Street Boys

by Lorenzo Carcaterra

  “Togliati da mezzo ragazzi,” Dante said from his seat in the rear. “Move out of the way. He’s an American. Here to help us.”

  “Are these two part of your outfit?” Connors asked, keeping his eyes on the smiling boy.

  “Yes,” Gaspare said. “The big one is Roberto. He doesn’t trust anyone, not even us, and we are his best friends.”

  “The other one is Fabrizio,” Dante said. “He likes everybody. He loves to play football and is very good at it. He not only looks like a little German, he plays like one, too. He may one day have a chance to play for Team Naples.”

  “If there ever is a Team Naples again,” Claudio said.

  Connors jumped from the jeep and stretched out his back and arms. “I didn’t even know they played football in Italy,” he said. “I always thought it was an American sport.”

  “It is all we play in Italy,” Pepe said. “It is the national sport. Every city has a team and from there the best players are picked to represent Italy against all other countries.”

  “You ever played against a team from America?” Connors asked.

  “We have never seen a team from America,” Gaspare said. “But if there is one, Italy can beat it. You may be better at winning wars, but you can never beat an Italian in football.”

  “You talking about college ball or professional?” Connors asked, watching as Fabrizio’s gaze moved from him to the mastiff, now standing by his side.

  “Here, in Italy, a boy plays football from the day he takes his first step,” Dante said. “We don’t need someone to teach us or show us how. It’s just something we all know how to do.”

  “And he’s the best player in your group?” Connors asked, pointing at Fabrizio as he walked toward him.

  “No one is better,” Claudio said. “He can control the ball and the field. And when he runs, he is like a bird, impossible for anyone to catch.”

  “That sounds to me like one helluva football player,” Connors said, standing across from Fabrizio. “Are you as good as your friends say?”

  Fabrizio nodded, eyes shifting from the American to the mastiff and back. “Maybe one day we can play a game,” he said in a soft voice.

  “That would be fun,” Connors said. “All we would need is a little time and a nice place to play. And one of you would need to bring a football.”

  The boys in the jeep all laughed, while Fabrizio lowered his head and giggled. “The sun has played a trucco on your eyes, American,” Gaspare said. “The football is right in front of you. There, under Fabrizio’s foot.”

  Fabrizio flipped the round white ball from his foot to his knee and then with his arms spread out, bounced the ball from one leg to the other, his eyes fixed on the bullmastiff, the smile glued to his handsome face. He then lifted the ball skyward with the front of his foot, bouncing it from his forehead to his upper thigh, keeping up the rhythmic beat without ever losing his balance. Connors took a step back and removed his helmet. “He’s pretty good,” he said to the boys behind him. “With a beach ball. How good he is with a football is a whole other question.”

  “What are you saying, American?” Dante asked. He jumped out of the rear seat of the jeep, caught the ball off Fabrizio’s forehead and shoved it at Connors. “This is not a beach ball. It’s a football.”

  “That’s not like any football I’ve ever seen,” Connors said, shaking his head. “Maybe what you guys play over here is a whole lot different from what we play back home. You wear pads and helmets when you play?”

  “Cose sono pads?” Fabrizio asked.

  “They protect your shoulders and legs,” Connors said.

  “From what?” Dante asked, flipping the ball back to Fabrizio, who caught it with the flat of his knee and resumed his bouncing routine.

  “So you don’t get hurt when you block on the line or tackle a player coming at you on either a run or a pass,” Connors said. “It prevents a lot of injuries.”

  “In football, speed is all you need to stay safe,” Gaspare said. “These other things you talk about can only slow a player down.”

  “What do you like about the football you play, American?” Fabrizio asked, resting the ball against the side of his ankle.

