in the palm of his hand for a pigeon who would never return, for all the ways in which he felt he would never grow up, never become a man, never take something for himself and fight to the death to keep it. Mr. Pittilio knelt, put his arms around the boy. Conrad smelled the cigar smoke in his hair, in his collar with its frayed edge. Conrad felt him tremble.
    â€œCome on,” Mr. Pittilio said, rising painfully, his knees cracking. “Can you be a little late for supper? It’s time we went to shake down Mr. Lemuel Sparks. It’s time he gave you your birds back.”
    Mr. Lemuel Sparks. That’s his name, Conrad thought as he wiped his hands across his face, across his pants. He combed his fingers through his hair, tucked in his shirt, sucked air into his cheeks. He trotted along beside Mr. Pittilio, who, after locking the door to the pigeon exchange, cocking his head at the birds, lit himself a cigar and clapped his hat on his head. He nodded goodevening to the proprietors of stores they passed, men in aprons leaning in door frames with their arms crossed over their chest. Conrad imagined them whispering, laughing; he imagined they knew where he and Mr. Pittilio were headed, were relishing the scene they could see pictured in their mind: little one tilting at Goliath, little one come to beg his birds back. Mr. Lemuel Sparks. Conrad thought he could see him, looming from his rooftop among the chimney pots belching devil’s fire. He was afraid.
    Mr. Pittilio walked fast, like a tree blown over in the wind. Conrad hurried to keep up as they raced down one street after another, leaves blowing at their feet, thronging the gutters and toppling over one another in haste.
    â€œEver seen a really big loft?” Mr. Pittilio asked, the cigar clenched between his teeth, smoke and his own words trailing behind him in an acid wind.
    â€œJust Mr. Polanski’s,” Conrad said, panting with his effort to keep up. “He took me up there once.”
    Mr. Pittilio laughed. “Well, get ready,” he said. “This one will take your breath away. It’s a whole Holy Roman city up there. Another world altogether.”
    At Modena Street Mr. Pittilio turned, and they walked to the last house. A huge barbed wire fence threaded with vines stood at the dead end before a scrub line of ailanthus and maple trees and the deep gully in which the train tracks ran. The house was a wide, four-story brownstone, with a short flight of concrete stairs leading to the second story. At the bottom of the pitted steps Mr. Pittilio paused, neatly clipped off the lit end of his cigar with the toe of his shoe, and folded the sodden