Miracle at St. Anna

by James McBride

  “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 hurt—it 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 army—though 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.”

  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”—he pointed to the three soldiers—“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 giant—of whom several had heard but few had seen—carrying 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 were—for none of them knew—gradually 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 t
o 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.