Bishop glared at him. “They don't give a damn about you, and they'll forget you five minutes past breakfast when this war's all over. You'll see.”
Stamps shrugged. “Maybe so. but I ain't fighting for them. I'm fighting for my children, if I have any. And my grandchildren, if I get some. I'm fighting for Huggs and Trueheart Fogg, remember them? And Captain Walker. You forgot him, didn't you? Yeah. That white man saved your ass. He took the point at Lucca when your squad was supposed to take it. He got stitched nine ways to Sunday 'cause of y'all. A white
cracker.
From Mississippi. Best goddamn captain we ever had. You think we'd be hung up out here if Walker was running things instead of Nokes? You think we'd be setting here?”
Bishop was silent. Walker would have hiked up that mountain and fetched them. He'd have walked it alone if he had to. He'd have cussed them out and called them niggers because he was a snakebitten bastard, but he wouldn't have been calling them on any goddamn radio like that coward Nokes, telling them to get prisoners while their balls were in a sling. Walker had always looked out for his men. He had always kept his word. Bishop felt a pang of deep regret and looked away. Fuck it.
“Walker's dead,” he said. “Plus, he didn't like niggers nohow.”
“Yeah, well I'm fighting for 'im anyway.”
“Remind me to tell Mr. Charlie to raise your allowance when you get home.”
“Fuck you, man!”
Bishop laughed as Stamps rose and took a few steps down the alley away from them. The soft sound of Train's singing stopped him. Hector, sitting on the ground next to Bishop, his feet splayed out by the fire, listened to Train's singing, too, as it blended with the howling wind, which had returned, bringing the rain back with it. They felt the first moist drops, then the freezing downpour began. Against the background of the splattering rain, they could hear Train singing louder, some hymn. Bishop recognized it. “Take Me to the Water.” He liked that song.
“Damn fool,” Stamps muttered. “The best thing he done so far is to fall through the floor and find them rabbits. You can't trust none of these people here.” He turned to Bishop and Hector. “Germans be damned, we ain't looking for nobody. We got to sit tight for two days, three days, so we sit tight. In the meantime, we better watch these ridges and hills. This ain't the best position. We're below everything. These little streets can't cover us from above, so we got to watch from the edge of town, by the walls near the gate. There's only one way in and one way outâthat front gate. So we watch that. We'll split the watch up. Who wants it first?”
“What's the point?” Hector said. “If twenty of 'em come, or even ten, we're cooked. These people here ain't gonna help us.”
Stamps felt rage boiling up inside him. He was the one with the OCS degree. He was the one with combat training. He was the lieutenant. These guys were draftees, buck privates, and now they were experts in combat strategy. “Okay, y'all wanna be smart-asses? I'll take the first watch for ten minutes, and when I get back, the next guy has it for two hours. The next guy is you, Hector.” He pointed to Bishop. “Then
you,
Mr. Mary McLeod Bethune, you go after Hector.” He stalked down the alley, and they watched his back, illuminated by the fire under the lean-to, disappear around the corner.
Bishop snorted. “He's a smart-ass, ain't he, Hector?”
Hector stared at the wall of the alleyway, silent. Two days up here was just too long. He wasn't sure they'd last two hours. They'd been here fourteen hours, and he was convinced, peering at the ridges at dusk that evening, that they were being watched. He could see nothing other than blowing treetops above them, but he could feel it, the hairs on the back of his neck telling him that somebody was out there, watching, waiting. He'd had that same feeling at the Cinquale, and he was right then. He had dreams that told him the truth, and in his dreams he saw himself getting shot or captured. He just didn't want to get captured alive by the Germans. He'd heard they didn't take prisoners, and that if they did, they tortured you for information. He always had trouble with English when he was nervous. What little information he could give them, he wouldn't be able to give in English.
“In a way, it doesn't matter if division sends help or not,” Hector said. “If they send somebody, then we have to go back with them. And do what? Fight some more. We ought to head deeper into the mountains, where nobody can find us.”
“Is you gone 'round the bend, too?”
“Train did it and look where it got him. He's in there singing songs, he got a little friend. He's stupid and happy. That's what I wanna be. Stupid and happy.”
