“Birdsong!” he snapped.
Lieutenant Birdsong stepped out of the lead jeep.
“Deal with this while I get the prisoner. If it's not together when I get back,” he pointed to Stamps and his men, “I'm court-martialing all four of you. Now where's the damn prisoner?” Stamps pointed at Ludovico's house, and Nokes stomped away, muttering, sweat oozing off the back of his neck despite the cold.
Stamps watched him go, knowing the explosion that would follow. He stifled an urge to follow Nokes. He wanted to see Nokes's face the moment he walked into Ludovico's house and saw the German dead on the bedroom floor. He was curious. Why not? He was already in a shitpile, anyway. He hoped to drag Nokes down into it with him. Served him right for screwing up at the canal.
Birdsong stepped forward, awakening him from his reverie. The two had known each other since officer candidate school. Birdsong wore a frown of resignation on his face. He waited till Nokes was out of earshot, then said, “Stamps, tell your big man to loosen up.”
“Bird, I can't do nothing with him. He won't let anybody near the kid. We got a situation here. Got a bunch of civilians killed by the SS up at the church about a kilometer up that ridge. What we gonna do about that?”
“We're gonna get the fuck outta here like the captain said, that's what we're gonna do about that.”
“Why you so strong for him? Ain't nobody done a thing to him.”
“He's a captain, that's why.”
“Why you so uppity, then? I ain't seen you down at the Cinquale when we was getting our asses kicked.”
“I was there.”
“I see you got some new stripes out of it, too. 'Fore you know it, you gonna be a big white captain like him.”
A couple of soldiers in the jeeps laughed, but not all of them, Birdsong noted. He shot a glare at the culprits and saw that all the men, even those who hadn't laughed, were looking on in sympathy at their muddy, filthy comrades. Stamps glanced at Bishop and saw his eyes in dangerous, half-droop mode. He didn't know if that was for him or for Birdsong. He didn't care. This thing was winging way out of control. A crowd of Italians had now gathered behind Stamps and his men, Ludovico, Ettora, and Renata among them. Stamps wished they hadn't come to witness this face-off. It didn't seem decent. These people had enough problems. He glanced over his shoulder at Renata and felt affection and shame. She owed him nothing. She was free person. She'd belonged to him only in his dreams. And now she had to stay here, had to keep living this nightmare, while he would go home to his own.
Birdsong said evenly, “I got to follow orders out here like everyone else, Aubrey. You know that. I'm asking youânot telling youâto please get your men together, lessn' we all face a court-martial when we get back.” He glanced at the ridges behind him. “If we can get back.”
“All right then. Bishop, Hector, git your rags together. Train, give the boy to Miss Loody here.” He nodded at Renata without looking at her. He couldn't look at her again. She had broken his heart. He deserved it. Served him right for dreaming so high and wrong.
“She ain't his mama,” Train said.
“I know, Diesel, but you got to give him up.”
Train's heart was pounding, his head swimming. “She don't know him like I know him, Lieutenant. He ain't got no mama. He got to go where somebody can tend to him. I got a grandma can do it.”
Stamps saw Birdsong roll his eyes as Hector touched Renata's arm and leaned in close and whispered in her ear. She stepped forward and gently removed Angelo from Train's arms. The boy began to wail and kick. Bishop and Hector converged on Train and tried to push him toward the jeep, but the boy broke free from Renata and leaped back onto Train's legs. Train swept him into his arms.
“See, he don't want to go,” Train said glumly. The men in the jeep laughed.
Stamps turned away and picked up his helmet, gear, rifle. Fuck it. Let Nokes handle it. He turned around just in time to see Nokes charge from Ludovico's house, on his face an odd mixture of disbelief and outrage. A thunderous round of artillery struck behind Ludovico's house, forcing Nokes to bend over for a moment; then he straightened again and stalked forward. Hector winced as he approached. Now the shit was really coming.
“Is this a joke?” Nokes said to Stamps.
“No,” Stamps said.
“The fucker's dead in there.”
“I know.”
“He's dead. How did he get dead?”
“Somebody killed him.”
“No fuckin' kiddin'! No
fuckin' kiddin'!
” Nokes was furious. “Didn't you put a man on him?”
“I had a man on him. The Italian partisâ”
“You had him and you fucked up, y'understand! You fucked up,
Sergeant
Stamps!”
Stamps silently fought the anger rising in his throat. It had taken him three years to earn those lieutenant's stripes. Three years of work. Gone in a blink. He could hear artillery and small-arms fire drawing closer. Big booms that shook the ground. He saw a grove of trees shorn off beyond Nokes's shoulder. Long-range eighty-eights at work. In a moment, German helmets would be peeking over the ridge. They were coming from the east, from above, after allâat least he had been right about that.
