Gowanus Crossing/A Life Along the Canal Chapter 3

Americo pulled on rumpled Lee dungarees and a gray sweatshirt, grabbed his socks and sneakers, tiptoed past his parents' bedroom door. In the stairwell he smelled coffee and cigarettes. Joe, wherever he’d slept, if he'd slept, was up and on the prowl.
He listened for the rustle of a newspaper, the clatter of a coffee cup. He took a breath, came out of the enclosed stairwell darted for the bathroom, turned and braced his back against the flimsy door, planting his feet against the back edge of the tub, his wiry body a flexible, but unyielding barrier. He held the position for a minute waiting for his father’s shoulder to shiver the door. The tan phone sat incongruously in the tub. A plastic triptych of the Crucifixion was tacked to the outside of the door covering a gaping hole Joe had punched a year before while Americo and the twins cowered inside.
A cigarette butt floated in the toilet. Was Joe gone? Americo hesitated, then pulled the bathroom door open and ran through the living room for the front door—the Christmas bells jingling merrily.He twisted the lock, pulled it open and was on the street, bright morning sun flaring in his swollen eye. He pulled on his coat as he ran, knees pumping looking back until he'd reached Third Avenue. He spit a mouthful of blood onto the sidewalk and walked past Goldie’s Poultry Market. Ace the rooster strutted on the sidewalk, glaring at Americo. On the other side of Third Avenue, Victor the blacksmith, in a leather apron that looked like something from the Middle Ages, was pounding nails into the hoof of a swaybacked horse, the smell like burning fingernail clippings in the air.
Sometimes, Americo worked with Angeletti the peddler for tips and a bag of peaches or plums at the end of the day. He'd sit on the painted wooden wagon's tailgate, skinny arm clinging to a post, the scale swaying next to his head, the horse plodding amidst the cars and trucks, carrying him across a sea of cobblestones from one neighborhood to the next, listening to the peddler singing out in Neapolitan.
"E rook e rabe, pomodoro, ba-sil-ico.”
The song invariably drew crones and housewives in halter tops and shorts from the brownstones and tenements that lined the streets of South Brooklyn. Americo carried the bulging brown bags behind them, up endless steps, along darkened hallways, eager for a peek into life in the sweltering, tin-ceilinged apartments where black garbed nonnas sat by sleeping babies.
He walked to Third Street where a eastern tributary of the Gowanus--once connected by a series of ingenious dikes to a 17th century Dutch farmhouse--had been filled in with rubble. Nobody gave a shit.
Behind him, a car rumbled over the cobblestones. He whirled, then recognized his Aunt Lucy’s pink, 1955 Cadillac. He dashed into the street. She braked, wheels squealing. He walked around to the driver’s side, leaned in.
“Stupid bastard you wanna get run over!”
She paused, took in his bruised eye. Then lit a menthol cigarette, flipped the match under Americo’s chin.
“Whadda you up so early for?”
They both avoided mentioning his father.
“Nothing. Walking to the gas station to see Sally.”
“Too jerk-offs instead of one.”
Americo grinned. He loved his wild, foul-mouth aunt.
Lucy was dragging, her makeup runny, her bouffant ike wilted flowers. Americo’s eyes flicked past her to Rosemary Marcantonio, one of Monte's’ barmaids, asleep in the passenger seat, her skirt riding up her thighs.
“You just getting home?” It was all he could think to say.
“What are you a detective? Mind your f-ing business.”
“Your brother…”he began.
She glanced at the rearview mirror as if expecting Joe Guzzi to show up.“Psycho should have stayed in the Philippine with the cannibals.
She puffed on the cigarette. Rosemary groaned, shifted. Americo caught a flash of pink, the darker shadow at the crotch.
“Are you getting a good look?”
Americo blushed. Lucy reached over and tugged Anna’s skirt down.
“ It’s your mother’s fault you know. Marrying him. Miss High-Falutin.. She started to say more, then stopped. "I gotta go.”
She accelerated, then braked abruptly. "Listen, I gotta drop off Sleeping Beauty over here. Stay with me  tonight if he’s still on the warpath. My Thomas and Lulu Belle like the crazy stories you tell them about the canal.”
“They're not stories. History.”
"Too much history around here," she said driving off
"Warpath!"
Americo thought of Sonny the Indian and laughed for the first time in days.

When Americo walked up, Freddie and Marty were sitting on vinyl-covered kitchen chairs in front of their dilapidated Texaco station, eating bologna sandwiches smeared with mustard the color of baby shit and sipping chocolate milk out of half-pint containers. Smoky Robinson & the Miracles’ Tears of A Clown echoed tinnily from the cracked plastic radio at their feet. They wore greasy coveralls and thick work shoes. Their hands and particularly the fingernails cracked and crusted from too many oil changes, but the hair on their narrow heads was spectacular, dyed rust red, processed into ringlets like gypsy coins, wrapped in blue and red cowboy bandannas.
“My maaaan!” Marty croaked.
 He squinted at Americo, then poked Freddie with his elbow. “What’s wrong with my man's eye? Walk into a door again? Best get some bigger glasses.”
“Or a softer door," Freddie grinned.
“Sally here?”
“Sally took the day off. Say he ain’t feeling well,” said Freddie.
"Sheeiit!” said Marty.
The roar of a V-8 engine, then the squeal of brakes shatters the quiet. A white Pontiac Grand Prix jumps the curb, the chassis bottoming against the concrete.
 Americo groans. Shakey Manzo and his 17-year-old kid brother Boy-Boy, roar up to the pumps, radio blasting "Sherry" by the Four Seasons. Boy-Boy is at the wheel, jittery Amerco would bet, with amphetamines.
“Yo! Melanzani!"
He bangs the outside of the door with his fist. "Yous jigabos wanna go for registrations?”
“No way!” Marty grins. “You white boys too fast.”
Freddie gets up and pumps the gas. When he reaches over to wipe the windshield, Boy-Boy floors the car. Freddie jumps back, barely avoids being thrown over the hood. The driver's side mirror catches his elbow, hard. The Pontiac fishtails crazily across Third Avenue and disappears
“Crazy motherfucker!” Marty shouts, the mock friendliness dropping like a mask. "Why am I paying off these guineas! This shit ain't 'posed to happen!"
How’s the Twister?” Americo manages. He can't think of anything else to say.
“Sherry baby my ass,” Marty growls.
Freddie walks back to his chair rubbing his elbow. He turns his face away from Americo.
The Twister, a ‘55 Chevy coupe tricked out with a 409 cubic inch engine, twin four-barrel Holley carburetors, Isky roller cams, and high-compression pistons, sat in a back bay of the garage. The car had fiberglass fenders and a chrome straight axle that jacked the front end up so preposterously high Freddie had to use a stool to climb in and out. Americo loved that stool, loved the Chevy and its grey suit of primer far more than the Electra 225s and Continentals that gleamed like Christmas tinsel outside Monte's.
He associated the Twister with freedom, with beach boys and surfer girls, with California—a candy apple culture that he could glimpse darkly through the screen of his television, that reverberated over the airwaves, a New World Americo could not comprehend, yet believed in, and lusted after. He walked into the garage, grabbed a rag and began polishing the engine’s chromed air cleaners and valve covers, then spotted the phone on the wall.
He dialed Sally’s number, HY9-9870.

Continued