The Morelli Bros. (Prologue, ii.)

Posted on June 16, 2014 by R. Richardsson

When his sons were ten, just a few years before he became entirely dependent upon the bottle, the Morelli family set sail for America. Rocco had turned into a miserable excuse for a man, unwashed and unkempt, but he still worked just as hard as he had before his sons were born.

They made a small home for themselves on the outskirts of Brooklyn in an apartment that was only big enough to be comfortable for one person, while two would have been a crowd. To top it off, Rocco had no where else to store his tools.

The boys never complained. They never cried, and despite the fact that there was hardly ever any room left for them to play or sleep, they always found a way to make the best out of their situation.

Mario, the oldest of the two, had the strongest interest in his father’s trade. Whenever Rocco was still sober, he constantly grilled him for information about the various tools and equipment that was lying about. When Rocco was too drunk to talk, he studied from the various texts and manuals he found lying around. His younger brother Luigi was just as bright as he, but his talents lie more with how he interacted with people. Though he was a gangling youth, taller and often clumsier than his brother, he had a knack for reading people. This talent had gotten them out of all kinds of trouble growing up.

The boys were very athletic. They enjoyed playing outside from morning until evening. Running, jumping, climbing, nothing was off limits to them. They soon became legends among their friends. Where Mario was the stronger of the two, his brother was the quicker. Where one was known for his iron fist, the other was recognized for his ability to outrun and jump everyone else.

As they grew older, the boys began to pick up the slack that their father left behind. They did it without complaint. They did it unconditionally, because despite his faults he was directly responsible for their very existence. Even though he only ever grunted in response to their stories, they still loved the man whose passion was quickly becoming their own.

Much like the man before them, they began taking odd jobs here and there. If they weren’t fixing pipes that Rocco hadn’t properly set, they worked as a two man moving crew. They prided themselves in the jobs they did, though ‘moving’ was only a vague reference for what they actually did. While they sometimes helped the many other immigrants that have come and gone over the years, they were often called upon to help move things around by elderly neighbors who couldn’t do so for themselves.

Everyone thought kindly of two young brothers and often paid them more than for what they were asking and being the thrifty boys that they were, they used that extra money to buy clothes, food for the apartment and the various tools and parts that were needed for their father’s business. They knew where their father kept his earnings and when the landlord came each month, they took out just enough to cover the rent and the utilities.

It wasn’t an easy childhood for the Morelli brothers. Their days were more filled with work as they grew older. While their friends enjoyed going to school and playing out in the streets until the darkest hours of night, they quickly became masters of their trade. By the time their peers were graduating, they had taken all of their father’s clients. With their meager savings, they had purchased a used utility van to store their tools and spare parts for easy access. It wasn’t much, but it made things so much easier than hauling their equipment in the basket on their shared bike.

The Morelli Bros. (Prologue, i.)

Posted on June 2, 2014 by R. Richardsson

Deep in the heart of Manhattan, there were two young brothers struggling to keep their family business afloat. Every day was a constant battle and if they were lucky, they were able to hold onto the few remaining customers that had been loyal to them since their father first strapped on his leather workmen’s belt.

Their father had been a man’s man. Born in his homeland of Italy, Rocco Morelli spent his life doing the only thing he knew how. The better part of his life had been spent working various odd jobs in order to save up enough money so that he may chase his dreams and thrive. He wanted to marry his sweetheart and give her the family she always wanted in a country where any and everything was possible.

It was a big dream, a HUGE dream, but he’d had the strength to pursue it. Though squat compared to his countrymen, he was very strong and this allowed him to take many types of employment that most would shy away from. He carried stones from a nearby quarry while renovating homes. One summer saw him working as bouncer for a local entertainment business, while another found him in a junkyard sorting through scrap metals worth salvaging.

His dreams would only grow on the foundation of his marriage and it wasn’t long before he discovered exactly where he was meant to be. Time, as it always tends to do, brought some exciting changes to their village. And, as tourism continued to expand deeper into the heart of his homeland, it brought with it the entrepreneurs seeking to peddle their own brand of change.

By this time, he was in his mid-thirties and his wife was carrying their first child. As the westerners slowly dug into Italian soil, so would it would come to be that his fallback jobs begin to vanish. Desperate, he took the only option left and took work for a Plumbing company that sought to revolutionize the way people lived.

Though it was a dirty business, he had a great aptitude in the work before him and it wasn’t long before he excelled past every man he worked with.

The months rained down until a year had passed. He saw the birth of not just one son, but twins! He also watched helplessly as his beloved slipped away while giving birth to their second.

By this time, he’d saved enough money to take his family across the ocean and start a new life. There was enough in his savings to build their home and open a small Plumbing business of his own; they had only been waiting for the pregnancy to pass before traveling.

His heart, broken after the passing of his wife, had very little love left to give and it was with sadness that he looked upon the two little lives she had left him. For the first few years, he tried to be the father they needed while still working for the Plumbing business. But when the pipes were laid and the toilets installed, the company moved on, leaving him exactly where he was before they arrived. Of course, they had offered him a position if he were to relocate with them, but he simply couldn’t do this with the responsibility of his two boys.

They say that time has a way of healing the broken heart, but what they didn’t account for was the man who had poured his heart into everything he had before the break. Once a man who openly smiled and spoke to everyone he met, Rocco withdrew deep into himself until his brooding features often caused others to shy away. Though he provided for his children, he didn’t have the love needed to give to them. So cold had his heart become that when he finally got around to signing their birth certificates, he didn’t bother to add their last name.

As illogical as it was, he had begun to blame them for her death. These two small children who had been born ten minutes apart, one short and chubby, the other long and skinny, who could only smile when he looked upon them. He blamed them, even though they coo’d in his presence and never cried unless they were hungry or needed changed.

