She chattered at Jesus all the time, her appliance wants, her need for closet space. And the only son of God, thinking he could shut her up, threw up his hands, exasperated, saying, “Oh, what the Hell!” And grabbing my parents by the scruff of their necks, he shook them like a cat with two mice until they were unconscious. Then he lifted them from their basement on 19th Street to the fields and blue skies of Connecticut. There, in an Anderson Window Home with shrubs outside, he set them down. And when they awoke they were like souls in hunger, startled by chocolate. But Jesus had a price for all this. He’d put a bug up my father’s ass, a bug that gnawed at his insides whenever my father tried to rest, a bug which relaxed and gave peace only when my father, St Joe, was hard at work.

And turning to my mother, Jesus said, “Glady, I know what you need.” and gave her a son, a small Jesus with a hammer, me. My father was delighted. Each night after coming home from his construction company work, he’d eat dinner at his desk in the kitchen which differed from the cab of his pick-up truck only in that it had a telephone which he nightly held in one hand, fork in the other, and me on his knee. He’d cover the mouthpiece with his fork hand while his clients talked, and whisper to me, “You hit the nail right on the head there, Daley Boy! The future’s gonna be like concrete. But no problem for you cause you’re like me — good peasant stock — willing to work!

However quiet he’d say “peasant”, my mother’d wince. And knowing something bad was coming, she cried when St Joe picked me up like his lunch pail, sat me beside him, and drove his time machine pick-up with its blowing receipts and rolling nails back to the apartment on 19th St where Uncle Benny and Aunt Helen still lived. On seeing Joe, Benny erupted sounds, foreign and happy. He carefully placed the photograph he’d been absorbed by on a dark bureau covered with socks all the while unconsciously fingering a potato-sized dent in his skull. Then, through the basement darkness, he saw me for the first time and grabbed me with his good eye. His other, a milky planet, orbited aimlessly. Slowly, he pointed with his bone of a finger to a head-sized dent in the plaster wall behind him, and nodded grave agreement to what my father was saying, “You hit the nail right on the head there, Daley boy! You appreciate not having a stepfather like we had! That hole there, that’s where Benny grabbed him by the hair and banged old Brownie’s head — twenty years ago — knocked him cold! Christ, Benny was only — how old were you, Benny? Thirteen, fourteen? Son of a bitch, Brownie had me in one hand and my mother in the other one, slapping the crap out of us! But after Benny shows him what’s what and who’s boss... that’s the last time he pulls any of that crap!... best big brother a guy could have, weren’t you Benny?”

Benny glowed. But the tiny apartment with its strange garlic and fried potato smell, Benny’s orbiting white eye, and the talcum powder clouds breezing off Aunt Helen after she finally huffed in dropping bags of ugly used clothing, all overwhelmed me. I slept then, while Helen and my father talked softly and in another apartment a radio played. Suddenly I was awakened by shouts. Helen had pulled a bottle of beer from under Benny’s bathrobe. She shook it at Benny then at my father, saying, “See!”

And Benny, as Helen drained his beer in the sink was yelling, “No, no! I kill you Helen! You wait, you see!”

Helen, with her kidney problems and her diabetes just shrugged, rolled her eyes. She brushed her bags to the floor and slumped in a chair. “I can’t handle him anymore, Joe. Take him up there to the suburbs with you.” She sighed, laughing to herself. Then looking over at Benny, she said, “Maybe you can make a gentleman out of him.”

So Uncle Benny moved into my room. Barely thirty, he was like the shed skin of some overgrown insect. “You hit the nail right on the head there, Daley boy, they smashed his brain in a factory accident when some clown knocking a half-ton casting riser across the shop floor with a swinging iron ball forgot to yell any warning!”

Asleep in the bed across from mine, wrapped in sheets, his toothless mouth wide gassing the room with garlic potato-cake essence, Benny looked like something dug up from the sands of Egypt. And when, after choking and gasping, he awoke, the first thing he did, his white eye still twitching and wild from dreams, was grope for that photograph of himself in a suit with his arm around a dark haired, full-bodied woman in a big dress. He’d clutch the black-and-white picture with its scalloped edges close to his face, stare and slowly gather identity from the young man, Benny from another time, the world his, large, strong as an elm tree.

