Tuscany

by Matthew Thayer

  “Jones, how are you still alive? I witnessed your fall, saw you dead on the rocks. Lorenzo’s top captain confirmed your demise. His men threw your body to the sharks. There were many that night.”

  “I shoulda died. Helmet saved me. Protected me in the fall, then in the water. Kept my head warm and afloat, face turned toward the stars. Maybe it repelled the sharks. Don’t remember anything about them. Woke up floating with the current. Brain roasting and body freezing. Current carried me into an inlet, dropped me on the rocks. Hardest thing I ever did was crawl out of the surf. Back was fucked up, man. Broken.

  “Couldn’t get a fire lit. Sure I was gonna die. Outta nowhere, old man’s dog trots out of the trees with a rabbit in her mouth. No lie.”

  Jones described how the dog stuck with him as he spent more than six weeks of winter nursing his back. When he was strong enough to walk, he followed our faint trail all the way to Tuscany.

  “Know what happened to my atlatl launcher? Made this one. Poor substitute.”

  “Lorenzo grew tired of it when the skill eluded him. His troops also never mastered the technique. It may have been saved, or dropped along the trail. There is only one way to know. Search. Perhaps you will find it around here some place.”

  “How’d you end up on the cross?”

  A simple answer eluded me. However accurate it was, “Because Lorenzo was a lunatic,” did not begin to explain the odyssey which ended in crucifixion. I told him of Lorenzo’s increasingly bizarre connection to the Christian religion, how he interpreted it to fit his own neurosis and desires.

  “I was aware for months that my destiny lay upon the cross. I was too weak, and then too afraid, to escape. I will also admit to you there were times when I truly wondered if Lorenzo did have some sort of connection with the Supreme Being. Some of the events which transpired, such as the fire and finding the master sergeant’s kayak, they made me wonder. Perhaps part of me thought being a charter member of heaven wouldn’t be such a bad deal.

  “The longer we traveled, however, and the more I witnessed the Great Lord-enzo’s excessive, violent ways, I knew it was a false god he worshipped. Lorenzo’s god was in and of his own mind. My survival became a game of poker, one in which Lorenzo was dealt four aces. I played my cards as skillfully as I could, cowering and coddling his ego. When it came time for the final play, I ended up tied to the cross, rather than nailed. And I wore a suit which could keep me alive indefinitely–as long as my helpers risked their lives to sneak me water and food at night.

  “You see, I convinced Lorenzo that his people preferred a more active form of torture. A man nailed to a cross would have little impact on them, surely not enough to inspire a story to be passed down through the ages.

  “In the end, he thought it was his own idea. Surely a glowing, singing man dying on a cross would be worth remembering.

  “When I pointed out his plan would never work, unless he was willing to ruin one of his three jumpsuits by pounding holes through it, he exclaimed, ‘We’ll tie you.’ I knew I had won.

  “Keeping up my end of the bargain, I sang my heart out, some of the best arias of my life. I sang until my voice was gone. Folks came from across the countryside to hear me. I could tell from my perch on the cross, Lorenzo’s sermons were losing their touch with the people. Even his most loyal followers were distracted, watching flights of birds and playing with stems of grass as he spoke.”

  Jones admitted he was close enough to observe the church service when I was placed upon the cross. He apologized for not coming to my aid, saying his back was so badly injured he was powerless to stand up and fight. He finished with something I took as a joke, but wasn’t really sure.

  “Besides,” he said, “I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life wiping your sorry ass.”

  When he stood, Jones pressed a pair of ear peas into my hand. He said he felt I needed them more than he did. I now believe it is time for a bit of the “Red Priest.” Oh, Vivaldi, how I have missed you!

  TRANSMISSION:

  Kaikane: “She seems worse today.”

  Jones: “Restless.”

  Kaikane: “Jones, she’s got to make it. She doesn’t, I’m gonna die.”

  From the log of Paul Kaikane

  Recreation Specialist

  “Hon, let go of my hand, I need to go to the bathroom.”

