The Darkest Hour

10

Nick Amato listened to his nephew’s story as he sipped black coffee in the kitchen of his West Side cold-water flat. The kitchen was the only room in which he felt comfortable. His wife had filled the rest of the house with holy pictures, dull heavy furniture, and retouched portraits of her relatives in Naples. And everything smelled of furniture polish.

Amato was in shirtsleeves, with his elbows on the table and a cup of coffee cradled in his hands. He was mad, and getting madder every minute, but he kept the musing little smile on his lips. Joe Lye sat at the end of the table watching Mario, and Hammy, a bandage along his right cheek and jaw, stood in the comer, twisting his hat around in his hands and breathing noisily through his damaged nose.

“So that’s all,” Amato said, staring with cold brown eyes at his coffee cup. “You haven’t forgot nothing, eh?”

“I told you just the way it happened,” Mario said, rubbing his damp forehead. He was frightened by his uncle’s reaction; if Amato had laughed or cursed he would have felt better. Maybe the big guy, Retnick, knew something. You’re in trouble your uncle can’t fix! That’s what he’d said.

“So that’s all,” Amato said. “He asked you about Evans and Ragoni and you told him nothing. Is that it?”

“I swear that’s all,” Mario said. “I told you about him hitting me and the rest of it.”

“Yeah,” Amato said. He looked up at his nephew, staring at him as he would stare at a bug crawling on his plate. “Did you hit him back? I forget.”

“What could I do?” Perspiration shone on Mario’s face, dampened the little curls of hair along his temples. “He might have killed me.”

“Retnick?” Amato laughed softly. “Don’t worry about him.” He turned to Hammy. “He’s not tough. Ain’t that right, Hammy?”

“I was drunk,” Hammy said. He shifted his great weight from one foot to the other, and smiled stupidly at Amato. The beating from Retnick had effected a change in him; the dumb trust in himself was gone, and his eyes were sheepish and puzzled. “I was drunk,” he said again. “He caught me when I was fouled up from drinking.”

“You’ll get him the next time, eh?” Amato said, staring at the shame in his eyes. Like a castrated bull, Amato thought. “Next time, eh.”

Hammy smiled as if this were a joke; he wanted no more of Retnick. The memory of those blows to his body was frighteningly vivid; another one would have killed him, he knew. “Sure, Nick,” he said, laughing nervously.

“Next time he’ll kill you,” Amato said, knowing what was going on in Hammy’s mind. “Remember that.”

A soft knock sounded on the door. Amato looked around irritably and called out, “Yeah?”

His wife entered the room smiling an apology at Amato. She was stout and middle-aged, with a dark complexion and large brown eyes. Her black dress, shapeless and old, fell almost to her ankles, and she wore her gray hair in a large bun at the back of her neck. There was a heavy resignation in her manner, but it didn’t stem from peace of mind or calmness of soul; instead she looked as if she had signed an armistice with life before a shot could be fired.

She stood close to Mario, almost touching him, and said to her husband, “He’s upset and tired, Nick. Can’t he go to bed?”

“Sure, he can go to bed,” Amato said, drumming his fingers on the table. Once he had seen a blasphemous picture of a cow saying a rosary and the image nagged at him when he looked at his wife.

“I did all I could,” Mario said, making a last attempt to alter the ominously hard expression around his uncle’s lips.

“Go to bed,” Amato said. “Don’t worry about it.”

His wife shepherded Mario from the room and before the door closed Amato heard her promising to bring him some warm milk with a little brandy in it. Amato put down his cup and swore softly.

Hammy, guessing at the source of his irritation, nodded solemnly and said, “That kid will turn out spoiled, I bet. Anna’s too good to him.”

“Joe, give Hammy a thousand dollars,” Amato said.

Lye hesitated, smiling uncertainly; the request made no sense but he knew Amato was in one of his dangerous, unpredictable moods.

Amato suddenly pounded his fist on the table. Glaring at Lye, he said, “You want to know what for? You want to vote on things maybe, be democratic?”

