Blood Alone: A Billy Boyle World War II Mystey

by James R Benn

  "I guess that makes me your first patient as a civilian," I said, following him into his tent.

  "Yes, Lieutenant Boyle, perhaps it does. I am sorry I will not be able to see you again, as yours is a most interesting case." He began to stuff a few items of clothing into a knapsack, pausing to inspect a shirt that was covered with stains where it wasn't replete with gaping holes. He dropped it to the ground and put on his knapsack. Collecting a canteen of water and his khaki bustina, the soft wool cap the Italians wore, he looked at me as if I were a houseguest who couldn't take a hint.

  "I have a jeep," I said. "I can drive you part of the way."

  "That is very kind, but I do not think so. Not far from here, being with an American will make me a target. Alone and on foot, I can avoid the tedeschi. I know the hills and back roads. Please excuse me."

  He hung the canteen from his shoulder and pulled his bustina on, angling by me sideways to get out of the tent. I couldn't blame him for wanting to steer clear of the Germans. I scurried after him, knowing I needed a local to help me figure things out but also aware that the last one who had helped me had been rewarded with a mouthful of sand for his troubles.

  "Just up to the main road then," I said, feeling like a high-school kid asking to walk a girl home. He nodded his acceptance and I led him to the jeep, cutting across the rocky slope, directly above the tents and enclosures on the beach.

  Below us, landing craft picked up Italian POWs while the lucky Sicilians among them trudged away in the opposite direction, toward their homes. As we sat in the jeep I remembered the odd note I'd been carrying around.

  I gave it to Sciafani. "Does this mean anything to you?" I asked him.

  "'To find happiness, you must twice pass through purgatory,'" he read. "Yes, I have heard this. Why ?"

  "It has something to do with where I was when Roberto found me, I think."

  "Then you were some distance away, my friend," Sciafani said. "In Agrigento, perhaps 130 kilometers east of here."

  I started to ask him how he'd reached that conclusion when two jeeps full of MPs raced down the road and braked in front of the tent where I'd been. They were in such a rush they didn't notice the vehicle park or the jeep. The two MPs who'd been eating K rations came out to meet them and they all looked at some papers while one MP pointed up the path I'd taken to the Italian aid station. They took off at a trot, an officer, his hand on the .45 in his holster, leading the way. The MPs behind him carried Thompsons and carbines.

  "Must be a dangerous war criminal up there," I said as I started the engine, put it in reverse, and backed up the road as quietly as I could. When I was out of their sight I turned hard and floored it, kicking gravel out from the rear tires and praying more reinforcements weren't headed for me.

  "Yes, Lieutenant Boyle, if that is who you really are. Perhaps he is a very dangerous man."

  Sciafani hung on as the jeep bounced over the ruts up to the junction with the main road. I didn't want to lose any time getting away from the MPs, and I wasn't slowing down enough to let him jump out.

  Then I saw the truck blocking the road ahead. They'd sealed it off when they came to look for me. Two guys in nondescript khaki leaned against a Dodge WC-52 Weapons Carrier parked sideways across both lanes. On either side rocks and cacti blocked escape. I slowed and wondered if I could make it out of there on foot. We came closer, and I saw the two men more clearly. They were lounging against the truck as if they were casually waiting for someone who was late for an appointment. One of them was smoking and for a change no guns were pointed at me. It didn't make sense. Then it did. One of the men was Kaz. I pulled to a stop within a few feet of him and couldn't keep myself from smiling. He looked grim, which was unusual. The scar that split his face from the corner of one eye down to his chin didn't tend to make him look cheery, but his usual expression was carefree, or at worst nonchalant. I knew it was a pretense that pleased him, and that the look on his face now was a truer reflection of his heavy heart.

  "Kaz," I said, leaning over the steering wheel. He was my friend, and I was glad to have met up with him. He was only person I could trust to believe me and not turn me in.

  "Who is this?" Kaz pointed at Sciafani, his eyes still on me.

  "I am Dottore Enrico Sciafani, late of the Italian Army. I have my parole papers."

  "Lei e siciliano?" Kaz asked.

  "Si, sono siciliano."