  With those words, Dr. Maria Duarte rejoined the world. Gray Beard and I helped her up from bed and I held her tight as we found a private spot close to the tent for her to squat and do her business.

  “These plants are new,” she said in a dreamy tone. “Where are we?”

  “Along the river, babe. You’ve been out of it for more than four days. Scared us to death.”

  “Where’s Jones?”

  “Probably fishing, or off on a hunt. He never goes far. He’ll be back before long.”

  “What happened?”

  “Martinelli tricked you, detonated his suit. Tried to kill us all. Do you remember?”

  “Maybe. Mind’s foggy. Did he survive?”

  “No.”

  “Cpl. Bolzano?”

  “He’s hanging in there.”

  “Still on the cross?”

  “No, you helped pull him down. Don’t you remember?”

  “Help me get this suit off. I want to lay back down, but I stink. Help me, please.”

  Gray Beard called over to Tomon’s wife, Gertie is her name, and told her to fetch a cook bag full of warm water. She must have had it ready, for she brought it in no time at all. The old man added a handful of dried plants, then told the girl to wash the sweat, blood and grime off Maria’s body while he and I carefully pulled the jumpsuit off and got her dressed in his wife’s ceremonial clothes.

  I reckon the jumpsuit saved her life. And probably kept her systems stable enough to let her survive. Still, I breathed a sigh of relief once she was quit of the thing and dressed in normal clothes. Jones and I are convinced, those suits do something to you.

  She laid on the bed of furs for the rest of the day, covered by a blanket woven from soft leather and pounded reeds. Bruised, raccoon eyes occasionally fluttered open to gaze at us through the haze of a migraine.

  I could do cartwheels in the mud.

  Jones wandered back empty-handed a few hours ago and began to grouse about the hunting. Then he noticed the smiles on our faces. As I filled him in, she opened her eyes and gave Jones a little wave.

  “How’s it going, Jones?”

  “Not bad. How ‘bout you, Doc?”

  “Tired,” she mumbled before drifting back to sleep.

  Jones and I were content to watch the rain fall, but Gray Beard hates to waste daylight. Soon, he was up limping around Martinelli’s tent, sniffing contents of leather bags, sorting through the Italian’s crap. Wedged against the edge of the tent, holding one of the sides down, he found a heavy roll of gray leather. Calling me over with a wave of his hand, he pantomimed for me to pick it up and carry it to the middle of the tent.

  “We make foot clothes for Green Turtles,” he said in hand sign. His words, more or less. “For journey to home range. They need.” The message conveyed much more, but it’s hard to translate. Facial expressions, pauses to look us each in the eye, his excitement with the quality of the leather, said things like, “I will teach you. We will make very good moccasins. This is good leather. Pay attention and don’t screw it up.” All unsaid, but conveyed clearly nonetheless. Jones and I nodded our understanding.

  A squall blew down from the hills to rattle the tent as the old man set up shop. He started by flaking several handfuls of razor-sharp blades from a jet-black slab of basalt from Martinelli’s stash. Sitting in front of the slab, holding it tightly with his feet, he struck an oak club against an antler chisel in just the right place, with just the right amount of force, to chip flake after perfect flake into the dust.

  Tap, tap, bang. Working in a circular pattern, shifting the slab a quarter-turn after each precise blow, he produced hand-sized t
ools with wicked cutting blades. The backs, or tops, of the cutters were uniformly a half-inch thick with a flat, safe edge. Perfect for holding and pushing down on.

  His work exposed The Team’s instructors for the pretenders they were. The main tool-making teachers had been a pair of anthropologists who liked to dress in skins and play “caveman” with other nerds on summer weekends. Jones said he bet those two guys could have spent the entire afternoon with the same rock and not produced one blade equal to any the old man knocked out in a couple minutes.

  Maria slept through the whole thing. We quartered the supple, gray leather into manageable sections and spread them out all over the place, even her bed. Gray Beard said the leather was from a young rhino. He said pieces this quality are hard to come by. Too heavy for clothes, the leather is good for moccasins.