“Hell no, Nick,” Lye said hastily. He counted out ten one hundred dollar bills from his wallet and handed them to Hammy.

“What’s this for?” Hammy said, staring in confusion at the money.

“That’s your severance pay,” Amato said, getting to his feet.

“Wait a minute, you can’t—”

“Shut up!” Amato yelled at him. He crouched slightly, as if the weight of his anger was more than he could bear, and Lye moved slowly to the wall and covered Hammy with the gun in his overcoat pocket.

“You killed old man Glencannon,” Amato said, in a low thick voice.

“I didn’t mean to,” Hammy said, shaking his head desperately. “I just cuffed him and he — well, he fell over.”

“You’re lucky I’m letting you quit,” Amato said, pounding a fist on the kitchen table. “What’ll it look like when I take over his local next month? The International can move in and call the election a phony. The papers are going to have a lot to say about hoodlums and killers on the docks. Sure, but that doesn’t mean anything to you.” Amato paused, breathing heavily, bringing his anger under control. “There’s five hundred men in my local who do what I tell ’em to do. I say work, they work; I say strike, they strike. But you got to be different, you got to do things on your own.”

“Boss, I was trying to make him wait for a cab,” Hammy said, rubbing his big hands together nervously. His little eyes were wide and frightened. “He pulled away from me, and I grabbed him. Maybe I hit him. But not hard. And he just fell over. I... I dumped him then. That was all I could do. You got to give me a break.”

“You’re getting a break,” Amato said coldly. “I could turn you over to the cops. But I’m letting you go. But I want you to go fast, understand? Get out of town and stay out.”

Hammy looked desperately puzzled and hurt, like a child whose values had been ridiculed by a trusted adult.

“This ain’t a fair shake,” he said at last. “It’s because of that Polack, Retnick. You think I’m no good because he dropped me. I told you I was drunk.”

Lye said softly, “You’re crowding your luck, Hammy. You heard Nick. Don’t let me see you in New York again.”

Hammy looked away from Lye’s fixed and deadly smile. He knew what that smile meant. “I’m going,” he said wetting his lips. “I ain’t mad.”

“I’ll see you to the door,” Lye said. “Then I don’t want to see you again anywhere.”

When Lye returned to the kitchen, Amato was seated at the kitchen table puffing on a cigar. “Has Retnick got a phone?” he said, looking up at Lye through the ropy layers of smoke.

“Yeah. There’s one in his boarding house.”

“Call him up and tell him I want to see him. Right away. Here.”

“You think he’ll come?”

Amato shrugged. “Sure. That’s why he roughed up the kid.”

“You should let me handle him now,” Lye said. “He’s trouble, Nick. And he’s getting help from the boys at the Thirty-First.”

“Go call him up,” Amato said. “I don’t want any more loud bangs along my stretch of the docks. You call him.”

“Okay, Nick.”

While Lye was out of the room his wife came in and put a saucepan of milk on the stove to heat. The kitchen was crowded with equipment, all of it gleaming and new. Anna seemed at home among these mechanical marvels. They were a big thing to her, Amato knew. Mario, the church and the kitchen. That was her life. He watched her, frowning slightly, as she took down a large breakfast cup and measured out two tablespoonfuls of brandy into it. Then she stirred the steaming milk slowly, and a little smile touched her full patient lips.

“For the kid?” Amato asked her.

She nodded, without looking at him; her attention was claimed by the simmering milk. “He’s upset,” she said.

“He’ll be okay.”

Anna poured the milk into the cup and put the saucepan back on the stove. Then she turned and looked at her husband. There was a curiously cold expression on her dark face. “He told me a man hit him tonight,” she said. “Can’t you keep him safe?”

“Things like that happen. They don’t mean nothing.”

“This mustn’t happen to him, Nick. He’s all I got. You know that.”

“Sure, sure,” Amato said irritably. Most of the time he was glad he’d arranged to have Mario shipped to America. But there were moments when he wished he’d let him rot in Naples. The boy gave Anna something to think about besides polishing the furniture and hanging around the church. That part was fine; but her simple-minded anxiety about him was a bore. Amato had bought little Mario the way he’d buy an ice box or a suit of clothes; they had no kids and Anna cried about it at night, so he got her sister to ship them her oldest boy, Mario. That was fifteen years ago, and since then Anna had lived for the boy, coddling and smothering him with her frustrated maternal longings.

