The End by Salvatore Scibona Read Free Book Online Page A

down his knife and fork and refilled Rocco’s wineglass. The boy did none of the things you are not supposed to do with regard to eating at a table except that at one point he inclined his head very slightly toward his fork as it approached his mouth; she observed this and, without taking her eyes from Rocco, said, “Ciccio will kindly remove his snout from the trough.”
    “Beg your pardon,” he said, straightening. Like a dog, it pleased him to obey—but why expend judgment? A boy needs someone to obey. Ciccio was the name; Rocco made a note.
    The boy took the plates away again and came back with the salad. The meal was progressing with extreme slowness. Rocco couldn’t remember the last time he’d sat down to eat with other people, with a tablecloth and gravy boat and the whole shebang. Ciccio took the plates away and came back with cheese and some peaches. A breeze came through the window. Gratitude was expressed for the last night’s thunderstorm, which had broken four days of stupor, although more storms were predicted for that night.
    “But it’s such a long way, Mr. LaGrassa, and all by your lonesome,” she said. “Take the train.”
    “I want to see the big happy country as I go.”
    “The obvious thing that I have to tell you is, Buy a window seat.”
    “I want to look at the pretty flowers and then stop my car and pick the flowers.”
    “But you’ve never driven such a distance, I expect.”
    “I meant to tell you,” Ciccio said, “the other day you were turning by the bridge—”
    “I saw you,” said Rocco. The boy had been among the usual miscreants throwing junked auto parts and rubble into the river.
    “Yeah, you were turning, and I heard a sort of jingle-jangle from the car.”
    “The car will break in the wilderness, and then where are you with your flowers?” she said.
    “Yeah, my thought was one of your motor mounts broke,” Ciccio said. “And you were making a turn, and maybe the engine torqued up to the other side, and the fan pooched forward, and it was maybe grinding on the shroud and the radiator.”
    Rocco chewed a peach, his hands folded on the table, and looked at the boy. Finally he swallowed. “A fair guess, but no,” he said. He extended his hand and deposited the pit on the boy’s plate.
    “So I’m mistaken?”
    “It’s a trick I do. Do you want to know what it is?”
    “Yeah, I would.”
    “It’s a device I’ve devised,” Rocco said. He inquired of himself why he had presumed to dispose of his own waste on the boy’s plate. His self responded, This is one of the gestures of which a man may avail himself to say to a boy or a younger man, I am the boss, but I like you.
    “Here we go. Let me have it.”
    “If you want to know, I’ll tell you.”
    “Faster, please,” the old lady said, stabbing a knife in the cheese.
    “The man fills my tank with gasoline. I keep the change in my pocket. When I get home I slip the silver down there into the tank. When eventually the car is defunct, I drop the tank, I cut a hole, I collect my change. Here is the money for the next car.”
    “You sit down,” Mrs. Marini said, unscrewing the pit from her peach, “you take a nap, you go to the dining car and you buy a sandwich. Isn’t that a good time?”
    Rocco begged leave to smoke. The boy was dispatched in search of an ashtray.
    The conversation turned to the war and the recent cease-fire and then to a curious story that he was surprised to find she had failed to notice in the Voice of the People and the Reserve Gazette: Immediately after the armistice, the North Koreans had agreed to release a number of United Nations captives in advance of the general prisoner exchange. (Rocco had had no way of knowing if Mimmo would be among them.) But once the initial exchange was actually carried out, about a dozen prisoners of the promised number were unaccounted for—
    The boy, having delivered the ashtray and a box of matches, pulled out his chair, whereupon he was