  "All right, both of you in the back of the truck. Banville will take the jeep," Kaz said in sharp, clipped tones.

  I had questions, plenty of them, but hearing the snarl of engines behind us I decided they could wait. Kaz took Sciafani by the elbow and hurried him along. The man he called Banville took my place at the wheel of the jeep, eyeing me strangely as we passed, but there was no time to wonder if I knew him. I thought I might, but it was like seeing somebody who resembled someone you knew, yet not closely enough for you to feel OK about clapping him on the shoulder and telling him it had been too long. Banville wore crumpled, faded British naval khakis and a weather-beaten white naval cap with threadbare gold braid. Unshaven, with a huge knife and a revolver on his belt, he looked piratical.

  "Hurry," was all Kaz said as he hustled me into the back of the truck. Kaz was a slight guy, thin and reedy, and wore steel-rimmed spectacles that he really needed. But he wasn't afraid to use a pistol for close work, that much I remembered from North Africa. He'd gotten me out of a jam in Algiers. I recalled a Vichy French jailer tumbling down the stairs and Kaz strolling into the cell block with a ring of keys in one hand and a smoking Webley revolver in the other. He'd been smiling then, but today the expression on his scarred face was grim.

  Canvas covered the rear of the truck, a small three-quarter-ton job that was handy for transporting weapons or a few men tightly packed. It was bigger than a jeep, but not by a lot. What it did have going for it was that no one could see me, and that Kaz had stashed gear, weapons, food, and water in the back. I lifted aside the canvas flap and saw Banville following us in the stolen jeep, far enough back not to be choked on our dust. Banville. That name was familiar. I did know him. A British sailor. From where?

  As we rounded a curve I noted a group of tents with aerials thrusting toward the sky, protected from overhead view by camouflage netting stretched between palm trees. Wire ran up one tree and across the road. I wondered if Lieutenant Andrews--Rocko's pal--was in there, working on a German dialer, whatever the hell that was. And if he'd taken a walk down to Capo Soprano last night with a sharp knife. And Charlotte? The voice in Rocko's tent had mentioned a girl. What was a girl named Charlotte doing mixed up in this?

  "They are friends of yours, these English?" Sciafani asked from the bench opposite, jolting me from my thoughts.

  "Yeah, yeah, I know them. Kaz is Polish, though."

  "Ah, the Poles," Sciafani said. "As unfortunate in their geography as we Sicilians. Destined to be overrun by armies from the east and west, just as the Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Moors, and Normans have conquered us. They have all come here, but only the siciliano remains."

  I barely heard Sciafani's history lecture. I was remembering what I hadn't wanted to remember about Kaz. His scar. And Daphne Seaton, who had loved him and had been my friend. Daphne, who'd been murdered to keep her silent, a car explosion immolating her and ripping Kaz's face and heart. I remembered my resolve to keep Kaz busy, to keep him from blowing his brains out. Based on the look on his face I realized I hadn't been doing my job. Kaz liked to be amused, and he had often said that working with me made him interested in what tomorrow might bring. Now he didn't look much amused at the prospect of today, much less tomorrow.

  Something else ate at my gut, but I couldn't tell what it was. I knew that I hadn't remembered everything yet. Daphne had been killed, Kaz badly injured, and when he'd returned to duty he'd become a killer who took chances with his life. I didn't want to think about what else there might be. I rested my head in my hands and tried to quiet the rage in my mind as the unfairness
of Daphne's death and Kaz's loss overwhelmed all other thoughts.

  Daphne and Banville. There was more, about them both. What ?

  "Lieutenant Boyle, are you weeping?" Sciafani asked.

  I didn't realize I was until I looked down at the floorboards and saw tiny drops, fading in the heat and vanishing as quickly as they appeared.

