The Brotherhood of the Grape Read Online Free PDF Page A

stare out over a sea of tombstones and groan. There still seemed acres to traverse. The whole world had turned into a graveyard. What a way to warm up before a ball game! He knew why I seethed and festered, pawing the gravel with my spiked shoes, he knew , but he didn’t give a damn as he solemnly moved along the path to the gravestone of old Loretta Stevens, the librarian, fashioned like an open book, her vital statistics chiseled on a stony page.

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    M Y OLD MAN had never wanted children. He had wanted apprentice bricklayers and stonemasons. He got a writer, a bank teller, a married daughter, and a railroad brakeman. In a sense he tried to shape his sons into stonemasons the way he shaped stone, by whacking it. He failed, of course, for the more he hammered at us, the further he drove us from any love of the craft. When we were kids a great dream possessed Nick Molise, a glimpse of a glorious future lit up in his brain: MOUSE AND SONS, STONEMASONS .
    We sons had his brown eyes, his thick hands, his fireplug stature, and he assumed we were naturally blessed with the same devotion to stone, the same dedication to long hours of backbreaking toil. He envisioned a modest beginning in San Elmo, then expansion of operations to Sacramento, Stockton and San Francisco.
    The only son who made a serious attempt to share my father’s dream was Mario, who gave it a heroic try after graduating from high school. Since Papa was dealing with a raw apprentice and not a member of the union, he put Mario through a test past all endurance, working him from early morning until after sunset six days a week, at paltry wages paid only when the spirit moved him. He felt that Mario should actually be working for nothing, just for the privilege of having such an illustrious maestro. The apprentice period should last five years, he thought, but in Mario’s case, since his son was so stupid and difficult to instruct, the training period should be extended to seven years.
    “Okay!” Mario would keep saying. “But teach me something! I might as well be at Folsom, breaking rocks.”
    “That’s the idea,” Papa would say. “First we break you down, so that you’re nothin’. Then we build you up and up, until you can raise your head and tell the world you’re a first-class bricklayer, the son of Nicholas Molise.”
    “Aw, bullshit!”
    Three months into his apprenticeship Mario had an offer to play professional baseball with the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League. At seventeen he was already an extraordinary pitcher, had thrown two no-hit games for the San Elmo High School team, and was the star left-hander for the town team. Playing baseball was the one talent that lifted Mario above the crowd, the passion of his life. Though graduated from high school, he was still a minor, so the San Francisco management needed parental consent before signing him up.
    Mama was eager to sign, but the old man refused. Mario was too young, he insisted, and besides, baseball was a foolish way to earn a living. Five, six years and you were through, a nothing, a ditch-digger. Better that he should have an honorable profession, that of a mason, building with brick and stone, than earning money playing a kid game with no future.
    God, what a brutal time: we fought him for weeks—Stella, Virgil and I—pleading with him to give Mario his chance, yelling at him, then refusing to speak to him at all. But he was an Abruzzi goat with poised evil horns and he would not relent. He knew what was best for his son, and someday Mario would thank him. Needless to say, there was no gratitude in Mario’s soul, only bitterness and fury.
    Gritting his teeth, he went back to the rocks and cement, patiently awaiting the day when he would be eighteen and beyond Papa’s legal hold on his baseball future. But it never happened. The New York Giants moved to the Bay Area that winter and the San Francisco Seals were no more. Mario’s big opportunity vanished in the