Cold

By William J Farrell

William J. Farrell is a retired professor from Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. A Navy veteran,he has received numerous awards for his servce to the community.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 17, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466901025

William J Farrell

William J. Farrell is a retired professor from Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. A Navy veteran,he has received numerous awards for his servce to the community.

Book preview

Chapter One

It was as cold as cold horror. Snow had crusted on top of the powdery surface on the ground, and the children tried to walk on it without breaking through. They pretended to blow smoke rings with their frozen breath, and they taunted one another with the threat of throwing snowballs and little pieces of ice that stuck to their stiffened gloves. They shouted at one another that they might be late for school if they kept playing. They might miss the first bell which rang at 8:30. They picked up their books from the cold white snow that covered the school yard and they ran inside the building. Their ears and their noses were all red with near frostbite.

The building was red brick and it had a black iron fence around it. It blended into the architectural style of the North End of Boston: red brick buildings, three story tenement dwellings where most of the families lived since the massive migration to Boston from Italy during the late 1890’s and the early 1900’s. There was an enormous sense of pride and belonging that most of the people experienced living there. During the summer months, people would sit out on the front steps of their buildings, talking about everything from religion to politics, or planning the street parades that honoured the many saints they prayed to, especially to The Virgin Mary. There were four Catholic churches in the North End, all within walking distance. And there was the constant aroma of Italian food no matter where you walked. It didn’t matter if it was summer or winter, warm or cold; the smell of food was always there. It seemed that the entire area was an Italian kitchen. During the summer, people from all over the city came into the North End for pizza and the splendid variety of Italian food prepared by cooks who had been cooking from the recipes that their parents and their grandparents had used years before. At Christmas time, the streets were flooded with people who were shopping for toys or bargains that they thought would save them money.

But this Christmas was unusually cold, and the children running to school were a great deal braver than the adults who preferred to stay indoors. Some parents were anxious to have other children come over to their homes visiting with their own children and playing with their toys. But for most parents, this time of year was too hectic and confusing. Sometimes, when people think about things or days that they think are essentially holy, they become very uncomfortable and they compensate for their inabilities to understand what often is not understandable by extravagant behaviour whether it be drinking, parties or gifts which they exchange with one another either to express their love and affection or their attempt to prove that they deserve love in return. Most people give gifts and think that they deserve gifts from other people. When we think of things, we feel that everybody has the same ideas that we have and we act in such a way as to suggest that this is true.

But the children running into St. Anthony didn’t think this way. They only thought of what they would get for Christmas; what Santa would bring them, or what their parents would give to one another, or how their tree looked when they compared their tree with the other kids in the neighbourhood. They, like other children, had an unshakeable belief that Christmas would always be happy, even if no other day of the year was.

Inside the three story tenement on Fleet Street, the steam pipes that heated the building hissed and banged as they did most of the winter months. They were silent during the summer months. Johnny Vale lived on the third floor. When he was only three, his mother left his father and moved to her mother’s house in Charlestown. Until this time they had lived in a house in Concord, Massachusetts.

He looked into the mirror and stroked his heavy growth of beard that had grown overnight. He was a handsome man. His hair was curly and black: he looked at himself through deep, intensely brown eyes and thought about his childhood. He was a handsome man but a little bit insecure in his personality.

He remembered playing half ball during the summer months and football down at Sullivan Square when the weather was colder. He remembered all those half ball games that he played, even the World Series of half ball that kids played up by the Monument. It was there that he first met Larry O’Brien. Larry was a fine athlete. He was big and strong. He was a great basketball player and, according to Johnny, a good half ball player. Larry was one of the kids who began the World Series of half ball that they played against the school wall by the Monument.

His thoughts wandered to the times when he was a kid. He hung on the corner of Bartlett Street and Pearl Street in Charlestown where Joe Kelly had a small store. Kelly had run the store, mostly for the kids in the neighbourhood. He was an alcoholic, but he did give the kids a lot of his attention. He had sold ice cream cones to them and there were two pin ball machines in the store. When the kids were on their way to school, he would open up a pack of cigarettes, take each cigarette out of the pack, and would sell them loosies for a penny each.

