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| Letters Home pt. 5 | Started by: FrankCastiglia on Jul 08, '22 23:28 |
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Another three months had came and went since Frank wrote his last letter home. There had been no line of communication returned to him nor had his weary eyes set sight upon the sweet face of his Mama, the strong proud jaw of his Papa or the pretty and youthful vibrance of his younger sisters. Worried would not begin to describe the aching that he felt in his heart, bordering upon being a deep dwelling that tore at his very soul. Something didn’t feel right, he had awoken every day expecting that to be the day he saw their faces. Every night as he returned home to still find they weren’t there, his heart sank even deeper into his stomach. Frank paced nervously this day, his normal routine of showering, shaving and breakfast had turned into chain smoking, talking to himself and constant trips to the window which overlooked the street. How could he go to work today? How could he continue to live out and carry the expectations of his duty to the “family” here when there had been no word, no reassurance of the well-being of his real family back home? His face quickly turned from hopeless and gray to vibrant and nervously excited as he stepped closer to his window yet again. Frank loved the view of the hustle and bustle of the city street so much that normally he often sat in his bedroom on the second floor of his home and took in the view. Increasingly so now as his eye was caught by a postman approaching his stoop. It was as if he were a child on Christmas morning having saw the postman walk up to his steps. Frank hurriedly threw on some clothes he had sitting on a chair nearby in his room and made his way downstairs. His feet must’ve skipped several stairs on the way down but never broke his stride nor did he fall on his face. Though, in his mind even if he had, it wouldn’t have changed the electric feeling deep within himself. It was as if he had been electrified inside, as if the whole world around him suddenly shined brighter, moved quicker and all at once was the most peaceful it had ever been. He flung his locks from their latches and hurriedly opened his door. Frank had got dressed so fast and raced down the stairs that the postman was still placing the letter into the box by his front door as he flung the door open, shocking the surprised postman. “Good morning Mr. Postman, I hope your day is beautiful today!” He exclaimed in Italian, recognizing a paisan as most in his neighborhood were. “For me?” He spoke in broken but confident English. His understanding and use of the language was growing better as time passed. The postman smiled and replied “Good morning Mr. Castiglia, this one appears to be for you! Have a beautiful day yourself!” He had replied in English as he handed Frank the envelope. Frank grinned as he took the letter in his hand. He thanked the postman and quickly closed the door, latching his locks in place, he was excited, not careless. Frank began tearing the envelope open as he made his way through the family room and into the dining area where he pulled a chair out from the table as he removed the letter and sat down to read. Dear Frances, Your Uncle Vito and I both send our condolences and I apologize I have not written you sooner. It was hard on us both over the last few months to come to terms with what I’m about to tell you. The story that your Uncle and I were told was that Don Salvatore had found out that you had been sending money to your Mama and Papa from the America. I had spoke with your mother a few months back when she had come into town for the market. It had not been long after that when Don Salvatore’s men had taken the lamp she had purchased from the lamp maker inside of Cassano allo lonio. Don Salvatore apparently took offense to your Mama and Papa being sent money from your labors in the America and demanded his share that he believed to rightfully be owed. He sent a few men to their home and had roughed up your Papa. You know your Papa, my husbands brother, he was always stubborn and tough. He had refused to pay Don Salvatore’s men and was told that when they arrived next time, there would be even more men and to not be given the tribute owed to Don Salvatore meant death to him and his family. The men returned a week later, your Papa again refused to pay them. And, my nephew, I am so sorry for you and my heart breaks in to pieces to write these words. But, those men, Don Salvatore’s men, they lined up your Mama, your Papa, your sweet, beautiful sisters and they executed them in front of the house. The police found their bodies, still lying there when passerby’s came into town and reported their bodies lying in their own blood. Your uncle and I didn’t hear the news until the next day. I know as heartbroken as we have been to have had to know this tragedy has occurred to family which we loved so much, how much you must hurt now reading this. We were not allowed to go inside the house or to take anything while the police they investigated. But my nephew you know the same as we all know here that Don Salvatore lines the pockets and owns the badges of every member of the police we have for our village. The house was so bare and raped of the beautiful things I know your Mama and Papa had worked hard for. It was heartbreaking to even step inside and see what