As Bishop climbed behind the others, watching the steam rise from Sam Train's back in the eerie, foggy rain, Bishop tried to decide which made more sense: fighting and keeping your pride like the Negro papers said, or bailing out and keeping your life intact. Nothing ever worked right in the division anyway. The good white commanders had transferred out before the company even left the States. The black first and second lieutenants ran everything, and they never knew more than five minutes of what the next mission was. Take this hill, take that hill. For what? The enemy came right back and took it the next day anyway. When Bishop first saw the mountain slopes they had to attack, he thought maybe jail was better. The Germans had blasted and burned away all the trees and houses and foliage so there was no place to hide. The Germans shot down. The Americans ran up. It was a turkey shoot. Their first mission outside Lucca, they had a good white captain named Walker, a man from Mississippi. Walker was a courageous bastard, Bishop had to admit it. Walker refused to stay back at headquarters and give radio orders like the other white captains. He told them, “When we climb that ridge tomorrow morning, I'll be right there next to you,” and he was. When the order came to jump, Walker stood and said, “Let's go,” and the Germans sliced, diced, sissy-fried, cut up, spanked, and chopped up every single foot of earth in front of Walker, and every soldier behind him who was stupid enough to stand up when he made the order got his ass shot off. Walker made it ten feet before he leaped into a foxhole. A shell came right after him and blew him to pieces. Incredibly, what was left of him got up and staggered another five feet before the other bits of him collapsed, and not all of them at the same time, either. Lieutenant Huggs, he got his face shot off at the Cinquale Canal. All his friendsâJimmy Cook, Skiz Parham, Spencer Floor, Hep Trueheart, all of 'em deader than Calpurnia's flapjacks. Now the whole thing was so fucked up he couldn't stand it. He was still out here, Captain Nokes was back at base sipping tea, probably, and Stamps was running things, all because he'd panicked and followed the dumbest nigger in the world.
“It's working,” he growled, as Hector climbed in front of him.
“What's working?” Hector asked, the rain dripping off his helmet.
“This stupid idea I had. To see how dumb you niggers were, following me across the canal. This kid's gonna die, anyway. And us with him.”
“Cut it out, Bishop,” Stamps snapped, as he climbed ahead. “We don't need ministerin'. We got to find shelter to get outta this weather.”
“I ain't ministerin',” Bishop said. “I shouldn't be here with you dogfaces nohow. The only reason I came over here is 'cause my tailor lives here.”
Hector laughed, but Sam Train saw nothing funny. “Kid here needs a doctor,” he said. “What y'all gonna do about it?” He stopped underneath an outcropping of rock that partially shielded him from the downpour to check on the boy, and the others huddled in close. Racks of rain slopped down from the slab of rock like a waterfall. Train slowly peeled open his field jacket, which covered the kid. The boy's face was the color of white plaster, his tight little hands balled into fists. Occasionally, his eyes flickered open, then fluttered shut again. For the first time, Train noticed that his breathing seemed labored, and even over the pouring rain he could hear the child's breath wheezing in and out, as if something were rattling in his throat, making the ripping sound a playing card makes when it's stuck in the spokes of a bicycle rim.
“He don't need no doctor. He needs a hospital,” Stamps said. “Hector, take a look while I check the top of the ridge.” Stamps trotted ahead.
Hector didn't even bother to glance at the kid this time. He waved his hand at Train, who looked at him hopefully. “I told you before, he needs a hospital.” He felt sorry for Train's kid, but not that sorry. He'd seen a thousand of them in Naples, begging at street corners, tugging at the soldiers saying, “Meet my sister. Big titties. Tight pussy.” They reminded him of himself growing up back in San Juan, begging for food at sidewalk cafés, snatching leftovers as the owners chased him down the street, his silent mother praying at mass, his drunken father screaming and punching her out at home. Hector couldn't stand the thoughts. He turned away and crouched on his haunches, watching Stamps slip up the muddy ridges.
“Whyn't you look at him?” Train insisted.
“I seen him,” Hector said, watching Stamps struggling up the rocky crevices.
“Whyn't you put some o' that powder on him that you got. I seen you use it before.”
“What powder?”
