True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office

by Arthur Cheney Train

Then a man returned from America just for the harvest to see his family. He said that Vito was alive. He had not seen him himself, but others had seen him and he was rich. He told of the plentifulness of gold in America, where every one was comfortable and could lay up a fortune. He himself had saved over five thousand lire in four years and owned a one-third interest in a fruit store. He was going to take his brother's family back with him—all of them. They would be rich, too, in a little while. A man was a fool to stay in Italy. Why did not Toni come back with him? He would get him a place on the railroad where one of his friends was padrone.

Toni discussed it all with Nicoletta, and she talked with the man herself.

"Toni," she said at length, "why do you not go? Here you are earning nothing. There you could save in a month enough to keep your mother in comfort for a year. You have to pay the nurse, and that takes a great deal. While you are here it would cause talk if I came to live in your home to care for your mother but if you go away I can do so without comment and it will cost nothing. Perhaps you will find Vito. If not you will soon make enough to send for both your mother and me."

"You are a good girl," he answered, kissing her, "but I could not shift the responsibility of my mother to your shoulders. Still, I will talk to Father Giuseppi about it."

The priest thought well of the plan (he was a little excited over America himself), and agreed to break the matter to the mother.

She begged Toni piteously not to go. He was her only surviving son. Vito was dead. Let him but wait a little while and she would not be there to stand in his way. Then the priest added his personal assurance that it would be for the best, and the mother finally gave way. Toni was obliged to tear himself away by force from the arms of the old woman lying upon the bed, and her feeble sobs echoed in his ears as he trudged down the road with the scarf Nicoletta had worked about his neck, and a small bundle of his tools and most precious possessions on his shoulder. A couple of miles farther on came another harrowing parting with his betrothed, and from the top of the next rise beyond he could see Nicoletta still standing at the crossroads gazing pitifully after him. Thus many an Italian, for good or ill, has left the place of his birth for the mysterious land of the Golden West.

The voyage was for Antonio an unalloyed agony of seasickness and homesickness, and when at last the great vessel steamed slowly up the North River, her band playing and the emigrants crowding eagerly to her sides, he had hardly spirit enough left to raise his eyes to the mountains of huge buildings from whose craters the white smoke rose slowly and blew away in great wind-torn clouds. Yet he felt some of the awakening enthusiasm of his comrades, and when once his feet touched earth again it was not long before he almost forgot his sufferings upon the ocean in his feverish anxiety to lose no time in beginning to save the money which should reunite him to Nicoletta and his mother. As soon as the vessel had docked a blustering Italian came among the emigrants and tagged a few dozen of them, including Antonio, with large blue labels, and then led them in a long, straggling line across the gangplank and marched them through the muddy streets to the railroad train. Here they huddled in a dirty car filled with smoke and were whirled with frightful speed for hours through a flat and smiling country. The noise, the smoke and the unaccustomed motion made Antonio ill again, and when the train stopped at Lambertville, New Jersey, the padrone had difficulty in rousing him from the animal-like stupor into which he had fallen.

The Italians crowded together upon the platform, gazing helplessly at one another and at the padrone, who was cursing them for a lot of stupid fools, and bidding them get upon a flat car that stood upon a siding. Antonio had to be pushed upon it by main force, but the journey this time was short, and in half an hour he found himself upon an embankment where hundreds of Italians were laboring with pick and shovel in the broiling sun. Here he also was given a pick and told to go to work.

Toni soon became accustomed to his new surroundings. Every night he and the rest were carried to Lambertville on flat cars and in the mornings were brought back to the embankment. The work was no harder than that to which he had been used, and he soon became himself again. Moreover, he found many of his old friends from Culiano working there. In the evenings they walked through the streets of the town or sat under the trees playing mora and tocco. His letters home were quite enthusiastic regarding the pleasant character of the life. To be sure he could not write himself, but his old friend Antonio Strollo, who had lived at Valva, only a mile from Culiano, acted as his amanuensis. He was very fond of Strollo, who was a dashing fellow, very merry and quite the beau of the colony, in his wonderful red socks and neckties of many colors. Strollo could read and write, and, besides, he knew Antonio's mother and Nicoletta, and when Toni found himself unable to express his thoughts Strollo helped him out. When the answers came he read them to Toni and joined in the latter's pleasure. Toni himself soon became a favorite in Lambertville, for he was simple and gentle, and full of good-will for everybody. He was very good-looking, too, with his handsome Roman profile, snapping black eyes and black curly locks. Yet he was sad always, especially so as since his arrival in America he had made no progress toward finding Vito. From time to time he met other Italians who had been working elsewhere, who thought they had seen him or some one that looked like him. But inquiry always elicited the fact that their desire to give him encouragement was greater than the accuracy of their memories. Of course Antonio Strollo, who had become Toni's inseparable friend, shared all his eagerness to find Vito. In fact, Toni had no thought that he did not confide to his friend, and it was really the latter who composed the love letters to Nicoletta and the affectionate epistles to the mother.

Every month Toni divided what he earned into three parts. One of them he deposited in the savings-bank, another he invested in a money order which was sent by Strollo to Nicoletta for the mother, and the last he kept for himself. It was astounding how fast one really could make money if one was industrious. Forty dollars a month, sometimes! That made nearly seventy lire to send to Nicoletta. His bank account grew steadily, and he often saved something out of the money he allowed himself to live upon.