“I remember the last time I saw him before his arrest. It’s a thing I somehow still feel ashamed about. A bunch of us were playing ball in Suosso’s Lane and somebody hit one over the fence into a garden. While I was climbing over to get it I trampled on some vegetables and the man who owned the garden came out and started to bawl me out. I answered him back, like any fresh kid. Then Vanzetti came along, took me over by the fence, and talked to me. He wasn’t angry, he didn’t raise his voice, but what he said made me feel ashamed. I didn’t feel like playing ball any more. I’ve often wished it hadn’t been that way, the last time I saw him free.
“You know, of course,” he went on, “that I testified I was delivering eels with him the morning he was supposed to have been holding up the pay truck in Bridgewater. That’s been the terrible thing for me. I was there with him all that morning long, and I couldn’t make them believe me. Sometimes I’ve asked myself, Could I have been wrong, could I have dreamed it all? Was Vanzetti really at Bridgewater? But then I know, I know that I was delivering eels with him that morning. It couldn’t have been any other day, because that’s the one day Italians always eat eels, no matter what they cost. And I remember how I started out that morning to go to Vanzetti’s house. It was muddy and I forgot my rubbers. At the corner I met my father and he sent me back for them, so I was late. Vanzetti was waiting for me with the pushcart. We delivered eels until, it must have been, two o’clock. It’s funny the things you remember. I remember a two-family house where I made a mistake and went to the wrong door. When we got all through Vanzetti paid me off at the corner of Cherry Lane and Court Street. And I know that it happened that way, that it was the day before Christmas, the same day and the same time they said he was holding up the truck in Bridgewater. When I told my story in court Katzmann complimented me on learning my part so well.
“I was only thirteen then and I was scared. I’d never been in a court before. Katzmann would go at me like a tiger, fire three questions at me at once. Thayer would never help me out. His face was so stern. He never said anything, but you could feel his hostility.”
Brini’s wife came in with a tray, and Brini took a pile of magazines from the coffee table to make room.
“Tell me,” I said, as she joined us. “If you had a friend in trouble you knew was innocent, could you lie to establish an alibi for him?”
He leaned back in his chair for some seconds, frowning slightly, while his wife poured the coffee. “I thought you might ask me something like that,” he said finally. “No, I couldn’t. I suppose you wanted me to say yes, but I couldn’t. I don’t know why I couldn’t, either.”
“Could you?” his wife asked me.
“Yes,” I said truthfully, “I could quite easily. Under oath too.”
“So could I,” she said, looking at her husband as if she thought he was being foolish.
“Well,” he said, “I know this, that I didn’t want to go to court. Young as I was, I knew what a disadvantage it would be for me to get mixed up in it. I wanted to be a musician, and whatever I might want, once I testified, I knew I’d find the way blocked. And it’s shadowed me ever since. They’ve pointed me out—Brini, the boy who testified for a murderer. In 1927 I told my story to Governor Fuller, and he said he believed me, but he never did anything about it. The day before they were executed I tried to see the governor again, but I couldn’t get past his secretary. I shouted at him, ‘If I lied, why don’t you arrest me for perjury?’ All he said was, if I was so brave why wasn’t I out picketing on the Common. I told him I’d been there the day before, and I asked to be locked up, but he just turned his back.”