Shepherd Avenue. Charlie Carillo

he exclaimed. “I knew you could do it! Everybody in this family can hit.”

      “I’m not hitting it far,” I said, secretly aglow with pride.

      “Ah, that’s okay. You’re a singles hitter. Nothing wrong with singles hitters, they make good leadoff men.” He threw again and I hit it over his head. It bounced toward the open foundation but Mel fielded it at the last second.

      “I ain’t always gonna groove ’em like this,” Vic warned, but there was pride in his voice. I could hit.

      * * *

      At the supper table I met Freddie Gallo. He and my grandfather had worked together that day, doing a small cement job somewhere in the neighborhood. Angie, a plumber, and Freddie, a bull of a laborer, were both retired, but they took on jobs together to pad their union pensions.

      But I think they worked more for the companionship than for the extra money. They also caroused together at night — no one ever told me where.

      Freddie sat at the end of the bench near Angie. They both smelled of Lava soap and their hands, hard-scrubbed, were pink. Still, there were deep lines of dirt under their fingernails and along the creases of their necks.

      Still sweating from stickball, Vic and I sat next to each other.

      “The kid’s a natural hitter,” Vic said, his hand on my back. Angie smiled neutrally at me.

      “You’re both sweating,” Connie said.

      Vic laughed. “How are we supposed to keep from sweating, Ma?”

      Connie didn’t answer as she ladled vegetable soup out into big bowls. It was full of beans, tomatoes, lentils, and spinach.

      Such flavors! Connie was able to extract tastes from foods like no one I’d ever known. The vegetables seemed alive in the broth, and the soup was so thick you needed a fork and a spoon to eat it. When shreds of grated cheese hit its steaming oily surface they disappeared like snowflakes landing on a warm sidewalk.

      Angie’s manners were impeccable: though he was served first, he waited until everyone had food before starting. Freddie was a chowhound to rival Vic, slurping and letting out belches he only half muffled. Freddie was nearly six feet tall but he looked even taller. He was a stretched version of my grandfather, a bit leaner, with longer, stringier muscles. He wore a black T-shirt that showed off his round pectorals and pinched his upper arms. Veins and tendons coursed down his forearms like telephone cords.

      Only his head looked old. His eyes were narrow and he was almost totally bald, the narrow scallop of bristly hair near his ears a close-cropped stubble.

      There was no formal introduction to Freddie Gallo — he’d heard about me and I’d heard about him. A nod and a grunt sufficed.

      When we finished the soup Connie cleared the table, leaving behind wine and cherry soda. Freddie and Angie rehashed the day’s work while Vic idly pushed crumbs around the tablecloth.

      Angie went to the back of the cool cellar and returned with enormous oranges and apples. Connie brought him a sharp knife and he began cutting the apple into sections.

      He rolled an orange at me and asked me to peel it, but its skin was too hard and thick for my fingernails to penetrate. Laughing, Freddie took the orange from me.

      “When you work you’ll get hard hands so you can do this,” he said. “When I was your age I was tyin’ grapevines to poles in Naples. They hadda hire kids to do it — we fit easy between the vines.”

      He ripped the skin off the orange.

      “You and your stories,” Vic said.

      Freddie tossed a piece of peel aside. “You, when are you gonna make a buck?”

      “I’m playin’ ball,” Vic said calmly. “When I sign with a club I’ll have more money than you ever made tyin’ vines.”

      Freddie cackled knowingly, a sound that warned: wait, wait.

      “Enough already,” Angie said. He jabbed a slice of apple onto the end of his knife and offered it to me.

      “Johnny makes good money working on cars,” Freddie said. “Be a mechanic. If you don’t make it in baseball you won’t starve.”

      “I’ll make it,” Vic said. “Don’t worry about it.”

      “I ain’t the one who has to worry.” Freddie pointed. “You, you could break your leg, you could get hit in the head with a pitch —”

      “Oh! Shut up already!” Connie said from the sink. “You make me shiver.”

      Vic yawned and said, “I don’t want to get my hands dirty, anyhow.” He kneed me under the table to let me know he was after Freddie’s goat, which he got with ease.

      “Dirt is good,” Freddie said. “A real man ain’t afraid of it.”

      “Freddie. Your wife’s callin’,” Connie said, but he ignored the hint.

      “How come you don’t eat with your wife?” I asked. Freddie stared at me, then looked at Angie.

      “What’s this kid, a wise guy?”

      “No,” I answered. “It’s not nice when people have to eat alone. My father always said that.”

      “Your father!” he exploded. “He should talk!”

      He was sorry the moment he said it, and put a knuckly hand over his mouth.

      “Let’s all calm down,” Angie said softly. Freddie turned to Vic and picked up the thread of the other conversation.

      “I never, never — you listening? — never came home from work with clean hands.” He passed the peeled orange to Angie and looked at me. “I got buried alive, kid. Twice they buried me alive.”

      “Here we go again,” Vic sighed.

      “Twice,” Freddie said again, cupping his hands around his wine glass as if to warm them. “Ten feet down the first time, fifteen the second.” His eyes glittered. I was suddenly afraid of him.

      “Why?” I finally asked.

      “Because I wouldn’t join the union. Because the boss paid me twenty-one bucks a day and everyone else eighteen. Well, the guys didn’t like that, so one day they say, ‘Fred, join the union.’ I told ’em I was doin’ okay without it.”

      “Eh, that’s all,” Connie said.

      He began to nod. “Same day, late in the afternoon, the boys are puttin’ away the tools. Foreman says, ‘Somebody go down and get that goddamn pick we left behind.’ I’m not doin’ anything, so down I go.”

      He gulped wine. Connie said, “He’s talkin’ so much he’s dry.”

      “Ten feet,” Freddie continued. “Even in August it’s cold like ice in that hole. You press your fist against the side and it gets numb. Am I right, Anj?”

      “Always cold in a hole,” Angie said.

      “Next thing I know I hear the dirt slidin’. Slidin’ like somebody’s pushin’ it, not like it’s fallin’ by itself. I turn my head to look and the dirt gets in my eyes, so now I’m blind. But I know what’s goin’ on, all right.”

      Freddie’s color changed, as if a wash of black ink had been brushed over his face. Angie poured more wine for him. The apple slice in front of him was browning.

      “I get down on my hands and knees and put my arms around my head to make an air pocket,” he continued softly. “So’s I can keep breathin’ awhile, you know?”

      He demonstrated, putting his head on the table. He stayed in place so long the top of his head went pink.

      Connie snapped him out of it by saying, “You should have joined the union.”

      He