The Vendetta Defense (10 page)

When he first met his wife, he was doing one of these chores, hauling their pigeons by cart to a shipping for the race on Saturday. It would be a weekend of good flying weather, starting with a warm evening, now on the edge of darkness. Tomorrow would be the first race of the old bird season, and it had taken the day to travel north from Veramo to the city of Mascoli in the Marche province, where the birds would be released, the trip made slower because Tony was on his bad feet. Even so, out of kindness he led rather than drove their pony, an overweight, sway-backed brown creature with a brushy black mane and stiffness in his right hind. The beast pulled the cart gamely, and in back of the cart the pigeons cooed, called, and beat their wings in their wooden cages, sending pinfeathers into the air, transforming the assembly into a swirling cloud of dust.

The pigeons knew they were being shipped to race and anticipated the event as much as they felt fresh despair at having left their mates behind. The Lucias used the widowhood method of racing, leaving the captive hen at the loft, so that the cocks felt eager to fly home faster and so were agitated until they were finally released to be on their way. It didn’t help that the dirt road was a rocky one, winding through the hills of the region, and the pigeon cages, piled five on top of one another and tied up with twine, jostled right and left. The birds felt unstable in the creaky cart with the weary pony yanking them along, and Tony couldn’t blame them for that.

They all plodded ahead, with Tony barely noticing the terrain, even though he had never been in Marche before on his own. Abruzzo, on Marche’s southern border, was considered by the
Marchegiani
to be far less sophisticated than their province. And for their part, the Abruzzese had a popular saying: “It is better to have a dead man in your house than a
Marchegiani
at your door,” because the men of Marche had been used as tax collectors by the Romans, and so were universally hated.

But Tony took no notice of differences between men, for all of it sounded like generalizations to him, and he was not the political sort, despite the heated politics of the day. His concerns were his family, his olives, and his pigeons, and he practically walked backward as he led the pony so he could make sure no birds fell off the bumpy cart. It was the reason he was almost run over by another cart that suddenly came roaring down the curving road, bearing a beautiful woman and a Blackshirt, Angelo Coluzzi.

“Hey! You! Hey!
Stupido!
” Coluzzi shouted to him. Almost out of breath, the Blackshirt pulled hard on his leather reins, bringing his matched brown horses to a stuttering halt, leaving them tossing their heads against the painful bit, their mouths gaping and their nostrils flaring. “Why don’t you watch what you’re doing, bumpkin? You’re hogging the whole road! Fool!”

“Oh, my!” Tony exclaimed, startled. The sudden lurch to a stop set the birds complaining and flapping their wings. He put his hand up to protect the cages from falling. “I didn’t see you. The birds—”

“The birds! The birds are no reason to cause a traffic accident!
Cavone! Idiota!
” Coluzzi’s face had gone red and he seemed to get angrier as a result of Tony’s explanation, not less so. His eyes and mouth were large and his dark hair combed back with brilliantine, making it as black as his shirt, with its gold buttons and pressed epaulets. It identified him as a
squadrista,
one of the elite cadre of Fascists who helped Mussolini rise to prime minister mainly by beating people up, breaking strikes, and destroying all opposition. But Angelo Coluzzi needed no identification in this region, as everybody knew him, or of him, for he had attained high station at only eighteen years of age, mostly because of his father’s influence.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” Tony said. It cost him nothing to placate the man, any more than a father minds calming a child in tantrum. And Tony’s attention was riveted, despite the noisy blowing of the horses and the feather-beating of the pigeons, on the lovely
signorina
sitting beside Coluzzi.

Her eyes were as brown as the earth itself, and her hair was, almost miraculously, the identical color, only shot through with filaments of red, like veins of clay in soil. Bright red lipstick, which Tony knew was the fashion among city women, made her mouth shiny, but Tony would have noticed her lips whether they were painted or not. She smiled at him kindly despite the anger of her companion, and because Tony was not stupid, he apprehended in an instant that she and Coluzzi made a poor match and wondered if she would ever realize it herself. He concluded that she would, because of the intelligence dancing behind her eyes.

“Stumblebum! Why in heaven’s name are you leading your broken-down pony along? How can you be so dim-witted?” Coluzzi continued his diatribe; it seemed that nothing could stop him. “Buffoon! Are you so simple you don’t realize that man is meant to ride upon his animals and not walk beside them, as a lover?”

