Happy Birthday, Rocco

Rocco would have been eighty years old in a few days. It is hard for me to imagine what my friend would be like now or even what he'd look like because we were both so young when we met. It all happened so many years ago. . . . But Rocco had a profound effect on my life.

Last year my book Charity Case and Other Stories was published (Exeter Press, Boston, 2011). One of those stories was "Rocco." It was the most difficult one to write. I have received more mail about it than about any other story in the book. Last winter I was invited by a literary group to a talk about and read something from the book. I chose the Rocco story. My wife, Joan, suggested I read another story. I wanted to read Rocco. She was right; I was wrong. I'll never make that mistake again. I could barely get through it before my voice cracked and my eyes filled with tears. Somehow, I managed to finish the last two paragraphs in a voice that did not sound at all like my own...

GROWING UP in Brooklyn my best friend was Rocco Romanelli. A lot of people couldn't figure out our relationship. It was a friendship of opposites. Rocco was big and strong, had limited mental abilities, and could barely read and write. I was small and did well in school and liked to write and tell stories. Rocco was never interested in anything but sports, particularly football. He liked the physical contact, the roughness, and the thrill of scoring a touchdown, especially if two or three players of the opposing team were hanging on him as he crossed the goal line. Rocco was always getting into trouble-mostly minor scrapes with the other students but sometimes even with the teachers. He went to the public school; I went to the Catholic. He was not interested in school and was actually left back twice, which put us in the same grade despite the fact that he was a year older. He was not only older, but he was taller. He was six feet tall when he was 14, and I was barely five feet tall. I grew ten inches between 14 and 16, but he kept growing, too, so he was always a few inches taller. He had great speed, and his hands were the size of catcher's mitts, which meant that he could catch any ball that was thrown anywhere near him. He could be hotheaded, obstinate, and very unpleasant. He was never any of those things to me. To me, he was very kind and gentle, and he always went along with anything I said or suggested.

We met when I was seven years old and had just moved into the new neighborhood. It was always hard to move into a new area. Rocco was my protector right from the start. And on those Brooklyn streets, a small kid needed one. There were bullies and gangs even in those days although nothing like the gangs of today. There were certain streets that a kid could not walk on unless he had permission from the gang controlling that street. Sometimes you'd have to pay a nickel or a dime to walk on certain streets.

    Everyone knew that Rocco liked me and that to do anything to me meant that they would have to deal with him. Nobody wanted to get Rocco mad at them.

    In return for his friendship and protection, I did Rocco's homework, wrote his book reports, and helped him learn to read and write better. He could add and subtract, but he could not multiply or divide.

    I liked Rocco right from the start. In time we were like brothers. He was a good person underneath a very rough exterior. We spent a lot of time together. Nanny, my grandmother, liked him and recognized that he was a good person and that he was important to me. She liked the idea of our friendship. Rocco's family did, too, and included me in all the family events, including the annual winemaking.

    The Romanellis, unlike most of the other people in the neighborhood, owned the house they lived in; Rocco had a mother, a father, seven sisters, and one brother. His grandfather-his father's
father-lived with them. Italian families in those days cooked and ate in the basement. His mother-I never knew her name-did not speak a word of English; never wore shoes except when she went to the neighborhood stores; always wore the same cotton housedress; never smiled; and worked all the time. For some unknown reason, she called Rocco "Roy." They always communicated in Italian. She could not read or write, even in Italian.