  CHAPTER * TEN

  WE DROVE FOR NEARLY an hour, mostly at a crawl, in the midst of a convoy of trucks and tanks. I tied back the rear canvas flaps for some air, but loosely so they gave us shade and cover from prying eyes. We passed an artillery unit, the short barrels of their 75mm pack howitzers sticking out beneath camouflage netting. Dappled shade cut across the backs of the crewmen kneeling to fire and feed new shells into the smoking breech as each empty casing was rapidly cast aside. The roar of cannon fire was followed by dull crumps on a far hillside where brown dirt puffed into tiny explosions that looked harmless at this distance. But I knew there were small red-hot shards of metal flying through the air, rending flesh wherever they encountered it. Sciafani sat with his head in his hands, and I knew he too was thinking about the men on the ground, his comrades of yesterday, still suffering today. Perhaps he couldn't bear to watch, with his parole in his pocket and thoughts of safety, home, and a life to be lived vying with his sense of duty. The war had made it possible for me to think and believe entirely contradictory things. I knew I wanted nothing more than to go home, and yet I was willingly being carried to the front lines, the only place I would find what I was missing, what I needed to feel whole again, to understand what home really meant.

  The sound of artillery fire faded as we drove. I put it out of my mind because to think too much about what we were doing to the enemy did no good at all. The same kind of bombardment could land on me tomorrow, so it was best not to imagine the results or think too deeply about it. Shrapnel didn't care about the color of the uniform it shredded.

  Occasional rifle fire rippled across the landscape, but it was impossible to tell if it was from the side, front, or rear. A few quick pop pop pops and a burst of machine-gun fire here and there--the sounds of tentative skirmishes rather than a full-scale battle. Traffic slowly thinned out, vehicles taking turns or pulling over and stopping to disgorge GIs in fresh uniforms, their clean shirts and full packs marking them as replacements for units chewed up since the landings.

  We drove a while through silent, gently rolling farmland, the soil almost black where it had been recently turned. Kaz took a side road, little more than a dirt track, and pulled over. Banville pulled the jeep off the road and into a field of ripe grain. The stalks fell away from us, the wind from the sea carrying the faint smell of salt as it brushed our backs. Banville took a gas can from the back of the jeep and sprinkled gasoline over it, then lit a match and tossed it into the backseat. A soft thurmp and flames burst over the vehicle, shimmering in the hot air, red-yellow brightness quickly dulled by black smoke from burning rubber.

  Banville got up front with Kaz and we drove off, leaving the harsh sound of an exploding fuel tank behind, the smell of gas and rubber trailing us. Sciafani looked at me. But I was a stranger here myself. Or maybe not. The burning wreck disappeared as we turned a corner. There was something familiar about Banville and fire. I wondered what it was. Thinking about fire caused a pounding in my chest, so I tried not to dwell on it.

  We drove on, the road winding and rising as we passed more farmland. Grain was everywhere, ready to harvest, but farmers were scarce. So were farmhouses, for that matter. We drove through one small village that could've passed for a heap of stones if it wasn't for the blue daisies neatly bordering small vegetable gardens. The houses were squat and square, built from white-gray rock that looked like it had been bleached in the sun for a hundred years. A woman dressed in black, squat and square as her house, fed an outdoor oven from a stack of firewood. The oven, made from the same stone but blackened by smoke, looked like a charred entrance to the underworld.

  "She makes the bread di campagna," Sciafani said. "They cook outside to keep the house cool."

  "They?" I asked.

  "The peasants," he said.

  "So I guess your mother cooks inside the house then?"

  "It depends upon which house. But never mind about my mother. Tell me where we are going."

  "Sorry, Dottore, but all I know is that Kaz can be trusted."

  "Is he a relation of yours?"

  "No," I said. "He's Polish, I'm Irish."

  "You have known each other for a long time?"

  "No," I said, "about a year."

  "A year? Then he is a staniero to you. As you are to me. A stranger. You cannot know a man well enough to trust him if he is not a relation, or if you have not known him since you were both bambini." "You wouldn't trust anyone except a blood relation or childhood friend?"

  "Why should I?" He looked at me, his dark eyes steady as the truck rumbled over the dirt track.

  "Because you have to, when there's no one else. Kaz and I have gone through a lot together, maybe a lifetime in that year."

  "Yes, perhaps," he said. "Perhaps.Was the vehicle stolen?"

  I was surprised by his sudden shift in conversation, and wondered if his command of English was all it seemed. "It was," I said.

  "Then he is a smart friend, at least. He speaks Italian like a Tuscan, but, still, he is smart."