One day Johnny bought some candy and gum. The people at school didn’t allow anyone to chew gum though. He felt kind of bad that he bought it. When he got outside, he threw it away. He noticed a boy standing where he threw it. The boy was the butt of jokes at school because he had a scar that went from one side of his face to the other. Johnny felt sorry for him. Felt real sorry. He took one of the pieces of candy that he had bought with the gum and offered it to the boy. The boy took it and it made Johnny happy. When he grew up, he often thought about giving the candy to the boy.

There were lots of times when the kids that he played half ball with would lower him down the sewer to retrieve the half ball that somebody let fall there. He was always scared that they might not hold his ankles tight enough, that they would drop him in the grime of the sewer. But half ball, he thought, was such a great game. He knew that if he didn’t retrieve the half ball the game that the kids were playing would be cancelled. So he always made his best effort.

The rules of the game were simple enough. A pimpled ball would be cut in half and the batter would get only one strike as the pitcher scaled the half ball like a Frisbee. The batter would bat with a broom stick. One of the kids would steal a broom from his mother’s closet and saw off the part that was used for sweeping. When the batter used the stick as a bat he felt like a professional ball player. If he swung at the half ball that the kid who was pitching threw and missed, he was out. But if he hit the ball against the wall that he was facing, the other team, which generally meant two or three other kids, would have to catch the ball on the hop and the batter would be out. There were designated areas for a home run, a triple, double and single. He remembered one time that he hit the half ball way up in the air and it came down in Mrs Gallison’s back yard. She was very angry at all the players and refused to let them in her yard to retrieve the half ball.

God, he thought, I loved that game! Almost as much as I hate to shave. He was muttering to himself as he lathered his face with soap from the mug his grandfather had used. Look at my eyes! They look as though I spilled red ink on them. Nobody would ever love me if they saw me in the morning.

He had an older brother, Francis. The guys on the corner called him Bo, partly because when he was a baby he said bo all the time. He was superior to Johnny in every way, athletically, intelligently, with the girls, in height, in weight. He was six foot two and weighed one hundred and ninety pounds. Johnny stood only five foot ten and weighed one hundred and sixty pounds. Johnny admired him and fashioned all of his activities as though they were being judged by Bo. At times, this brought him joy and happiness, at other times sadness when he thought that he didn’t measure up to his own and to Bo’s expectations. When Bo had a birthday, Johnny would always give him a present. But Bo never gave Johnny a gift. When they played football together, Bo was always the star. The same thing was true when they played softball down at the park, or when they took the exam for the military.

Bo was a better athlete than Johnny, especially at football. When they both played together on the same team, Bo would score practically any time that he was given the ball, and Johnny would be relegated to substituting for him. Bo died when he was only thirty two.

Johnny thought about him all the time. He thought about Bo and he thought about the girl that he had fallen in love with. He had not seen her in the past several months. He had last seen her in November. He thought about her often. Some things become so indelibly etched on a man’s soul that it is better to accept it as a fact than to try to forget it. Trying to forget is often more painful than accepting the memory of something that was, but is no more.

Shit! he cursed as he cut his chin with the razor. I really hate to shave.

He splashed warm water on his face and used the blue towel to dry himself. He thought that he could have used another towel to accomplish the same thing, but there are some things that you do by habit. He had the habit of using the blue towel that hung on a hook on the bathroom door. He went into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of coffee from the Mister Coffee container that he had prepared the night before. He loved coffee in the morning, it woke him up. He needed coffee every morning just to get started.

Just then the phone rang.

Hello, he said as he cleared his throat while drinking the hot coffee. The voice on the other end seemed quite insistent to him. He frowned as he sat down on the kitchen chair while holding the phone in one hand and the cup of coffee in the other one.