“The magic powder.”
Hector looked at Train sideways. “Sulfa powder. Is that what you talkin' 'bout, Train? That's for fevers. I'mma give him that in this rain? He don't got no fever. He got a chest injury or something inside, I don't know.”
“Well, do something.”
Hector yawned. He suddenly felt sleepy. His nerves were giving way. He watched as Train stared at him, his large eyes bulging with hope like a dog's eyes. Hector imagined Train as a dog. He'd be a big, black puppy. “Let's get outta this shit first,” he said.
Train turned to Bishop. “Bishop, can't you make 'im look at 'im?”
Bishop peered at the ridges around them. The rain made a fizzing sound as it hit the leaves and trees. “Don't talk to me 'bout no little white boy,” he grunted. “You would never see me grabbing no li'l white boy like you done.”
“But you tol' me!”
“Told you, hell. It was your idea. Wasted your time, too, trying to save him. What for?”
“I done what you tol' me to!”
“I ain't tell you to get us kilt. This is a white man's war, boy. Niggers ain't got nothing to do with it. This boy ain't got no life nohow.”
“Why not?”
“ 'Cause a life of goodness is not what white folks has chosen for they children. The Bible says it, Proverbs Twenty-two sixteen: âRaise up a child the way you want him to go, and he will not depart from it.' He's trained to hate, boy. His life ain't worth a dollar of Chinese money.”
Train blinked in confusion, the rain shrouding his giant features. “He ain't done nothing to you.”
“Two hours ago you didn't want 'im.”
Train said nothing. That was before he knew the boy was an angel. The boy was his now. The boy was an angel of God. He had the power. Train couldn't give him away now.
Stamps returned from above, slipping and sloshing down to a stop underneath the rock outcropping, sliding as if into home plate. The rain was falling in sheets now, and he had to shout over the splattering of the downpour. “It's gonna be dark in ten minutes,” he said. He pointed. “There's a church bell tower behind that ridge. We'll hold there. Maybe we can make a fire inside the church.”
Hector took the lead and Train went last, carrying the kid, who lay limp against him, tiny as a chicken in his arms.
The church lay beyond a village composed of several houses dug into a dark mountain beside a road that curved along a beautiful sloping ridge. They crawled along the underside of the ridge, sticking close to the dirt road, cut through the woods to bypass the village, and came upon another dirt trail that led to the church. They followed the tiny trail past a small graveyard. Farther up, the road widened and curved again, and they could see, at the very top of the ridge, the church bell tower and a few pastel-colored houses dotting the distant hills behind it. It was a good place to build a church, Bishop thought. If he were really holy and wanted to build a church, he'd build a church here, too. He had just been about to build a new church back in Kansas City when he got drafted. It was the story of his life, that just before he made a big score, his luck ran out. He'd served six months at Parch-man Penitentiary in Louisiana under the name of Mason June for fraud and theft, breaking rocks on a chain gang and sleeping with his teeth on edge after winning cigarettes at poker from the other inmates, big, stupid men like Trainâtough, grizzled cotton pickers with long arms and short brains who liked his smooth talk and easy-handed way of dealing cards, finding his funny stories about the white man an ease from the burden of their own tortured, boring existences, which promised no future other than long nights of pining after whores and country women, who promised only a dull life and more plowing. He got into preaching afterward. It was a lot easier than fleecing cardplayers in jook joints, where share-croppers in overalls often found courage at the bottom of a bottle of suds once they figured he'd duped them. Besides, the big-city pimps were moving in and crowding his business, and when they pulled out their pistols, they touched the trigger and told the hammer to hurry. The Bible was an easy study, with lots of extra poontang and chicken dinners thrown in. He had actually grown up in church back in Louisiana, but watching his deacon father punch his mother out every Saturday night, then pray to high holy heaven on Sunday mornings, robbed him of any illusions about God's work. If God's around, he's a loser, Bishop thought, and I'm gonna play him. He spent his last fourteen dollars on a bus ticket to Kansas City and set up shop in front of an abandoned plumbing supply store downtown, serving free lemonade on hot July afternoons and preaching like a madman to tired housekeepers and old gardeners who wandered past on their way home from work: Put down them heavy pots and pans and come to God, he said. Put down that heavy sack and come over here, 'cause Somebody Special wants you. And He don't have no anger. He don't know no pain. He don't give no orders. He's a pain-getting-rid-of-er. That's His job. To get rid of your pain faster than this lemonade can go down your little red lane. Why? Ain't no why! He ain't got to explain Hisself! He'll hurl your enemies down to low stones like he hurled Satan outta heaven, 'cause He's mighty. He's the baddest kitty kat in the firmament! He got the mojo and the sayso. He knows truth. He knows justice. He knows your pain. And He will heal your pain right now, for free, if you just trust in Him. Ain't no cost to it! Ain't no buy-now-pay-later to this. You ain't rentin' no couches here! God-don't-want-your-money-tainted-by-the-filth-of-man's-sinful-touch and you can
take
your money home and put it under your mattress where it belongs, 'cause I don't want it,
I want your soul!