    His father, on the other hand, was just the opposite. He spoke perfect English. He was the most handsome man I've ever known. When I met him he was probably 35. He was prematurely gray-actually, snow white-and had very fine features, and skin that looked tanned, winter and summer. He was a plasterer and had his own business with men working for him. He made very "good money," according to Rocco. He bought a new Cadillac every year-once they started making them again after the war-and always had a comare, a girlfriend. Rocco said he got a new girlfriend every couple of months. He used to show Rocco pictures of them, sometimes without their clothes on. On one or two occasions he even introduced Rocco to his current girlfriend. To Rocco this was perfectly normal and was what men did. Mr. Romanelli left for work every morning at five a.m. and came home about two covered in plaster dust. His coveralls were stiff with dried plaster, and he left for his wife to clean up a trail of dust and plaster particles wherever he walked. Rocco knew almost nothing about arithmetic, but he knew the difference between a 38C cup and a 38DD. He would often say to me, "You should see my father's new piece of ass." Rocco himself showed little or no interest in girls. When he was 14, one of the girls in the neighborhood-Gloria-who was 17, took him into her house one afternoon when nobody was home, and they "did it." He casually told me about it that night as if it was nothing. When you're a 14-year-old boy, that's usually all you can think of, but to Rocco, going to bed with Gloria was no big deal. He never took a girl to a movie. In fact, he never went to see a movie with the exception of Knute Rockne-All American, which was the story of the legendary coach of Notre Dame football. He saw that film at least 10 times. Rocco never read a book. He never learned to swim. He never went to the beach. He never went to church, nor did any other member of his family, which was very unusual for an Italian family living in Brooklyn in those days. He never had any interest in music or art. Yet the two of us got to be as close as brothers. The older we got, the closer we became.

    We used to go up on the roof of his house in the summertime after the flat tar roof cooled down a bit. We'd just look up at the stars. And sometimes we wouldn't talk for maybe an hour or more. After a while, Rocco might ask me to tell him a story, and I would. Sometimes it would be a story I'd read or a movie I'd seen or one of my family stories. Sometimes, he'd tell me a story.
    
Very often it was a story that he had told me before. For example, he told me the story of the strongest man in the world, who, of course, was an Italian named Natale Spacio. Now I have no idea if such a person ever existed, but according to Rocco, he did. And he was listed in some record book and was the strongest man in the world. Rocco would tell me that Natale Spacio could kill a horse with one punch. One day, he said, they brought 12 horses to him, and he killed each one with a single punch. Rocco told me that he punched them, and one by one they would drop to the ground, dead. Years later, I asked a veterinarian friend of mine if he thought this was possible, and he said, "Certainly. If you punch a horse in the heart, you are going to rupture his aorta, and he dies."

    Sometimes Rocco would put a question to me. His favorite, which he often repeated, was, "Could God build a rock bigger than She could lift?" I would start out by explaining to Rocco that God was a man and not a woman. Of this I was absolutely certain. All the pictures of God portray Him as a man, and all the references to God are masculine, like "God the Father" or "Our Father." Once we got through the He-She business, I would explain to Rocco that God could do everything. Yes, God could build a rock that big if He wanted to. He would immediately come back and say, "Well, if God can do everything, how could She build a rock bigger than She could lift?" We would
go around and around on this point until I'd finally give up and say, "Okay, Rock, you convinced me. There is no God." As far as referring to God as "She" is concerned, no, Rocco was not ahead of his time in coming up with that notion. He simply had a very poor command of the English language. He constantly made grammatical errors and had no interest in learning. But it didn't matter because he was Rocco.

    When we were up on the roof, we had to make sure we would pick a spot that was upwind of the pigeon coop. The Romanelli pigeon coop was approximately nine by twelve-the size of a living-room rug. It was built primarily of old doors, only one of which was on a hinge so that someone could go in and feed the birds and clean out the coop occasionally. There were several storm windows mixed in with the doors to allow light in, and the roof was made of large metal Coca-Cola signs. Rocco's brother Jimmy tended to the feeding of the pigeons and the cleaning of the coop. Jimmy let them out each evening and called them back in after an hour or so of exercise. There was trading in pigeons. There was selling. And there was stealing of pigeons. People were actually killed over pigeons. One day, we were in the basement kitchen, and Rocco's mother said something to him in Italian and threw a balled-up piece of white material at him. It looked like a pillowcase. After giving her what was obviously a little backtalk in Italian, he told me to go up to the roof with him.

