Bread and Roses, Too

The Bargain

Mr.Gerbati let go of Jake's wrist, leaned over, and picked up the hammer and the point, now badly blunted. He put them carefully on the table. Then he took Jake's overcoat off his desk chair. "Up to your feet," he said. "We go." He handed Jake the overcoat and waited for him to put it on.

At both the office and the outside doors, Mr. Gerbati stepped aside for Jake to go through first. And then, as though he had no fear of what Jake might do, he turned his back on the boy and carefully locked the shed door.

Should he try to make a break for it? But where could he go? Where could he hide? Jake felt paralyzed. He just stood outside in the snow and waited for what the old man was going to say. How had Gerbati known? He'd sneaked into the office without Jake realizing it because Jake had been so intent on jimmying the infernal lock, making so much racket of his own. But how had the old man known where Jake would be, what he'd planned to do? Why had Gerbati suddenly taken a notion on a Sunday morning to come to the shed? It was all too neat, as if God had put it in the old man's mind to catch him.

Mr. Gerbati returned his watch fob to his vest pocket, buttoned his suit coat, then his overcoat, and started to walk, but he was not taking the usual route home. He was following two sets of footprints in the snow around several long neighboring sheds before heading over to Main Street, which was still pristine with blinding new snow—except for the same two pairs of footprints. As though taunting Jake, Mr. Gerbati followed the tracks like a bloodhound in reverse right up to his own back door and into his kitchen, where Mrs. Gerbati was bustling about laying out her usual bountiful Sunday morning spread.

"We took walk," Mr. Gerbati said, as though an explanation were required.

It was a late breakfast, as it would be on a Sunday following Mass. Rosa hardly touched her food. Still mooning over her stupid family, Jake supposed. The girl didn't know what real trouble was. He was sure he wouldn't be able to eat, either—his belly seemed to have taken up residence in his throat—but when Mrs. Gerbati said, "Eat, eat," he obeyed. He found, to his amazement, that the food went down the usual way and stayed there.

Mr. Gerbati got up as soon as he had finished his coffee spiked with the spirits he always liked to slop into the cup at the end of a meal. He went into the hall, shutting the kitchen door behind him. They could hear him talking out there, the words muffled but apparently in English.

"Telefonata—call on telephone," Mrs. Gerbati explained.

Telephone call? Gerbati must be calling the police ... or worse. Now the rich, oily meal did threaten to rise from his stomach. Jake wanted to make some excuse to get out of there—to go to his room or to the toilet—but he sat frozen, trying to hear through the wall what Mr. Gerbati might be saying into that infernal machine.

"Get your coat, Salvatore," Mr. Gerbati said when he reappeared. "He come soon to take you."

The hair stood up on Jake's head. The man let him eat his breakfast as though nothing was happening and then was going to turn him over to ... to the goons or the cops or—He got up and fetched his cap and overcoat, though Lord knew he didn't need them, sweating the way he was. Someone rang the bell at the front door.

"Come," Mr. Gerbati ordered. "Is here."

He followed Mr. Gerbati out to the front door. The old man opened it, revealing not a policeman or one of Jake's imagined goons, but Duncan, of all people.

"Hello, Sal," the big man said cheerfully. "Ready to go?" Jake nodded. "You coming, Mr. Gerbati?" Duncan asked.

Mr. Gerbati shook his head. "No. I read my paper."

"Okay. Then it's just us two, Sal."

Jake trailed the big Scot down the stairs. There was a truck standing in the street, the engine put-putting as though impatient to be off. "Hop in," Duncan said.

Jake climbed up into the passenger seat. Duncan started down Brook Street and turned left on Main. They were heading toward the town green, toward the city hall, where, Jake knew from his walks around town, there was a police station. He could hardly breathe.

At the green, however, instead of bearing to the right toward the city hall, Duncan bore left up a slight grade. Then he stopped the truck at the tip of a triangular piece of land, well short of the imposing brick building that stood farther up the grade.

"See it?" Duncan asked.

Jake was so relieved that they hadn't parked in front of the city hall that he wasn't even looking straight. "See what? That building up there?"

"No, not the school—the monument ... there." Now he saw it. In the point of land, as though looking down on all the activities of the town, high on a carved pedestal was a tall granite statue of a man with a coat slung over one arm. "That's our own Bobbie Burns, it is. We Scots paid a pile of money to have that done. Mr. Gerbati wanted you to see it."

What in the blazes was going on? Was Gerbati trying to tease him? The way a cat toys with a mouse before killing it? And who the devil was Bobbie Burns?

"Get out. You have to look close. It's probably the bonniest granite sculpture in the world." Duncan set the brake and hopped out of the truck. Jake climbed down and accompanied the big Scot over to the statue, which towered over them both. More than three times taller than Duncan himself.

"Every big city puts up its monuments to generals and war heroes, but when it came to the hundredth anniversary of our Bobbie's death, the Scots here wanted the whole town to remember that he was Scotland's greatest poet. The Italians understood. They worship men who write operas. But we couldn't do it ourselves. We mostly get the stone out of the hill. It's the Italians who are the artists. We hired the best that Barclay's shed had to offer. Barclay was one of us Scots, but his carvers were Italian—Novelli and Corti. Novelli carved the great man himself, but look, these panels under the statue—they were Corti's work. Corti was Mr. Gerbati's teacher. Mr. Gerbati followed him here from the old country."

Jake was studying the panels under the statue. There were four scenes, one on each side of the pedestal. Duncan took off his right glove and fingered a panel. "These are from the poems, all but this one—this is his own wee cottage in Ayr. Here—" He took Jake's finger and made it trace the lines of the cottage. "See. You have to feel it. Bas-relief. Harder to do, I think, than a statue." The big Scot shook his head. "God help us. What a waste," he said. "It was just a crazy thing. A fight between the socialists and the anarchists at the Labor Hall, and someone had a gun. Corti wasn't even there for the fight. He was just standing in the wrong place, and some crazy anarchist shoots his pistol off, and boom! the greatest carver this side of Italy is dead."

"Do you know...?" How could Jake ask the question? "Do you know why Gerbati wanted you to show me this?"

"Mr. Gerbati. I'm not sure. He just called and said he wanted you to see this before you left town. I guess he didn't want you to fail to see the most beautiful thing in the city."

Jake's stomach gave a lurch. "Did he tell you I was leaving?"