Bishop rose to his feet and faced the crowd impatiently. He didn't want to take care of all these people.
He pointed to the rabbit. “This here,” he said, speaking loudly, as if he were addressing schoolchildren, “belongs to the boy. Inside.” He pointed to Ludovico's house. “We”âhe pointed to the three soldiersâ“we no eat rabbit. We take it to the boy. Inside.” He pointed to Ludovico's house again. He watched the Italians. No one moved.
Bishop whispered to Hector. “Just take it and run on in the house with it.”
“Hell, no.” Hector turned on his haunches, leaving Bishop to face his audience.
A pretty young woman in a worn blue-flowered dress stepped forward. She was tall and thin, and like most of the young, she seemed sallow and slightly gaunt with malnutrition. “Are you staying long?” she asked in Italian.
Bishop looked appreciatively at her long legs and slender hips. He did not understand a word she had said, but looking at those legs and hips, he suddenly felt the mandate of the U.S. government heavy and righteous on his shoulders. His duty was to protect these people. They were depending on him. He spoke the only Italian he knew.
“Americani,”
he said.
“Dove tedeschi?”
The young woman, Fabiola Guidici, happened to be an art history student at the Academy of Art and Design in Florence. She was three weeks from receiving her degree when the war hit, so she fled home from her rented room, but not before discovering en route that the university's library, to which she owed several hundred lire, had been blown to bits by German shelling. She plied through the wreckage and managed to salvage several books, including
The Origin of Potatoes (Solanum tuberosum), The Life of Plautus, A Walking History of Philadelphia,
and an ancient tome by the Roman philosopher Marcus Aurelius entitled
Crates of Athens.
She'd spent the last four days eating nothing but chestnuts and reading Aurelius's
Crates,
an experience that had left her literally stuffed and starving at once. She pointed past Bishop's shoulder and said in Italian, “The Germans are in the Mountain of the Sleeping Man. However, the sleeping man is a metaphor for the element of surprise, for the mountain does not truly sleep but merely lies in a state of unconsciousness and dormancy, until such time as he rises and shows the true meaning of nature's unequivocal greatness and love's savage fury. Who's that rabbit for? We're hungry.”
Bishop turned to Hector. “What'd she say?” he asked.
Hector blinked in surprise. “I think she's their lawyer.”
“That's it,” Stamps said, getting up and brushing himself off. “Get Loody and his daughter out here.”
Hector went inside and returned with Ludovico, Renata, and Train, who was carrying the boy.
At the appearance of the giantâof whom several had heard but few had seenâcarrying the small boy in massive arms that looked as if they had been sculpted from steel, the Italians stared in awe. The boy had become an appendage now, as natural a part of Train as the head of the statue of the
Primavera
that dangled from his right hip in the net sack looped around his belt. He looked ridiculous, Bishop thought, but he had to admit, Train was the only one who could get the boy to eat.
As the days had passed, Train's attention to the child had never wavered and, miraculously, the boy's condition had improved. From total collapse, his fever had lifted and his internal injuries, whatever they wereâfor none of them knewâgradually began to heal; slowly he began to move, a finger first, a fist, then a toe, an arm. Soon he began to sit up by himself. While the others were convinced he was still going to die, Train told Bishop, “This boy's a miracle. He brung good luck to me. Do you believe in miracles?”
“I believes in the power of everything, especially the pictures of white men on green paper,” Bishop said.
“What about all the preaching you does back home? Don't you believes in God?”
“I believes in God at the time I'm preaching it.”
“And then?”
“Then I don't believes it no more.”
But even Bishop had to allow that the child's recovery was unlike anything he'd ever seen. He'd seen Italian children dying by the dozens. In Lucca, where he had been stationed at the medical operations tent, he'd seen them brought in as bloody messes, with mangled arms and legs, burst stomachs, chest wounds, and some like this kid, some who had no obvious wounds but something terribly wrong inside. Most died. Some died horribly, screaming for their already dead parents. Others succumbed quietly, their huge eyes fearfully following the strange mass of colored doctors and medics who scrambled to throw IVs into their bony arms and set their horribly mangled and broken legs. Then the doctors would silently close their young charges' eyes forever, sometimes within minutes after they arrived, while their parents howled. Even the most hardened of the Negro doctors bit their lips and walked away, wiping sweaty tears from their faces. Bishop had wanted nothing to do with them, the doctors, the kids, the parents, none of them; they were losers, connected to life by a single belief and subsequent string of beliefs that he'd shut out. The Old Testament. The New Testament. God. Jesus. Elijah. All bullcrap. It would have been easier if this kid had died. Now, he had to admit, he was starting to care, just a little bit. He tried to stifle a chuckle as he watched Train's kid roll around on the ground, then sit on Train's giant foot, Train lifting him into the air, giving him a ride.
