# Carmella Commands/Chapter 16

armella’s one splendid day was not repeated.
No further call to arms thrilled her ﬁghting instinct.
Occasionally, when she teased, Tommaso took her with him for the day. But Greendale seemed to need her no more.
Once or twice she walked up the road to Elm Heights, the rival development, and with sinking heart realized that progress was faster there. Both projects had been greatly expanded. Already houses were nearing completion, and more cellars were being begun daily. It was evident that Mr. Barrington was in a desperate race with his rivals.
One day Tommaso added another truck to his equipment. From Mr. Hastings, whom she overheard talking with a stranger on the plat, Carmella gleaned the news that there would be a show-down between the two in the early autumn, in the form of an auction on each plat. She noticed that her father was taking on a few more men. But still there were nearly twice as many at work at Elm Heights.
​Still Tommaso said nothing, nor asked Carmella for help in any conference. Leaving the house before she was out of bed, he came back at night too tired to talk. Sometimes he merely grunted when she asked permission to go to the movies with Nicolo, and she promptly went.
Vacation came to an end, and Carmella regretfully returned to school, carrying her promotion card into Miss Silva’s room—the last grammar grade. They began on Africa the ﬁrst day, and Africa irked her. So did arithmetic, and so did the story of some early Indian war. All these were so inﬁnitely less interesting than Greendale.
From Nicolo, whom she saw nearly every morning as she passed Mike Laudini’s place, she learned that aﬀairs at Greendale were moving badly. Elm Heights was apparently winning the race.
“Old Man Barrington is getting ﬁdgety,” said the boy. “I helped Mike deliver some stuﬀ night before last. The old boy was half pickled and ugly. Must have paid graft somewhere and afraid he wasn’t getting his money’s worth. Your dad’s got to go some, or there’ll be trouble.”
That morning Carmella deliberately disobeyed Miss Silva. It began while she was thinking over what Nicolo had told her. When Miss Silva, less poised than Miss Kelly, scolded her for inattention, Carmella ﬂared up. She could not have told why. It merely relieved her feelings.
​“I’ll study when I like,” she said, with smothered fury. “Already it is that I know more than you do about many things. I have things to think about besides the river Nile and the population of Liberia.”
She spoke from the day’s geography-science lesson. Miss Silva hesitated. She taught the diﬀicult age, and was skilled in encounters between old world tradition blossoming into new freedom. But this was complete mutiny on the high seas of learning.
She turned to her desk and wrote rapidly for a moment, while the class looked on in dubious wonder. Carmella, almost the youngest, had long since led whenever she would lead. Mostly, she ignored her classmates. Naturally, therefore, if anything dire were to happen to Carmella, the class would be glad to see it happen. There was a wave of disappointment as Miss Silva said:
“Carmella, come here and take this note to Mr. Carroll.”
Downstairs, in the principal’s oﬀice, Carmella waited uneasily until he came from his private oﬀice.
“Hello, Kid Kate,” he said. “What’s up?”
She handed him the note, and grew slowly red of face as he apparently went through it several times. Finally he looked down at her.
“Why wouldn’t you?” he asked.
“Why wouldn’t I what?”
“You know.”
“There’s lots more exciting places than Africa,” said ​Carmella unexpectedly. Mr. Carroll was surprised, but a principal grows used to sudden turns.
“What place, for instance?” he asked, quietly.
“Why—why, here—Greendale.”
“Oh, you’re interested in Greendale, then?”
“My dad is,” said Carmella, proudly. “He’s a contractor out there. I was thinking about his job when Miss Silva jumped on me.”
“Just what does he do?”
Carmella glanced quickly at the principal, and saw that he was really interested. Not simply make-believe. Words jumped to her lips. She poured out the story of her hopes and fears, of her power to help if Tommaso would only let her, of how much more exciting this was than red and brown spots on a map.
“And you were planning how to help dad, weren’t you?” said Mr. Carroll soothingly. “I know you were. But now listen to this, Kid Kate! The way to help dad is to learn all you can in every way you can. School isn’t the only way, but it’s a very important way. Don’t you know more about America and its language than your father and mother do?”
Carmella laughed.
“And how much did school help you this way, when they know so much more than you do about other things?”
Suddenly Carmella’s eyes danced.
“Say, Mr. Carroll!” she exclaimed. “I wish you ​talked dago and my dad had you for a foreman. He needs a good guy like you.”
Never before had a pupil so talked to the principal. Never before had he felt so nearly beyond his depth in the presence of a fourteen-year-old. But he went on:
“Perhaps it’s better for me to be helping you learn to help dad. You can’t do that unless you learn all about⸺”
“Africa?” Carmella grinned mischievously.
“You’ll be glad some day to know about Africa, too. But in order to learn, you must let those who know more than you do guide you. Don’t you let your father tell you about the contracting business?”
“All he will,” admitted the girl.
“Then let Miss Silva help you all she will. That means obeying her. Now will you go back and tell her you’re sorry you behaved badly, and then go on learning to help dad?”
“Are you sure it will help dad to have me lie to Miss Silva?”