Bishop laughed. “I know a pretty girl in Kansas City named Doris who'll polish your knob for fifty cents. That'll make you happy. That'll bring you joy, son. You wanna play some cards?”
“Hell, no. I'm going to sleep.” The sound of Train's soft singing from within Ludovico's house meshed with the icy rain, which was falling harder now, to make a soft symphony.
“Lemme ask you something,” Bishop said. “When we was at the church last night, what was that crazy man up there saying?”
“Don't know, but I ain't going back there again, that's for sure.”
“Something about a chicken, right?”
“I'm gonna start charging y'all for my translations.”
“Something bad happened up there,” Bishop said. “I know it.”
“Yeah, something bad happened,” Hector said. “Big Diesel tried to kiss you in the poker and you was gonna let him, but we stopped you.” He chuckled, suddenly feeling giddy. The memory of it made his stomach hurtâit was so funny.
Bishop smirked. “I don't know what got into him,” he said.
Stamps reappeared at the end of the alley. Bishop glanced up at him and said, “It ain't been ten minutes yet.”
Stamps spoke to Hector. “Hector, get moving.”
Hector rose wordlessly. He was glad to go. Better out there than in here. He marched around to the side of the building, passed through several tight alleyways and sharp turns bordered by high stone walls, the tops of which he could not see over, enclosing God knows what. He descended a set of tiny steps and passed several dark houses until he reached the edge of the village and could see the mountains beyond it. He stood by the gate and leaned on the stone wall, the wind blowing against him. He stared at the looming mountains. Whoever was out there could see him now, he knew. He wanted to wave, to show whoever it was that he was a man of mercy, that he was Hector Negron from Harlem who had never harmed anybody in his life before he entered the army, that he never shot the man, just the uniform. He didn't hate Germans, he didn't hate anybody. He was just afraid. He hoped they would let him explain.
As he watched the ridges above him, the clouds parted momentarily, and the moon shone through the breaks and he could see the bell tower of the church where they had fled, and a taller ridge behind it. Then a cloud came and made the night total again, and the view was gone. In the dark, he heard a dog bark. Then an owl hooted and nearly made him piss in his pants. He wanted to pee badly but decided against it. Instead, he sat with his back against the wall, facing the ridges, and after a few moments he lay down and stretched himself out, resting his head on his arm. The heavy rain had ceased. Instead, several stray snowflakes blew across his face. Hector pulled off his field coat and placed his rifle on the ground; then, curling up against the wall, he covered himself with his field coat and tucked his hands into his pants for warmth as the wind howled over his head. If the Germans came down the ridge, he thought, he wanted to die dreaming of San Juan at Christmas, with the sun on his face and the ocean blowing warm sea breezes on his nose and Christmas lights and decorations everywhere. He fell asleep immediately and slept like a dead man.
13
THE TOWN
There were thirty-two official residents of the town of Bornacchi during World War II, though its history stretched back over twelve centuries. It was founded by monks from nearby La Spezia, who were lured by the area's beautiful black cypresses, natural olive groves, and thriving chestnut trees. The monks lived peacefully for nearly fifty years until the Lucchesians arrived, conquering the town in 1202 with horses and spears. They, in turn, were driven out by the Pisans, who arrived forty-five years later with bigger horses and spears, and with mules. The Pisans stuck around for forty years and built a small wall around the town to keep invaders out, but the wall failed them when they were attacked in 1347 by the Ligurians, who arrived with ladders, scaled the wall, drove the Pisans out, and lived happily ever after, thinking they'd conquered nearby Florence, until the Florentines arrived and sent them packing. The Florentines stayed for 148 years, extending the wall around the town a foot higher with mortar and embedding broken wine bottles along its top, which only served to make the Lucchesians angry when they showed up again, looking for a rematch with the Pisans. They found the Florentines instead and whipped them just for being so frivolous as to waste good wine bottles by sticking them in a wall, then cooled their heels happily for twenty-six years waiting for the Pisans to mount a comeback. They were not disappointed. The Pisans arrived in 1598 and knocked the stuffing out of them, leaving only the teeth, bones, and skulls of the survivors and sending the rest over the glass-topped wall by the dozens. The Lucchesians responded by laying low in the hills outside of town for 140 years, telling stories to their children about the wicked Pisans, who had left only the teeth, bones, and skulls of the great Lucchesian people, conveniently omitting the part about the time
they
took Pisan teeth, bones, and skulls as souvenirs. Meanwhile, the Florentines, who were feeling flush in those days from having beaten the stuffing out of the Pisans three times straight in the adjoining valley, rushed in and sent the Pisans to the dogs. A bandit warrior named Enrico the Terrible wandered by with his army, whipped the Florentines with one hand tied behind his back, then departed and forgot about the town completely. The Lucchesians returned for one last throw, only to find that everyone had grown tired of fighting and had now graduated to diplomacy, which was worse.
