(This is a work in progress for an anthology contest, where the theme is “People of Rhode Island” This is based on a family yarn that my great-uncle told me “really happened”.)
Little Manny Estrella swung the bucket as he walked up the hill towards St. Patrick’s Church. Not quite so little, having inherited his father’s broad chest and long legs, at the age of 9, he was the delivery boy for the speakeasy next door to his apartment house. Nobody messed with him when he delivered the special medicine that he even knew was liquor from his father’s still down in the cellar. The bucket sloshed the liquor around. He could smell its acrid stench as he swung it back and forth, probably dripping some of the precious liquid on the dirt sidewalk.
No one walked this soon after work. Right after work at the Ann & Hope mill, men and women gathered with their families to eat dinner, and then hung out on the stoops if it was too warm. The leaves on the trees in the orchard in the back were already turning, many apples rotting at the base of their trees. However his father would gather up these bad apples and use them for the still. Old man McAllister didn’t seem to mind, as long as his dad didn’t pluck them from the tree.
Mrs. Mendoza was busy sweeping out her stoop of non-existent dust. She waved at Little Manny, who waved back. “How’s Emma?” she asked in Portuguese.
He replied in the same language, used commonly in the Valley, “Doing better. She got out of bed this morning.”
“God bless her,” said Mrs. Mendoza, making the sign of the cross. “And your mother.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Mendoza,” said Manny, echoing the motions. “She should be in church Sunday.”
“Come back this way, and I’ll give you cookies to give to your mother.”
Manny smiled. He’d get a couple of extra for himself, he was sure. “Yes, Mrs. Mendoza.”
She smiled and went back into the house. Mrs. Mendoza lived on the first floor of the apartment house, and her husband worked the lathes at the lumberyard outside of the Valley. He wouldn’t be home until late.
He went around the corner to the white shingled house with a small front yard and a concrete walkway. He unlocked the gate, and heard a dog bark, a loud, low-pitched bark that held a growl underneath it. Manny knocked on the door and waited.
“Wait! Suave, be quiet!” The door opened and a woman peered out. “Oh, it’s you!”
“Hi, Mrs. Alvarez. I’m delivering your special medicine.” He held up the bucket.
Mrs. Alvarez was built stocky, like most Portuguese women in the neighborhood. Her husband had lost his arm in an accident in the looms, and her three children worked in the assorted mills near the river. The special medicine was for her husband to sleep at night, she had said.
She took the bucket and said, “Wait right there.” She stepped back inside, yelling again at the dog, and she came back with a coin. “Here’s a quarter for the medicine, and a piece of masa for you.”
Mrs. Alvarez handed him the sweet bread, still hot from the oven. “Thank you!” he said, and pocketed the quarter. He was going to get cookies and sweet bread. It couldn’t get any better than this.
Upon arriving at Adele’s, the speakeasy next to his apartment, his pockets bulged with twisted round cookies for his sisters. He had already eaten the masa, knowing he couldn’t stuff it in his pockets.
Adele’s didn’t even hide itself as an apothecary shop or a drug store, or even any store at all. The blackened windows set high in the building’s wall. Without the black paint, they let light into the bar, which lined the entire opposite side of the wall. Adele McAllister manned the bar when he walked in. A few men turned in his direction; he knew them from the neighborhood and greeted them with a wave.
“Took you long enough. What’s in your pocket?”
Manny took out the quarter and handed it to Adele. “Cookies by Mrs. Mendoza.”
Adele took the quarter and put it in her cash box. She turned to one of the men at the bar. “Your neighbor’s feedin’ the neighborhood kids.”
The man shrugged. He didn’t speak English, and Adele only knew rudimentary Portuguese, enough to know beer from wine and numbers for money.
“Your father’s looking for you,” said Adele. “Tell him I need another barrel of that vino.”
Manny nodded. He glanced at the trap door to the cellar. He could get to his apartment that way, since that was also the way that the liquor came into the speakeasy. He debated, but the idea was quickly squashed by Adele’s glare at him. He put his head down and left through the front door.