“I’ll take care of him,” Amato said, hoping to end the matter.

“He’s not strong like other boys,” Anna said. “He’s not rough and wild. He should make something out of himself. It’s no good that he works with your men. He should be a priest or a teacher.” Anna spoke with dogged insistence, as if emphasis alone might make her dreams come true.

Amato puffed on his cigar, avoiding her eyes. The cow with the rosary, he was thinking. The idea of Mario as a priest or teacher — or anything at all for that matter — struck him as slightly absurd. “Don’t worry about him,” he said. “He’ll be okay.”

“I try not to worry,” she said. “You don’t know how hard I try.” Then she left the room without looking at him and went quickly down the hallway to her son.

Lye returned in a moment or so and sat down at the end of the table. “I talked to him,” he said. “He’ll come.”

Amato grunted and puffed on his cigar. His mood had turned sour and bitter. He wouldn’t have admitted it, but Anna’s jealous preoccupation with Mario made him feel unimportant. “You seeing that broad of yours tonight?” he asked Lye.

“It’s pretty late,” Lye said, trying to be casual about it.

“Can’t you answer a simple question?” Amato said. “I know it’s late. I got a watch, too.”

“Yeah, I’ll see her, I guess,” Lye said.

“You got a nice life,” Amato said, staring at Lye. “Martinis and steaks, real high style.” The thought of Kay Johnson made him restless and irritable; he had never seen her apartment but he imagined it as a place of soft lights and deep chairs, with music playing, maybe, and lots of good liquor in crystal decanters. And he saw her there, very pale and blonde, with white shoulders that smelled of perfume, and a long robe that showed off her breasts and hips. “How’d you get to know her?” he asked Lye.

“A friend of mine, a bookie, introduced us at the track,” Lye said. The conversation made him uneasy; he felt his mouth beginning to tighten. “I drove her home that afternoon, and—” He shrugged, “Well, I started seeing her, that’s all.”

“You must have hidden talent,” Amato said, staring deliberately and cruelly at Lye’s twisted mouth. “You ain’t the best-looking guy in the world, you know.”

“I get along,” Lye said, trying to control his growing tension.

“Maybe it’s them prayers of yours being answered,” Amato said. “You prayed when you were in jail, but God didn’t get you out, Joe. I guess the prayers went into another account.”

“How the hell would I know?” Lye said, lighting a cigarette and throwing the match aside nervously. “Things just work out, that’s all.”

“Then why pray?” Amato said.

“Why don’t we talk about something else?” Lye said.

“Maybe you pray for the hell of it,” Amato said. “For fun, maybe.” He didn’t know why he was needling Lye; it wasn’t improving his own temper. “I can arrange for you to start praying again, if that’s what you like. There’s that Donaldson rap still hanging over your head. I guess you remember that.”

Lye took a deep drag on his cigarette and tried to smile; but it was a ghastly effort. “Why should you send me back to jail?” he said. “I do my work. I’m with you all the way. You know that, Nick.”

“Sure, I depend on you, Joe,” Amato said, frowning faintly. “Let’s forget it. How did Retnick sound?”

“No way in particular. He just said he’d come over.”

“He may be your next job.”

Lye nodded quickly. “I ain’t worried.” He felt the tensions easing in him, flowing mercifully from his rigid body. It filled him with shame to be so vulnerable to unreasoning fears; but those nights in the death cell had driven a shaft of terror into the deep and secret core of his manhood. The dream had come again last night, the violent red dream that repeated itself with the monotony of a stuck phonograph record. There were always the profane, laughing guards, the rush along the corridor, and then the rude altar and the straps that tightened across his bare chest until he could no longer breathe. And the guards stared at him, laughing obscenely, and there was nothing he could do about it. The dream sickened him; there were parts of it he had never been able to tell Kay about...