Birdsong said, “Sir, we gotta pull out.”
Nokes didn't hear. He didn't care. He backed off, hands on his hips. “Shit . . . Goddamn, sap-sucking, yellow-bellied, son of a bitch . . .” He was kicking at the snow. He seemed to have lost touch.
“Please, sir,” Birdsong said, “we gotta roll.”
“Okay, goddammit.” Nokes was panting now, staring at Ludovico's house, where the dead German lay. Finally, he climbed into the front of the lead jeep. To Stamps he said, “You're in trouble.”
Train stepped forward.
“Please, suh. I jus' . . . I just wanna explain something 'bout this child heah . . .”
Nokes undid the holster holding his service revolver. He said, “I'm gonna court-martial you, soldier. I gave you an order to load up.”
Train stood silently, still holding the boy, then slowly set the Italian youngster on the ground behind him and carefully placed his helmet on the boy's head. The child, with Train's helmet covering nearly half his face, peeked out at Nokes and the others from between the giant's knees.
Behind him, Birdsong heard the four soldiers in the rear jeep stirring. “Ain't no need to shoot the man over no child, sir. We can take him back to headquarters. We got room.”
“Yeah, ain't no problem to take the child, suh. Let's go, suh . . .”
Nokes glanced at them out of the corner of his eye. To Birdsong he said, “Lieutenant, take the kid.”
Birdsong jumped out of the lead jeep and approached Train slowly. “Don't make it tough on me, big fella.”
Train didn't move. “You bet' not come no closer.”
Birdsong lunged to grab the kid, and with one hand Train grabbed him by the neck and squeezed, lifting Birdsong into the air. Nokes yanked his carbine out of its holster, and as he did so, Bishop, standing behind him in front of the second jeep, flipped the catch off his M-1 and stuck it in Nokes's ribs.
The four soldiers in the second jeep watched in shock as Train held Birdsong high in the air by the neck. Stamps leaped on him, but Train's strength was too great. “For God's sake, put him down, Diesel,” Stamps begged. The four men in the rear jeep leaped out to help Stamps free Birdsong from Train's grip, but the giant's power was too mighty. He held Birdsong high, and for the first time, Ludovico, standing behind them, saw the truth, saw what he had spent a lifetime trying to imagine: He saw Train silhouetted against the Mountain of the Sleeping Man behind him, the smaller men uselessly grappling with him, dangling like flies as he shrugged them off with mountainous strength, and Ludovico knew then that he'd seen a miracle, that Ettora's spell had worked, that the Mountain of the Sleeping Man had awakened to wreak vengeance and to claim his true love, except his true love wasn't a fair damsel after all; it was this child of innocence, a child who had survived a massacre, a miracle boy who represented everything that every Italian held dear, the power to love, unconditionally, forever, to forgive, to live after the worst of atrocities, and, most of all, the power to believe in God's miracles. That this child of innocence had brought this American to them was an even greater miracle, for behind this giant would come many more Americans, all because the Negroes and the child had come to Bornacchi by mistake. But this was no mistake. The war was going to end, and they all would be free soon. Ludovico watched, awestruck and terrified, as Birdsong's feet dangled high above the ground, his face turning blue. Birdsong was pummeling Train with his fists, then his palms, then with slaps, until his strikes became weaker and weaker and his body began to sag. Only after several long moments did the five men manage to force Train to release his mighty gripâjust as the artillery around them began to thunder louder and machine-gun fire began to reach the town's outer walls.
The four men scrambled back into the rear jeep. Birdsong lay in the snow where he'd been dropped, grasping his neck and sucking air. “Christ!” he said. “What's wrong with you, man! The hell with you!”
Artillery was banging all around them now. The villagers who had returned to watch the event, frozen in terror, were backing away, fleeing. But Renata, Ludovico, and Ettora remained, transfixed, watching.
Bishop withdrew his rifle from Nokes's ribs, and the captain quickly holstered his revolver and leaped into the driver's seat of the lead jeep, starting the motor. Two men from the rear jeep leaped out and tossed Birdsong into the back of Nokes's jeep, then remounted their jeep. Nokes swung his jeep around. He pointed his finger at Bishop as if to say “You” but said nothing more, and roared off. The second jeep, holding the other four men, roared to life as well and swung around in a tight circle for Stamps and his men.
