I heard, I heard Eddie told his dad he didn't know who did it, poured the gasoline. Even no matter what his dad did to him, he wouldn't tell.
Sally's green eyes get wide; Marian moves a little closer next to her and pats her hand. Everyone's quiet for a moment. The kids are all thinking about what Mr. Spano, a red-faced explosion of a man, might have done to Eddie, and about Eddie not telling.
Al Spano is just plain mean, for no reason, like his two sons. The Italians, the kids all think they're weird anyway. They wave their hands around and listen to music that you can't understand the words, and the old ladies wear black. But this kind of meanness, it's not from being Italian. All the kids keep away from Al Spano, all the kids cross to the other side of the street on the block where the Spanos live; all except Jack, who walks on that side on purpose, staring right into the windows of their house. No question Al Spano would tear out and break the arm of any man whose son was messing with his son. Even Mike the Bear: any man. But going up against Mike the Bear, that would be the end of Al Spano. Eddie Spano must know that, everyone knows that. So Eddie has to say he doesn't know who poured the gasoline.
Eddie's doing what he has to do. The kids are still scared of him, they'll never like him, and he deserves whatever he's getting; but his silence, they respect. Only Marian looks sad.
Sitting there on the stoop, everyone quiet, Jimmy's thinking, like the other kids, about Al Spano and the beating Eddie must have taken. But he's thinking about something else, too: what would happen if the Spano brothers snatched little Paulie's lunch money again tomorrow.
He sees it: Eddie Spano howling, rolling on the ground, eaten alive by flames.
He knows it won't be like that: the Spanos will never go near Paulie again. But if they did? Jimmy watches Tom, Tom's hands peeling the bark from a stick, digging with his thumbs where it doesn't want to come off.
But if they did, Jimmy thinks. Whose job would it be, then, to put that fire out?
Tom looks up at Jimmy, almost like Jimmy said what he was thinking out loud. Looks at him, but doesn't answer the question.
Tom snaps the stick, throws it away. Anyhow, he says. This way Paulie gets to keep his lunch money. The only one in trouble is Eddie, and he started it. The important thing—and now he grins, that great grin that makes them all feel good, all feel part of everything—the important thing, Dad don't get smacked by Sister Joseph.
The kids all laugh.
But there's something else Jimmy sees, sees and doesn't forget. What Tom wanted was to make the Spanos stop. Tom makes Jack part of it, what Jack will want is to beat the crap out of anything that moves. Kids fight, it's no big deal, not big enough for Sister Joseph to call anyone out. Except the way Jack fights. Jack gets in there, everything blows up, everyone's in trouble.
Tom looking out for little Paulie the way he did, Jimmy knows, that way instead of a different way, is also Tom looking out for Jack.
From the New York Tribune, October 24, 2001
A HERO'S LEGACY
by Harold Randall
Today was a happy day in Pleasant Hills.
This Staten Island hamlet of modest homes on sloping, tree-shaded streets is a town that lives up to its name. Kids ride bikes past well-tended flower beds on their way to the schools their parents went to. Main Street runs a short three blocks, lined with mom-and-pop shops. The Post Office is on the eastern end of Main Street, and the parish church of St. Ann's anchors the west. Between them, in the symbolic heart of Pleasant Hills, stands Engine 168, one of the first firehouses on Staten Island and still in use.
The purple and black bunting draped above the red doors of Engine 168 and the flags at half staff all over town suggest that Pleasant Hills hasn't had many happy days lately. Engine 168 lost two men on September 11, men who lived here, who were neighbors, fathers, and friends. The town also lost four other residents: two who worked in the World Trade Center, and two who were firefighters with other FDNY companies. And Pleasant Hills is also mourning a native son, a man who left