NOBODY EVER CAME BACK...
EXCEPT PETRU SALAMONE
by Salvatore Amico M. Buttaci Award Winning Author & Poet.
from A FAMILY OF SICILIANS: STORIES AND POEMS.

  Jay Leno stands gloating in the green room. "Run out of material? Are you serious?" he asks one of the hangers-on from still another national gossip rag. "I switch on the news and find all I need to make folks laugh."

  "Will they laugh tonight?" the reporter wants to know. Leno glances up at the flashing on-air light, signaling two minutes to show time. Television Land will never forget this one, he tells himself. The big boys threw me the brass ring, and I'm gonna ride with it. Not Barbara Wa Wa. Not old Cronkite out of sleepy retirement. Not Sawyer. Not any of them! They picked me-- Jay Leno. "You're the one he asked for," head honcho Bill Aronson had said. "The guy likes you, Jay. He thinks you're funny." So here he was, doing the show of a lifetime on early-night primetime no less. Johnny Carson, eat your heart out.

  "Will they?" the reporter asks again.

  "Oh, they'll laugh all right," says Leno. "The guy's been dead for almost a year. Now he's back to tell it all on my show. You want funnier than that? Ok, how's this? He's not a famous dead actor or one of those departed televangelists back from the next world to pitch one more 'Save your soul. Send money.' He's not a limelighter, nobody you or me or anyone would recognize. He's an old Sicilian bricklayer named Petru Salamone. Come on. Give me a break!" 

  Now the light was flashing in earnest. the countdown has begun and Jay Leno straightens the tie knot of his red and black Pierre Cardin as he lumbers down the long corridor towards the Tonight Show stage. From another room his guest Petru Salamone exits and follows beside one of the show's producers.

  The usual cue of applause out of the way, Leno smiles, then begins his monologue. "No, folks, I'm not the guy who's dead. And hopefully my jokes will pass the 'breathe-on-a-feather' test some of you E.R. Clooneys out there might care to administer. [Laughter.] I mean, do I look dead? And if I were dead, would I come back to the show I died on? George Burns would be here in my place. He'd rename The Tonight Show The Right Now Show. At his age he's not taking any chances. 
[Laughter.]
  "So what's in the news? Who cares, right? I mean, who can top our special guest tonight? Who cares if Monica Lewinsky is upset after finding out the government is not going to pay her all that overtime. Who cares if President Clinton and the U.N. today drew up a formal declaration of war against Iraq, and Saddam says he's not complying. Who cares that the stock market plunged into the negative numbers, and El N no just met up with El N na and the two of them plan to drown the Alamo and trash all the Taco Bells in Texas. Do we have news or what.

  But all of it is a drop in the bucket next to the biggest news anywhere. The news of Petru Salamone. Man kicks bucket and then returns to kick ass! How's that for a headline? I read somewhere that the clone scientist Dr. Seed is taking full credit for Petru's return.

  Yeah, he insists our guest is a clone he made while Seed was on vacation in Palermo several years ago. This was long before Seed turned to sheep. [Laughter.] Now Seed is going to seed. [No laughter.] Okay, okay, I guess you've heard about all you can take, so let's get on with the show.

  The camera follows Leno back to his desk where he sips something from a cup, and then waves his hand to the guest across from him. "Back by popular demand and a king-size miracle, Petru Salamone! Let's hear it! Leno says, clapping his hands and motioning the audience to do likewise. Not quite understanding, Salamone joins in applauding, which starts the audience laughing again. Feigning anger, Leno darts a stern eye at him and says, "Now wait a second. I do the comedy around here.

  I'm Leno; you're Lazarus. Got that?"

  Petru, shaken by Leno's outburst, sits and fidgets with the items on Leno's desk: accidentally he snaps a pencil in half, then spills some of the contents of the cup. When Petru pulls his hand back, Leno's face gets in the way and gets slapped. By now the audience is roaring.

  Leno leaps out of his chair, makes a major production of skirting around his desk, pulls Salamone up by the lapels of his charcoal-gray suit, lifts the five foot three inch Sicilian half a foot off the couch. What makes the scene so Laurel- and-Hardyesque is that Salamone is missing the humor in it. Sicilian humor is rarely physical. Slapping one's forehead or flicking the thumb outwardly from the underside of one's chin or making unmentionable arm- flexing gestures are never meant to be humorous. Salamone defends himself by flailing his arms and yelling, "Basta! Basta!" ["Enough! Enough!]

  "Ladies and Gentlemen, I think I just heard the Sicilian word for 'Uncle,' says Leno. "Or is Signor Salamone reliving his salad days as a waiter in Palermo's Famous Pasta House on the Mafia Strip? You give up, Petru? Had enough?" Leno releases the old Sicilian. Gently he eases him back onto the couch.

