Pennsylvania Polka

26 MARTIN COZZA PENNSYLVANIA POLKA 1980 T he wedding that was about to begin was not a travesty to Catholics, as some people might think it would be. The maid of honor came up the aisle in the slide-step the organist had taught her—right, stop; left, stop—then she rushed, lost the rhythm, and had to wait for the hymn to catch up. Next came the bride, Terri Donati, a drapery of white in the vestibule doorway. She was big, eight months pregnant and tall, and she loved the thought of being eight months pregnant in her wedding pictures. She imagined herself looking through them someday with her grown-up child and the two of them screaming with laughter. She stepped out under the high, vaulted ceiling of the church and felt the space expand around her. She felt like a float in a parade. Ahead was her groom, Denny Redmond, long-haired and skinny, rigid with effort in his tight white tux, like he expected a ball to come flying at him. Beside him, what appeared to be Denny again, but younger and smaller in another white tux— Curtis, his brother, the best man. Curtis fingered a dip in his forehead where Denny had shot him with a shotgun he thought wasn’t loaded. Most of the buckshot missed Curtis and shattered the tv, but a mass of pellets had struck him near the temple , piercing his skull and putting pressure on the surface of his brain. This had happened two full months ago, and Curtis had recovered, but the injury had made him mean. At the altar Father Gus stood in his vestments, holding his arms out wide. Behind him a large Jesus hung on the cross, eyes cast down in a fixed, grave expression. It reminded Terri of the look Denny had just given her—part agony, part pity, part shame. Jesus had his gut sucked in, his ribs poking out, and a huge red gash in his side. He looked bad. From above you could see that the church was shaped like a thick cross, with Terri and Denny standing at the intersection, 27 Cozza facing the altar with the long aisle at their backs. The white ceiling paint was peeling up here, and a chunk of it dropped and spun, landing with a tick on an empty pew. The falling paint exposed cracks in the plaster, but up through the cracks, in the dark cavity between ceiling and roof, the aged beams were still strong. On top of the beams lay the roof planks, tightly together, and on the planks lay the slates, and the slates held a layer of snow, peppered with black bits of soot from the chimney. Past the stone parapet and the edge of the roof ran the street down below. Across the street lay the half-filled church parking lot, and behind it another parking lot, empty, with its faded sign, Park ’n’ Shop, lying flat on its back on top of the snow. This lot used to fill up quickly on Saturdays , but now most of the stores in downtown Black Hand were closed. The town, Black Hand, Pennsylvania, was named after mobsters, the Black Hand Society, who once murdered a deputy way back in the woods by stabbing him in the stomach with stiletto knives. They dipped his hand in a bucket of tar and left him, and it became a famous crime. Some people said that the tar must have stood for their own dark Calabrese skin, or for stains from the coal mines where some of them worked. Today some people worried that the gang still existed, but most people had enough other worries. In one corner of the Park ’n’ Shop lot, a crowd had gathered around a small car. Some men were lined up, taking turns bashing it with a sledgehammer. Each one would step up and swing, whamp, then hoots and cheers would go up. On the sidewalk a man strutted up and down, hands cupped to his mouth, shouting in a hoarse voice, “Smash a Japanese car! One dollar!” The people who passed were drawn toward the car. Women drifted...