Free The Brotherhood of the Grape by John Fante Page B

startled, frowning. I’m hungry, I said. She opened the door and pointed to three overloaded garbage cans, motioning me to take them outside. I rolled them out among the ecstatic flies. She worked swiftly at a butcher’s table with half a loaf of French bread split down the middle, hollowed out and filled with pastrami and cream cheese. I thanked her and said I was looking for a job. Experienced dishwasher, I said. She opened the door and invited me out. I went away down the alley to a trailer park where a black hose curled like a snake through uncut lawn, and I sat on a trailer hitch eating the sandwich and drinking warm water from the hose.
    Down in the harbor a mile away I came to the Toyo Fish Company. There was a sign: WANTED: MACHINE OPERATORS, LABORERS .
    Me, laborer. No hod carrier, me. No stonemason. No bricklayer. I could hear the old man: learn a trade, be something special. Oh shit, Papa. I’m not twenty yet, give me time.
    The man’s name was Coletti. Dark, maybe Sicilian. Foreman of the labor gang. Paisan, I smiled. He didn’t like it. I’m looking for a job. No jobs, he said. But the sign outside said…Maybe tomorrow, he said.
    I walked out into the street, heading for town, up Avalon Boulevard. But where, and why? I found a bus bench. I would call Virgil collect and ask him to send money. No, he’d tell Mama, which was okay, but the old man would find out. He’d laugh. I warned him, he’d say, he wouldn’t listen to his father.
    I rose and walked again, my feet aching. I met another bum like myself. He wore a long overcoat in that hot late afternoon, the pockets stuffed with junk.
    “Hey, where can I get something to eat?”
    “They’s lots of restaurants,” he said.
    “I’m broke.”
    “So am I.”
    “Where do you eat?”
    “Holy Ghost Mission.”
    “Where’s that?”
    “Follow me.”
    Holy Ghost Mission was on Banning Street between two pawnshops. It had once been a store. A crowd of thirty men, all as neatly dressed and clean-shaven as myself, crowded the door. Some sat on the sidewalk, their backs against the storefront. At seven o’clock the door opened and Mr. Atwater, a black man, told us to come inside. There was a podium where Mrs. Atwater stood, holding a guitar. We took our seats on long benches, were given hymnbooks, and Mrs. Atwater led us in songs. Then Mr. Atwater stood before us and talked about the mercy of God, the importance of faith, and the evils of drink. He was a big, soft-voiced man with a short white beard, a good and gentle man.
    After the sermon we were led behind a partition to the dining area, long tables and benches, and two black ladies served us large bowls of beef stew, a hunk of bread and an apple. Everything was free, and it happened every night at seven o’clock. I sighed with relief. I had it made.
    That night I slept in a used-car lot on Avalon, an old Cadillac with a velour back seat, comfortable and long enough. At eight o’clock the next morning I was back at the Toyo Fish Company standing in front of Mr. Coletti’s desk. He looked up from some papers.
    “Nothing today,” he said.
    “Tomorrow?”
    “You never know.”
    I felt encouraged. I liked Coletti. We were on talking terms, getting acquainted. Every morning I left my Cadillac and trudged down to Toyo for a brief conversation with him. There were never harsh words. Sometimes he glanced at my clothes, the gray suit I had worn since my first day in Los Angeles, rumpled now and soiled and misshapen. “Nothing doing today,” he’d say. “Things are still slow.” Then one day he let me in on a production matter. “No fish,” he said. “We’re waiting for the boats.” I felt cheered. I had been given confidential information. The job was coming. I had to hold out. Now I need not look for other jobs. God knew I had tried.
    Why had I been rejected? Was it my clothes? Was it my face? I studied it in store windows, the dark stubble beard, the gaunt-ness, the aspect of defeat. Did I