Thrust Your Sickle Into Another’s Corn

Thrust Your Sickle Into Another’s Corn is historical fiction entwined around an actual event. John F. Kennedy’s speech, the mob factions, the steel mill are all part of Warren, Ohio’s history. The personas of the main characters, Gino and Meatball, were inspired by male paisanos of my Italian mother (all deceased), and they were a hoot!

On October 9, 1960, presidential candidate John F. Kennedy stood before thousands of supporters in Warren, Ohio’s town square giving a campaign speech. I walked over from my nearby deli, Gino’s Italian Eatery, to disappear into the crowd. The mafia ruled here, so business owners had to pay for protection. I couldn’t.

In this city, you didn’t mess with criminals who ate linguini. I survived by defying the scripture in Deuteronomy 23:25 that says you can pluck your neighbor’s ears of corn with your hand, but you can’t thrust a sickle into it. Well, I did.

Here’s the blow-by-blow of events leading up to my showdown with a mob hitman who had enough gold chains around his beefy neck to anchor the Titanic.

As Senator Kennedy spoke, smoke spewed from Republic Steel’s blast furnace, it’s charred chimney visible in the distance. The powdery clouds of iron oxide-the same color as his auburn hair-covered the entire community but missed the acres and acres of cornfields downwind.

My deli flanked the road in the flats that led to the mill. Steelworkers-their gray work clothes stinking of sour cabbage-would shuffle in after their shifts to buy sandwiches before lifting a few at one of several neighboring bars, many known to host gambling games for the mafia.

The crowd in Warren’s historic town square swarmed around the nineteenth century Romanesque courthouse, hung from office building windows, spilled into nearby roads, filled side alleys, and pressed me closer to Kennedy. As the senator wrapped up his speech, he borrowed words from President Abraham Lincoln.

“Now, 100 years later, we know there is a God, and we know He hates injustice, and we see the storm coming….”

For me!

I wondered if God even existed and twisted words from Psalm 42:10 to rant, “Why’d ya forget me, God? I’m losing it with all these mobsters harassing me!” Then I sweat bullets expecting Him to strike me dead.

While I agonized about my situation, I took notice of a statue of justice on a courthouse gable. How ironic. Then I sized up nearby campaigners-women in heels and cotton dresses holding “Vote for Kennedy” signs, kids standing on benches to get a better view, all sizes of men in hats-fedora hats.

I overheard a man with an Italian accent react to the jostling, “Push-uh me again and I smash-uh your face!”

The man yelled back, “I didn’t push you! You pushed me!” The handful of people separating us cheered as Kennedy climbed into a convertible and stood to wave to his supporters.

The guy with the accent unbuttoned the jacket of his black pinstriped suit, lifted his lapel, and asked, “Now whatta you gotta say?” The handle of a snub-nose .38 revolver leaned out of a shoulder holster resting on several gold chains. The other man, two heads taller, bolted into the safety of the crowd.

Okay, I thought, he’s an Italian with a gun under his jacket. That doesn’t make him a hitman. I’m an Italian with a .22 caliber pistol under my deli counter and I’m a rat killer.

He lifted his white fedora and ran his sausagey fingers through hair that apparently absorbed a major oil spill. When he slid his hat back on, he tugged the brim downward covering all but a glint of his left eye. He scanned the crowd while he reached for a cigar in his jacket’s inside pocket-jangling his guy chains.

I blinked. He bit off the cigar’s tip, spit it out, and lit the opposite end. It wiggled between his lips as he shifted his weight to his left foot. He winced then shifted to his right foot. His shoes looked like new spit-shined wingtip Oxfords. Puffs of gray smoke collected under his fedora as his freaky eye fixed on me. I blinked again.

I suspected he planned to take out either the senator or me. But with a short-barreled gun, he’d have difficulty getting close enough to Kennedy to bring him down. I broke eye contact.

When Kennedy’s convertible, surrounded by six bodyguards on foot, slowly pulled away, I drifted with the crowd. State troopers on motorcycles rode alongside the five-car motorcade. Confetti rained down from store windows and office buildings. Nearby, in the sea of people, the white fedora surfaced.

