Full of Life by John Fante Read Free Book Online Page A

picture of me at six months, popeyed and naked on a velvet pedestal. I jumped up from the table.
    “Please, Mama. For God’s sake, not that.”
    She put the picture away and began clearing the table. I drank wine, watched the clock on the stove, and read the Sacramento Bee. Mama took a colander of scraps out to the chicken yard. Pretty soon she was back with three egs. One in particular she singled out and brought to me at the table.
    “Feel. It’s warm, from the mother hen.”
    I didn’t want to feel it. Warm or cold, I wanted nothing to do with it.
    “Feel how nice and warm it is.”
    I wouldn’t. I just stared at it. The egg stared back like a white oval eye, melancholy, stupid.
    “They’re good for you. Eat lots of them.”
    “Take it away. Put it some place else.”
    Time passed. I watched the clock and listened for footsteps in the yard. It was good to see my people again, but now I wanted to get away. Though I had plane reservations for the next day, and a ticket for Papa, I considered leaving that night. I had brought unhappiness to Papa. Best now to leave and let time and distance restore him.
    Mama had unpacked my grip that afternoon. Now she began another inspection of the contents. She wanted to know the price of everything. I had brought an extra pair of slacks. She carried them out of the closet and flung them on the table. She examined the cuffs, the seat, the zipper. There was a food spot in front. With an exclamation she discovered this spot.
    “What on earth do you suppose it is?”
    “Don’t worry about it, Mama. Just put it away.”
    She spread the trousers on the table and made a production out of it. She got a small cloth and soap and water and began scrubbing the place.
    “I wonder what it is.”
    “Please, Mama. Leave it alone.”
    “It won’t come off.”
    She kept probing around. I leaped out of the chair and took the trousers away from her.
    “I’ll send them to the cleaners.”
    “That costs money.”
    “I don’t care.”
    “Doesn’t Joyce look after your clothes?”
    “Of course.”
    “Sending them to the cleaners—that’s the American style.”
    I went out on the front porch and sat in the moonlight. The stars floated low and cool. Thirty miles to the east shone the Sierra snows, star-stuff, distant and lonely. A passenger plane droned through the sky, green and red lights blinking. I was homesick for my wife, and worried about my father. It was ten o’clock. There was a midnight plane out of Sacramento for the South. I made a decision: I would find Papa, bring him home, and take that plane.
    Then this car with feeble headlights came clattering down the road. It was Joe Muto’s old Ford. Joe was driving. He pulled up in front of the house. I went down to the fence and we greeted one another.
    “You look for your father?” he said.
    “Have you seen him?”
    “On my land. Now. I think he have too much to drink.”
    I climbed into the truck and he turned it around. We went bumping down the broken road I had traveled that afternoon with my father.
    “I hear him in there,” Joe said. “He feel pretty bad.”
    We descended the small hill where the road turned left until we came to the section of uncultivated land. Joe stopped the car and I jumped out. Everything was clear in the moonlight. A community of bullfrogs and crickets filled the air with mating calls. Then I saw my father. He was sitting under one of the old lemon trees, a bottle in his hand. If he saw me, he paid no attention. Joe Muto stayed in the car and I went forward through the whistling weeds.
    My father was talking to himself.
    “Don’t you worry about your Grandpa. He’s not so old like they think. You’ll get your house, little boy. Your Grandpa, he’s not dead yet. Everybody tries to kill an old man, but your Grandpa ain’t through yet.”
    I clenched my teeth to hold back the pain.
    “Papa.”
    He saw me before him and cast the bottle aside in the weeds. Then he turned his head to the