  Salamone is visibly trembling, his swarthy complexion pasty, nearly white. But then Leno offers him a handshake, and Petru calms down enough to smile nervously. "You okay, Petru?" Petru nods. "Ready to tell the world how you made it back? I mean, you were dead, for crying out loud. Last you remember you were up on a scaffold laying bricks on a Palermo highrise when the wall above you collapsed on your head. You were crushed. Thousands of falling bricks. You were splattered down there on the sidewalk. Okay, that sounds like dead to me. Then what happened? You were buried. Nothing unusual there. Would you tell us the rest of the story? Just walk over there," Leno says.

  Petru Salamone, seventy years old and recently deceased, but none the less for wear, shuffles his feet towards the spotlight while the orchestra begins the fanfare of "When the Saints Go Marching In."

  Self-consciously he stands there in the white circle of the spotlight, staring out at the audience. Without waiting for the music to stop, he begins to speak. "My name isa Petru Salamone."

  He clears his throat. "Petru Salamone from Palermo, Sicily. For many year I was bricklayer. I builda houses, make a money for Salvatrice my wife, for my daughtersa Carmela and Mariana. We live gooda life. We no starve. It was gooda livin'." 

  From off the stage we hear the voice of Leno. "Tell them about your gooda dyin', Petru."

  "The line betweena live anda die isa vera thin. When we alive, we no give a much attench' to dyin'. Maybe we think we gonna live forev'. We make a jokes like Mr. Leno. Evera thing funny. Evena the grave. "I no remember when I crossa that thin a line. They say the wall she fall on a me, but I remember feela joosta one brick befo' I close a my eyes. When I opena them, I was in a de nexta life."

  Again Leno's voice: "You saw Peter at the Pearly Gates?"

  Petru smiles, shakes his head. "I see my littla sister Teresa. She die when I was boy. 'Petru,' she says, 'Benvinutu [Welcome]! to Paradise!" We embrace "I am dead?" I aska her.

  "No, caru frati [dear brother], you are alive now! Walk with me," she tella me. All a once I see Gesu Cristu [Jesus Christ]! He smile and say, "Benvinutu, Petru. Finalmenti si arrivatu [Welcome, Petru. Finally you've arrived.].

  "Gesu, you speak Sicilian?"

  "I speaka de language newcomers speak. Sicilian, Spanish, Polish, English. Whatever makes it easier you firsta day here."

  Again Leno: "What does Jesus look like, Petru? Beard, sandals, long hair, blue eyes?"

  Petru's eyes fill with tears. Too emotional to trust himself to speak, he waits, then tries a reply, but he fails. "Don't die on me now, Salamone," says Leno's voice, but no one laughs. 

  Finally Petru says, "I have a no words. No way I can a describe Him. But my soul find comfort in His voice. I was no more afraid. And how brighta was He! Brighter than the Palermo sun, but He did not blind me. For the firsta time in my life, I coulda see mo' clear than ever befo'."

  "So how did you get back here?" asked Leno's voice. "Tell the truth now. Was it a near-death experience?"

  "It wasa no near, Mr. Leno. It wasa the real thing. I die, I see heaven, anda Gesu He senda me back to talk ona TV." 

  "Just once? Or are you here to take my job"

  "Joosta thisa one time and then I go backa home."

  "Palermo?"

  "Paradiso."

  "And what does Jesus want you to tell the largest viewing audience in the history of the world?"

  Petru sighs, like a man physically unprepared to support the burden he's been ordered to shoulder. At one point he closes his eyes. When he opens them, everyone expects to see tears again, but Petru's dark eyes are dry, set hard and piercing. They stare into the camera, into the depths of every viewer waiting on this message from heaven.

  A drum roll begins, but Petru shakes his head in disapproval, and it stops. Not even Jay Leno will fill the silence now. The world waits. "'Why me?' I aska. 'Why Petru Salamone? Why send me?' I aska Gesu. 'Go back, Petru. Tella them to repent. Tella them about heaven. How life on earth she'sa short. Tella them love one another anda repenta.'"

  "That's it?" asks Leno. "This is the message of all time? You came all the way from heaven to tell the world 'Repent'?"

  The camera focuses now on a speechless Jay Leno. The camera pans the audience where, like a stilled frame, no one moves. The band too is silent. When the camera returns to center stage, the spotlight is empty of Petru Salamone. Only his final word, whispering over and over again from another world: "Repenta. Repenta. Repenta. Repenta." 

 <end>

A FAMILY OF SICILIANS: STORIES AND POEMS.
perfect-bound, softcover, 152 pages, 5 1/2 X 8 1/2;
ISBN ISBN 0-917398-21-1.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-96208
PRICE: If ordered before December 1998: $10.95 plus $3.00 handling and
shipping.
After December: $12.95 plus $3.00 handling and shipping.