It was just as well that they never fussed and better yet that their bond was strong enough that they could comfort the other while he was around, because in his melancholic state, he turned to the bottle in hopes that it would ease his pain.

Rocco was a man of action. His hands had built many wonders over the years, all of which were the pride of the owners he had worked for. The renovations were a thing of beauty, built with the same hope that fueled his dreams. In his brief stint as a bouncer, he’d imparted much knowledge upon several young hopefuls, all of whom to this day had become very successful in settling the riffraff. And there were toilets in every home of his village.

Yet, for all his knowledge of labor, he hadn’t the insight to be the best father these two young boys needed. Rather than losing this dark cloud to the warmth their hearts radiated, he turned to a solution that was only temporary at best and would ultimately change him into someone that his wife would never have looked at twice.

Trespasser (Part III)

Posted on May 8, 2014 by R. Richardsson

It has been several weeks since the passing of ole Sammy D and the entrance to Bryer street had never been busier. At first, it was the bankers who came to look through the now empty home. They walked through its vacant rooms with an appraiser, a small weaselly sort of man who hid behind his spectacles and mountains of paperwork, placing tags on everything of value.

Friends and neighbors watched on as the entire life of three-time war veteran, and one time loving husband, was divided into categories and worth. Most watched in sadness as they remembered the life of one of the kindest men they had ever known. Some remembered him for his figurines, while those old enough remembered him as a man who had gone out of his way to help those in need.

Sammy Dryden had fought and killed a countless number of ‘the enemy’ for the country he loved, and when it came time to lay down his weapon, he continued to fight for his and his neighbor’s freedom in the only way he knew how.

Things weren’t as they were when he was a young man. Before he joined the service, children played outside. Crime was only an occasional report on the radio and when the reporters ran out of things to say, airtime was filled with live action skits or by music from the most current artists. Most people trusted the other and were willing to say ‘Hello!’ in the very least and there was very little fear about living the life you chose to live.

Times had certainly changed. He knew, because he had watched the metamorphosis with his own eyes!

As freedoms were extended to women, he couldn’t have been more overjoyed. And when, after a few years had passed, his wife suggested taking on a part-time job to help pay the bills, he had stood proudly behind her.

When tensions increased between the whites and the blacks, and when this tension reached even his small community, he chose to stand behind the few Negroes who lived near him. There were many nights when he had worried for his and his wife’s safety, but neither were willing to stand down from the injustice being inflicted upon their friends.

Time seemed to pass very slowly during this period of fear and hatred, but he and a few of his army buddies managed to spread a message of their own. When they came hidden beneath their white sheets, wielding their baseball bats and their misguided beliefs, they were met by a small platoon of men of mixed color, each wearing their own uniforms bearing the American flag, armed with a standard issue rifle.

There had been no words spoken during this encounter. Each stared at the other with defiance in their eyes, but ultimately is was the Hidden Haters who turned and left, never to return. The Dryden and the Robinson family had ever remained friends, and the latter would continue to live on Bryer Street even after the passing of their friend.

Soon, children began to vanish from the streets. Oh, they played outside from time to time, but never with the vigor of the generations before them. The Age of Electronics was coming in full and most prefered to stay inside with their eyes glued to their TV screens. Those who did come out were the ones who couldn’t afford their own video game devices. They ran together and most times, though not all, they were only doing so for nefarious reasons.

When his wife died, he began taking long walks that began through his neighborhood. It got so that this was a daily routine and he would often stop and talk with whomever would listen. As days stretched into weeks and weeks into years, talk turned into something more. He used his general knowledge of mechanics and carpentry to help his neighbors fix their cars or work on their projects. Once, while he was still healthy enough, he helped install a below-ground pool.

When his body began to fail him, he spent more and more of his days sitting on the front porch, peddling to his secret passion. His friendship with his neighbors remained strong as each made it a point to visit him daily. Soon, the daily visits, much like the wood he worked with, whittled down to maybe once per week, but this didn’t bother him in the slightest. He often carved things for his friends and neighbors that personally applied to the something he knew of them. For Davie Robinson, he had carved the likeness of a Klansman which appeared to be running in fear, only he was tripping because his pants had fallen around his ankles. For the Hammonds, who enjoyed their sports team way more than most, he’d created the likeness of the coach who had once led their team to the Super Bowl; Hank Stram.

Sergeant Sam Dryden was the last man standing of his platoon. He had survived his wife and children, three wars and countless presidents. He was respected and loved by those who knew him, treated as if he were an extended member of each of their families, and so it was hard on each and every one of them when he passed. Even the children had a special place in their hearts for the wrinkled old man who made their pretty wooden dolls.

The watched from the sidewalk as the bankers and their appraiser came and went. They attended the auctions that were held, and by no small miracle, every one of his possessions went back into his beloved community or to his own extended family.

When the hustle had finally died down, and the contractors had come and gone, the night of the storm was but a distant, if painful, memory to those who had known him. He would never be forgotten. Not by the Robinsons, who once been protected by he and his platoon. Not by the Hammonds, who would proudly display their wooden coach for decades to come and certainly not by the small girl standing at the base of the steps leading up to the house he had once lived in.

Vanessa Rowen stood with her head down and her feet slightly apart. She had a small object cupped in her tiny little hands, an object that was slowly growing damp from the tears that leaked from her eyes. Her dirty blonde hair hung about her face and shoulders, obscuring this from any who might happen to see, but the hitching of her back as she sobbed could easily have given them the message.

She stood, as she had many times since he had gone to be with his family, staring down at the unfinished ballerina he had intended to give her on her seventh birthday.