  Jones and I were forbidden to do any serious leather work until we watched him cut out the first two pairs. In the center of Martinelli’s tent there are a pair of wide benches made from split pine logs smoothed flat on the top. The old man used the benches as cutting boards. Most of his cuts were made by rocking or hammering the curved blades against the leather as it rested on top of the wood. A few times, for long, straight cuts, he had Jones and me stretch the leather as he sawed on it.

  Though I had been wearing native footwear for most of the past 10 months, I had no idea how they were made. It was cool to see it done. Pretty simple, really. Picture a Y-shaped piece of leather with a long tongue sticking up the middle to make it a three-pronged pitchfork. The tongue provides the bottom sole and top of the shoe as it folds back over the toes and runs all the way up the front of the shin to just below the knee. The trunk of the Y flares wide at its bottom so when it is folded up and over the calf, there is enough leather to wrap around and enclose the front of the leg like a boot. The two side tines of the Y fold up to protect the sides of the feet, then taper back into long laces that wrap around the ankle and calf before being knotted below the knee to hold everything in place.

  I knew from experience, once you break them in properly, say, after a hundred miles of walking, the moccasins mold to match your foot perfectly. Few things are more comfortable. Too bad both of mine have holes in the sides. I’m constantly picking up little stones and sticks.

  Jones’ back must have been bothering him something fierce. The guy could barely stand up after sitting cross-legged for two hours. He said not one word of complaint. Once we were turned loose cutting leather on our own, the old man sat down to flake another handful of blades. The commotion roused Maria long enough for her to prop herself up on one elbow and take stock of the situation. “What’s all the racket?” she asked before laying her head back down on the furs.

  A while later, a woman ran up to tell us three boys had managed to pull a sturgeon out of the river. The kids come from a little clan of survivors that is hot to join up with the Green Turtles. I think the sturgeon may have sealed the deal. When I wandered down to look, all the men and women of both clans, about a dozen of them, were standing in the rain along the riverbank, gorging on fish and roe. Bolzano was in the middle of everybody, eating roe by the handful.

  Tomon and Gertie were uphill a ways, building a lean-to of pine boughs. When I asked what they were up to, the boy stopped just long enough to explain it was a smoke house where strips of fish will be hung over a green-stick fire. He didn’t call it jerky, but that’s what they are making, traveling food for the walk home.

  The two clans are the only ones left from Martinelli’s once-mighty army. The rest cut out as fast as their feet would take them. Packed up and split that night. Flutes tooting away into the dark. Gray Beard says they were anxious to return to their home ranges, to run with the herds.

  He and Jones wandered down to check out the commotion caused by the great fish a couple times this afternoon, but for the most part, the three of us were content to stick close to Maria. We helped the old man do his leatherwork, listened to his native songs about animals and forests. Maria seemed to enjoy the company. She slept with a soft little smile, almost a smirk.

  At one point, I wandered over to plant a couple kisses on her cheeks. She laced her fingers with mine and mouthed the words, “I love you” without opening her eyes. She drifted off holding on tight to my hand, sort of happily trapping me there as my pals slaved away.

  “Take off your foot clothes.” Gray Beard stood over me as late afternoon sunlight slanted through the trees. “You have slept long enough. Wake up.” I worked the knots free and peeled the moccasins from my surprisingly pasty white legs. He then traced the outlines of my feet on thick scraps of rhino leather–the inner soles to my new “foot clothes.”

  Gray Beard ordered me to pay attention. He said Green Turtles would be stopping by the tent through the next few days to have their inserts cut. If he wasn’t there to do it, then it would be my job.

  “Where’s Jones?”

  “Down with the fish. His back is in pain. Doo-art must get better. She must help him.”

  “What about you? You fixed his shoulder.”

  “This problem, I do not know how to fix. She must help him.”

  TRANSMISSION:

  Kaikane: “What are you doing up?”

  Duarte: “I’m sick and tired of doing nothing.”

  Kaikane: “Whoa, whoa, hold on, I got ya.”

  Duarte: “Dizzy.”