  Connors placed a boot on the bumper of the jeep and pulled a cigarette from the front pocket of his uniform. “I like that we play it in the fall,” he said, lighting the cigarette and exhaling a drag, thin puffs of smoke clouding his face. “When the weather turns cold and the wind blows down heavy from the hills. I like the smell of the air and the feel of the breeze. I like running on hard ground, the ball held inside my arm, the other fellas rushing in to tackle me and keep me from getting too many yards. In lots of ways, it’s not so much the game itself for me. I like baseball a lot more and I’m much better at that. But I love the time of year football is played. People back home always seem happier in the fall, holidays closing in, days getting shorter, sitting around warm fires at night, close to your family, your friends. When you’re in the middle of it, you think you have nothing but a lifetime filled with days and nights like that to look forward to. Then a war comes along, shoves you in places you’ve never been before and you wonder if you’ll ever see another fall like the ones you remember.”

  The boys moved around the sides of the jeep, their feet kicking at dirt and rocks, their heads bowed, an uneasy silence warming its way into their happy moods. “In Italy, football is played every day, no matter what month, no matter the weather,” Dante said. “But for all the boys here, the best day to play was Sunday. After mass and before the big family meal.”

  “All the squares in the city and all the parks would be filled with people watching their children playing football,” Gaspare said. “Our mothers would pack baskets with fruit and cheese and wine. Our fathers would stand off together, cheering us on, smoking cigarettes, laughing and talking with their friends.”

  “The city was so alive, so happy,” Claudio said. “I’d look away from the game and find my mother and father in the crowd, always with smiles on their faces. It was everyone’s happiest day.”

  “Now Sunday is just another day,” Pepe said.

  “Have you ever lost anyone, American?” Dante asked Connors. “Someone close to you?”

  “Not the way all of you have,” Connors said, shaking his head. “The war hasn’t cost me family. The people back home have died the way they were meant to die. But you get close to people when you’re in the army, go through training with them, travel across an ocean together, fight a few battles next to one another. Then one day a bullet lands or a bomb explodes and those friends are gone. You have that happen enough times, you pull away. You learn that war isn’t the best time to go looking for a new batch of friends.”

  Fabrizio stepped up to Connors and tugged at the back of his shirt. “I will be your friend,” he said to him. “And to your dog, too.”

  Connors smiled and kneeled down in front of Fabrizio. He picked up the football and held it in his hands. “He’s not my dog,” Connors said, inching his head toward the bullmastiff. “We just travel together. But I think having you as a friend is something we both would like.”

  “And I will teach you to play football,” Fabrizio said, taking the ball back from Connors. “I will make you the best American player in Naples.”

  “Then something good might come out of this war after all,” Connors said, rubbing the top of Fabrizio’s head. He glanced over at Roberto. The boy had kept his head down and his eyes to the ground since Connors first pulled up and had yet to speak a word. “What about you?” he asked. “You going to try and make a football player out of me, too?”

  “He doesn’t speak,” Dante said. “He listens, but never says a word.”

  “He used to talk all the time,” Claudio said. “There were days when we wished he wouldn’t talk. But those days are in the past.”

  “Why won’t he talk?” Connors asked.

  “His father was anti-Mussolini,” Pepe said. “So was most of his family.
When the Nazis first came into Naples, the Fascists pointed them out. They were branded as traitors to the cause.”

  “The next day the Nazis went into their home,” Dante said. “Waited until the middle of the night to do it. Woke them from their sleep and killed everyone in the family. All except for Roberto. They left him alone, surrounded by the bodies of his mother, father, grandmother and two sisters. Pepe’s father found him there early that morning. From that day to this, he has not made a sound.”

  “We look out for him,” Fabrizio said, putting a hand on the taller boy’s shoulder. “He is our friend. Just like you.”

  Connors put out a hand to touch the boy, thought better of it and then turned and jumped back behind the wheel of the jeep. “Pile in, all of you,” he said in a low voice. “I think it’s time I got a good look at the rest of your squad.”