Tony ignored the insult, so lost was he in the eyes of the woman. He contrived to think of a way to make her acquaintance, and then God sent him one. “Please forgive me, sir. My pony is so burdened with his own weight he can’t bear even mine after a long day’s journey. If I may formally introduce myself, by way of apology, my name is Anthony Lucia, from near Veramo, in Abruzzo. And you, sir, are Signore Angelo Coluzzi, I believe.” Tony bowed slightly.

“
Abruzzese!
I knew it! Farmers and nose-pickers!” Coluzzi yanked again on the mouths of his fine horses, who, resigned to his ill treatment, only stamped their feet in response. “
Si,
I am Coluzzi. So you know me.”

“Of course I do, sir.”

“You are loyal to Il Duce.”

“
Si, si
. Of course. As are we all.” Tony was hoping Coluzzi would now introduce the young lady in the seat of his cart, but no such introduction was forthcoming. Tony glanced again at the woman, and her smile emboldened him. “I have not had the honor of meeting your companion. She is so lovely, she must be your sister.”

“Fool!” Coluzzi’s eyes narrowed. “She is lovely, but she is no blood relative. Her name is none of your business. Now, move out of our way. I have already delivered my pigeons and must return home before they do.”

Tony bowed deeply, this time to the young woman, and doffed his felt cap with a flourish. “Well, Miss None-of-Your-Business, my name is Tony Lucia, and I’m very honored to make your acquaintance.”

Gentle laughter came from the cart, but Tony was bowing too low to see her laugh. He knew only that the sound made him aware of the exact location of his heart within his chest, something he’d never given a thought to before this moment. He straightened up slowly and whacked his cap against his wrist to shake out the dust before he returned it to his head and shoved it down over his mass of dark, curly hair at an angle he hoped she would find attractive.

“How dare you!” Coluzzi bellowed. “How dare you, show-off! How dare you speak to my Silvana!” In one motion, he raised the long whip he had been using on his horses, snapped it high in the air, and cracked it across Tony’s face.

Pain ripped through the young man’s cheek, tears sprang to his eyes, and he staggered backward in surprise and shock. Through his tears he saw the horrifed expression of the woman, her bright mouth a red gash of pain. Tony could see she had cried out—for him, yes—though he cowered shamefully. Coluzzi cracked the long whip again, and this time it struck the sweating rumps of the horses and they leaped into the air, clawing it with front hooves, and bolted right at Tony.

He threw himself out of the way, half rolling and half stumbling into the hard ground at the side of the road, landing on his hip and shoulder before he came to a stop at the edge of the field. Dust and small rocks sprayed in his face, and he spit them out in time to see Coluzzi’s cart take off down the road away from the city. Suddenly Tony’s old pony spooked, then galloped off in blind panic down the road, toward the city. No!

Tony scrambled to his feet. Pain shot through his shoulder, and he heard an odd grinding coming from there, the unmistakable sound of bone against bone. He had broken his collarbone. But there was no time to lose. His pigeons!

“No! Whoa! Stop!” Tony shouted. Holding his arm against his side, he ran in agony after the old pony, who galloped away with the cart, careening this way and that, using energy he must have hidden from Tony. The cart bounced on the rocky road. The towers of pigeons cages swayed dangerously. The cart was heading straight for a large rock. Tony’s heart leapt to his throat.

“Whoa!” he cried out, but the pony ignored him and galloped faster. Tony picked up the pace, cradling his arm, wincing at each stride.

The cart smashed into the rock. Tony held his breath. The pigeon cages at the end popped out of the cart, flew through the air, and crashed when they hit the road. The other cages quickly followed, toppling out of the cart. “No!” Tony yelled, but to no avail. He sent up a quick prayer for the safety of his birds.

The wooden cages, which Tony had carefully constructed but hadn’t built to withstand such a calamity, splintered instantly. The twine tying them tore apart. Cages split open all over the road. Tony raced to the cages, his shoulder broken, his feet painful. When he got there he fell to his knees, gasping for breath, as his pigeons struggled to free themselves from their wrecked cages, injuring themselves.