Sure. I understand Freddie. You know that he only has to ask me. I’ll do what he says, even when I don’t agree. I’ll be in his office in about an hour. Yeah, I know that there is a problem. OK, I’ll see you then.

He hung up the phone very deliberately. His dark face was slowly turning red with anger. Why me? Why the hell me? Why should I be his errand boy? Sure, I owe him everything, but when do you stop paying? Maybe never. Sure he is the Godfather and he sent me all the way through Harvard and its law school. Sure, I passed the Massachusetts’s bar and all, but when is he ever going to forget it?

He dressed himself and glanced very quickly at his law school diploma that hung on the bedroom wall. He took a white shirt from his closet and a red striped tie from the tie rack that he just installed last week. He thought to himself that it was indeed rather inappropriate for him to practice law while his business essentially involved breaking the law. He smiled to himself as he thought about a professor whom he had in college who said in class one day that every person makes a choice in life, a choice that is either good or bad, but that person is stuck with that choice and there is nothing that the person can do about it. The professor went on to say that the choices that we make will direct the rest of our lives, once you have lost your innocence, it is impossible to get it back. His professor was a strange guy who would say things in class that had little to do with the material that he was teaching. But of all the material that he taught, those things were remembered most.

He put on his warm coat, adjusted his brown gloves and closed the door to his apartment. He stepped quickly down to the second floor hallway and stopped to greet Joe Rizzo. Joe had been the janitor for the building for as long as Johnny could remember.

Even when he was a young man going to Harvard Law School, Joe was tending the building, mostly cleaning up in the summer months and in the winter time trying to fix the radiators.

Hey, Joe, good morning, it’s a real cold one today. Keep the building warm. Make sure that you do, and you have a good Christmas. How is your wife feeling? Hope she’s OK. His wife was ill for a long time with breast cancer. Johnny had contributed monies to help her and all the unfortunate women who were infected with this horrible condition.

"Yeah, sure Johnny, she’s good. Thanks for asking. Everybody gets real busy and nuts this time of year, around Christmas, ya know. She’s still running around and goes to church or to Macys. Those are the best places to be around right now, church and Macys.

Have a great day Johnny. Only four more days and it’s all over anyhow. Then you don’t have to worry about church. We can forget about Santa Clause too. We can get back to normal. Except, of course, for Macys."

Joe, you’re such a cynic.

It’s the only way to be. Joe grinned as he finished adjusting a valve on one of the halls radiators that he was working on.

Never expect anything from anybody, Johnny, and that way you will never be disappointed. Then you can only disappoint yourself.

You should have been a philosopher too, Joe.

Everybody is.

I guess so, Joe. Have a good day.

Take care. If you don’t, nobody will. Joe was pleased that somebody like Johnny Vale was so friendly with him.

Johnny waved, smiled at the woman sweeping the snow from the front hallway as he went down another flight and left the building. He had the kind of personality that everyone seemed to like. He gasped as the cold air invaded his nostrils. He had planned to walk over to State Street to Don Luciano’s office, but it was so cold that he called taxi. On warmer days he walked everywhere in Boston and thought that people who took cabs were essentially lazy. He thought to himself that people should enjoy the weather and when it’s nice out, people should walk to where they’re going rather than take a cab.

Johnny was always thinking. At least he thought he was always thinking and that he had thoughts that other people did not have. He was wrong often about things

Chapter Two

The cab pulled over and Johnny thought that he was lucky to find one so quickly with all the snow they were having in Boston. It is so difficult to find a cab vacant anyhow, particularly during the holidays. The cab driver was quiet as he drove by the Aquarium, by the Faneuil Market and to the corner of State Street.

Damm pedestrians, he finally muttered as people walked in front of the cab, drivers have rights too.

We all do, buddy. But just let me off here at the corner. I’ll walk the rest of the way.

He paid the cab fare, gave the cabbie a tip and jumped back into the cold. The snow was slushy and wet, it always is in Boston. He thought that the mayor and the City should spend more money cleaning up during the winter months when there was plenty of snow on the ground. In that way jobs could