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Franco sloshes through muddy snow, looking back through dirt-gray branches in time to see the train crew leap into trackside weeds as the locomotive blares out of the tu
Renzo wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. “Of course!”
“But they’re Fascists! They’re—”
The air is compressed by two explosions in quick succession, then ripped by the screech of metal on metal. A shatteringly loud crash seems to go on forever. Across the ravine, Tullio Goletta gives the sign and thirty men in motley leave the trees to slide down a snow-covered slope. The trainmen call greetings to Renzo, and join the partisans in emptying the freight cars of their cargo.
Mouth open, Franco turns. Renzo’s eyes are mocking and mature, if slightly unfocused. “That’s why I’m the boss, and you’re the one who’s going to shut up and carry a box back to base.” Renzo waves to Tullio and pitches his voice to carry. “Anyone over there speak English?”
Tullio consults with the others. “Otello does, boss!”
“And I do, a little,” Schramm says.
“We’re going after that airdrop,” Renzo calls. “You’re with me, Tullio. Bring Otello and five or six others! You, too, Schramm. We may need a doctor.”
Roman candle. That’s the jump-school term for it. Occasionally chutes fail, and that’s what you look like, going down.
It seemed hours before Simon felt the welcome jerk of his own straps. He lost sight of Salvi’s all too rapid descent, rotating on the lines in time to see the Dakota itself crash into the mountainside. With tracers trying to find him, the long swaying float to earth seemed endless, even while the ground hurtled upward to meet him. He kept his elbows tucked and meant to roll, but thudded instead into snow, less than a minute after the Chicagoan gave Simon a shove into the frigid air.
Winded by the fall, he hears more explosions— two, three? Nearer this time. Expecting Germans at any moment, Simon tries to get out of his harness but can’t move. I’m paralyzed, he thinks. I didn’t roll, and I’ve broken my own silly neck!
In the next instant he realizes he can wiggle his toes. Crossing his eyes, he can focus on the snow just in front of him. He turns his head from side to side to clear a little airway in front of his nose. Kicks and presses and gouges with knees and elbows. Gains some space around himself, but makes no progress upward.
Not paralyzed then, but definitely immobilized.
Rest a bit, he decides.
The snow insulates him at first, but soon begins to drain his body heat away. Shivering, he tries again to dig out, swearing now, and scared. The activity makes him warmer briefly, but his muscles start to tense up. Fatigue sets in faster this time.
He rests, shuddering uncontrollably. His fingers and toes ache with cold. He tries again, digging like a demented terrier, but exhausts himself just to get his fingers up by his chest.
Astounded, he thinks, This is it then! Unless the Germans come and shoot me first, I’m going to freeze to death. Standing up. In a snowdrift. In Italy! I never even got to wear that bloody red beret.
He wishes he’d written to his mother. He wishes Major Salvi’s parachute had opened. He wishes it were spring, and that the snow would melt.
In a fit of determination, he grits his teeth and puts everything he’s got into last effort to free himself.
Don’t cry, he tells himself afterward. Just don’t cry.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Angelo stands still, one arm into a jacket that’s already too small. “To the privy. Really,” he says. “The explosions woke me up. I had to pee.”
“Look me in the eye,” Mirella orders. “Tell me you weren’t going to look for bullets.”
“Honest, Mamma. I have to pee.”
“All right,” she says, eyes narrow. “I’ll just wait right here until you’re done.”
He jams his feet into wooden-soled boots. “You never believe me,” he mutters, indignant at being caught.
Mirella sags onto a kitchen chair as her son clumps out to the privy. Oh, Angelo, she thinks, fighting nausea. What am I going to do with you?
Is it because he’s a boy, or because he’s nine? Is it the war, or is it just Angelo, needing a man’s hand? She wishes she had Lidia to advise her. She wishes Iacopo were here to take charge. She wishes she could sleep through the night.
The door bangs shut. She looks up. “Angelo, come here,” she says. He does, but he won’t let her put her arm around him. “Angelo, please! Try to understand! I’m all alone here—”
“No, you’re not! There’s Mariano and Tomasso and—”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it! It’s just you and me and the girls now. I have so much work to do, and I’m… I don’t feel well. I worry about Babbo, and if you make me worry, too, it’s just too much! I need you to be as grown up as you can be. You must look after the girls, and take care of me a little bit, too. Can you do that?”
Arms crossed against his chest, he shrugs, rolling his eyes but nodding. She tries to kiss him, but he squirms away and stomps up the stairs to the bedroom, ahead of his mother.
He and Stefania share a bed with Rosina to keep warm. Rosina’s asleep, but Stefania’s only pretending. She probably noticed when he got up to watch the airplane go by, and ratted him out to Mamma. Girls, he thinks, disgusted.
His mother stands in the bedroom doorway until Angelo undresses and gets back into bed. He waits, listening to the hallway floor creak under his mother’s footsteps, until her door closes. Then he pinches Stefania really hard, like Bruno Ceretto taught him. Stefania squawks, and he covers her mouth with his hand. “Nobody likes a rat, Stefania. You snitch on me again, I’ll cut your hair off.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“I’ll wait till you’re asleep and cut it off until you’re bald.”
“You’ll get spanked,” she warns.
“You’ll be bald a lot longer than my culo will hurt.” He pulls his pants back on, drags two sweaters over his head, opens the window, and tosses his boots out. Won’t be the first time he’s climbed down the vines. Throwing a leg over the sill, he fixes Stefania with a stare. “Rat on me again, and you’ll be sorry, baldie.”
The starlight’s all blue, but when your eyes are used to it, you can see real easy because the snow sort of shines. And anyway the parachutes are easy to spot. The camouflage is all wrong— black, green, and brown against the white. Course, they didn’t expect to get shot down. They probably figured they’d be past the mountains when they jumped.
Germans look for airdrops, but Angelo’s not scared of them. They don’t like coming into the mountains at night anymore, so they walk real slow, and won’t get here for a while. Dead bodies don’t scare him either. They did when he was little, but not anymore, not after that one Bruno Ceretto found. It must have been a partisan, because he wasn’t wearing a real uniform. He died near the orphanage, and Bruno found the body when the sisters sent everybody out to look for mushrooms and bird eggs and ruculo to eat. He told Angelo, and they snuck back out that night to see it. There were flies and worms, and no eyes, and it really stank.
“Get his bullets!” Bruno said, shoving Angelo.
“I’m not touching him! You can get a disease!”
“You baby. I bet you made it up about that lady’s head in a bucket!”
“Did not!” Scrunching up his face, Angelo waved at the flies, put his hand way out, and picked a bullet out of the dead guy’s cartridge belt with the tips of two fingers. He jumped back and Bruno laughed, but Angelo had the bullet, heavy and cold and important, in his palm.
Bruno snatched it. “Watch! You take the lead out like this, see?” He pried the pointy part out of the brass case with a penknife he took off a littler kid. “Then you pour the gunpowder into little piles on a flat rock. Like volcanoes, see?”
When you hit the volcanoes with another rock, they explode. The kids on the farm think Angelo made that up, but it’s true, so he’s going to get some bullets and show them.