That’s when I knew-he intended to bump me off!

“Excuse me! Get outta my way!” I yelled as I plowed through the campaigners toward my deli in the flats.

Being fit and at my physical peak at 27-years-old made it easier to shake the middle-aged meatball who probably ate before, during, and after he whacked someone. He couldn’t keep up.

I ducked into the train depot a block from the town square. Kennedy’s motorcade moved southeast from Warren toward Youngstown, 13 miles away. They’re located between Cleveland and Pittsburgh and local mafia loyalties are split between the two mob factions in each of the larger cities.

Because of their territorial dogfight, both mob families shook me down. I paid protection money to one but couldn’t pay the other.

I peeked out a window at the swarm of people scattering like a school of fish disturbed by a discarded body. Even though I could see the police station, I couldn’t go there. The mob-powerful and ruthless-corrupted local cops, politicians, and judges.

I thought I lost the meatball mobster-until I felt someone behind me. I spun around-fists raised. A young street urchin jumped back.

“If you want my money, earn it,” I said pushing my wallet deeper into my pocket. He could’ve been me as a dopey kid-black curly hair and everything-so I gave him five bucks to make sure Meatball had left the area.

As I raced through the flats past several buses, I gulped air heavy with diesel exhaust that tasted like burned rubber. When I got close to my deli, I hid behind a tree. A cigar butt smoldered next to a cherry red DeSoto convertible parked in front of my business. The driver’s crazy eyes stared hard enough into the side mirror to crack it.

I shadowed a group of pedestrians until I could dodge behind Ironman’s Bar, which shared a rear parking lot with my deli. A layer of orange mill dust covered my Chevrolet Bel Air. Before wiping the windshield, I checked for fingerprints and explosives in and under the car. Nothing torpedo-sized jutted out.

Meatball parked in front so I’d see him, panic, jump into my Chevy and-KABOOM!

“Pinch me-Senator Kennedy is so-o-o gorgeous!” A teenage girl’s voice bounced between the buildings.

Other girls giggled in agreement. “And what about his Boston accent? It’s so-o-o dreamy!”

As their shrill voices trailed off, I stared at the deli’s rear entrance-the gateway to a weapon. If I grabbed my pistol from under the counter and killed the guy, his family would fit me with concrete footwear-probably not flipflops.

I opted to hop in my car and turn tail. The door wouldn’t close so, while shoving the key in the ignition, I slammed it. Then I clutched the steering wheel in a death grip, squeezed my eyes shut, and held my breath.

Then I hesitated.

I couldn’t be wishy-washy about God’s existence while about to start a car that might blow up and launch my body fragments into an earth orbit with space debris.

Trembling, I genuflected and bowed my head. “Oh, God, if my car explodes and my skeptical soul rockets into purgatory with a steering wheel, please forgive my sins and my Italian mama for demanding You let me out. Amen.”

The DeSoto, tires squealing and engine roaring, careened through the alley. I turned the key to crank the engine. Silence. I cranked it again. It started-then stalled.

The dang mill filth got in the carburetor!

I heard his car door open-then footsteps. I cranked it again. Sputtering. I pumped the gas pedal.

Frantic, I shouted Psalm 59:2: “Rescue me from my enemies, my God; lift me out of reach of my foes!”

Then “BANG!” My car engine backfired. Meatball leaped away. His fedora popped off revealing a head so huge a helicopter could land on it.

“Idiota!” He screamed as he picked up his soiled fedora. “Look what-uh you do to my beautiful white-uh hat! I gonna snap-uh your bones one by one! Get outta the car!”

I wrenched the key in the ignition so hard the starter screeched, but the engine revved. I sped out of the parking lot and turned right onto the first side street, zigzagged through the roads behind the mill, and headed out of the city. As I drove up a hill, the engine sputtered.

Near the top, my Chevy started to roll backwards. I jammed down the emergency break, coaxed the engine to a full rev, and released the brake. It jerked forward to the crest. Before the engine stalled, I chugged into a dairy farm’s driveway and became a sitting duck for a Sicilian stew pot.