But Benny was tiny now, except for his head and nose. And he had seizures where his brain sizzled like spit in fry-oil rippling with heat. He peed in his pants. He drooled. I’d see it coming when his milky eye glowed and his brows clenched over the steel plate screwed into his splintered skull. Before the seizure got him, he always had the presence of mind to carefully lay the photograph on the little table by his bed. And though he’d stagger, hissing, grabbing and ripping the air with a fury his thin arms should not have allowed before falling and rolling, likely as not, under my bed, he never upset the little table. Once, as he writhed beneath my bed in his epileptic spell, I tried to jump over him to run and tell my father. But his arm shot out, tangling my legs. His flailing arms wrapped around my face, pulling it tight to his as he grimaced and clenched.

I screamed for my father who came and tenderly separated us. He lifted Benny to his bed, cold and hollow, snoring now as my father gently stroked Benny’s sunken skull. “You hit the nail right on the head there, Daley boy! Why God deals the cards he does, that’s the mystery.”

But always the next day, the pressure released, Benny’d wake up hungry as a horse and soon be in the kitchen cooking. Smiling brightly, unaware of our embrace, staggering slightly, he’d grind potatoes and garlic to fry Lithuanian potato-cakes in lard until our ranch house, our clothes and our hair smelled like the stairway on 19th St. My mother would nudge me out of the kitchen as if sex were involved, crying to Jesus, “Holy Son of God, please keep that immigrant potato stink off my boy!”

But Jesus ignored her. Worse yet, he and my father would lean on the kitchen doorway grinning, waiting for the crispy potato cakes to drain on grocery bags. Then they’d eat without forks, rolling the cakes with their hands and dipping them in sour cream while Benny, spatula in one hand, white enamel range curves in the other, would fry and stroke the enamel like it was the smooth hip of his lover, Saskia. He’d stroke till she gave up that sweet aroma of garlic sizzling in oil.

“Gone,” is all he’d say when I asked Benny about the girl in the picture.

“Best thing you ever did for the poor slob, too!” My mother’d whisper to Jesus. And my father, laying his big hand on my shoulder would say, “You hit the nail right on the head there, Daley boy! City girl, that Saskia! Couldn’t a been two weeks Benny’s in the hospital, she runs off with that Wop with the fancy Buick.”

But, more and more often, Benny’d have his spells. And always, the next day our house would fill with that immigrant potato frying smell. And my mother couldn’t help herself. She began to long for Benny’s death and imagined him dead in Jesus’ arms. She saw the kitchen hers again, clean and odor free. She pictured herself in a scarf at Benny’s open grave whispering “Mother of Grace, give us all peace.” as they’d lay his little body in the ground behind the church on Avenue B in a lovely silk-lined box.

But in the kitchen, behind her she became aware of my father’s eyes. She shook herself free of such thoughts. Clear as ice, she smiled at Joe, magnanimous, it’s my father’s birthday. And like an Israelite, solemn, holding forth some precious Ark, she handed my father his gift, the Arnold Palmer, cobalt-blue Alpaca golf sweater in its crisp, tissue-lined box.

“Golf?” my father asks, like it’s an Italian word. He holds the sweater high and shakes it slightly as if expecting the meaning to float down on the same little slip of paper with the inspector’s number. Then the bug in his gut gives him a terrible bite. He whispers to me in pain, “I think you hit the nail right on the head there, Daley boy! Work is what a man lives for, not Golf!”

It was true. St Joe, Benny, all my father’s crew; Thors, nail pounders who worked fast and long. Skill saw carbide rips, nailing plywood hard since dawn. Each had that bug in their gut who gave them a break at ten when they’d joke and feed it coffee and crullers from oil stained bags and before going back to work again, it’s always my skill with a hammer they’d praise.

