Document text
Mari Tomasi
Yontpelier, Vt.
UMBRELLA PAT
Snow was piled high in the park square. It was February; bright
sun warmed the benches and melted the snow from the elm branches, so
that the park sounded with a cheery drip -drip.
An old man sat an a corner bench where he could watch the life
of Barre on the main street, from the granite bank facing the park to
the dingy wooden and brick business blocks.
The policeman stopped beside the old man. "This is Pat McFinn,"
he said. "He's been in and out of Barre these forty years-"
"Forty-five," Pat corrected with a friendly smile, as the police-
man swung down the walk. "I remember that fellow's grandfather.' He
was my age. With all my bumming around and poor living I've outlasted
him by fifteen years. Them days they didn't have kids for cops; or
maybe I'm wrong. Maybe.the young men seem like kids to me just because
I'm old."
Strands of hair fell white and silky beneath Pat's corduroy cap.
He needed a shave. His cheeks under the white bristles were pink as a
baby's. His eyes were strangely young, china -blue, and fragile looking.
His slight frame4ippommed. weighted by a heavy black ulster hanging down
to his ankles. His mittened hands played with the knobbed head of a
cane that stood between his knees.
Two school children in snowsuits were walking the path on skis.
Pat's eyes followed their progress. *When I was a kid," said he, "I'd
rather ski or snowshoe one day than swim in the brook all summer.
2
Nowadays kids have store things for their sports. The only skis I ever
awned were made from a couple of staves off my old gent's cider barrel.
We made straps for them from an old halter. We'd grease the staves with
bacon rind and they'd take us where we wanted to go. Couldn't use
them much except on moonlit nights. The old gent put us out to work
when we was thirteen; me, and three brothers. He was one of them hard-
working, hard -praying, hard -drinking men. Didn't lay no stock in kids
enjoying themselves; not during the working -day hours anyhow. Then come
night, he'd fetch us in for prayers and bed at nine o'clock. Didn't
leave us much time for having fun."
A youthful nottllad crept into Pat's voice as he epoke of the past.
"I came over from Ireland with the family when I was seven. The
old gent used to tell haw he happened to make the trip. We lived in one
of those small Irish villages you read about; a village that's awned
and run by one rich guy. Well, this rich guy had a daughter who was
homely as the ace of spades, so the old gent used to say, and she took
a fancy to my father, who had no special trade and hired out to farmers,
doing odd jobs; mostly clearing their fields and pastures of stones.
The old gent didn't have eyes for the old maid, so he used to say. Why
should he, when he had a wife and four kids? But this old maid, she'd
follow him to the fields every day,. and when the father heard of it,
what did she do but lie and say it was my father that was pestering her
all the time. The rich guy was mad, I tell you. He had influence in
the village. Got so the old gent found it hard to find anyone to hire
him.
One morning what does the rich guy find in his rose garden but a
load of stones, dumped right onto his bushes. He laid it to the old
gent, said he'd run him out of town. That same night he took awful
sick from a mess of fish he'd eaten. When he discovered that the old
gent had caught them and sold them to his cook he peddled it around that
my father was trying to poison him. Everyone in the village was de-
pendent on him one way or another. He gave them all orders not to give
even an hour's work to my father.
"Father Gilligan had heard my father talking about going to the
States someday. What does he do but borrow some money and stake the
old gent and family to the trip over here. He told my father as how
he'd game through Barre, Vermont the year before and that it looked as
though it was going to be a mighty prosperous town with all the granite
they was digging from the hills.
"Don't remember much about the trip over here except that we lived
for a couple of weeks in a room with about twenty-five other people.
We could hear machines close to the roam, and chains rattling. At night
we'd wake up to people snoring, or meaning, or making sick, puking
sounds. It was too much for my mother. She lost the baby she was
carrying two weeks after we got here. The old gent used to say: 'God
bless Father Filligan, he's a good man. I'll say a Hail Mary for him
every day of my life. I'd gladly say two for him if he had deeper into
his pocket and given us the extra for better passage.' The old gent
paid him back every cent.
"We came straight to Parre. My father found work in the quarries.
We lived on a farm in East Barre. Hard work and hard drinking got him
in the chest. I was thirteen then. He put me out to work by the day
14
for farmers. He didn't want any of us near the sheds or quarries.
"I guess the trip over here gave me a taste for travel. I run
away from home when I was fifteen; me and the grandfather of that oop
you VIRS talking to. We went broke in Bristol, Connecticut, but got
jobs in a buckle factory. It wasn't hard work, and it sure felt good
not to have to turn over my wages to the old gent.
"I'd been there about a year when I got brass poisoning in my hand.
It swelled and got green and rotten looking. The doctors talked about
cutting it off. Rotten looking or not, I wouldn't let them. No sir,
not Pat McFinn. Pat McFinn was going through life with two hands, or
he wasn't going through life at all. Well, it's a good thing I didn't
let them butchers do their cutting. Looki" He pulled off a mitten,
and held up a wrinkled, heavily veined hand. "Lookitl it's just as
good as the other.
