“Your father’s an enemy alien.” The head agent motioned to several other agents, who ransacked the house for radios, flashlights, cameras and binoculars. His mother looked on in horror, while Paul gaped in confusion. Nick wondered what the hell these men were thinking his family might do with these everyday items. After the search was complete, not one piece of furniture stood in its rightful place. The family trailed the posse out of the house and down the stoop, the rain a filmy mist on their faces as they watched an agent push Gaetano’s head under the roof of the black, Ford sedan.
Nick stood on the sidewalk barefoot in his underwear, while Paul leaned against his cousin, Lucia kneeling alone on the sidewalk, her hands raised to the predawn sky. Their neighbors peeked through the blinds and saw what had only been rumored in North Beach. At that moment Nick realized why his family home had been invaded—the contrast in their olive complexions was all the reason they needed. As the unmarked cars sped away, the wind chilled the air in the San Francisco Bay and they retreated inside, as the fog spread its cover around the town.
Lucia went into the kitchen to brew some coffee, while Nick and Paul straightened up the dining room. It wasn’t long before they sat at the table, sipping some caffè Americanu.
“Chi facemu ora, Nicolo?”
“I don’t know Mamma.”
“It’s a damn shame, them haulin’ Ziu Gaetano away like that,” Paul said.
“Just because we’re at war don’t mean the FBI got a right to arrest him.”
“You don’t think I’m angry, too. I’m never gonna forget this!”
“We will be mischinu in North Beach,” Lucia cried out.
“Mamma, we have nothing to be ashamed of.”
“People will talka.”
“We’ll get a lawyer. He’ll fix everything. Va beni?”
“Figghiu miu!” Lucia kissed Nick and wiped her tears away with her palm.
“Yeah, cuginu, get a good mouthpiece.”
Nick knew things were not going to be that simple freeing his father. It would be difficult finding a lawyer who knew had to handle a case like this, and besides, there wouldn’t be much money to go around, since the fishing boat disappeared, just like his father. Nick felt that things didn’t add up—there was a hysteria building up with the Japs. Not that anyone didn’t have a right to be scared after all those sailors were killed in Pearl Harbor, but why pick on his father? He was an honest, hard working Sicilianu, someone who loved his family, even America, despite its stranu ways. And Mamma was so ashamed that the Feds arrested Papà, muttering ‘Not to say nothin’ to nobody’ and ‘Not a word outside nostra casa’.
The more Nick thought about his father’s arrest though, the angrier he got, recalling all the ‘just kidding’ slights and actual skirmishes he had with the so-called real Americans while growing up. His job was to get his father out, and then he would deal with the war. A few days later, his mother received a brief call from her husband, letting her know that Papà would be held indefinitely but he didn’t understand why.
Several weeks had passed when Nick came back from his after-school job at his uncle’s alimentari and found his mother rocking back and forth in her chair.
“Mamma, what’s the matter?”
“Papà no comin’ back. Twenty years we been married!” She clasped her hands, her eyes red and wet. He saw a letter in her lap.
“Let me read the letter. You must be mixing up the English.” She handed it to Nick, who studied the writing for any key words of condemnation for his father.
“Papà has been moved to another Immigration Service facility on Angel Island.” Nick looked up from the letter. “Sounds like a detention center to me.” Lucia let out a cry. “Mi dispiaci, Mamma.” Nick ran his eyes over the letter again. “Says that Gaetano Spataro is on a list to be relocated to Fort Missoula, Montana, until further notice. It’s got the seal of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Geez, they’re going to lock him up in a military prison.”
“My poor husband.” Lucia crossed herself. “Why they doa this thing to him?” she shouted as she rose from the chair. Nick grabbed his mother who was about to faint. He placed her on the couch, while he paced in front of her.
“Wacky things happening in this town,” Nick said. But his mother was far away now, gazing at the rose medallion on the ceiling. Nick eyes watered up as he looked at a family picture on the wall above his mother’s head. All three of them were smiling, as they posed in front of Gaetano’s new purse seiner docked at Fisherman’s Wharf. Nick knelt down next to his mother. “We’ll see Papà before you know it. Don’t you worry, Mamma.”
Arcuri’s office looked like a mess but Nick didn’t have much of a choice. The lawyer motioned for Nick to sit and jotted down the details of the arrest on a yellow legal pad. After ascertaining important biographical details of Gaetano Spataro, he peered over his reading glasses.
“Kid, I have worked on many immigration cases and none of them are ever easy, but this is in another ball park.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
“What does…”
“This war is making the government short on reason. The Defense Department is sure that Tojo is going to hit the coast of California with everything they got, sooner or later.”
“But what does this have to do with my father? He’s no enemy alien. He loves this country.”
“That doesn’t make him a legal citizen. It doesn’t look good for your pop.”
“Why not?”
“He won’t be facing a judge in civilian court. It’s called an Enemy Alien Hearing. Heard about it from a judge friend of mine. Two military officers and two professional citizens. No counsel will be allowed in at these Justice Department Detention Camps.” The lawyer stood up and looked out the window at the swift, dark gray clouds. “All I can do is send in a testimonial to his trustworthiness”—Arcuri turned to Nick—“and hope it persuades the hearing board to release your father.”
“Once you do that, everything will be fine, right?” Nick jutted his chin out. “My father is well-respected in North Beach, you know.”
“I get the picture, Nick, but the folks deciding your father’s fate have heads as hard as a Louisville slugger.”
Nick gazed down at his hands, squeezing them, when a hard rain began to fall outside the wide office window, streaking the gold letters of Arcuri’s name.
“Ascolta! Your father belonged to the Ex-Combattenti, the Federation of Italian War Veterans in America, according to what you told me. That’s the tip of the bat and I am afraid Gaetano is going to get hit in the head with it during the hearing.”
Nick shot up. “Why is my father the fall guy?”
“I’ll do my best, kid.” Arcuri shook Nick’s hand and walked him out the door. The door cracked shut, its sound bouncing off the terrazzo floor of the hallway. When he stepped onto the pavement, an abrupt burst of rain flowed into the street gutters, forcing the flotsam of North Beach down the hill all the way to the wharf like a line drive, the detritus floating with the current under the Golden Gate Bridge.
II
Nick met his first Jewish friend at the Legion of Honor Museum in Lincoln Park, after his longest bike ride from North Beach. He wanted to distance himself from the spot where the Feds snatched his father away. Gaetano’s absence changed the family conversation, pitching from melancholy to cacophony. He felt like Giufà the fool from the Sicilian folk tales his mother used to read to him. Just as the Spataros started to live well in America, now all he wanted to do was run away from home and not face his mother crying, not deal with having Papà gone as if Gaetano era mortu—not even a stone marker in a cemetery for his family to pay their respects on a Sunday. His father disappeared on a night Nick would never forget. After skipping mass, he pedaled with a sea breeze pressing against his face, which brought him to a new place where he could lose himself.