“Is that allowed?” Train said.
“You can give him a ride him with your foot, Diesel. It's allowed.”
“No. I mean believing in God when you preach it, then stopping after you're done.”
Bishop shrugged. “God allows anything in this world that can happen to happen.” He realized even as he said it that this was the exact reason why he did not believe in God, and it troubled him, because it sounded not like disbelief in someone who did not exist but more like anger at the actions of someone that he, Bishop, did not agree with. He hoped Train wouldn't catch the subtle difference, and Train didn't. The giant had something else on his mind. Train was looking down at the kid, who had now untied his boots and was gleefully trying to loop the shoestrings from both boots together so Train would trip and fall.
“Like me bringing him home? Is that allowed, Bish?”
Bishop stared at him. “Boy, you're dreaming. This child here don't belong to you. What you know 'bout raising a child?”
“My grandma knows how to do it.”
“The one who gived you that sack 'round your neck? With the dust and magic bones in it? Her?” Bishop laughed.
Train looked confused. “This boy's an angel, Bishop. I seen his power.”
“You a fool, Train. After he poops his panties and calls his mama a few times, you'll be done with him,” Bishop said.
But the kid never pooped at all, and he never called for anyone, and as the days passed and the boy's condition improved, Train found that he could communicate with him by a series of taps. One tap meant “yes.” Two taps mean “no” or “not.” Three was “try.” Four taps meant “I'm tired.” Five meant “must do it.” Six taps meant “trouble” or “bad thing.” It took the kid a while to learn that, but once the kid burned his hand on a kerosene flare a couple of times, he figured it out.
Nights were the hardest, because the boy would not sleep. They vacated crazy Eugenio's house after a day and slept on the floor in the bedroom of Ludovico's house so they could use his electricity to power the radio, and on the third night and each night thereafter, the boy would tap Train into consciousness, whereupon the giant would stumble to his feet and hold the boy through the night, the child tugging on him, moaning so loudly that the others would grunt fierce disapproval and force them outside. Train would pace back and forth in the alley behind Ludovico's house, carrying the boy wrapped in a blanket, rocking him to sleep, the statue's head bumping up against the wooden wall, causing further cursing and consternation from those inside. No one slept well. Stamps always posted one of them outside the house to watch for Germans, and when Train was too exhausted to walk the boy any longer, the lone sentryâStamps, Hector, or Bishopâtook over, pacing with the crying boy until he slept. The child slept fitfully, murmuring and tugging each of them, covering his ears, as if a loud noise might come crashing through his sleep at any moment. During the day, he would wander off when Train wasn't around, prompting hilarious chases around Ludovico's house and through the rabbit pen in the alley behind it, which was now mysteriously populated by two or three rabbits. Even Stamps, hard nut that he was, found himself checking for the kid each night after their short patrols, which really amounted to nothing more than walking the perimeter of Bornacchi's walls at dusk, peering at the trees in the ridges for a few moments, then hurrying to the relative safety of Ludovico's house. He had become part of their unit; his eyes were big and dark as olives, his pallor had lifted, and his complexion was smooth and beautiful as ice cream.
The soldiers fell in love with him. It was not hard. His eyes, once glazed, now took in everything around them. He hugged everyone. He sucked his thumb though he was beyond thumb-sucking years. His incoherent babblings, understood by no one, not even the Italians, came off as cooing sounds, gentle and relaxing, but no amount of coaxing could make him talk sensibly even though he appeared to be of talking age. When he rose out of bed in the mornings and began waddling like a penguin, shaking and showering each of the soldiers with hugs and cuddling, laughing with a row of straight white teeth in a dazzling smile with one front tooth missing, he melted their hearts. After months of savage fighting, with the white man at their backs whipping them and the white man at their fronts shooting at them, the boy restored their humanity, and for that they loved him. He was their hero. They called him Santa Claus, in honor of the Christmas that was coming in four days, and they fought over what kinds of gifts to get him.