    We walked over to the pigeon coop, and he unfolded the pillowcase. He stepped inside the coop. The birds went crazy any time a person would come near them. He told me to hold open the pillowcase, and he proceeded to throw six or seven pigeons into it. When he was finished, he closed the door again, took the pillowcase from me, and went over to the side of the roof-which had a two-foot wall around the perimeter-and proceeded to dash the pillowcase against it until the fluttering inside stopped and the pillowcase was dripping pigeon blood. I was shocked. I asked him what he was doing. He said, "For the gravy. My mother puts pigeons in the gravy." He was referring, of course, to the pasta sauce that was constantly cooking on Mrs. Romanelli's stove, and which was part of every meal. I had eaten in their house hundreds of times. In fact, I had a permanent seat at their table, and when I wasn't there, no one else sat in it. In all that time, I never knew that I was eating pigeon meat. And it's a good thing I didn't. I thought I was eating chicken, slivers of chicken. I skipped a few meals after that day on the roof, but before long my appetite for Mrs. Romanelli's spaghetti returned.

    We finally graduated from our separate schools. I was 14; Rocco was 15. Rocco went to Boys' High in Brooklyn, and I went to a fancy prep school in Manhattan. At the end of the first freshman semester, both of us were school-less. Rocco was expelled for fighting and for hitting a teacher who tried to break up the fight. Rocco swore that it was an accident, that the teacher got in the way. In my case, I was not expelled but failed in every subject. On that last day of school when I walked out the door, I knew I would never go back there or back to any school. I was quitting school at the age of 14.

    I worked that summer from nine in the morning until eight at night at Lauer's Pharmacy on Jerome Avenue for 45 cents an hour; Rocco worked for his father as a plasterer and earned a lot more. We spent a lot of time that summer up on the roof talking about our futures.

    In those days, the new school term always started on the first Tuesday after Labor Day. We both had that Labor Day off, and we discussed the fact that neither one of us was going back to high school. We talked about joining the armed forces, probably the Air Force, which was always my interest area. And again, Rocco seemed to go along with anything I wanted to do. The problem was that he was old enough, being 16, but I wasn't. So I would have to find some kind of a job until I became old enough. But I wasn't even old enough to legally work. Finally, Rocco looked at me and said, "I'm not gonna let you quit school. You should go to school. You should be a doctor or something like that." We talked about that for a while, and finally we struck a deal. It was simple-if I enrolled in a high school, he would, too. We decided to give high school another chance. We discussed whether it would be Franklin K. Lane in Brooklyn, which was really the school we were supposed to enroll in, given where we lived, or John Adams, just over the line in Queens, where we could go if we gave someone else's address. We chose John Adams because it had a much better football team than Franklin K. Lane. There also was a speech teacher there-Mr. Robert Sheppard-who I thought could help me get rid of my Brooklyn accent.

    The next day, the two of us, wearing clean shirts, ties, pressed pants, and shined shoes, went up to John Adams. We were ushered into the office of Miss Marie L. Keller, who was actually Dean of Girls, but her job also entailed evaluating transfer students from other schools, many of whom had problems. Miss Keller took me first and made Rocco wait outside her glassed-in office. She was very stern and had a reputation for being tough. Miss Keller meant business. She asked for a full explanation about why I left the Prep. She told me to wait outside. I watched as she picked up the phone, and her face seemed to get darker and darker. I knew she was talking to someone at the Prep about me. She called me back in and said that what I had done-to hit a priest-was absolutely unpardonable in the eyes of the Church, in the eyes of society, in the eyes of God himself, and in her eyes. She told me she was a very strong Catholic woman and asked if I knew that striking a priest was an automatic excommunication from the Catholic Church. I told her I did, but that nobody had said anything to me about excommunication following the incident. She then told me that she was puzzled by the fact that she learned that I had a perfect conduct record for eight years in elementary school and that I was an honor student there. She said she was also told that I was the only boy from St. Michael's who had ever been accepted into the Prep and, finally, that my tuition was being paid by the parish. She went on to say that she was told by the person she spoke to at the Prep that only one out of approximately 25 boys who took the entrance exam was admitted and that I scored very high. She couldn't understand how in less than six months I could go from that to failing every single subject.

