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Patch...

Greg G. Zaino

    The night before was a nightmare. It had been happing on a regular basis. Me and my girlfriend got into it once again. When Terri had too much to drink she’d get mean as hell and ran her mouth like a whore that didn’t get paid. She’d come in the door with an asshole attitude after being out all day and most of the night. She drank, partied, and drugged with a group of people from work that I stayed away from. I did my share of all the above, as she did hers, and no problem, but man, she got ugly as fuck after drinking hard liquor the day before. It just got better after she came in the door.
    I didn’t know it at time, but she’d been getting freaky with another chick who was part of the unusual collection of co-workers she partied with. My friend Billy told me about it after the she and I split up a couple years later. I was a sucker for punishment I guess, but I put up with it, so that makes me accountable. She’s dead now. What I wouldn’t give for one more guilt trip...
    That morning, I needed to get away for the day. I didn’t want to deal with her so I split before she got her spiteful, hung-over ass out of bed. The wind was up and getting stronger that New England morning in late October. The weather outside was cold and soggy. It was the perfect time to pack up my foul weather gear and go fishing. I was gone in no time.
    A couple hours before driving over the bridge to Jamestown, I sat inside of my 69 Volkswagen smoking a bone and listening to Frank Zappa’s new album, ‘Joes Garage’ on my Pioneer Super Tuner II cassette player. Man, that thing rocked; state of the art at the time. I took a hit, thinking about the situation back home and what I should do about the whole situation. “Fuck it!” I said out loud. “Just another day in joy land...”
    It was the off season so the parking lot at Narragansett State Beach was near empty. I got out of the car, lit a smoke and propped myself against the bubble front fender of my old Beetle, Lulu. I was watching a group of die hard surfers. The coming storm was generating huge rollers. The surfers were eating up this opportunity in wet suits, sitting on their long boards offshore, waiting for that perfect wave. Their torsos, sitting atop the sleds, appeared and disappeared between the oncoming waves, looking like corks popping up and down as they came into, and out of view.
    I put out the cigarette, got back in Lulu, started her up, and continued the drive over Verrazano bridge from Narragansett to Jamestown. I stopped at a package store in town for beer, ice, and more cigarettes. I stowed the beer and ice in my Coleman cooler. Nearing my destination, I passed the 18^th century windmill on the island and saw work was underway. I was happy to see that. The historical society was funding a restoration of the antiquated structure.
    At the bottom of the hill I passed over the small bridge and wheeled into the gravel parking lot of the bait shop. The shop sat off to the left of the throughway at an inlet surrounded by long marine grass and sea heather. I felt at home. I grabbed a half dozen green crabs, clam worms, some extra sinkers, and hooks. The owner, Eric, told me fishing had been pretty poor, but I just wanted to relax; fish or no fish, didn’t matter. He wished me luck, I said my goodbye, left the shop and headed to a spot at the tip of the island where I’ve pretty much always had decent luck.
    I met Patch that same afternoon. His first name was actually, Manny, last name, Silva. He and I hit it off right away. We met at the rocky point that jutted out into the Atlantic off to the right of the old Beavertail lighthouse. The water was angry as hell, thunderous, and huge. A bad ass squall from the northeast was on the way. Nor’easters can be bitching with the impact of a hurricane in New England, and this one was coming hard and fast.
    His friends called him ‘Patch’. Manny was one of the good guys. Family meant everything to him. He loved Elvis, cigars, Portuguese wine, and Jack Daniels whiskey. Manny made his own wine and grew tobacco. He told me it was illegal. I never knew anyone that grew tobacco in their gardens, though there were still plantations in Connecticut, next state over. I knew a family there in South Windsor that had been growers for umpteen generations, going back to the 1700’s. My grandfather had made wine all his life too, so that gave Manny and I something to talk about when we first met.
    He was a natural born storyteller and let me into his life over the years after getting to know him as a close friend. It would happen when he had a few drinks and feeling no pain. He’d occasionally tell me of his experiences during the war, but it wasn’t something you’d normally hear come out of his mouth. He brought me into his world with those tales, and seemed always to have a new one to tell, hardly ever repeated the same one twice.
    I remember his stories of battle like I was there. He spoke of French wine, cognac, and the beautiful women he’d met, danced with, kissed, but never about his sexual exploits. He wasn’t a boaster. He told me stories of hate and extreme violence, of love and sadness, the horror of Panzer tanks, and deadly pill boxes; stories of the enemy’s resolve, bravery, and his compassion for them. I remember his first.
    Manny looked at me, head tilted to the side. “They wasn’t all Nazi bastards ya know- most was just like us- had wives and kids, moms and pops, and brothers and sisters that they loved. No different than you and me. They had a country to defend and die for, just like us. You know, Zane, war baffles me, don’t make no fuckin’ sense. And here we are now, friends and allies with those same Germans; same as the Japanese. Try to figure that out... like it was all for nothing. And then, here we got the Russkies, who was an ally in that blood bath, but now we’re in a fuckin’ cold war with ole Ivan- what the fuck is that all about?” All I could do was nod in agreement.
