The Rhyming Ballad of Sam Cantorelli

Sam Cantorelli was half Italian ‘my half was the legs’ he once said,
he was a very fast runner with a face that was always red. His mother
shouted and pointed and always looked stressed his father was a smoker
who rarely got dressed. We grew up between the ages of six and thirteen
in love with football and his cousin Kathleen. We were good boys most of
the time but got drunk one day on his father’s red wine. We were sick
and suffering all of the next day his mother was scornful and sent me
away. We whispered in the classroom imagined ourselves in jail Sam said
to me that prison would mean we’ve failed. ‘If I ever end up in a cell I
know I’ll be in hell and the shame that I will feel will leave me with
no worth, I swear if I was jailed I’d want to leave this earth’ I
changed the subject to football and the new girl in class Sam was deep
in thought I felt our world had passed.

Peace was reclaimed after a couple of days and Sam and I went through
another girl watching phase. Mary Westhouse and her best friend Hazel
Hoods agree to a picnic with the two of us out in the woods. We were
childishly stupid and hopelessly amiss the girls just kept laughing when
we tried to give them both a kiss. The sun was descending it was time
for our tea Sam Cantorelli walked with Mary and Hazel walked with me. We
were in love with these girls whose faces were aglow we went to meet
them the next day but they didn’t show. Our hearts they were broken
crushed and undone we saw them in the playground they said we were too
young. Sam he was a kind boy he’d share anything he had and when he
moved away he left me awful sad. We promised we’d keep in touch like
people often do but one thing and another became a distant mile or two.

I grew up with a clean sheet got a job with prospects bright got
myself promoted for working late at night. My conventional rise up the
ladder turned me into shirt and tie I mixed in a social circle where
people always aimed high. I was troubled by my good fortune it didn’t
seem to be real I thought often of my childhood and how I used to feel. I
was startled by the postman delivering a brown envelope to me I thought
it was the taxman looking for another fee, but the letter said it was
Jury service time, my reward for living life clean and fine. I was
nervous about spending a day in a court and unsure of changing someone’s
life without little thought.

The case was a robbery at a petrol station late at night, the
attendant had a heart attack and died on account of fright. The thief
took money from the till and flowers for a whore, who was watching from a
doorway whilst telephoning the law. The police found him standing with
his hands in the air a junkie lost and lonely with a junkie stare.

I sat amongst the jurors feeling out of place I wasn’t too
comfortable amongst this established human race. I listened to the story
the prosecutor was selling about the accused, a man named Sam
Cantorelli whose faced looked abused. He looked tired and helpless too
scared to look at the judge who had guilty in his eye and was not about
to budge. My heart beat a thousand times as it sank like a stone in a
lake the boy that I grew up with had thrown me a piece of his fate. He
was guilty of course the evidence was clear I was the one abstention as I
wiped away a tear.

Five years was the sentence I watched Sam pretending to be cool, I
thought of the little boy sprinting after school to be the first to the
sweet shop for chewing gum and coke we leant against a wall watching
chimney smoke. I walked the longest mile after witnessing this twist of
life I felt like a traitor who’d just sharpened an old knife. I drove
home with the thoughts of Sam Cantorelli filling up my head I saw the
news on telly he’d hung himself till dead. Left with no worth he
departed this earth, an epitaph of a ghost never set free goodbye Sam
Cantorelli you were my childhood with me.

©JmcN2014 (revised)