The Italians at Cleat's Corner Store by Jo Riccioni Read Free Book Online

‘Come on, my beauty. Up, up … you’ve had worse than this. It’s only a scratch from some angry little squire … Up, now, up!’ He pressed at the dog’s torn belly with the canvas bag as if the wound was no more than a graze.
    â€˜Urso.’ His father’s voice was low. ‘Move away.’
    â€˜No. It’s not like that,’ the butcher said. ‘It’s not like that, Capo.’
    â€˜Paolo, come away.’
    It was the first time Lucio had heard the butcher’s real name. And he knew then what his father was going to do.
    â€˜Go with the boy. Go tie the boar to the spears.’
    Lucio looked at Urso. His cheeks seemed redder, the veins about his nose more broken when wet. His father told him to lead the butcher away from the dog, but instead he stood next to him and waited while he stared down at Valeriana. Eventually he pressed his fingers inside the great hook of the butcher’s hand, hanging limp at his side.
    â€˜Gufo?’ Urso said, as if he had forgotten all about him.
    They turned away to the dead boar and Urso set upon it with a vengeance, binding its legs around the pikes with ropes so tight they broke the animal’s skin. He knotted and yanked and knotted until they heard the short, high whine of Valeriana. The butcher fell still. A crow’s caw ripped through the silence.
    His father called and Lucio went to the tree where he stood, the dog’s collar dangling from his hand. ‘You and I will carry the boar down the mountain. You can manage that at least, can’t you, boy?’ He nodded, but his father had already stepped away, towards Urso and the boar.
    Lucio forced himself to look down at Valeriana. The innards that peeped from the gash in her belly were glossy, seething like they were still alive. He thought of her head on Urso’s lap in the osteria and considered it now, its jaw askew. He took off his jacket, laid it on the ground and pulled the dog onto it, tying the sleeves about her until her torn and bloody teats were hidden.
    The trek home was laborious, with the boar hanging between them on the spears. On the flat he took most of its weight, being shorter than his father, but the struggle gave him some distraction from his thoughts. Urso trailed behind them, Valeriana laid across his shoulders, like quarry. They didn’t speak until they reached the Viale Roma. There they parted ways, Urso going down to his allotment on the road to Monteferro, where Lucio imagined he would bury the dog. Lucio wanted to go with him, but his father and the butcher had already clasped fingers in a wordless farewell.
    As they were climbing Via del Soccorso his father said to him, ‘You think it covered your shame, giving your jacket to a dead dog?’
    Lucio didn’t answer.
    â€˜Perhaps when you have it back you can tell me whether the dog’s blood is easier to wear than the boar’s?’ His father spat into the chalk of the road.
    The beast swung between them. Lucio thought of Valeriana on Urso’s shoulders, her glassy eye and greying tongue. And he thought of his bloody jacket holding together her swollen dugs, full of milk for her puppies. It wasn’t his shame he had most wanted to spare. It was Urso’s.

Leyton
1949
    Halfway through summer, Mrs Cleat had begun to leave Connie to tend the shop alone on Tuesday afternoons. The Leyton and Parishes Christian Ladies’ League had been fundraising since VE Day and were now in heated discussion with the Parochial Church Council over the status of what some considered a rather avant-garde mural scheme for St Margaret’s Village Church. The idea of not having a say in such a controversial legacy to posterity, such decisions of high art and donor signage, terrified Mrs Cleat considerably more than leaving Connie in sole charge of her livelihood. Standing on the customer side of the counter in her hat and gloves, Mrs Cleat talked Connie through