The shelling was hammering all around now, striking several houses. The Americans and the villagers could see the Germans' helmets mounting the top of the ridge above them to the east and then descending. The second jeep hesitated a moment, waiting for Stamps, Hector, Bishop, and Train to jump in. The soldiers yelled, “For Chrissake! C'mon!”
Stamps nodded to Bishop and Hector. “Y'all g'wan.” They didn't move.
Shelling had reached the other side of the village. It struck a house and then walked in their direction.
The second jeep roared off.
The four soldiers watched as the two jeeps, in single file, flew through the gate, forded the tiny creek in front of it, then hit the other side of the ridge, bouncing upward and churning up snow and mud as they headed across the western curve of the mountain. They saw the eighty-eight shells whizzing toward Nokes's jeep, which was in the lead, explode in front of it, pop behind it, then strike it dead on. The jeep exploded into a ball of flames as the second jeep veered around it, flipped on its side, and fell over the ridge, tumbling over, then exploding into a fireball.
It was as if they had never been there.
From the direction that Nokes had come, they could see the helmets of the Germans bobbing down the ridge. The artillery fire was hitting the houses and flying into the air like tiny flocks of birds, striking the stone houses and sending chunks of debris airborne into the piazza, the rocks and shrapnel striking the stone walls with loud pops. They could see the backs of the villagers who had fled over the rear wall of the village, the skirts of the women disappearing over the southern ridge, blowing in the winter wind like stray flowers.
Stamps tried to think. If they were surrounded, their best bet would be to get to a high point to fight the Germans off. The ridge above St. Anna's church was the highest point.
“Follow me,” he said.
The soldiers and the remaining Italians followed, save one. Ludovico turned to see Ettora standing alone in the piazza as shrapnel pinged around her and artillery shells whizzed by. He peeled off, leaving the others as they fled toward the rear wall, his old frame shuffling through the snow back to Ettora. “Come,” he cried.
Ettora shook her head. She was pasty-faced. She sat down in the snow.
“Please, come. Ettora, get up.”
She looked at him as she squatted on the ground in the snow, Indian fashion. “My eyes are not so good,” she said, “and I'm tired.”
She had cracked, Ludovico knew it. The St. Anna thing had done it. He decided to humor her. She could be stubborn. He knelt. “Your eyes are fine,” he said. “They look fine.” He wanted to say they looked beautiful but could not bring himself to say the words. He cursed himself. If he could not say it now, could he ever?
She smiled at him. She had always known what he felt. She knew him like a book. “My spell worked, didn't it?”
“Yes, it did. It worked.”
She laid her head against his arm as he crouched next to her. Only then, as she turned on her side slightly, did Ludovico see the blood oozing from her stomach, from around a large piece of shrapnel, its hot metal end still poking out.
From behind him, Hector, who was last, behind Stamps and the others, heard a howl, like a dog yelping. He turned to see Ludovico leaning over the old woman, the line of red from her stomach making a small trail in the snow. Renata saw it, too, and tried to run back. Stamps grabbed her, and she kicked and screamed at him. “Get him, Hector!” Stamps yelled.
Hector didn't want to go back. There were several Germans not a hundred yards off now. The village was in chaos, people running back and forth, smoke pouring out of houses, Germans kicking in windows on the other side of the village. He decided he wouldn't go. He'd had enough pain. He wanted to die with San Juan on his breath, dreaming of the beach at Christmas, the lights, his mother nearby, the smell of rice and beans in his nose. Hector Negron from Harlem was not going any fucking place. Hector Negron from Harlem was no hero. Fuck Stamps. Hector Negron was no soldier. Hector Negron was a boy who could barely read but could speak three languages by the time he was seventeen. How about that? Everything he did had error in it. He was a mistake, as his father used to say, a mistake that made more mistakes that were followed by still more mistakes. No mistake is going to be made unless my son Hector is involved, his papa used to say. At times he'd wanted to kill his father, the old bastard, and now, at the moment of his imminent death, Hector saw him, saw him bright as day, standing in front of him. It made him furious that his father, drunk as alwaysâdrunk from San Juan to Harlemâwould stand there screaming at him, telling him he was nothing but a shit, a dirtbag, scum, even at the moment of his death. Yet Hector did what he always did when he was a boy back home in San Juan. He ignored the drunken screaming, hoisted his father onto his back, and carried him home, as his mother had always instructed him to do. Only when he was clear of Bornacchi's wall did Hector realize that the screaming man he was carrying over his shoulder was Ludovico, and that his father, thank God, was nowhere to be found. He was already dead, long ago, back in America.