  From the log of Paul Kaikane

  Recreation Specialist

  Maria is much more alert today. She says her headache is just about gone. She ate some dates and a wedge of fish jerky for lunch. Managed to keep everything down, then insisted on a blow-by-blow account of Martinelli’s death. I was halfway through it for the second time when Bolzano hobbled up the path leaning on the shoulders of Tomon and Gertie. Though their tent is not far away, the walk must have tired Sal out. He laid down next to Maria and fell sound asleep.

  “I guess we’re his babysitters,” Maria said as the caregivers slipped away hand-in-hand. “Did I help lift Sal off the cross? I recall something about a rope.”

  “Sure. It was you who suggested we loop a rope around his chest so we could hold him in place while we cut the ties from his wrists and ankles. Remember?”

  “Maybe. Not really.”

  “I wonder why he tied Bolzano up instead of nailing him to the cross. Martinelli was a stickler for details.”

  “Don’t know, we’ll have to ask Sal if he ever wakes up.”

  I settled down next to her, on the side opposite the Italian, and she snuggled close so her head rested on my chest. I stroked her hair and felt as if my face might split wide open from smiling so hard. We laid together, two of the happiest people on the planet, listening to Bolzano snore.

  TRANSMISSION:

  Jones: “Game’s played out. Need to move on.”

  Bolzano: “The storyteller has informed Tomon and Gertie that he will not depart until Doctor Duarte is well.”

  Jones: “She’s getting there.”

  From the log of Cpl. Salvatore Bolzano

  Firefighter II

  (English translation)

  What a bitch. Dr. Duarte today had the audacity to inform me I must face an “official investigation” into my involvement with Lorenzo’s mad romp across the continent. What a giant, steaming pile of mammoth dung.

  Our conversation started peacefully enough. We were strolling together, trailing the banks of the Arno, skirting the high-water mark, headed downstream in hopes of finding a tranquil place devoid of both the smell of human feces and the squealing of flutes. Now that Bongo and Conga are both deceased, my Porters have lost all sense of rhythm. Anyway, the noise and smells were driving Duarte and me mad. We elected to go exploring while Kaikane was engaged in fitting a pair of bare-breasted nubiles for new shoes. He said he would follow along later.

  We wound through stands of white birch and willows green in new leaf when, rather suddenly, I realized Duarte had orchestrated our time alone. Small talk dissolved into a series of poin
ted questions which swiftly became out-and-out accusations of fraud and perjury. She demanded to know how The Team had been infiltrated, insisted I explain why I stuck by Lorenzo’s side for so long. It made me wonder if Jones had shared my stupid little slip about wanting to be the first angel in heaven.

  Nothing in Team training prepared me for the assault. Fortunately, in my previous lifetime, I had faced off against far more fearsome interrogators–ones accusing me of all sorts of misdeeds. I resisted the urge to go on the offense, always a good stalling tactic when you are guilty. I bit my tongue to stifle an imaginative lie. That was the old Bolzano.

  “I imagine you wish to record this interview. Go ahead, activate your silly helmet. I have nothing to hide from you.”

  TRANSMISSION:

  Duarte: “Were you placed on The Team by a religious entity?”

  Bolzano: “I dealt with one individual, a Cardinal from my home city of Milano. I had the impression he was working alone, as a favor to my father. It was only later, after the jump, I learned the same Cardinal had recruited Martinelli and Amacapane.”

  Duarte: “What instructions were you given?”

  Bolzano: “He wanted me to bury valuable artifacts where he could find them.”

  Duarte: “What about your behavior? Spreading the word of your God to the natives? Was that also a part of your mission?”

  Bolzano: “I did no such thing. Lorenzo was the crusader, not me.”

  Duarte: “From what I saw of the Christmas service in Nice, you had more than a small role. You were the baby Jesus himself!”

  Bolzano: “Lorenzo forced me.”

  Duarte: “Why else would the Cardinal choose you?”

  Bolzano: “I have thought about it quite a bit. The Cardinal was a family friend. He knew I was not a religious man, and he was certainly well aware of my poor behavior and past indiscretions. It was he who brokered two of my previous releases. No, I have the impression he was searching for a thief. He knew I would be a good one.”