Bread and Roses, Too (18 page)

"Come on, Rosa, they like you better than they like me. They'll listen to you."

"Are you saying I'm a better liar than you?" She turned to go. "Well, the saints forgive me, I've sure had plenty of practice since I met you." She stomped out, closing the door none too gently behind her.

He could hear the murmur of their voices as she spoke with Mrs. Gerbati. He was tempted to get out of bed and put his ear to the keyhole, but he was afraid of being caught. It might have just been a few minutes but it seemed hours before there was another knock on his door.

"Yeah?"

"Get dressed," Rosa said.

"I can't go—"

"You're not going to school." She opened the door a crack and stuck her head in. "Mrs. Gerbati talked Mr. Gerbati into taking you to work with him."

"
What?
"

"Well, you told me to think of something."

"I didn't tell you to think of
that!"
His whisper was hoarse with anger. The old man hated his guts.

Well, what could he do? He couldn't stay in bed forever. He got up and put on his new clothes, including the double pair of stockings. Or should he have put on his own clothes? After all, he was going to work with the old man. But it was too late to change. He opened the door and walked into the kitchen. The others were already at the table eating.

"Sit down, Salvatore. Eat up good." Mrs. Gerbati was smiling all over her round face, but Mr. Gerbati was bent over his coffee cup, slurping noisily. He didn't even glance in Jake's direction.

Jake sat down at the empty place. Coffee, black as midnight, was steaming in a mug. There was fresh bread and thick slices of salami on the plate. He might as well eat. He hadn't finished when Mr. Gerbati pushed back his chair and stood up. Jake saw he had on a suit, a shirt, and a ribbon tie. He didn't look like a worker. He looked like Joe Ettor, going out to lead a union rally.

"Mr. Gerbati need to go to shed now, Salvatore. I wrap up your bread, yes?" She got up and took Jake's plate to the counter by the stove. "Put your big coat on. It's cold today."

He got his coat and cap. Mrs. Gerbati handed him his bread, neatly folded up in a napkin. "Put in pocket for later." Then she said something in Italian to Mr. Gerbati, who nodded curtly. Jake looked at Rosa to translate, but she didn't.

"You behave now," she said under her breath. "I told them you wanted to be an apprentice."

He looked at her in disbelief.

"It's that or school," she said sweetly.

Jake followed the old man out the door onto the porch. His new boots crunched on snow blown up from the yard; several more inches had fallen in the night. He plunged his hands into his coat pockets. The fingers of his right hand curled around his napkin-wrapped bread. It was still warm. He stared out toward the street, almost blinded by the brilliant white landscape.

"Come, come," the old man called. "Already I am late."

Jake went carefully down the snow-covered steps and then scurried to catch up, noticing for the first time that Mr. Gerbati was carrying a briefcase. In Jake's experience, only the big shots at the mill carried cases like that. Wasn't Mr. Gerbati a workingman? What was he doing carrying a briefcase? Not that Jake was going to ask.
Hell's bells,
the only thing the man had said to him in two days was to hurry up.

It was a long enough walk from the house to Mr. Gerbati's shed to freeze his nose and the tips of his ears peeping out from under his new cap. The boots were wonderful, though. His feet were as warm as they'd been under the quilt in bed. Now, if only he had something to cover his face and his hands, he'd be able to stand the cruelest weather.

The old man could walk amazingly fast. He seemed to be paying no attention at all to Jake.
If he don't care whether I live or die, how come he agreed to let me go to work with him? He wants something out of me, most like. Well, I want something out of him, too. And I bet I get mine first.

They went down the hill past a school, the one he was escaping, no doubt, and on to Main Street. There they turned left, walked a block or two, and turned right for a couple of blocks until they came to a series of long shedlike frame buildings with a branch of the railroad track running into each one.

"Is here," Mr. Gerbati said, going down the length of one of the smaller sheds, past huge bolted double doors with a large sign above them that announced, Jake could only guess, the names of the owners. The track ran underneath the doors. Jake followed Mr. Gerbati around the shed to a small door toward the back corner of the building. Here the old man took out his watch fob. With the key that was hanging from it, he unlocked the door, then pushed it open and nodded for Jake to go in. The shed was a large, high-ceilinged area. To the right of the door, in the corner, was a smaller windowed room. There was no one inside the building. Count on the old man to be the first guy to show up for work. In the dry, dusty light, the room looked to Jake almost like a mill floor, except that instead of rows of spindles or looms, there were large blocks of granite sitting around here and there, and, at the far end to the left, some kind of massive machinery.