    She asked me to explain to her some of these inconsistencies, and I told her about my first day at the Prep and the things Father Hess said to me. I told her about his key chain weapon. I told her about the incident in the lunchroom and how he hit me. I told her about the stitches in my head. I told her about my "jug" assignments every day, and I guess I told her a lot of other things. I don't remember everything, but I do remember starting to cry as I told her. I cried for the first time since all these things happened. It felt like my insides were shivering. I cried in front of this stranger, a very stern woman, who just sat there looking at me. She didn't comment on any of what I had said, and eventually she told me to wait outside. Once again, I watched through the glass as she seemed to stare off into space, and finally she looked in my direction and beckoned for me to come back in.

    "I'm going to give you a chance, Thomas McCann, but if there is one infraction of our rules here-one unexcused absence, one class cut, one late arrival, one complaint from one teacher-in the next four years, you will be expelled from John Adams High School. School starts at eight o'clock tomorrow. Report to me, and I'll tell you where to go from here. Now, send your friend, Mr. Romanelli, in here."

    I watched as she talked to Rocco. He looked her straight in the eye and nodded his head several times. He stood up after a while, they shook hands, and he came back out. We were to start at John Adams the very next day, Wednesday.

    That next morning, I stopped by Rocco's house to pick him up. We had to take a train to get to Adams, and we waited outside until the doors opened to let us in. We walked up the stairs, and as we were about to go through the door, Rocco grabbed me by the shoulders and started to stuff me through the doorway, ignoring the other kids who were entering at the same time. I did not know what was happening but instinctively struggled to stay on the outside. He grabbed me, put me up against the wall, and made a big fist that he held across my face. He said, "You're gonna go to this friggin' school, and I'm gonna see you at Jack's after you get out this afternoon." I asked him what he meant and reminded him that we had a deal-and he couldn't back out. We were both going to go to John Adams. "I ain't backing out," he said. "The old lady decided not to let me in. I don't blame her. Let's face it. I'm a bum. I want you to go through that door, and if you don't, I'm gonna hurt you. Much as I love you, I'm gonna hurt you. You gotta be a doctor. I want you to take care of me when I get sick or banged up. I want to have a friend who is a doctor."

    After school that day, we did meet at Jack's candy store and Rocco told me that he'd joined the Air Force that morning for a three-year enlistment.

    A big part of my life was taken away when Rocco left for the Air Force. He was sent to Roswell, New Mexico, for his basic training, and we spent a lot of time together when he came home for 10 days when that was over. He was almost immediately shipped to Okinawa. He wasn't given any specialized training as the other airmen were following their basic training. The Air Force had plans for Rocco. He was slated to be on the Air Force football team for the Pacific Region, which was based on Okinawa. I think he came home twice in the next three years. He played a lot of football in the service, and he and his team set some impressive records. Rocco sent me all his clippings and asked-which he pronounced "axed"-me to save them for him because he wanted us to get them to Notre Dame. Notre Dame had a legendary football team and coach, and that's where Rocco wanted to go when he got out of the Air Force.

    When Rocco got out of the Air Force, he was 19 and I was a senior at Adams. I had managed to put the prep experience behind me. I became president of the 4,000-strong student body and was voted, "Done Most for Adams" and "Most Likely to Succeed." Miss Keller was proud of me and told me so, and she and I became friends. Best of all, I met Joan, my future wife, at John Adams.

    When Rocco came home, he and I spent a lot of time together and made copies of all of the clippings and stats he had sent me. In those days, there were no photocopies, no Xerox copiers or anything like it. Everything you wanted copied had to be photostatted, which is basically taking a picture of a document, developing it from a negative, and printing it. It was a week-long process, and it was very expensive, but we did it. We-rather, I-wrote a letter to the freshman football coach at Notre Dame and sent a copy of Rocco's GED diploma, which he earned in the Air Force, and waited.

