On July 5 Jerry McAnamey resumed his place within the bar enclosure. Attendance had fallen off in the last week, but on this Tuesday morning every seat was occupied in anticipation of the defendants’ taking the stand. The first witness was Aldeah Florence of Quincy, with whom Sarah Berardelli had boarded after her husband’s death. Testifying for the defense, she said that Sarah had told her a few days after her husband’s funeral that he might still be alive if only he had not left his revolver in the repair shop. Her examination and cross-examination lasted less than ten minutes. Then came a pause, with Moore and the McAnameys whispering together, while the district attorney stood by, smiling knowingly.
Finally Jerry McAnamey turned toward the cage and asked “Will the defendant Vanzetti be brought forward?” A murmur ran through the courtroom. It was the moment that everyone had been awaiting since the beginning of the trial. A deputy unlocked the metal door. Quietly, Vanzetti stepped forward and raised his hand in oath before Clerk Worthington. The receding hairline of his domed forehead, the wrinkles around his eyes, the slight sag of flesh under his chin, above all his drooping mustache, made him look at least fifteen years older than thirty-three. He was dressed neatly in a dark suit, white shirt, high stiff collar, and black bow tie. On the stand he told his story in an assured manner, using few gestures, answering all questions without hesitation.
Guided by Jerry McAnamey, he told briefly of his early life, then of his years of wandering until he ended up with the Brinis in Plymouth. The rest had by now become a familiar story. On April 15, he said, he had been peddling fish in North Plymouth. Almost at the corner of Castle Street he had met Rosen with his bolt of cloth and they had gone to the Brinis’ together. About one o’clock he had sold all his fish and was going down Ocean Street with his empty pushcart when he saw Mr. Corl painting his boat. He stopped to talk with him and while they were talking Mr. Jesse, the boatbuilder, came along, and also a Mr. Holmes from the lumberyard. They chatted a while, and after he left Mr. Corl he had gone home with his pushcart, changed his clothes, and cooked his evening meal. What he had done that evening he did not now remember. The next morning he went to Marvelli’s store to buy a Boston Post and find out what time the tide would be low so that he could dig clams. He dug clams most of the day and afterward sold them. On April 17 in the morning he tried to get a job at the garage they were building in front of the carbarn. There was no work there, however, so in the afternoon he took the train to Whitman and from there the streetcar to Brockton where he had eaten supper with a friend named Caldera and afterward gone on to Boston.
He stayed overnight with a friend, Vincent Colarossi, and next morning, Sunday, had breakfast with him and Felicani in Scollay Square; later they had dinner at Boni’s with a group of friends. They spent the afternoon at the Naturalization Club in East Boston and at the end of the day Vanzetti had gone back to Plymouth.
On Monday he went around Plymouth looking without success for a job. The next day he tried to get fish from Antonio Carbone down on the pier, but fish seemed as scarce as jobs. He was at Carbone’s house that evening paying a bill for fish and Carbone had just given him two cigars when Chief of Police Armstrong came in to tell them an Italian fisherman named Pacci had drowned. Two days later Vanzetti happened to visit the dock, and there was a dory near the wharf with Pacci’s body in it and the undertaker’s car waiting on the siding. He told the men in the dory it would be easier if they brought the body to the shore and took it up the three cement steps to Water Street.
All that week he could find neither work nor fish. On Saturday he went to Boston, again staying with Colarossi. At their Sunday meeting in the Naturalization Club his friends asked him to go to New York on their affairs and he left that night. Three days later he returned, coming back on the Providence boat.
May Day found him again in Boston with Colarossi, and the next day there was the usual get-together at the Naturalization Club. Monday morning he spent at the fish piers; everywhere he went he found the prices too high. In the afternoon he took the train to Stoughton and stayed overnight at Sacco’s house. Next day he spent around the house while Sacco went to Boston to pick up his passport. In the evening Sacco came back with Orciani on the latter’s motorcycle, and the three of them agreed to meet the following day.
That last day he and Sacco cut wood while Rosina packed. Just by chance he had pocketed four shotgun shells he found on Sacco’s kitchen cabinet.[10] Vanzetti told in detail about the evening of May 5: how Orciani, with Boda, had gone on ahead, and how he had composed a notice for the next Sunday’s meeting. Sacco had thought the notice too long, so he had cut out some of it. Although they had agreed to meet Orciani and Boda at Elm Square, there was no sign of them when they arrived. Only when they were walking over the railroad bridge near Simon Johnson’s house had they seen the motorcycle coming along from Brockton.
After talking about the license plates with Johnson they had given up their project. Boda had then told Vanzetti: “I and Orciani go with the machine and you take a car and you go home. We will look for a new number. When I am ready I will tell you and we will come here some other day. We will come to take the automobile.”
They had needed the automobile “to carry books and newspapers.” As Vanzetti vaguely explained it, they planned to collect this unspecified material “from any house and from any house in five or six places, five or six towns. Three, five or six people have plenty of literature, and we went, we intend to take that out and put that in the proper place ... not subject to policemen go in and call for, see the literature, see the papers, see the books, as in that time they went through in the house of many men who were active in the radical movement and socialist and labor movement, and go then and take letters and take books and take newspapers, and put men in jail and deported many.”