Mr. Gerbati turned a switch, and electric lights hanging from the ceiling brightened the area. Then he went into the small room in the corner and turned on the light in there. It was an office. Through the window Jake could see the old man hanging his coat on a peg and putting on a large tan-colored apron. That might explain the briefcase. He worked in the office, not as a laborer as Jake had thought. After all, the man did have his own house.

Suddenly, his ears were pierced by the high pitch of a factory whistle, then others, as though the whole town were exploding into whistles. Mr. Gerbati went to the door and opened it wide, letting in a blast of winter wind. Before long, men began to come piling through. "
Buon giorno, Signor Gerbati.
" Mr. Gerbati nodded and smiled and murmured a greeting to each man as he came in. Most of them took notice of Jake with a smile or a greeting. But there was no loitering. The men headed for a line of pegs against the wall and exchanged their overcoats for large aprons like the one Mr. Gerbati had put on. Most of the men kept their caps on, but a few exchanged their caps for little paper hats that seemed to have been folded out of newspaper.

The men scattered then, some toward the end of the room where the machinery stood, others to various stations around the room where there were a few statues of angels and what Jake figured to be saints. But most of the men went to what appeared to be tombstones in various stages of completion. Jake swallowed. He didn't want to spend his days in a place that looked like a fancy graveyard, surrounded by reminders of death.

But no one else seemed to mind, and soon they were all busy at work. Some of the men used powered drills; others carefully chipped away at the rock with hammers and chisels. He counted eight men in this part of the shed—nine if you included Mr. Gerbati. Four or five had gone to the other end, from which he could hear the noise of massive machinery starting up. Only Mr. Gerbati had gone into the office. There he was, sitting at a desk. Jake had to conclude that Mr. Gerbati was the overseer of this shed.

So what was Jake supposed to do? Stand there by the door like a dummy in his new boots and overcoat? The floor was covered with stone chips. He was glad for his thick-soled boots. The air was quickly filling with dust. Just like the mill but worse, somehow. This dust had a bite to it. Jake coughed to clear his throat. Mr. Gerbati, just as though he could hear Jake's cough over the noise of drilling and pounding of the machinery, got up from his desk and came to the door of the little office. He looked about the shed, then walked over to where a large man with a freckled face and a mustache the color of rusty pipe was working. Mr. Gerbati said something to him. The man looked toward Jake and nodded. Mr. Gerbati, apparently satisfied, went back into the office.

"I understand you're one of the Lawrence boys," the man said, coming over to where Jake stood and putting out a dusty hand for him to shake. "I'm Duncan, and you're...?"

"Sal," Jake said.

"Welcome to Rossi and Gerbati's, Sal."

"Gerbati is one of the
owners?"

"Mr. Gerbati is
the
owner. Old Mr. Rossi died last year from—well, we call it 'stonecutter's TB.'" Duncan laughed. "It's likely to get us all in the end, but meanwhile.... Hey, hang your coat on a peg and then come over and make yourself at home. You might want to leave your cap on—the dust, you know." He started back toward the stone he'd been working on.

Jake hung up his coat and went to Duncan's station, still puzzling over what the man had said.
Owner?
Owners were like Mr. Billy Wood. But there were small owners, too, weren't there, like the baker and the grocer? Well, it was a small shed, not as large as several they'd passed on the way here or the great horseshoe buildings he had seen from the train window.

"Yeah, Mr. Gerbati is the best boss I ever had, including my own father. We start coughing, and home we go to rest up. But I'd work for Mr. Gerbati even if he was mean as old man Rossi, because he's one of the greatest artists this side of the Atlantic."

"Artist?"

"Yeah, look here, Sal." He pointed to the stone he'd been working on. "See these roses?"

Jake looked, and out of the gray of the granite flowers were blooming. They were as delicate as the real thing, which he'd only seen once over the fence in a rich man's summer garden. But here they were in stone, every petal fresh and alive. "Mr. Gerbati did those?"