Even now, Bishop watched Train approach the crackling campfire from Ludovico's house with the kid seated on his broad shoulders, riding him like an elephant, playfully poking Train in the eyes as he walked, and he had to stifle a smile. Maybe Train knew something he did not. He doubted it. Bishop watched as Ludovico and Renata stumbled out of Ludovico's house behind Train to join the crowd of villagers now circling the sizzling rabbit, its drifting aroma covering the piazza like a halo.
Stamps rose and approached the old man, whose brow was furrowed in righteous concern. “Where's all these people from?” he asked.
Ludovico looked at Renata, who translated. “He's related to only fourteen of them. Fifteen,” she quickly corrected herself, seeing her uncle Bruno staggering toward them from a house on the far end of town.
“How come your father got all those rabbits and they're starving?”
“They're not starving,” Renata said. “Franco”âshe pointed to the man with no teethâ“he's the mayor. He's got more wine in his cellar than Il Duce. Diva, over there, she has a vegetable garden bigger than the Pope's. Do any of them look like they're starving to you?”
Stamps had to admit they didn't. But they were the oddest assortment of people he'd ever seen. He was amazed at the resilience and creativity of these poor Italians who had obviously survived without the benefits of modern medicine. Many had teeth blackened by cavities, or no teeth at all. One young woman had the prettiest hair and face he'd ever seen, but a wandering left eye that roamed crazily in its socket. Others had broken noses that were not healed. Some were disfigured by broken limbs that had not been set properly, legs bent by mortar shells, still others were missing an arm or a leg, and one young girl had no arms at all. Yet they were smiling, and while they clearly did not look like they were starving, they looked mighty close to it, and all were highly interested in the sizzling rabbit that was browning nicely on the fire. Stamps looked at Bishop and Hector. “What do I do now?”
Hector walked over to one of the four packs that lay in Ludovico's front doorway. The Americans had paid Ludovico for four rabbits, the rest of them being so diseased and skinny they didn't seem worth buying. He pulled out the rabbits and several cans of rations, their last. “We trade. Tell 'em what we got, and see what they got. I'd give anything for fresh vegetables.”
And so the bartering began, knick for knack, tit for tat. A knife for this, a can of coffee for that. The villagers brought fish, eels, chestnuts, olives, grapes, and real wine. The soldiers produced K rations, D rations, Bishop's cookies, Bibles, letters from home, pocketknives, phone wire, bullets. The bartering went on for hours.
As the villagers traded and cajoled, mimicking the soldiers and even one another, gathering around the kid to wonder who he was, Stamps felt something was wrong. He knew better than to get close to these people. It went against his every instinct as a soldier. Yet he couldn't help himself. The kid was beautiful, plus Stamps was starting to have a good feeling. They had waited and waited for the new marching orders from Captain Nokes back at base but they never came, and as the days passed, and the orders changed from hold for four hours to hold for eight hours to hold for a day to a week to we'll get back to you, Stamps began to see his luck turning. The silent radio was his first piece of good luck within the division in two years.
The Army had been a bitter disappointment for him. He couldn't wait to join after he graduated from college. Everywhere he went, he'd read in the Negro press about the famous all-Negro 92nd Division, the Buffalo Soldiers. They were being sent to Italy to fight as men, and Stamps signed on the day after college, a decision he regretted the moment he set foot at Fort Huachuca training camp, which was rife with dissent and rancor: blacks punished severely by Southern white commanders, Negro plots to retaliate by killing white commanders, Negroes on furlough beaten to death by white civilian mobs, sometimes aided by sheriff deputies who were frightened at the thought of fifteen thousand armed Negroes in their midst. Negroes knifing other Negroes for calling themselves half Indian, Negroes trying to pass themselves off as half white. There was even an entire company of Negroes, two hundred men, the Casual Company, who refused to train or fight and were living in the stockade. The whole business disgusted him. He was alarmed by the hoops the division commanders leaped through so that poorly qualified white officers would always outrank black officers, because of the unwritten law that no colored should ever be able to tell a white man what to do. The policy had created all kinds of problems in the fieldâincluding his current predicament. Captain Nokes didn't know shit about artillery, and everybody knew it. He was from engineering. If Nokes had fired that fuckin' eighty-millimeter, the Krauts would have vacated his squad's sector at the Cinquale and they'd be at base now, getting ready to eat the turkey and mashed potato dinner they'd been promised for Christmas. Bishop was right. It was a mistake, he decided, for the Army to allow the colored to fight as combat soldiers. For what? To fight the enemy? Which enemy? The Germans? The Italians? The enemy was irony and truth and hypocrisy, that was the real enemy. That was the enemy that was killing him.