The four groups, Ligurians, Lucchesians, Pisans, and Florentines, settled in the valley around the town's walls and argued for eighty-seven years about who owned what and where, until Napoleon arrived in 1799 and beat the blubber out of everybody. The town sat, indifferent, for 122 years, until 1921, when a blacksmith named Bruno Bornacchi from the village of Barga, near the Serchio River, showed up and rebuilt the town from scratch. He renamed it for himself, at which point Benito Mussolini's Fascists shot him in the foot in 1939 and sent him packing on his pony, declaring it a Fascist town. In short, the town had known pain, glory, suffering, pity, self-sacrifice, grief, jealousy, murder, mayhem, peace, war, grapes, wine, and wisdom, but it had never known the smell of good ol' stinkin' fried rabbit cooked Kansas City-style by a smooth-talking fatback lover named Bishop Cummings, who was called Walking Thunder back home at the First Baptist Saving Souls Center.
The smell wafted high over the Apennines, into every stone crevice, mule trail, street, and alleyway, and as it did, thirty-two descendants of slaves, kings, cooks, court jesters, opera impresarios, serfs, second cousins, kings, bakers, chair-makers, and blacksmiths slung their nostrils into the air as one, and emerged from their stone huts and tiny homes, noses held high. It was as if God Himself had floated down from up above.
Ludovico saw them through the window of his house.
“Dio mio,”
he murmured, “They'll bring the Germans here.” He ran out to warn the American
tenente
but too late, as the villagers drifted out of the half-bombed homes and rubble that lay amid the shorn hills and trees surrounding the town. They walked, seemingly hypnotized, toward the three soldiers who sat around the fire cooking the single rabbit, and gathered in a circle around them.
An old man in a worn vest and weathered shirt that had once been white but now was yellowed was the first to speak. His name was Franco Bochelli. He'd fought in the great Italian victory over Ethiopia in 1936, then had had the good sense to knock his teeth out with stones to avoid serving in Mussolini's armyâthough at age sixty-four it was doubtful that they wanted him. He thought the three coloreds were Ethiopians.
“Viva Il Duce,” he said.
“What's he want, Hector?” Bishop asked. Three days had passed, no Germans were in sight, the weather had lifted that morning, and it was a bright, shiny, chilly day, just four days before Christmas. Stamps had forgotten all about the radio, and he was in no hurry to get up into the mountains to check for Germans now. He sat next to Bishop, his eyes watering, as the rabbit turned and its sloppy juice dripped onto the fire.
“He wants directions to Ebbets Field,” Hector said.
“Quit fucking around. Wha'd he say?”
“Something about a duke.”
“They still got kings and dukes here?” Bishop eyed old Franco, who, seeing he was under scrutiny, pushed his toothless grin even wider, giving his mouth the look of a bottomless pit, a black O. Wrinkled skin covered his face like an old blanket draped over a pile of junk. Bishop spoke to him. “You looks like you was a waiter at the Last Supper,” he said, smirking. Franco nodded and smiled harder. Bishop turned away and spoke to Hector. “Tell him there ain't enough here for no dukes unless one of 'em's Duke Ellington. I done this one here for Train's little junior.”
Hector looked at the gathering of women, children, and old men. “Shit, you tell 'em.”