these criminals had done to injustice the family further! But that is how I found your latest letter. My nephew I am so sorry that this is news I had to bring you. I am even more sorry to have to write these words to you that you have to find out this way. Your uncle and I send our deepest sympathies and love though I know that nothing could make this terrible news easier. I pray that you find peace in the arms of the saints and comfort from mother Mary in this time of great pain that I’m sure you are feeling. Your Mama and Papa and your dear sweet sisters were all so proud of you for leaving for the America, for escaping the tyranny here and making a good life for yourself there. We hope you and Vincenzo are looking after one another and that together you make the Castiglia name something that stands tall when spoken in the America. With the greatest love and heaviest heart, Aunt Ginerva Frank shook in shock as tears streamed down his cheeks. His body ran cold as he struggled for air, for thought, for a scream that wouldn’t come no matter how much he tried. His heart all at once beat so fast he felt it might burst through his chest and yet seemed as if it were in his throat, choking him. The letter shook free of his trembling hands as he tried to turn to stand but fell to the floor on his knees, his hands and head pressed to the floor. The blood curdling scream that couldn’t find its escape came as he beat his hands into the floor and cried loudly. “This is my fault! My fault! Mama! Papa!” He screamed loudly in Italian before naming each of his sisters by their first names. His crying intensified as he fell over on his side, his eyes closed, flailing his body back and forth from the culmination of every emotion washing over his mind and body. “Don Salvatore, I will have your blood! I will hold your heart in my hands! I will make your children orphans!” He screamed as he cried out phrases uncontrollably and inaudibly through more tears and the occasional gasps for air that his lungs needed to continue breathing. As Frank finally collected himself after what felt like a lifetime of laying in his floor, seeing flashes of his loved ones through memories in his mind and crying tears that would no longer come, he was unsure as to how much time had passed. What once was a bright, shiny and beautiful day had turned to dark. Both literally and figuratively. It was night outside, the street lamps the only illumination that fell through the windows of his home which felt more like a burial plot now. Cold, lonely, looming. He crawled to the chair where he once sat and pulled himself to his knees, his body literally weak, exhausted. With his hands planted firmly in the seat of the chair he pushed himself up to his feet and stumbled the rest of the way to the chair and sunk into it. A million and one thoughts raced through his mind. Memories, things that would now never come to be, his own sins. Most of all though, most of all Frank thought of revenge. He wanted Don Salvatore to feel the pain physically that he felt all throughout his very being right at this moment. Not only did he want Don Salvatore to feel pain but for those who loved him, his family to have to feel the pain he felt inside and out.To have lost, to suffer the way that he now must. Somewhere inside him sadness was overshadowed by rage. A fire inside him burned brighter akin to a steamship urged on by coal. He stood up from the table, he knew what he must do. Frank, urged on through the sheer power of the hatred that boiled over inside him, made his way up his stairs. He removed a suitcase from under his bed and began to pack it. First, he took some guns from under his mattress and lay them on the bottom. Then he took some clothes he had and layered them over top and headed downstairs without a second thought. He unlatched the door before closing it from the outside and locking it back with the keys from his pants pocket. He walked down the stoop in front of his home and to the street where his automobile was one of only a few that was in the neighborhood. Unlocking the door of his car had been a task for Frank who had to not been operating a vehicle but for only five months now. He typically had trouble navigating the key to the door and unlocking it but today he hit it in stride. He tossed his suitcase into the back of the car as he slid himself into the drivers seat and cranked his vehicle. Fighting off the flashes of his families faces, the memories, the hellacious scene he imagines the imagery of as described the events by his aunt back in the old country. He violently shook his head each time those thoughts began drowning out the checklist and thought process of what needed to be done. “Come on Frank, pull it together.” He verbalized in Italian internally. Frank shifts his car into gear and begins to drive toward the Mulberry street social club which acted as a meeting place and office for his cousin since becoming Don of the family. “First I see Vincenzo and tell him what has happened. I tell him I must go back home to avenge my family! I get a ticket and cross the ocean and if no ships are setting sail today I use our connections at the docks to ride a cargo ship back to Italy. I will buy an automobile there, I don’t care, take a train, whatever it takes to get there quickly so that this vendetta can be paid! In full! With blood! I have enough money….. FU*K! The money!” Frank, in his haste had forgotten to grab the money stash that he kept in his closet, nor had he remembered to grab his wallet. “You’ve got to be better than this Frances, a man would not lose his head in time of crisis!” He shouted out loud in Italian and even referred to himself by his given birth name. These were words his father had told him many times growing up. Perhaps as to channel his fathers wisdom, his courage, he used them now to settle himself. “I will get the money I need from cousin Vincenzo, it is not as if I can’t repay him when I come home. He can have the keys to my home and retrieve what he is owed for that matter! This was his fathers brother! His aunt, his cousins! My blood! His blood that was spilled by a greedy mustache Pete who’s been in power for too long!”