"He's a genius with flowers—roses, lilies, daisies, daffodils, morning glories, pansies.... He can even do a perfect thistle for us Scots. He's a genius, he is."

"I didn't know."

"No, I'm sure he wouldn't have told you. He's as humble as Rossi was arrogant. But every one of us is here because we want to learn from him."

Duncan was chipping at the stone to carve a name. "Hey, would you hand me that point?" He indicated a sharp chisel lying on the stone near where Jake was standing. "Yeah, we call them points, and this"—he raised his mallet—"is a hammer. I'll try to teach you what we call our tools as we go along." He took the point that Jake handed him and began to work again. It was a tombstone, no question about that, but with Mr. Gerbati's roses blooming on it, more beautiful than any stone Jake would ever have seen or imagined.

"Mr. Gerbati wants me to keep you busy," Duncan said, carefully holding his point in place as he spoke, "but I've never had an assistant, so I'm not sure what you ought to be doing. You could sit down and watch, if you like. Pull up a slab and make yourself comfortable."

Oh, he was joking. Jake smiled to show he'd understood, and perched himself on a block of granite nearby. Duncan grinned and went back to his task.

He didn't know how long he'd sat on the granite, but he knew the cold of the stone had overcome even the warmth of his new wool trousers. He stood up and wiggled to restore circulation in his seat. Mr. Gerbati saw him, came to the office door, and beckoned him over. Jake told himself that he wasn't afraid of the old man. Hadn't Duncan just sung his praises? But he couldn't help being nervous. What did the old man want of him?

"Here," Mr. Gerbati said, handing Jake an empty bucket. "The shovel over there, by the door—you see? You clean the grout off the floor. Duncan will show you where to dump it."

That was all, a job to do. "Yes, sir," he said, so relieved that he almost smiled at the old fellow.

Duncan took time from his chiseling to explain that "grout" was all the chips of granite on the floor. "Don't try to fill the bucket—you'll never be able to lift it. And just go to where no one is working. They won't want to stop for you to shovel."

So he had a job after all. Not a very grand one. He shoveled up granite chips and carried them out the door to a pile of stone near the creek. It was hard work—even partially full, the bucket was heavy—but he didn't mind. The men were friendly, and no one yelled at him to hurry or cursed him if he accidentally got in the way.

"Does the train really come in here?" he asked Duncan. The idea of a train coming right into the shed excited him.

"Not in winter," Duncan said. "It's too cold to quarry now. They'll bring our blocks down from the hill when the weather's warmer."

It was a disappointment, but the crane almost made up for it. He watched, his mouth open, as two men down by the machinery put a heavy chain belt around each end of a block of granite. It was raised up off the floor by another chain attached to a metal bar that went across the shed near the ceiling, and then the bar started down a track, carrying the immense stone the length of the room to a stonecutter's station. The first time Jake saw it, he ducked. But there was a man following behind the granite, making sure it didn't swing out and hit anything or anybody. No one else was worried about the stone falling or hitting him, so Jake wasn't scared exactly, but he felt a little thrill of fear every time he heard the movement of the crane over the noise of the shed, and looked up to see the stone riding above them.

At what he later learned was 11 a.m., the whistles wheezed and shrieked once more. "Dinnertime," Duncan announced. The men knocked the dust off their clothes, hung up their aprons, put on their coats, and hurried out. Jake got his coat and waited by the door for Mr. Gerbati. Dinnertime! And there was a warm place to go and food would be there waiting, he knew. What difference did it make if the old man hated him? His pa (he could never suppress the pang that name caused) had beat him. Mr. Gerbati had only yelled. It was a poor fool of a fellow who couldn't take a bit of screaming.

When they reached the house, a red-faced Mrs. Gerbati met them at the door. They had hardly got in the house before she began sputtering. "You don't want to go home, do you, Salvatore? You like it here,
si?"

"Yeah, yeah, I like it fine." What was the matter with the old lady? She looked as though she was about to burst into tears.

"The mamma and papa of two of our Lawrence boys say they want the boys home. They say in telegram that papa no give permission. We take—we steal—what you say?"