“You hit the nail right on the head there, Daley Boy. Life’s about hard work! When a Lithuanian’s work gets done, that’s when he plays.” And always smiling when he could, Uncle Benny’d say, “See, hit the nail on da head. . . some day we all be dead... up in sky with Jesus’ Papa!”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Glady begged, “Joe, for me, just this once, please, this Sunday — no work! It’s not every day we get invited to the Halsteads for a bar-b-q.” And my father, though it pained his gut, relents. He promised, “Okay Glady, okay!”

The Halsteads loomed large in our lives. They are dead now, decayed beyond recognition, dissolved! But, back then, they were like sharks in a Cadillac, and we were the suckers who clung. They were rich and made a point of throwing out their used clothing, appliances, whatever, at the first sign of minor failure or strain. Over and over, like dung beetles, we hauled their cast-offs into my father’s truck, he leering to Jesus and Benny while saying to me, “You hit the nail right on the head there, Daley Boy: waste not, want not! More than a few miles left in these suckers!”

And Benny baptized each used appliance with a Christian name, and afterward spoke to them like the white sisters of Jesus; Saskia the oven, Mary the fridge, Dwyer the dryer. Helping, struggling, I remember, when I was ten, lifting my corner of Mary, I’d asked, “So, why’d they get rid of her if she still works?”

“You hit the nail right on the head there, Daley boy, you tell me!” said my father, his ear on the old gal’s compressor, listening for quirks.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

On the great bar-b-q Sunday, bearing casserole under shining foil so proud, Glady led us like Moses in pedal pushers. Across the great Halstead lawn our family tramped. When we landed near the grill, my father and Benny got iced Pabst Blue Ribbons from Halstead’s smooth white hands. My mother veered off to join Buffy and the Bovines who grazed on gossip near the porch. I went with the men, but Halstead never acknowledged me. I was the only child there, invisible, I walked among Poo Bahs in Madras who poked fun at Benny, Glady, and St Joe.

But it was Sunday, the Son of God’s favorite work day. And it wasn’t long before Jesus came striding giant across Halstead’s chemical lawn, invisible to all except Glady, Uncle Benny, St Joe, and me. With his white robes and red beard flowing, he stammered, “Hey, Benny, Joe! Where the hell were you guys? I been waiting at the job since dawn!” Then he stopped and stared at Benny’s legs, bare from the knees down. “Oh God, look at you! The height of fashion!” And after choking back laughter and writing in his gold notebook, Jesus said, “Okay, I know how to handle this.”

With a clap of thunder, he grabbed the spit and began flinging golden chickens through the air. Some fell in the grass and the pool. Most fell in the Poo Bahs’ and Halstead’s hair. Almost immediately, Jesus’ hand shot to his mouth in embarrassment. “What the hell am I doing?” he gasped. And he looked skyward to see if his father had seen, then turned to St Joe saying, “Okay, Joe, Benny, Quick, can you fix this Goddamn thing?”

So, my father tossed off his Arnold Palmer Alpaca Golf Sweater, and with head bent under the grill, adjusted things back to normal while Benny rounded up and reskewered the half-baked fowl. When finished, they were roundly hailed. But behind the smiles, this skill with the hands, Halstead and company found it coarse. My mother, who’d been watching from the picture window inside, could no longer bear it, of course. She focused, instead, with the other ladies, on Buffy’s new fridge which excreted ice. “Very nice,” said the women. And my mother too murmered, “Yes, really, very nice.”

And Buffy, on a material high, continued, “That’s nothing!” she said, “My new range can bake a roast while I golf, then lick itself clean like a cat!”

I’d never seen a bar-b-q like this before with the tension and drama that rich people could bring. It excited me. I ran indoors to find my mother, and looking back, distracted, I banged my head on my mother’s hip where she’d stopped dead. She was staring out at the lawn and the aluminum chair where St Joe’s Alpacca Golf sweater lay forgotten. And up the street, by the church, I saw Jesus with Benny and Joe, hand in hand, all three bent double by the pain in their gut. And I knew I’d hit he nail right on the head when I said, “I guess the three of them just had to go and do a little work!”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Monday morning after Dad and Benny had left for work, Jesus, thorn hat in hand, bar-b-q stains gone, showed up at the house in the suburbs looking nervous. “Listen Glady,” he said, “I am so sorry, but, you know, I have this thing about work. But, Dad says I owe you one. How can I make things right with you?”