    Manny told me his father was a fisherman from Portugal who married his mother, a fifteen year old gal from his hometown, Sintra, before coming to America. There in the town of Bristol, Rhode Island, they raised a large family. His dad continued with what he knew best, and until he was too feeble to continue, remained a fisherman. Manny and his siblings were first generation, native born, Portuguese Americans, and he was proud to say it. He had five brothers and three sisters. Manny was a boat builder, despite his handicap, before he retired and handed the family business, ‘Silva Boat Manufacturing’, over to his two sons. They built wooden fishing skiffs made with sturdy oak, dinghies, and small sailboats. His personal craft, he personally built. It was a motor boat of hard-wearing mahogany. It was a ribbed, natural beauty; 21 feet long, no paint. The varnished mahogany was old school; a thing of beauty from a bygone era. He and I enjoyed many days out on the water in that hand crafted cruiser. He named it “Fatima” after his wife.
    I’ve always enjoyed the Atlantic’s rage, so did Manny. We both grew up on the water just down the bay from where we met. The town of Bristol, he called home. Me, I grew up in Barrington, two towns down the shore from Bristol. Manny wore a long and wiry, salt and pepper beard- had one eye, and a prosthetic leg. The day we met he was wearing a Greek fisherman’s cap, woolen blue Navy Pea coat, red checked flannel shirt, cuffed jeans, and work boots. The right side of Manny’s face was scarred and he wore a black eye patch covering what was underneath.
    For a guy his age, he was in great shape, didn’t have any excess body fat; a solidly built man. He wasn’t tall, but stocky with a thick barrel chest. He had a powerful grip that caught me off guard that first time giving it a shake. His fingers were short, stout, and callused; his arms muscular. He offered his hand, I stuck mine out. He grabbed hold quick before I had the chance to get a firm hold, and squeezed my fingers like they were in a vice. He shook my hand up and down like he meant it. Man, it pained the hell out those four fingers of my right hand, but I didn’t let on; never made the same mistake twice.
    He moved around with relative ease despite being minus one leg and the prosthetic. Patch lost both his leg and eye fighting in Europe near the end of World War II. He was 18 years old when he signed up in 1943, quit school at sixteen and tried signing up there at the beginning, despite his parent’s objections, was turned down, so he waited it out. Manny never saw need to go back and finish his education.
    His division was attached to Patton’s 3rd Army. It happened in June of 1945 in an trampled pasture outside of a French village on the front lines. Manny was a machine gunner; part of a three man squad. They were catching rifle, mortar, and machine gun fire, hustling for cover, him carrying his 50 caliber gun, his two buddies; one carrying the ammo, the other a tripod. Manny told me his buddy of near two years, the one carrying the ammo, just disappeared when that mine went off. His friend was an Irish kid from Providence, Rhode Island.
    They became tight, though they’d never met before at home, after finding each other in the same outfit. In a subdued voice and looking downcast, he told me. “I was told at the hospital they didn’t find enough of him to bury. Danny was no more‘en ten, maybe fifteen feet away from me when he hit that land mine. Poor bastard... I went to visit his family after the war and gave them his last letter. We both give one another letters in case t’other didn’t make it out. We knew we was headed into a hornets nest, and man, them Germans was waitin’, fightin’ for their very way of life, families, and homeland. We was right at their back door, there at the Bulge, and they was givin’ us fuckin’ hell to pay. I’m here to tell ya Zane- if’n ya wanna know what the horror of war is- well, you ain’t gonna find it in no fuckin’ movie, I tell ya. We was in it thick of it and I don’t ever wish that shit on another livin’ soul.”
    He lit a Lucky Strike while I sat up on a boulder holding my fishing pole. He reeled in his line in to re-bait. I put down my pole, hopped down, opened the cooler, and pulled out a beer. I cracked it open and waited. Patch took a hit off his pint bottle, placed it back in his coat pocket. His mind was still somewhere else. He baited and cast his line back out, reeled it in taught, and set his pole down against a boulder that had a thick vein of white quartz running through it. Manny said it was his rock. I laughed. His fishing line now extending out into the surf, he went on with his story.
    “Yup, Zane, just above my right knee, they took ‘er off in that Army field hospital.” He shook his head, flipped open his Zippo lighter, relit his cigar and puffed mightily. After a minute or so he went on with his story, a distant look in his one good eye.