    We didn't have to wait long. About a week later, a letter came to Rocco from the coach. He said that he was very impressed with Rocco's football career in the Air Force, and he enclosed a round-trip ticket from New York to South Bend, Indiana, with Rocco's name on it. Also enclosed was a four-page IQ-type test for Rocco to complete and send back to the coach. I filled in the answers and sent it back. We were both thrilled. We went up on the roof that night.

    The big day came. I went with Rocco over to Grand Central Station and put him on the train. A week later, he was back. He told me that he had never seen a more beautiful place than the campus of Notre Dame. He said the coach was one of the finest men he ever met, that he liked the guys on the squad, and that they had the best equipment he had ever seen-even better than the Air Force's. He told me that he caught every ball that was thrown to him and that nobody was able to bring him to the ground. At the end of the four days, the coach called him into his office and gave him the bad news that he would not be admitted to Notre Dame. The coach explained to Rocco that at Notre Dame you not only had to be good, but you also needed to be able to do the academic work if you wanted to play football. There were no exceptions.

    "They have tough priests in charge there, Tom," Rocco said, "and you know something about them from your days at that first high school you went to. Before I left, the coach axed me about that test he sent with the ticket. He said he had a feeling I didn't take it. And I told him, 'Of course I didn't take it all by myself. My friend Tom McCann helped me. He's been helping me out with stuff like that all my life. We're best friends.'"

    Rocco told me that the coach said that he would help Rocco get into another college, and he did. The following year, Rocco was almost 20, but he was going to college and he was going to play football.

    It, too, was a football school-a public college in Pennsylvania that helped its athletes in a variety of ways. 

    The athletic director there assured Rocco that he would graduate and probably would get a spot on one of the professional football teams. In those days, the late fifties, professional football wasn't nearly as big as it is now, but it was what Rocco wanted to do and it usually led to other things. Rocco was thrilled at the prospect of going there, and I was thrilled for him. He had to report in early August. A couple of weeks later I got a postcard from him saying, "Lost 15 lbs. Working my ass off. Love it. Write back to me. Your friend always, Rock."

    Toward the end of August there was a campus dance for incoming students. Rocco got a date and went to the dance. At some point in the evening, he got into an argument with another student, who allegedly "insulted" the girl Rocco was with. The two went outside to "settle it," along with a crowd of other boys. They began trading blows, and Rocco threw a punch to the other kid's jaw, and he fell to the ground, hitting his head on a curbstone. It was later determined that he fractured his skull with that fall. He died before the ambulance arrived. As the ambulance was pulling away, a police car pulled into the space it left. They handcuffed Rocco and drove him into the town. The two cops and Rocco got out of the car. In spite of the handcuffs, Rocco punched one of them, knocking him to the ground, and took his gun out of the holster. He ran for three blocks, stopped, put the gun into his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

    It has taken me fifty-five years to write this story. Joan has urged me countless times to write it. I could scarcely think about it, much less write it, until now. I don't know why I'm able to write it now except as I get close to the end of my own life, I want to leave a record somewhere of the Rocco I knew and loved. Rocco deserves to be remembered. But as I write this, I realize that there was a lot about Rocco that I never knew and never will. I don't know why he did what he did that night. Was he overcome with grief for that dead boy? Was he afraid of what might happen to him? A trial for murder, perhaps? Prison? Did he think that all his plans and dreams ended that night? Was it any of those things? Was it all of those things? Was it none of those things? Was it something else? I wish I knew the answers. I have been tortured for all these years by the fact that I don't know why.

Above all, I wish that he had not done what he did. I wish that he had allowed to happen what was going to happen that night at the police station. I wish he had called me. I could have talked to him. I think I could have helped him. I wish for a lot of things in connection with Rocco. Above all, I wish he had gone on to graduate from that college and to become the thing he dreamed of becoming, a professional football player. I wish he and I had been able to know each other all of our lives and that we had been able to grow old together.