You got an appointment to keep, and I'm the
secretary!
I'm here to tell you that Jesus is coming! The train's
leaving
the station, and I'm collecting tickets! Don't be left out. Don't wait! Leave your money home, but bring your soul! All aboard! Get what you need! Get God! I got what I need! How 'bout you?
The money poured in like magic, and more people came. Bishop rented the plumbing supply store, and the congregation grew. They called him Walking Thunder, and when he preached he was so good at making the lightning come that at times he actually believed in God. During those moments, fright would cover him like a blanket and he would disappear from his congregation for a few days and drink joy juice till the feeling passed. He was in the flow, he had it good, he had found his niche. But the Army wanted him, and he made the mistake of showing up at the induction center thinking they wouldn't sign up a Negro preacherâthey made preachers into chaplains with the rank of captain, he was told, and even a fool knew that no white man wanted a nigger being a captain and telling him what to do. By the time he figured the game was played by the white man's rules, that captains, even Negro chaplains, had college and divinity school degrees, he was doing push-ups at training camp. Now his new church back home was just a dream, and here he was trying to collect his fourteen hundred dollars, staring at a white man's church in a white man's land in the pouring rain with a nigger who was carrying a white man's son who was gonna die, and they'd be blamed for that, tooâif the Germans didn't smoke them first. He needed a drink.
Hector, in the lead, slowed as the others gathered around him at the side of the road and stared at the church. “That's where the Germans would be if they were near here. Camped inside,” he said.
“Don't see no Germans,” Stamps grunted. “Just keep goin'.”
“This is close enough,” Hector said. “We don't need to walk in the front door and get our asses shot off. There'll be Germans around here soon enough if they're not here now.”
Stamps was exhausted. “We stay in there or out here. One or the other. You and I'll go take a look. You take point.”
“Shit no,” Hector said. “Point or not, it don't matter who's got the point if there's a whole regiment in there having dinner and there's only four of us. If you and me get hung up there, who's gonna back us up? Them two?” He pointed to Bishop and Train. “I say we go together.”
Stamps felt his command slipping from him, but there was nothing he could do. He was so tired he wanted to lie down right in the rain and rest forever. “Shit, it don't matter. Let's all go.”
Hector moved forward slowly, crouching, advancing to the edge of the road. He lay on his stomach and peeked around the curve. He lay there for what seemed like an hour, then finally got up and motioned for the others to follow as he dashed across the road and took cover in some bushes on the other side.
Train felt himself going invisible again, and he fought the impulse. Invisibility, he felt, always brought problems. He had not wanted to get the boy and he would not have done so had he been visible and in his right mind, angel or not. He would not have waded into the Cinquale had he been visible. He would not have done any of those things. But they were done now. The boy was his responsibility now. He still owed Bishop money. He still did not know where he was. Everything needed clearing up. If the boy stopped breathing, he thought, that would be a disaster. The notion began to terrify him, that the boy would die. Train had seen dozens of kids dying before, in Lucca, in Naples, starving, begging, their wounds wrapped in gauze, big pus-filled sores on their feet and legs, but they were not connected to him, them being Italians and him being colored. But this one was different. He had felt it. How to explain to them that the boy was an angel? How to explain to God that he'd let an angel die?