  18

  CASTEL DELL’OVO, NAPLES

  SEPTEMBER 26, 1943

  The wood fires, spread out across the long stone entrance, lit up the cloudless sky. Off in a corner, standing on centuries-old steps, their backs to the sea, three boys sang the words to “Guarda Un Po.” Along the farthest side of the castle walkway, stretched out across the length of the path, handguns, rifles and starter’s pistols lay in one long row, drying from the heat of the fires and a warm night. Well over a hundred boys and girls were scattered across the open space, sitting around the four full fires, each eating a long meal of fresh fish grilled on wooden sticks and drinking from bottles of wine brought up from the castle basement.

  “It’s nice to see smiles on their faces again,” Nunzia said. She was sitting across from the main fire in the center of the road leading to the castle, a tin cup filled with red wine by her feet, looking at the cluster of boys stretched out around her. “At least for one night.”

  “A smile goes hand in hand with a stomach full of food,” Franco said. “It’s been a while since many of them have had both.”

  “How soon you think before the guns are ready?” Vincenzo asked. He was resting across the cobblestones, his arms folded behind his head, legs crossed.

  “Maldini said they should be dry by morning,” Franco said. “Then they’ll need to be cleaned. If we could find some oil to coat them, it would be even better.”

  Nunzia looked across the square, at three boys struggling with a wheelbarrow filled with an unexploded bomb. Beyond them, two younger boys bounced a small black ball against the side of a brick wall.

  She saw the jeep swing its headlights into the piazza and come to a sharp halt in front of a statue. She watched the soldier get out, a large dog following close behind, and walk into the center of the square, staring out at all the activity around him. He turned to look toward her, their bodies separated by distance and a large bonfire, their eyes meeting for a brief instant.

  “The Americans have finally arrived,” Nunzia said in a calm voice. “At least one of them.”

  Connors and the mastiff slowly weaved their way past the scattered children. Their quiet murmurs and soulful singing echoing off the large, barren castle walls, the fires crackling and sparkling high into the air.

  Connors stepped over two sleeping boys and turned past the edge of a fire when he saw an older man walking toward him, a small glass in his right hand. “You in charge here?” Connors asked, stepping in the man’s path.

  The old man shrugged. “They don’t even trust me to make coffee,” Maldini said.

  “Then who?” Connors asked.

  Maldini downed the remainder of his drink, wiped his lips with the palm of his right hand and then turned toward the edge of the pier. “The boy in the long-sleeve shirt,” he said.

  Connors looked past the blaze of flames and down toward the darker end of the pier. “The one next to the girl?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Maldini said.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Connors asked. “He’s only a kid. Where are the others?”

  “What others?” Maldini asked, walking with Connors now toward Vincenzo and Nunzia.

  “Anyone else,” Connors said. He glanced down at a group of kids drying wet guns and rifles with torn rags. “Resistance fighters. American soldiers. You can’t be the only adult here.”

  “My daughter would give you an argument about how much of an adult I am,” Maldini said. “But I’m the only one here old enough to join an army.”

  “And what’s going on with all this?” Connors said, pointing at the kids with the guns and another group wheeling a bomb inside the castle walls. “What’re all the guns and bombs for?”

  “They’re getting ready,” Maldini said.

  “Ready for what?” Connors asked.

  “They think the Nazis might be coming back to Naples,” Maldini said.

  “They probably are,” Connors said. “What’s it to these kids?”

  “They’re going to fight them.”

  Connors stopped, turned and stared at Maldini. He held the look for several seconds and then smiled. “That’s great,” he said. “No really. It’s a great idea. I don’t know who came up with it, you or the kid, but I wish I had thought of it. In the meantime, I don’t suppose you found a radio while you were digging up all these rifles and bombs. The one I got is pretty banged up.”

  “No,” Maldini said, glancing over Connors’s shoulder and watching Vincenzo, Franco, Nunzia and Angela come toward them. “There aren’t any radios in Naples.”

  “I have to get word to my command,” Connors said. “See if I can get some trucks sent down here and get these kids out.”

  Connors pulled out a crinkled pack of cigarettes and offered one to Maldini who shook his head. “I have enough bad habits,” he said.

  “How do you fit into this?” Connors asked. “Or you just somebody else that’s eager to die.”

