The Brotherhood of the Grape Read Online Free PDF Page B

and find a television set! Hurry! The game’s just started!”
    “You rat!”
    “Sorry, Henry. Tell you what: there’s a bus to San Elmo at five. I’ll pick you up at the depot.”
    I struggled for self-control.
    “I don’t want to see you again for the rest of my life,” I told him. “But please. Do me a favor. Don’t tell Mama and Papa I’m coining. I don’t want them at the depot, waiting for me. I don’t want any part of that scene. Okay?”
    “Oh, shit,” he said. “Murcer struck out.”
    I hung up and went back to my perch at the bar, depressed, frustrated. Mario was a born bungler. No wonder my father was always disgusted with him, always putting him down.
    The voice over the public address system announced the next flight to Los Angeles. Suddenly I had a premonition of terrible problems in San Elmo and decided to fly back home. But as I hurried toward the embarkation gate my mind changed. I had come this far, so why not continue another eighteen miles and complete the journey? I owed it to my folks, if only for a few hours.
    The airport bus took me into Sacramento, where I went to a movie, loafed around a bookstore, stopped in a bar for a beer and a few plays at the pinball game, and finally boarded a bus to San Elmo, altogether a most fruitful and rewarding day thanks to my wayward brother who had not only triggered the journey but had left me stranded at the end of it.
    Coming into San Elmo down Main Street you could see that the town had changed, now that Highway 80 to the Sierras veered away from the city two miles north. San Elmo was isolated now, its lifeline cut, and the town was dying. Except for a few cars parked before the Safeway and Penney’s, the main stem was deserted. Acme Billiards, where much of my early education for life was acquired, was dosed down. So was the Ventura Theatre, where I saw every Elizabeth Taylor movie at least four times.
    The bus turned right off Main Street, then left down the alley to the depot. I stepped down with two Chicanos and followed them inside the depot (formerly a clothing store), which had a few wooden benches fronting the windows looking out on Main Street. The ticket window was open but the depot was unattended. There were only two people in that desolate place. One was my mother, seated on a bench near the window, and the other was my father, seated on another bench as far away from her as possible.
    Both saw me at the same time. My mother spoke first, crying out, “Henry, my boy!” and holding out her arms.
    Though it was fearfully hot in the waning afternoon, she wore a heavy black coat with a fur-lined collar and hem. I knew that damned coat—we kids called it “the Colorado coat”—a hand-me-down from Aunt Carmelina thirty years ago, a flashy, almost whorish coat, absurdly draping my small, gray-haired mother. Beneath was a gingham housedress. I pulled her into my arms and kissed her hot face and smelled the scent of Italian spices always present in her hair.
    “Thank God,” she breathed, clinging to me. “Oh, thank God! All I wanted was to see my dear son one last time.”
    Her body twitched, then melted suddenly in my arms, her head thrown back, her mouth open, her eyes closed. She only weighed about a hundred and three pounds, but it was dead weight and hard to control, and I floundered with her, yelling at my father for help.
    “Leave her go,” he scowled, a little black cigar in his mouth. “Leave her fall on the floor.”
    But he crossed quickly to us, taking her like a sack of grain and hustling her to a bench, mumbling, “Son of a bitchen woman, why don’t somebody put her out of her misery?” Splotches of angry blood bloated his neck and smoke from the black cigar stung his eyes.
    Mama lay spread out as if unconscious, eyes closed, mouth open, one hand primly tugging her dress below the knee. Her stockings were held up by sleeve garters. I recognized them: they were discards from the old man’s wardrobe.
    “It’s