    “Yup, it got fucked all to hell when that God awful mine went off.” Manny made the sign of the cross after saying this. “My left eye got tore’d right outa my fuckin’ head. I went down hard and lay there in shock; a terrible ringin’ in both my ears, I had a mouthful of blood and dirt- didn’t know what hit me, but I looks down and sees part of my leg is gone and realizes I can’t see outa my right eye. It was gone. I passed out. They had to write me a note cuz I couldn’t hear nothin’, telling me they couldn’t save my knee and that I lost my right eye. They cut off what was left of my lower leg right above the joint- said I was lucky to be alive. Hell, I told the doctor to fuck off and leave me alone. I couldn’t hear nothing for weeks after I came to. Took a while and I still don’t hear so well neither. I was thinkin’ at the time, it would’a been better to be dead, than livin’ without a leg and havin’ one eye. I didn’t want to talk to no one.”
    I didn’t know what to say, just shook my head side to side. I felt a bit off balance. I just met the guy and he’s telling me all this. My father went through that war in Europe, also Army, but he was closed mouthed about the whole affair so I had nothing to add to his story. My own life experience seemed pretty puny compared to what this man was telling me. I had lost my good friend Gary in Vietnam and told Manny so. Sounded lame as it was coming out of my mouth. He nodded, said he was sorry to hear it and asked where he was buried. I told him Gary was at our home town cemetery. Manny said that when his number was up; he wanted to be buried at the Veterans cemetery with a military funeral, guns and all. I upended my can, finished my beer, reached over, dropped the empty in my cooler, grabbed another, cracked it open and handed one to Patch. He thanked me and started up again after passing his bottle over to me.
    “Yup, Uncle Sam sent me home on a U.S. Navy hospital ship with hundreds of other wounded guys and it smelled awful, liked death. Was a long trip home and all I could think of was surviving the battlefield, only to get sunk out in the Atlantic by a fuckin’ U Boat on my way back to the states, and here I was with one leg and couldn’t swim!”
    He laughed at himself then continued. “But we got back to Philadelphia in due time. Yeah, I got to see Christmas back in the states, but a lotta my buddies were still back there, freezin’ to death in a shit storm of dyin’ and screamin’ at the ‘Battle of the Bulge’, as the Americans called it; Germans called it something else. That was the final, pretty much to end it all fight. Germany was beaten all to hell. The allied bombin’ of her cities was a horrible price to pay for the civilians of Germany, Zane... but that’s just how shit was. Anyway, I got sent on a train to the V.A. in Providence after a time in that Philly hospital. That’s where I met my wife, Maria. She was a young immigrant; an Italian gal who was there volunteerin’ pretty much as a clean up lady, but she were a comfort giver for sure. All the guys had their eye on her. I fell ass over tea kettle in love with that black haired beauty.”
    Manny relit his cigar, wet his lips with a pull off the beer, then picked up where he left off. That guy was living the memory. “Her skin was olive like mine, eyes so dark brown they was near black. And ya know what? She didn’t give two shits ‘bout me bein’ all fucked up. We got married 17 months later. She loved me regardless- a fine woman and wife, couldn’t find better, and a great mother to my two boys and daughter. I never forget to tell and show her how much I love her... yup, a real sweetheart is what she is.”
    Manny spoke plain, to the point, his words were simple- his company, a pleasure. I caught a good dose of the reasonable that afternoon mixed with a measure of new found humanity, gratitude for my life, and a peace settled in. I sure loved listening to him; just being around him- his common sense, grit, and leather, molded from a lifetime of experience. Patch was a shoot from the hip kind of a guy, didn’t mince words. His was a life of sound logic and the man gave everyone respect, but don’t cross him.
    For eleven years following that day in Jamestown, I got to know the man until, Patch was no more. He died of a heart attack while fishing out on the waters of Narragansett Bay in that mahogany he built and loved so much. It happened at Potters Cove off Prudence Island one day in May of 1993. I was living in Germany at the time, attending a university there, painting, and studying art history so I couldn’t make the funeral.
    It was a heartbreaking day when I received the phone call from my buddy, Dave. As was his wish, Manny was planted, as he referred to it, at the Rhode Island Veteran’s Cemetery in North Kingston with a full military funeral, guns ‘n all. Dave took a picture and sent it to me of the soldiers attending, standing erect, holding their rifles towards the sky. I choked up at that, have the picture still.
    While there in Deutschland, I had visited some of the battle sites he told me about and had participated in. I saw the grave markers of the fallen German soldiers at the site in the burgh of “Alten Kirschen” which means “Old Cherries” I stood before a larger than life, bronze statue of a helmeted German soldier in his long winter coat, holding his rifle by the barrel, butt on the ground, head bowed. I felt a sadness, as though I knew him in a way.
    While making the rounds I still visit Patch at the cemetery and head down to his quartz veined rock in Jamestown, whenever I get back up north. Acceptance, forgiveness, perseverance, and courage, his message... and he’s still close by.
    “Hey, Patch- ya old coot!” - “Back to ya, ya dumb young shit!”
    Manny was an ole timer that I liked and loved...

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