"Later I wandered down south a bit. Got myself in the army for a
few months. Didn't like that. Didn't like the food nor the hours. I
kind of liked to be my awn boss even in those days so I run away from
them; run right away from the government, and I never heard no more
about it." Pat chhekled. "Run away from the United States Government,
and heard nothing of itt
It
A Colonel's wife at the army post had asked me to mend a silk
umbrella for her. She gat me to thinking of my mother and how she'd
always wanted a black silk umbrella with a pearl handle like the rich
guy's wife used to awn in Ireland. Well, when I went back to Barre I
brought my mother the umbrella. But she was dead. She'd died the day
S
before. I stole in the front room where she was laid out in her coffin,
and I laid the umbrella alongside of her under her skirts. I didn't
wait for no funeral. I took to wandering the country again. But I
couldn't get my mother off my mind. I thought of her and the colonel's
wife's umbrella I'd mended, and I got to thinking of what my mother used
to say: everybody's got to have some kind of a job to keep him from
going to the devil.
"Right then I got the idea of mending umbrellas, and earning a little
money as I traveled along. I wasn't married; never intended to be. I
got no use for women. A woman would have been a nuisance an the road.
I've mended mibrellas ever since. Umbrella Pat, they call me.
"Remember that song that come out last year about mending umbrellas?
The first time I heard it I felt it was written for me. I heard it in
a department store. I was going to buy the record, then I thought: it
wouldn't do no good without a victrola. So I asked the girl at the
handkerchief counter if she'd just as soon write out the words for me.
She did. They all know Umbrella Pat.
"I did a whale of a lot of traveling in the old days, but the last
twenty years I've stuck pretty close to Barre, Montpelier, and Waterbury.
I always believed in drinking. I've heard say as haw it kills folks.
Well, it hasn't killed Pat. I've outlived plenty of my friends. Wasn't
never particular about my liquor, either. Pk near eighty and I've
drunk nearly every liquor under the sun. Sure, I like good stuff. But
once I'm drunk and broke I'm not fussy.
"I got me a room in the Passetti Block. Not much of a roam. It's
warm and comfortable. Old Passetti died three years back. He was from
the Old World, too; from Italy. Came over here and started a grocery
store. Raised a family of eight kids; educated them all well. There's
doctors and teachers in his family now. Old Passetti lived to build a
business block and buy up siz or seven houses. The kids are well off
now. The oldest girl, Marietta, is about forty. She's got three kids.
She still looks after the roomers. She looks after me, and she's good
to me. She scolds like hell when I'm drinking. Couple of months ago
she made the rounds of the dime store and the department stores and
told them not to sell me any bay rum or canned heat.
"Every year she sees that I make my Easter duties. I'm a Catholic.
I'm not a good one, but I'm not a bad fellow. Drink a lot, sure, but
I don't do no one no harm.
"Last year I was on a two weeks' drunk. I slipped and broke my
leg. I happened to be in Montpelier at the time. They took me to the
hospital and kept me there two months.
"After that I vent to the poor farm. I had to. My leg wasn't fit
to walk on. I couldn't earn a living. Two of my brothers are dead.
The third one might be dead, too. Haven't heard from him in fifteen
years. I was all alone. I had to go to the poor farm. I got out as
soon as I could. I don't like charity. I don't
I'll pay that poor farm back. No one's going to
"I got me a five hundred dollars insurance.
want charity. No,sir.
say Pat took charity.
That's two hundred
and fifty dollars more than the funeral of Pat McFinn is worth. I'll
turn the other $250 over to the poor farm. I don't want charity.
"I get old age pension now. I don't call that charity. The leg
never healed the way it would if I was young. It's hard for me to get
around from house to house. I get along all right with the pension.
When the check comes, I give Marietta her rent money right away, and
the rest, well I guess I drink it.
"It's a pretty good life. I'm not kicking. When I need a little
money I go out and sharpen a few knives and scissors. Folks aren't
wanting their umbrellas mended any more. In the old days umbrellas was
expensive. Folks hung on to them, mended them to make them last. Now
you can buy them anywhere for a dollar. It spoiled my business.
"I haven't bought a suit of clothes for eight years," Pat announcede'
proudly. "Women folk take a liking to me. I don't know why. I'm
certainly not handsome. Just the same they take a liking to me like they
used to, to the old gent. I'll sharpen a couple of knives and a pair
of scissors, and first thing you know the voman'll go digging in the
attic for her husband's old clothes. This ulster was given me a month
back. I don't call that charity. It's no money out of their pockets.
It's just clothing that'd go to waste if I didn't use it.
"There was a time years ago I'd stop at the sheds and they'd always
have something to sharpen. That's all past, too. Each shod's got her
awn smithy these days. Well, life's like that, I guess. You got to
keep up with the times. Pretty soon my handell be too shaky for
sharpening knives and scissors. I won't go an charity even then. No
sir. Not Pat McFinn. I'll get me some pencils and peddle them. I've
seen one-armed men and one -legged men selling them and they seem to
make a living."