“It won’t be a lie, because you want to learn to help.”
“Miss Silva is a nut,” declared Carmella stoutly.
“She is a good teacher if you’ll let her teach you.” Carmella gazed squarely into his eyes until he almost blinked. Suddenly she turned and left the oﬀice without a word.
Mr. Carroll sat down and wiped his forehead. The principal who had the hardest school in the city to ​manage, had won what in later years he considered his greatest victory.
Upstairs, the door to Miss Silva’s room opened swiftly and Carmella entered with ﬁrm feet. Walking straight to the desk she said:
“I’m sorry, Miss Silva. I oughtn’t to have sassed you. The Nile overﬂows its banks to make money for those who plant early vegetables.”
Miss Silva, wise with experience, had the grace not to laugh.
“That’s good, Carmella!” she said heartily. “Now please take your seat.”
The class was frankly disappointed that she gave no evidence of physical punishment, and wondered again how this daughter of Tommaso Coletta managed to come through so many encounters with the law so little scathed.
Carmella drifted through the rest of the day’s lessons. In spite of her promise, her mind was still at work in the contracting business. Particularly had her talk with the principal focused her thoughts on a recent interview—the only one in which her father had asked her to interpret.
It was at the Florentine Trust Company, not far from Doty Street, where she had gone with Tommaso to help him establish credit in a bank where he could do business in his own tongue.
All she remembered was the picture of a heavily ​mustached man who sat at a desk near the entrance and told her that her father’s credit was not good.
“Not that he isn’t reliable,” the man hastened to add, “but he has not established a line of credit.”
“And what does that mean?” she had asked.
“Well, of course, he must put his whole account with us, and buy securities here,” said the mustache.
“Fine!” she answered. “Then Tommaso Coletta the contractor will keep right on banking with the Central Trust, where he has an account.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the mustache. “Does he bank with the Central? Then of course we should be glad⸺”
“Thanks! He’ll be glad to keep on doing it,” snapped Carmella.
She led her father out, telling him the bank was no good.
The memory of this interview blurred her attention to lessons. Twice Miss Silva asked questions, and twice forgave Carmella for not answering. Something that the teacher could not fathom was happening. Like a wise teacher, she yielded a few of the eternal verities to the vagaries of youth.
Carmella, in odd intervals of thought, wondered just how badly the building race in Greendale was going against her father, and why it was going that way. It kept her worried, in a way she did not know, that a person could be so plagued.
In reality it was a parental worry. In business mat​ters, she felt, her father Tommaso was her child. Her child in language, at least.
The school day came to an end, and Carmella had a sudden inspiration. Instead of turning toward Doty Street, she started downtown. There was just a chance, she knew, that Dixon would be waiting near the Central Trust building for Mr. Barrington.
Dixon would know Greendale aﬀairs as Nicolo could not. And she was sure he would tell her.
In this, as in so many of her plans, she met with good luck. Dixon was there, parked half a block away from the building, smoking a cigarette as he sat at the wheel. Carmella opened the door, and quietly stepped in beside him.
“Hello, Kid Kate!” he exclaimed. The throwing away of his cigarette was as involuntary as if she had been Mrs. Barrington. Carmella noted it without seeming to.
“Hello, Dixon!” she answered. “I hope you’re well.”
“I am, kid,” said the chauﬀeur, wonderingly. “And you?”
“All right! But I wish you’d tell me just what’s happening to dad’s job out Greendale way. I want to know all about it.”
“All what about what?”
“You know what, Why’s your boss worried? Why isn’t my dad beating the Cronin gang over at Elm Heights? What am I going to do about it?”
​“I’m no contractor, kid,” said Dixon, laughing. “If I was, I wouldn’t be all dolled up in a uniform driving other folks’s wagons. I’d be contracting.”
“You mean you’d be expanding,” said Carmella. And as she made the pun she was conscious of a new mastery of language.
“Well, you know what I—oh, I see! Joke by La Piccola Padrona. Good girl, kid! Well, you asked questions, and you’ve answered them.”
Carmella’s face registered bewilderment, and Dixon chuckled.
“Thought you were so bright you’d get that one. You said a contractor ought to expand, didn’t you?”
“Ye-e-es!”
“Well, that’s that! Your dad’s on a big job. It’s grown bigger since he took it. Is he expanding?”
“Isn’t he? He’s got more men, and one more truck.”
“Not enough! Not enough! He hasn’t kept up with the job. His excavation work has been holding up masons and carpenters for two weeks. He needs two more trucks and a lot more men, and he needs ’em toot sweet, meaning pronto, alias sudden.”
“But that takes money,” said Carmella earnestly.
“Like enough. Everything else does.”
“And dad has blown most of his bank roll into it already. So what the hell?”
“Maybe it’ll be more hell if he doesn’t speed up,” said Dixon.
Suddenly they were interrupted by the opening of ​the rear door of the sedan, as Mr. Barrington appeared and stepped in.
“Dixon!” he shouted. “What does this mean?”
Carmella felt herself shriveling, trying to hide behind the seat.