  "I think he studied in Florence before the war."

  "Ah, yes, that would explain it," Sciafani said, as if bemoaning a sad but inescapable fate.

  I lifted the canvas side of the truck and stuck my head out. The ground had changed from gently rolling fields to steeper hills and deep gullies. No entrenchments, supply dumps, or burned buildings marred this landscape. It was oddly quiet, and I realized how accustomed I had become to the sounds of an army at war: the echoes of fighting as well as the rear-area noise of machinery, engines, shovels, shouts, and curses. Here, it was calm and peaceful, and that worried me. Kaz slowed as the road narrowed where a small stone bridge crossed a stream. Beyond the stream he turned onto an even smaller path, lined with lemon trees, their yellow fruit ripening in the sun. On either side were fields of purple cauliflower, their huge heads looking ready for market. Bushy green trees flourished along the streambed. More color surrounded me here than anywhere I had seen before on this island.

  "Now you begin to see the real Sicily," Sciafani said.

  The truck slowed to a crawl as Kaz turned a corner, halting in front of a stone barn, its double wooden doors swung wide open. An elderly Italian man, wisps of white hair flying out from under his cap, hobbled out, hitching his suspenders up over a worn gray collarless shirt that might once have been as white as his whiskers. He nodded to Kaz, who spoke to him in Italian, with his Tuscan accent.

  "He asks if anyone has been here. The old man says no, not since last night, and asks if he brought the American cigarettes," Sciafani said, translating the exchange.

  Apparently Kaz had, so the old man motioned him to drive the truck into the barn. As we got out, the old man stopped short when he saw Sciafani in his Italian Army uniform. He pointed at him and spouted off at Kaz, but Sciafani interrupted him. All I understood was siciliano, siciliano, which seemed to do the trick and calmed the fellow down. Sciafani introduced himself, not mentioning his discarded rank.

  "Dottore Enrico Sciafani," he said somewhat formally, straightening up as he did so. The old man removed his cap and murmured what sounded like apologies.

  "Mi chiamo Filipo Ciccolo, Signore," he added with a bit of a bow as he backpedaled and stuck his cap back on. Kaz handed him four cartons of Lucky Strikes, which he took and hid under a tarpaulin.

  "Filipo did not wish to have a Fascist under his roof," Sciafani explained. "I assured him that as a Sicilian neither would I."

  It made sense, as far as it went. I had been told that Sicilians were not too fond of Mussolini and his Fascists. But there was something about old Filipo's reaction to Sciafani that interested me. It was as if h
e acknowledged him, respected him, and maybe feared him. And now, for the first time, I noticed that the truck we'd been riding in didn't have the regular army paint job. No white star, no serial numbers or unit designations were stenciled on it. It wasn't even army green, more of a nondescript tan color. At a distance, covered in dust, it might pass for any small truck in any army.

  "It's like my jacket," I said to no one in particular.

  "Exactly," Kaz said.

  We filed out of the barn, Filipo shutting the double doors behind us. Kaz led us around the back to a house made of the same stone as the barn. It was larger than the ones I'd seen in the village, but still square, with thin slits for windows. A small patch of peas and beans stood outside a side door, surrounded by more of the familiar blue daisies. A grove of orange trees, growing near the stream, shaded the front of the house.

  "We will stay here for the night," Kaz said as he stood in the doorway.

  Above the door frame, a little niche had been carved out of the wall. A ceramic tile bearing the image of the Virgin Mary was surrounded by cut flowers, a small candle flickering in front of it. Framed in the dark doorway, with the religious symbols floating above his head, Kaz looked menacing, a small but dangerous holy warrior.

  "Dottore," he added, "I believe you would find civilian clothes more to your liking?"

  "Certainly," Sciafani answered.

  "For now, we must insist on your company, Dottore. May I have your word you will accept our hospitality, or will it be necessary to impose it upon you?"

  Kaz had a way with words. No one else I knew could tell a guy he was still a prisoner and have it come out so nicely.

  "You have my word, for now."

  "Good. It will make for a much more pleasant evening," Kaz said, walking into the house under the Virgin's gaze as the candle sputtered out in a sudden, sharp breeze.