My mother pouted for as long as she thought she could get away with it, then said, “Well, there is something you could do. There’s that Woodbridge Country Club acceptance list I’d like for us to be on. You couldn’t do that... I know it wouldn’t be right, but... could you?”

“Hey, No problemo!” says Jesus, seeing he can get out of this one easier than he thought. “Ordinarily I can’t,” he said, “But this is special. Let’s see what I can do.”

And with his long fingers of cold fire, he grabs our admission denial from a mailbag pile and switches it for a golden one of acceptance. My mother smiles.

So, next Friday, then, out on the country club green wearing lemon Alpacca, apple, and tangerine, Halstead and two Poo Bahs stood checking their watches. Annoyed, they waited for my father. For Glady, watching from the Dina Shore room, panic comes quickly. These men, bankers, lawyers, they’re too important to stand up. She’d already phoned home — no answer. So she hopped in her car and drove, ran inside, smelled potato air. She cursed hearing Benny’s snores. Opening, then slamming doors, she finds Joe asleep in his recliner. Blue TV light illuminates his open mouth and crossed hands on his stomach. The way his eyelids twitch you’d never know the bug in his gut was now at rest. He was dreaming, but not as Glady would have it, of money, connections, Cadillacs, or Gold. But, as always, he was wandering, lost, back in the Great Depression years five years old, when his real father died. Small, helpless, scared, he trembled knowing what was coming. He’d been back here countless times, maybe every night. He knew, a violent man, drunk, red with anger, would slither into the bed beside his mother and him. He knew the man would shake his mother who was pretending to sleep. He could see clearly the man’s back, his hideous white skin with its purple eruptions and countless black hairs as the body writhed against his mother who continued to lie motionless. There would come soon enough the yelling, the pushing, then the hitting which always seemed so misplaced in the soft bed.

And, as always, he prayed for Benny to arrive — to run into the room. Brave, valiant Benny. And sometimes he’d hope for Benny’s sake that his big brother would not come, for Brownie was too big, too mean, and it was too horrible to hear Benny’s cries again. Those times, little St Joe would move to help his mother. He’d try, but he was too small, too scared, so small that all Brownie need do was laugh.

But this time it was different. Now, with twitching eyes, wild from terror dreams as terror’s child, my father was, once again, in the bed where Brownie leaned out to hold Benny off the ground, hold him by his neck. This time though, my father had a sharpened pencil in his hand. Oh, but his strength and resolve were fading. His arms were weak. He tried so hard to jab at Brownie’s eye, but before he could swing his lifeless arm, Oh Christ Jesus, Brownie had maneuvered his fat body to hold down Benny and his mother with his chest and chin. Both of Brownie’s hands were free now and as he turned to grab my father, Brownie hissed, “You little piss ant! I’ll kill you, now! I’ll take that pencil and shove it up between your legs!”

My father would have screamed, but his voice wouldn’t come. He wanted so much to wake up, to get away, and the shaking would not stop. Glady shook him. Confused, he still pushed and kicked. He found a voice that was nearly his, only his tongue and mouth were dry. He almost knew where he was, in a room, across which, Benny shivered under the Cobalt Blue Alpacca Golf Sweater with which St Joe had earlier covered his big brother.

Abruptly, drenched in sweat, St Joe was awake. Something was wrong. Something he heard, felt. He looked at Glady almost as if she had been in the dream with him. Then they both heard the choking sound and immediately afterward, the stillness of death. In the blue TV light, they saw Jesus rising off the couch with Benny’s little soul shimmering in his arms. Glady sobbed covering her mouth with her hands. My father, shaking silently, walked the few steps to the small empty body and sat stroking Benny’s soft skull. Through death, my father was truly St Joe, and for a moment, understood all. Then, as quickly, he forgot, and was my father again.