Up the hill came the Desoto. I took off running through a herd of grazing cows toward a dairy barn on the far side of the pasture and a fallow field. Then-SPLAT! I slipped in a steamy cowpie. When I stood, a stabbing pain shot up my right leg, my ankle buckled, and I fell back down into the welcoming warmth of the meadow muffin.

I got up just as Meatball parked by my car. He climbed out and quickly spotted me. First, he tossed his fedora onto the front seat with his jacket. Then he removed his snub-nose from his shoulder holster and pressed it into the palm of his right hand.

Unless he got close, he couldn’t hit the broad side of the bull stuck in a mud pit that a farmer on a tractor was rescuing.

I leapt forward with my left foot while touching the toes of my right foot to the ground. After rolling under a fence dividing the pasture from the fallow field, I lifted myself up with a post. Meatball lumbered after me like a hound dog with burrs between its toes.

I could still outrun him.

I hobbled into the dairy barn, eyed the cornfield on the other side, and grabbed a long-handled sickle on my way out. Using it for support, I crisscrossed through the rows of dried, crunchy corn stalks.

“Ah-h-h!” Pain shot up my bad leg when I stumbled in a critter’s hole. I clung to a couple thick cornstalks, pressed my head between them, and watched Meatball shuffle into the barn.

“Son-of-a-beetch shoes!” He leaned against a stall; his face contorted in agony. “I’m gonna killuh the dirty bastardo who selluh me these no-good son-of-a-beetch shoes!”

Meatball flipped off his wingtip Oxfords. His socks, which had crept down into his shoes, came off with them. The barefoot stubby-legged assassin lurched forward.

I took a few steps before doing an about face. Sweat burned my eyes and my funk fouled the air. “Oh, God,” I cried, “Kennedy says You hate injustice, but I got the devil’s henchman coming after me-and I need help!”

I gripped the sickle so the handle crossed my body and it’s curved blade hung above my left shoulder. Meatball stopped just beyond the sickle’s reach. An ominous cloud bank drifted in front of the sun casting a dark shadow over the cornfield.

We saw the storm coming.

With his right arm stiff and straight, he raised his revolver. I stared down its short barrel. A few flimsy brown cornstalks shielded me.

If I killed him, I’d go to hell. I’d grow horns. I’d hop around on goat legs.

“Gino, if you gotta my envelope, I go away. If you no gotta my envelope, I shootuh the knees. Then I shootuh the head. Then I feeduh you to the fish.”

“Ironman’s Bar increased their menu. Business is down.”

“You no gotta business because your sang-uh-wiches smelluh like the vomit of the dead buzzard.”

“I’ll sell my car and pay you next week.”

Meatball took a deep breath. His shoulder holster tightened around his chest. His finger curled over the trigger.

“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy….”

A flash-then BLAM! Another flash-BLAM!

“AUGH!” One bullet seared the side of my left knee and another bullet passed through the flesh above my right knee. From Psalm 64:2, I shouted, “O God…from a dreadful foe protect my life!”

I lunged forward slicing the sickle through the cornstalks separating us. A slash of sunlight escaped from the edge of the cloud bank. As if it were the hand of God pointing a finger, it fell onto Meatball’s left little toe. From it grew, almost in the configuration of a sixth toe, a colossal corn. I thrust the sickle into it.

“AUGGHH!” Meatball screamed, made a sucking noise, and flopped around between the corn rows like a monster catfish on a hook.

Then came the thunder, the lightning, and the rain. Huffing and puffing and shouting praises up to Heaven, I staggered to my car, got it to start, and fled. That night-with bandaged knees and a wrapped ankle-I watched my deli burn to the ground.

“Do you know what happened here?” A police officer asked.

“I think I left the dang deep fryer on.” Snitches end up in the river.

The next morning, I waited in line for a job application at Republic Steel. The orange plumes billowing from its smokestacks reminded me of Senator John F. Kennedy’s hair and his visit the day before. I wondered if he’d become president, and I wondered how my life would change making steel instead of sandwiches.

But I no longer wondered about God. Like Kennedy and Lincoln, I know there is a God, and I know He hates injustice, and I know He rode shotgun with me.

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