Uncle Sal Bought a Cat

Sal Maggio was an uncle of mine whom I consider one of the most unlucky men ever.

I never knew him when he was young because I wasn’t born at the time. I got to hear about him and his imperious accomplishments after he caught a case and went to prison. Even with him away, plenty of folklore circulated in the neighbourhood about him. My dad and his buddies chattered incessantly about him whenever alcohol flowed like he had slain a medieval dragon or something. It wasn’t until I was in my teens before he came out of prison that I learned the truth.

By the time Uncle Sal got out of Attica Correctional Facility, he was such a sad, pathetic sack that you couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. Meeting him for the first time, I thought it was unfortunate that he didn’t expire while in prison. That would have saved him from the stint of misery that trailed him when he came home.

My uncle completed his time in Attica in the late summer of 2002, the same weekend that he turned 50. He got sent to jail when he was 19 on multiple robberies and racketeering charges back in 1973. The same year that the World Trade Centre opened to the public.

By the time he got out, the World Trade Centre was non-existent, levelled due to 9/11.

Sal got let out when he was deemed less of a threat to anybody besides himself. His liver was acting up, and he had cancer; the prognosis was that he would likely pass away before the end of the year.

My dad drove to get him and brought him home. The neighbourhood threw him a welcome home party and everybody showed up. Many who did were clueless as to who he was, but had grown acquainted with his legend like me. Sal still retained his marbles and was grateful for the party. But you could sense that he was soon weary from all of it. His state of mind was still locked up behind bars; it would take months of open space and therapy to reacquaint him with the world. Not that the world wanted anything to do with him anymore. The world had moved on and discarded him like yesterday’s newspaper.

Back in his time, the country was still dealing with Nixon’s Watergate scandal. There was the threat of communism; there was Vietnam; disco was on the come up, and whatever twentieth-century malaise that made headlines back then. Terrorism was a word few people knew about back then. But after the fall of the Twin Towers, it became the talk on everyone’s lips.

Al Qaeda.

Osama bin Laden.

Uncle Sal bought himself a cat from a pound shop named Minsky; that became his sole companion of his life.

The plentiful and scary questions came from round-the-clock network news: Where was he in the world? When was he going to strike again? What’s going to happen if the Empire State building was next in line to get hit?

Rumours, speculations, and more rumours ran the streets. Businesses slowed and people cowered behind closed doors, assuming there was an underground terrorist network lurking within the New York boroughs waiting to strike.

Uncle Sal bought himself a cat from a pound shop named Minsky; that became his sole companion of his life. His wife had divorced him decades ago and relocated to the Pacific Northeast with his kids. She wanted to get as far from New York as she could; she might even have moved to Alaska for all I heard. There wasn’t a word from her or the kids. Sal never inquired about her, and nobody thought to venture any information regarding her whereabouts.

What was Sal like back in his time? I asked my dad this question days after Sal moved into a Bowery basement home. Rollicking and feisty was what my old man told me. A genuine short fuse ready to go off at the drop of a hat. You dare not mess with Sal, or he’d bust your nose faster than you could utter his name.

None of that reflected in him when he came home. He was nothing but a bumbling fellow who’d returned from a war shell-shocked. Minsky, his cat, seemed to be the only strand retaining him in the world. He couldn’t go out and get a job, and due to his illness, he was often incapacitated indoors.

I often spent time chatting with him whenever dad would send me an envelope of money to give to him for his upkeep. He’d get to talking sometimes, tell me stories about the old neighbourhood, about such-and-such. But then his rheumy eyes would grow watery and he’d suddenly clamp up. I’d take that as a cue to beat it.

Uncle Sal was in pain. Nobody knew what to do about his sort of pain simply because nobody cared. Everybody back then worried about terrorists and settling mortgages; few gave a damn about a doddering has-been inching towards death in a cellar apartment.

It was I that found him dead in his bedroom.

I’d gone with an envelope of money and knocked but didn’t hear the usual grunt that indicated for me to come in. Minsky appeared at my feet, looking malnourished. The apartment stank atrociously; the windows hadn’t been open in days.

Uncle Sal lay in bed looking peacefully asleep. Except for a knife in his hand and a gash in his wrist, you’d have thought he was having a quiet moment with the gods.

We laid Sal to rest a week later on an autumn weekend. Unlike his welcome party, few people attended the funeral–nobody cared this time. I tried shedding a tear for him, but nothing came from my eyes. He was an uncle I barely knew, and yet someone I tremendously missed.