October 28, 1943 – 6:00 AM
Salvatore Lombardi woke before dawn because his body had decided, after fifty-two years, that sleeping past five-thirty was a moral failing.
This was not a decision he supported. He'd voted against it repeatedly, lobbying for the right to lie in bed until at least six, but his body was a dictatorship, not a democracy. So at 5:47 AM, his eyes opened, his feet hit the cold floor, and his bladder reminded him that old age was a series of small betrayals.
The bathroom was down the hall, past Maria's room (she was still asleep, her eight-year-old lungs producing a gentle whistle with each breath) and past the little shrine to St. Joseph that Rosa's mother had installed in 1927 and that nobody had dared move since. Sal completed his business, washed his hands (he was a plumber; he knew where hands had been), and shuffled to the kitchen.
Rosa was already there.
She was always already there. This was one of the great certainties of Sal's life, like gravity or the fact that Navy beans went through a man like a greased mongoose through a garden hose. Rosa Lombardi ran their household with the quiet efficiency of a general, which made sense because her father had been a general—in the Italian army, back before Mussolini made the uniform embarrassing.
She stood at the counter, wrapping his lunch in brown paper. He watched her hands move—capable hands, strong hands, hands that had held him through two decades of marriage and one war and the loss of the three babies who never made it. She'd given him Maria instead, and Maria was worth a dozen babies.
"You're up early," Sal said, kissing her cheek. She smelled like flour and coffee and the faint rosewater she'd worn since their wedding day.
Rosa didn't look up. "The shipyard called at five. Some urgent problem on a destroyer. The Eldridge."
"The Eldridge?"
"That's what the man said. He sounded stressed. I told him you'd be there by seven." She paused, finally meeting his eyes. "And don't forget Mrs. Grimaldi's toilet. She called yesterday. Again. She says it's making 'a noise like a dying animal.'"
Sal closed his eyes. "Rosa, that toilet has been making a noise like a dying animal since Coolidge was in office. The difference is, now the animal is actually dying. The whole mechanism is held together with rust and prayers. She needs a new one."
"She says she can't afford a new one."
"She can't afford not to get a new one. Another week and that toilet's gonna surrender. We'll have sewage in the basement. She'll blame the socialists."
"The communists," Rosa corrected. "She blames the communists. The socialists are for the young people with their jazz music."
Sal opened his mouth to argue, thought better of it, and reached for the coffee pot instead. Some battles weren't worth fighting.
At the kitchen table, Maria was drawing.
She sat on a phone book (so she could reach) and clutched a crayon like it was a weapon. Her tongue poked out slightly, the way it always did when she concentrated. The drawing taking shape was, as far as Sal could tell, a ship. A grey ship with numbers on the side and little portholes and a flag on the mast. Above it, a sun with a smiley face beamed down. Below it, fish with surprised expressions leaped from waves that looked like rows of pointy hats.
"That for me, bambina?"
Maria nodded without looking up. "It's your ship. The one you fix today."
"It's not my ship, sweetheart. I just visit the plumbing."
"But you fix it. That makes it your ship. You're like the doctor, but for toilets."
Sal considered this. "I suppose that makes me the king of crap, then."
Maria giggled. "King of Crap! King of Crap!"
"Sal!" Rosa swatted his arm with a dish towel. "At the table!"
"It's a medical term!"
"It's a breakfast term now, apparently." But she was smiling.
Sal sat down with his coffee and watched his daughter draw. The ship on the paper grew more detailed—little sailors on the deck, a captain in the tower, a fish wearing a hat because Maria thought fish should have hats. It was a good drawing. Simple. Happy. The kind of drawing a kid makes when she doesn't yet know that ships sometimes don't come home.
Sal pushed that thought away. It was 1943. Everyone had those thoughts. You learned to push them away.
"The prosciutto's from Esposito's," Rosa said, sliding his lunch into his toolbag. "The good stuff, not that sawdust they sell at the commissary. And I put two apples."
"Two apples?"
"One for you, one for some sailor who looks like he needs it. You'll know which one."
Sal kissed her again, because she was Rosa and because she noticed things and because after twenty-three years he still liked the way she felt when he held her. Then he kissed Maria on top of her head, careful not to smudge her drawing.
"Bring me back something interesting," Maria said.
"Like what?"
"I don't know. A story. A fish with a hat. Something."
Sal thought about the Eldridge, about clogged heads and backed-up mess decks and sailors who'd been eating Navy beans. "I'll bring you a story," he said. "That's the best I can do."
"Stories are good," Maria said, and went back to her drawing.
The Philadelphia Naval Shipyard sat on the Delaware River like a sleeping giant made of steel and concrete and the accumulated exhaustion of ten thousand workers. Sal had been walking through its gates for fifteen years, since before the war, since before anyone had heard of Hitler or thought about degaussing cables or worried about U-boats in the Atlantic.
The guard at the gate was a kid named Kowalski. He couldn't have been more than nineteen, with a face that still had baby fat and a uniform that hung on him like it was hoping to find a more qualified owner. He snapped to attention when Sal approached, then relaxed when he recognized him.
"Morning, Mr. Lombardi." Kowalski's voice cracked on the "morning." It cracked on most words, actually. Sal suspected it cracked on words he only thought about.
"Kowalski. You're alive. Good."
"Yes, sir. They got a doozy for you today." Kowalski consulted his clipboard with the intense focus of a man who'd been told the clipboard was important but not why. "The USS Eldridge. Something about a clogged head on the mess deck."
"A clogged head."
"Yes, sir. The mess deck. During breakfast." Kowalski lowered his voice. "I heard they're eating with gas masks on."
Sal absorbed this information. He'd seen a lot in fifteen years. He'd pulled rubber ducks from toilets, socks from sinks, once a whole set of false teeth from a shower drain. (The owner, an elderly chief petty officer, had been very specific about not wanting them back. "They've been places," he'd said. "I can't un-know that.") But gas masks? That was new.
"Clogged head," Sal repeated. "It's always the head. Never the galley sink. Never the officer's shower. Always the head where the kids who just ate Navy beans are stationed."
Kowalski looked confused. "Sir?"
"There's a principle at work here, son. The Salami Principle."
"The what?"
"Nobody calls a plumber when things are going fine. They call when the salami's already hit the fan. By the time I arrive, the situation has achieved maximum salami dispersion. That's the job."
Kowalski blinked. "I... think I understand, sir."
"You don't. But you will. Give it twenty years."
Sal walked through the gate, toolbag over his shoulder. Behind him, he heard Kowalski muttering to himself: "Salami principle... salami principle..." He was probably writing it down. Kids wrote everything down these days. They thought there'd be a test later.
ns216.73.216.1da2
and then Add to home screen.