Tony scrambled from cage to cage, breaking them open so the birds wouldn’t get hurt further. His shoulder protested the effort and he heard his bones rubbing, but he ignored it. The race was a total loss, a year’s training and a day’s travel, but there would be other races. He had to save his birds. He hurried to the next cage. Soon passersby came along, laughing at the sight of the young man destroying his own cages and freeing his own pigeons, but Tony didn’t care. He finished wrecking the last cage and looked heavenward.

The birds, anxious to return home to their mates, were taking flight one by one, a running river of wings flowing up, defying gravity, soaring high into the clearest of skies, the blue darkening to black. A few flew on bloodied wing, but most looked healthy and sound. Tony’s heart lifted with them. Forty pigeons, all slate-gray colored, skated on air currents only they could see, circling just once as Tony had taught them, so as not to waste time, then heading south. He squinted to see them go, holding his hurt arm still. They flapped away, obeying instinct and training, going straight to their mates, and Tony kept watching as they grew smaller and smaller, until they shrank to bright white dots, like stars in the twilight, and then even the stars disappeared. Tony swallowed hard, his heart suddenly full of emotion, and then he understood why.

Silvana. The sound of her laugh was in his ears. Feminine and musical, from her perch on the cart.

Her laughter, right beside him in his ear. He could feel the whisper of her painted lips, then a gentle shaking on his shoulder, which hurt no longer, his collarbone miraculously healed.

“Pigeon Tony,” said the woman’s voice, and he opened his eyes, to look into not Silvana’s earth-brown eyes but the bright blue eyes of another woman. Her mouth had been red the first time they’d met. His lawyer, this Judy.

“Pigeon Tony,” she was saying, calling his nickname, one that Silvana never heard. “Wake up, you’re almost home.”

Then he heard another voice, coming from his other side. He looked up into more familiar brown eyes. Though they weren’t Silvana’s, they hinted at hers, for they were her eyes passed down to her grandson Frank.

“Pop,” Frank was saying with his nice smile. His teeth were white and straight as a wall, like all American teeth. “You okay? Can you wake up?”

“Sure, sure.” Tony was awakening only slowly. It took him longer than when he was young. He pushed himself up in his seat in the cab, not knowing when he had slumped down, and shook off his slumber. “Okay, Frankie. Okay, Frank,” he said, correcting himself. His grandson didn’t like to be called Frankie or Little Frank anymore, like when he was a baby.

But suddenly Frank wasn’t smiling and the lawyer wasn’t laughing anymore. The cab pulled up at the curb outside his house, where a crowd had collected. Both Frank and Judy had turned toward his house, and they looked so sad. He craned his neck to see around Judy.

Pigeon Tony wasn’t at all surprised by what he saw, and he realized that this was both the blessing and the curse of old age.

11

I
t was almost dark and the skinny South Philly street was too narrow for streetlights. Judy could barely see the plastic parti-colored beach chairs that sat outside each house on the sidewalk, in circles of three and four. Neighbors milled on the sidewalk but they were reduced to shadow figures, wearing pink-sponge haircurlers and smoking cigarettes.

Judy threaded her way through the crowd with ease, as they congregated around Frank and Pigeon Tony, and when she got to the front, she looked up. The front door to Pigeon Tony’s rowhouse had been sledgehammered from its hinges, and splintered wood blanketed the marble stoop. The two front windows had been shattered, as if by a baseball bat, and lamplight blazed within. Judy stared at the destruction for a minute, uncomprehending, then reached into her purse for her cell phone.

“My birds! My birds!” Pigeon Tony cried, his voice quavering, and he scurried past Judy to the front stoop, barely grazing the wrought-iron handrail in his urgency.

Frank hurried right behind him but stopped to touch Judy’s arm on the way. “Listen, we get my grandfather out of here as fast as possible, understood?” he said in a low voice. “He’s in danger if he stays here tonight. He’ll put up a fight to stay, and I’ll tell him no. You back me up. Got it?”

“Sure,” she said, willing to take instructions from a client when she agreed with them. She had already opened her black StarTAC and punched the speed dial for 911 when a woman’s voice came on the line. “Hello?” Judy asked, and Frank snorted.

“Good luck,” he said as he hurried after his grandfather.