The Brotherhood of the Grape Read Online Free PDF

upheaval. Suddenly he was a nobody once more. True, my father had taught him the rudiments of laying brick, but he was still an apprentice, still made to grovel and crawl at the old man’s will, the seeds of patricide sprouting in his gut. The moment he heard there was no deal with the Seals, Mario leaped from the scaffold of the building my father was constructing and walked away. Papa was shocked and unforgiving. For years he refused to speak to Mario, even crossing the street when he saw his son approaching. In fact, Mario crossed the street when he saw my father approaching.
    “He sold me out,” Papa would say. “He deserted his own father.”
    Sunday afternoons in summer, my father sat in the grandstand heckling Mario as he pitched semipro ball for the town team against Marysville, Yuba City, Grass Valley, Auburn and Lake Tahoe. Full of beer on those hot afternoons, he was a one-man rooting section, cheering the opposition to clobber his own flesh and blood. “Knock him out of there! Knock his brains out!” he shouted to the batters facing Mario.
    I sat with the old man in a crucial game between San Elmo and Yuba City. In the last of the ninth, with the score tied, Mario hit a home run to win the league championship. As he rounded third base to the cheers of the locals, my enraged father rushed from the grandstand and tackled the grinning Mario as he rounded third base. The police dragged him off the field and Mario got up and trotted home with the winning run.

5
     
    T HE JET HIT the Sacramento runway on schedule and the passengers unhooked their safety belts. I was first to disembark as a gust of September heat blasted off the concrete runway, shimmering like an unfocused television screen. I had forgotten the heat of the Sacramento Valley. Now I knew I was home again.
    My brother Mario was not at the reception gate, where a few people had gathered to meet the Los Angeles flight. I went inside the refrigerated depot and sat down to wait. After fifteen minutes I walked out into the parking area to look for Mario’s truck. There was no sign of Mario and the heat was crushing. I ducked inside the waiting room again, found the cool, dark bar, and ordered beer. By one-thirty I began to doubt that Mario would show up. I dialed his home in San Elmo and his wife Peggy answered. Her voice always had the breathless quality of a mother pursuing children.
    “Who’d you say this was?”
    “Henry Molise. Your brother-in-law.”
    “Well, for God’s sake. Henry Molise! What brings you up here, Henry? Are you still writing those shitty novels? The last one made me vomit. I burned it so the children wouldn’t be contaminated. Lord, what a way to make a living!” (The novel concerned a young railroad brakeman who deserted his wife and children for a career in professional baseball. There was no way for Peggy to like it.)
    “Is Mario there, Peggy?”
    “Maybe. Why?”
    “I want to talk to him.”
    “It’s your smart-ass brother,” I heard her call out. “Do you want to talk to him?”
    There was a roar in the background, a sporting event of some kind on television. After a long time the volume of the crowd noises was reduced and Mario spoke.
    “Hi, Henry. What’s up? You watching the game?”
    “Game? What game? You were supposed to meet me at the airport.”
    “Forget it. Don’t come up. I was going to call you. Everything’s okay. They made up. All that talk about a divorce—it didn’t mean a thing.”
    “You jerk! Why didn’t you let me know?”
    “I meant to, Henry. It slipped my mind.”
    “Come and get me.”
    “Get you? Where are you?”
    “Sacramento airport.”
    “You mean, you came up?”
    “How the hell could I be at the Sacramento airport if I didn’t come up? I flew up, Mario! I’m here, in a phone booth, talking to you. Come and get me!”
    He moaned.
    “Can’t do it, Henry. It’s the Giants and the Dodgers. Bobby Murcer’s at bat with two on. For God’s sake, Henry, go someplace