  “You know me so well and we only just met,” Maldini said with a chuckle. “I was drafted, just like you. Except I didn’t get a uniform with a fancy patch on the sleeve.”

  “You even try to talk them out of it?” Connors asked.

  “I no longer try to tell people what to do or what to believe,” Maldini said.

  “Our decision was made before you got here,” Vincenzo said, standing behind Connors. “And it won’t change, even after you leave.”

  Connors tossed his cigarette into the fire and turned toward the boy. He glanced over at Nunzia and then focused his attention on Vincenzo. He caught the boy staring at the Thunderbird patch on his sleeve. “We need to talk,” Connors said to him. “Just you and me. Quiet and alone.”

  “We can talk here,” Vincenzo said.

  “Yes, we could,” Connors said, “but we’re not.” He grabbed the boy by the arm and lead him away from the fire toward the darkness of the silent castle.

  They were in an entryway lit by two hanging torches. Connors was pacing, his boots echoing off the stone steps. Vincenzo stood with his back against the cold wall. “Here’s how it’s going to work,” Connors said. “First thing in the morning, you round these kids up and get them to follow me out of the city. If that doesn’t happen, then you and me got ourselves a serious problem.”

  “What will you do?” Vincenzo asked. “Shoot me if I don’t do as you say?”

  “I just might,” Connors said.

  “This is our fight,” Vincenzo said. “Not yours.”

  “What makes you so sure there’s even going to be a fight?” Connors asked. “That the Nazis are heading back into the city?”

  “Every night their planes dropped leaflets down on us along with the bombs,” Vincenzo said. “Told us that tanks would be coming in after the air raids ended, to destroy what was left of the city.”

  “If that’s true, then it’s all the more reason to get these kids out of here now,” Connors said.

  “Everyone we ever trusted has betrayed us,” Vincenzo said. “Everyone we believed has lied. Your words don’t mean anything to me or to those outside. You’re just another uniform marching through the city.”

  “Yo
u got a chance to save those kids,” Connors said. “Instead, you’re going to let them stay here and, if the Nazis do show up, watch them die.”

  “What difference does it make where we die?” Vincenzo asked. “In the city fighting or on the road running?”

  “The Nazis come back in here, they’re not gonna see kids,” Connors said. “They’ll see targets. Treat you no different than they would me.”

  “They’ve treated us in worse ways,” Vincenzo said. “They haven’t killed your family. They haven’t blown up your home. They haven’t burned your city.”

  “I can’t let you or these kids be left here to die,” Connors said. “You have to understand that.”

  “You have no choice, American,” Vincenzo said. “And you have to understand that.”

  19

  GRAND BALLROOM, VILLA PIGNATELLI, NAPLES

  SEPTEMBER 26, 1943

  Carlo Petroni lit a hand-rolled cigarette, wooden speckles mixed in with stale tobacco, and looked around at the barren ornate ballroom that was often used by the Fascist high command as a place to convene meetings. The villa was once the site of the finest gardens on the Italian coast, designed by the great Giovanni Bechi himself. Now the grounds lay scorched, lush green lawns and rose beds turned brown by the constant aerial attacks. Petroni looked away from the flowered patterns lining the walls and turned to the curious faces that surrounded him. He was eighteen and a convicted felon, sentenced by an Italian court to two years in the boys’ prison at Saint Enfermo. He had been a street orphan long before the first bombs fell on Naples, left to fend for himself since early childhood, abandoned by both parents and family. He was in charge of a small team of thieves who ate the food they stole and sold their pilfered goods through the black market. Petroni was tall and muscular, dark hair nearly shoulder-length. He had a small scar below his lower lip and a much longer one running down the length of his right arm. His war had not been against the Nazis or the Fascists, but had been fought instead on a daily basis inside the brutal walls of a prison without rules. Each day was a quest for survival, warding off surprise attacks from vengeful and frustrated guards and other inmates eager to get a grip on his access to the black marketers working the alleys and dark rooms of Naples.