Acre Under a Green Sky

Joe Scarceletti's mud colored Mercury was famous in Waterstop; part of the lore of the town. One Saturday morning, it wound up in front of Ellie Roth's house and stayed there attracting all kinds of attention until sometime late Wednesday night. More often than not, you'd see it sitting outside one of the three popular motels on Route 19. That mud colored Mercury was the source of a lot of speculation and much giggling. It was like a ghost ship appearing out of nowhere and just as silently disappearing again. But its presence could mean only one thing. Be it in a parking lot or on a back country road or at your curb, you knew that somewhere love was in the making. But all that was before the Martha Brennan business.

The story of Joe and Martha was an unwritten folksong that went something like this: Martha Brennan was a local wonder; well-built with short, straight shaggy blonde hair cut close to her skull like a bathing cap. Her eyes were large and blue, and she outlined them with black pencil to further accentuate them. The effect gave her a waifish, startled look, but it was the vulnerability emanating from those eyes that truly endeared her to people; especially men, who were drawn to protect her at the same time they were drawn to possess her. She wore only black misshapen skirts and tops. The overall look was one of kooky defiance. But the truth was she had a dreadful need to be noticed and to be loved. She was nineteen-years-old.

Martha Brennan gave birth in the ladies' room at Gimbel's Department Store in Pittsburgh. She wrapped the newborn baby in the sweater she had just purchased, and put it in the Gimbel's shopping bag they had given her. Then she went out into the street and hailed a taxi cab. She told the driver to take her to Waterstop some twenty miles away. At some point about midway down Route 19, she asked the driver to pull off onto the shoulder of the four-lane highway. There was nothing there but countryside. She got out of the cab with her shopping bag and disappeared over a little incline for a few minutes, then returned without the shopping bag and told the driver he could go on.

The driver dropped her off downtown, and went straight to the Waterstop Police. The girl appeared sick, and there was a terrible smell in the cab. And, of course, there was the business with the shopping bag. They were able to find the shopping bag, and miraculously the baby boy was alive. They also found Martha's charge slip for the sweater in the shopping bag. By the time they got to her home, she was hemorrhaging badly. She died that night.

Joe Scarceletti sought out my grandfather. He wanted to claim his son. Martha's parents were the Brennan Furniture Store. A custody battle ensued, and the courts gave the boy to the Brennan Furniture Store. The boy would be raised in the same home where Martha had so painstakingly hidden her pregnancy.

After that, Joe became like a phantom haunting the Royal Grill; always on the periphery, passing through like a half-seen shadow, never really there. And the mud colored Mercury? Well, if it's not parked behind the Royal Grill, you might see it sitting in front of the Brennan's house or alongside the Waterstop Nursery School playground.