The Brotherhood of the Grape Read Online Free Page B

thing.”
    He’d drop a hand on my shoulder. “Come on, kid. I got something else to show you.”
    Then two blocks down May wood to the Methodist church with its stone steeple and the open bell tower, the ivy-covered stone walls. Five minutes of silent, ritualistic admiration, gazing up at the steeple, the air magical with my father’s joy, his eyes dancing at his handiwork, his face suffused with contentment.
    “I did it,” he’d assert. “Yes, sir. I did it.”
    “You sure did.”
    Off and running again, chasing his heels. The City Hall. The Bank of California. Municipal Water and Power, Spanish-style, with adobe colonnades and a red tile roof. Haley’s Mortuary. The Criterion Theatre. The Fire Department, all red brick and spotless, with expanses of flawless concrete. On to San Elmo High School, with respectful pauses at places of interest—winding concrete walkways, drinking fountains.
    “Stop, kid.” He’d block me with his hand. “Down at your feet. What does it look like?”
    “Sidewalk.”
    “Whose sidewalk?”
    “Yours.”
    “Wrong. It’s the people’s. Your father built it for them, to keep their feet dry.”
    San Elmo High. Red brick. Immense stone stairs, and Papa, hands behind his back, squinting through cigar smoke as he gazed at what we kids came to call “the invisible marvel.”
    “Notice anything?”
    I’d shake my head. Just a damned school.
    “Look careful. You can’t see it, you’ll never see it, but I’ll show it to you.”
    My eyes would roll to the inscription across the front of the building. SAN ELMO HIGH SCHOOL . 1936.
    “Not that! ” he’d say, annoyed. “Look at the building! What’s special about it?”
    “You built it.”
    “What else? What is it you don’t see?”
    “How do I know if I don’t see it?”
    “You can—if you use your head.”
    I’d move up to the school wall and touch it here and there, scanning it up and down and across, bored to death with his ego trip, playing out a silly game.
    “Can’t see anything.”
    “What you see is a building that’s been through four earthquakes. Now, look close and tell me what you can’t see.”
    “Dead people.”
    He’d shake his head in disgust. “You dumb jackass! I’m talking about cracks! Earthquake cracks. Find me a crack in those walls. Go ahead.”
    “I can’t, because there aren’t any.”
    “So, then. What is it in that building that’s plain to see because you can’t see it?”
    “A crack.”
    “Why?”
    “Because you built it.”
    He’d dig into his pocket. “Here’s a quarter. Don’t spend it all in one place.,
    I’d take it and run, free at last.
    Other times it was the graveyard tour at Valhalla Cemetery, just outside the city limits. It could happen unexpectedly on a Sunday afternoon, an agonizing ordeal if you were thirteen and scheduled to pitch against the Nevada City Tigers at two o’clock and it was already one-thirty, and he was oblivious to your uniform, your glove and your cleats as you followed him around, knowing the ball park was ten blocks across town.
    Valhalla Cemetery was crowded with my father’s white marble angels, their wings unfolded, their arms and long fingers outstretched, hawk-faced and grim, a fearsome thrust about them like vultures protecting carrion. Wherever they perched, one got the feeling that they had already desecrated the graves.
    Down the cypress-lined path was the enormous bust of Mayor Hal Shriner, stern and iron-jawed, the menacing, cruel countenance of a crooked politican staring down at you from a pedestal above the sunken grave, his eyes empty, a few bird droppings on his stony hair. My father would remove his hat and stare in wonder, like a man enchanted by Michelangelo’s David , while I’d pound my mitt in a frenzy.
    “Nine years he’s been dead,” my father would muse. “Now he’s all gone, finished.” His eyes met the mayor’s. “Hello, Mayor, you old son of a bitch. How they treating you down there?”
    I would