. Frank began breathing heavily to calm himself as white spots formed in front of his eyes. He was already not yet an expert driver and the white spots made racing toward Mulberry street all the more difficult. Repeating the tasks at hand as he drove, ignoring most common traffic laws, he managed to make it to his destination without incident. No more than he put his car into park and shut off the ignition he was on his feet and walking toward the Mulberry street social club. Goomba’s, Wise Guy’s and associates alike tried to trade pleasantries as he opened the front door to the club house. After all, Frank had became an almost overnight sensation in the world that was his Mafia family. “Vincenzo” the only word Frank was able to muster as he shrugged off approach after approach. “Where is Vincenzo!?” His voice boomed and quieted the establishment all at once. Frank had grown tired of not being answered, tired of the approach, tired of wasting time that to him right now was more valuable than anything America had to offer. “Where the fu*k is my cousin?!” He demanded in broken English. The social club stood silent as much as to the uncertainty of seeing the ordinarily calm and collected Frank act such a way but also that he put together a legible sentence in English. Just as Frank was about to once more boil over and spray the room with a volume that could wake the dead, Vincenzo emerged from the back room and approached him. “My cousin, what is the matter? Why do you come here of all places and act such a way?” He spoke with a nervous smile as he placed his hands on Frank’s shoulders. Frank, not caring about the surroundings not who was there or who wasn’t let his rage get the best of him and brushed Vincenzo’s arms from his shoulders and bumped past him toward the back room. “Come” he spoke again in broken English. Vincenzo followed as he reassured those gathered in the social club. “Gentleman, enjoy, I’m sure my cousin has had his first bite from a woman of America!” He spoke referring to venlarial disease which was common in men during a time when brothels could be found sometimes two to a neighborhood. Vincenzo laughed it off as he shut the door behind him and could hear the snickers and conversations restart. “What in the absolute fu*k is your problem Frances?!” Vincenzo growled more than spoke to his cousin in their native tongues. “You come to our families social club, the Don’s office, my office and you act like that in front of the family? You have better be too drunk to realize what disrespect you have just shown me or suddenly become too stupid to remember who the hell I am!” Vincenzo tried to keep his voice down as his bubbling anger overflowed. “Mama, Papa, my sisters. They are dead. Dead. At the hands of Don Salvatore and his men.” Frank’s shoulders slumped as he spoke, his head hung low. Suddenly all the anger and range turned toward absolute broken hearted weeping as he almost collapsed if not for his cousin wrapping him up into his arms and holding him up while both men sobbed. “W-when did you hear?” Vincenzo asked through his own tears. “Your Mama, she wrote me a letter. I received it this morning. She told me the story” Frank pulled back away as his anger mounted. “She told me the story of how those pigs! Those fuc*king pigs slaughtered my family. How Don Salvatore felt he was being disgraced by me not sending tribute back home to him, can you believe that shit? Me? Sending tribute back home to him?! And instead sending money for my family. Papa refused to pay! He held strong and that bastard murdered them like dogs! Right in front of their home, our family home they lay dead on the ground for days before someone came by and saw them lying there!”. Frank again burst into tears as he angrily picked up a chair and smashed it into the floor. Vincenzo grabbed Frank as he shook violently as if the rage was trying to escape him and as Vincenzo held tightly to him he again broke down into broken hearted sobs. “So, what do you want to do? Should we go home and visit their grave, allow you peace to give them a goodbye? Do you want to go have drinks and talk about it or even better drink until you can’t think about it? Whatever you want to do my dear cousin, you tell me and I am here for you, always.” Vincenzo squeezed Frank’s shoulder with his hand as he spoke. Frank looked back at him through the sting of the tears that burned his eyes and with a rage that could make the fires of hell themselves jealous spoke a word all Italians would recognize it’s meaning from just it’s utterance. “Vendetta”. To be continued in the Vendetta series. Coming soon. Stay tuned. |
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