He went around the building to the back door of the apartment, which led directly into the kitchen. He could smell dinner wafting through the open window. Stew again, but that was all the family really had. His mother’s chourico downstairs was still drying and wouldn’t be ready for another couple of months.
He threw open the door and saw his mother, Rose, at the kitchen stove, stirring a pot. “Manny,” she said, and gave him a quick hug when he approached. “Go sit with Alice and Slugger until dinner’s ready. Elsie’s there, but you know her.”
Alice, his oldest sister, was going out with “Slugger” Santos. They always had to have a chaperone, and Elsie, dreamy, distracted Elsie, was there with them. She would listen to the radio with her ear against the speaker, immersing herself into the world of the radio, no matter what was on. A train could come through the house and she wouldn’t even notice, which made her a horrible chaperone.
Manny bounded into the living room, with a loud, “Hello!” as he jumped over the threshold and landed, his arms spread wide like Fred Astaire coming down from a high pirouette. As he expected, Alice and Slugger jumped slightly while sitting on the couch.
Alice was tall for her 15 years. With long, thick, raven hair down to her mid-back, black, deep, soulful eyes, she was slightly disproportionate with broad shoulders and hips, but someone obviously found her attractive. She told him, slightly annoyed, “Don’t do that, Manny.”
Slugger had broad shoulders too, but he was chiseled out of the rock that came out of the Blackstone Mines. Square face, square jaw, short-cropped black hair, he was nicknamed not for his boxing ability, but his use of a baseball bat during baseball games. He was going to try and become a cop—his father was a guard at the Ann & Hope Mill, and he knew people. The force was full of Irishmen from Lonsdale, while the Valley started to get filled with the Portuguese from the Azores.
Manny dropped on the couch next to his sister. “So what’s on the radio?” Elsie was on the floor, listening intently to the commercial for Palmolive.
Slugger shrugged. Manny didn’t like Slugger, didn’t like the fact that Slugger was holding his sister’s hand. Manny looked at the hand-holding intently, as if his eyes would be able to pare them apart. Alice let go and placed her hand on her lap.
Scoring a victory, he tried to stare at Slugger to get him to leave. Alice said to him, “Are you sick or something?”
Manny sat back. “Nope,” he said.
Slugger sighed. He said, “You’re old enough that we can be alone.”
“You should say something, then.”
“Me? It’s your mother.”
“Will your mother let us sit alone or will we have to deal with her being in the same room, too?”
Slugger was now an only child, his brother and sister having died at an early age. Slugger shrugged again.
Alice crossed her arms. “See?”
Slugger looked at Elsie, who didn’t even look like she was paying attention. He glanced up at the cuckoo clock. “I should go home anyway. Your father will be home soon.”
Alice got up at the same time Slugger did. They went to the door that led out into the small hallway, leading out front. Slugger lived a few trolley stops away in Central Falls. Manny followed to make sure that there wouldn’t be any hanky-panky.
There wasn’t, not even a chaste kiss on the cheek. A squeeze of hands and Slugger stepped out onto the sidewalk. He took maybe five steps to the trolley stop, and waited. Alice stood at the door, watching.
Manny said disgustedly, “You do this every night. He’s not going to get hit by a car.”
“You don’t understand,” she said. She waited until he got on the trolley and then went back inside.
“Alice! Set the table. Manny! Go outside in the garden and get some tomatoes.”
When Manny came in with the tomatoes, he saw his father’s lunch bucket on the chair, and heard him washing up in the bathroom. He dropped his tomatoes on the counter and went to the bathroom.
His father, a big, broad man, had finished his twelve-hour shift at the Lonsdale Bleachery. He loaded and unloaded textiles from the trains, and had just been given the duties of an assistant supervisor with an extra half-penny an hour for the compensation. His father took a towel from the rack and saw him. Manny senior smiled and rustled Little Manny’s hair. Without any other words of greeting he went out of the bathroom to the kitchen.
