The Wolf That Fed Us

by Robert Lowry

  He put the three money-orders, made out in his own name, into his wallet, and he shoved the tobacco can and the talcum-powder can into his toilet-kit and zipped it shut. Then he left the latrine and went back to his bunk, where he hid the kit under his pillow, undressed and lay down. He felt better now. He was leaving Wednesday and he was all fixed up. They could throw all the inspections they wanted, either here or on board ship, they wouldn’t find out a thing.

  But before he could get to sleep a new doubt wriggled its way into his mind. What about the package of flints which his brother had already mailed from the States? What if they got suspicious at its weight and opened it while he was gone? Oh to hell with it, nobody’d open it anyhow. It’d follow him right back home.

  He turned over and in ten minutes was adding his own loud snore to the music of the sleeping room.

  It started out as a joke between them, but after Deveaux had gone they began to talk about it seriously and finally on Friday they decided they’d go Sunday, their day off.

  “If it rains we won’t go,” Howdy said. “Otherwise we will, jeep or no jeep. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Landshof said. “But try to get the jeep. It’ll take us all day to walk up that mountain.”

  Howdy worked in the squadron supply office, which had its own jeep. Most Sundays the supply lieutenant took it out and rode his Red Cross girl around in it, but this week he was away on a rest-camp trip to Capri, so Howdy thought he might be able to get it. He was the sergeant in charge, and he wouldn’t even have to ask anybody unless the lieutenant came back suddenly.

  The lieutenant was still gone Saturday night, so Sunday morning Howdy and Landshof got up early while most of the guys were still asleep and went over to the motor pool and signed out the jeep.

  “He never even told us definitely that that was where he went,” Howdy said as they rolled through the town square and cut down a narrow alley toward the highway.

  “He hinted strong enough,” Landshof said. “It’s like you told him, he couldn’t have gone to any other town on top of a mountain and got back all in one day.”

  “What do you think we’re gonna find up there?”

  “How do we know? We might be just a couple damn fools. Maybe all the Deacon had was some babe he went to visit.”

  “Hell, no, he made money wherever he went.”

  “How do we know he made money? All we saw was fourteen hundred dollars and he might have made that sellin army stuff and gamblin.”

  “He didn’t gamble,” Howdy said. “And he let his PX rations pile up on his shelf week after week. Don’t worry, the Deacon had a deal and this is the closest we’ve ever been to findin out what it was.”

  “Wish we could talk better Italian, though, like him. It’d be a lot easier snoopin around then—maybe we could find out the whole works today.”

  “All I know is buono and no buono. Hell, we’ll snoop around anyhow. Maybe those people up there will think we’re the Deacon’s agents and let us in on everything.”

  “I sure hope this turns out to be somethin more than a buggy ride,” Landshof said.

  Never in its history had Tocini undergone such a cleaning. Most citizens didn’t even bother to wait for the ten Americans to arrive next day. An hour or two after Deveaux had left and the immediate excitement of his visit had calmed down, the scrubbing of doorsteps and windows, and even the insides of houses, began. Children carried water from the pump in the middle of the tiny town square, and though in all Tocini not one bar of soap existed, the bulging arms of the women made up for it, the dirt came off: stone doorsteps began to whiten, windowpanes glistened.

  Just after dinner that evening, a crew of men chosen by Signor Grossi went from door to door and made the collection that was to pay back Signor Grossi the fifty thousand lire which the Americans had required. The crew, which consisted of the four largest and healthiest men in town, was very firm about the size of the contributions and suggested that Signor Grossi would not forget those who gave most. Also, if more than the required amount was raised, this sum would be used to buy a magnificent present for His Excellency.

  But next day the ten Americans, who were due to arrive at nine forty-five, were late. At twelve o’clock they were still later. And by three o’clock there were already grumblings in the town. Signor Grossi, who was wearing his shiniest black suit of clothes which he’d bought eight years ago and which no longer fitted him well, especially across the backside, had hurried authoritatively about in the morning, peering into houses, talking to the gang of men sweeping the streets, shouting orders and encouragement to all. But by afternoon he was seen no more; he’d gone into his house, across the front of which the Italian and American colors had been draped, and sat down by the window. His mood was not good.

  Yet somehow no one doubted for a moment that Fiorello LaGuardia would arrive on Wednesday. The townspeople only cursed the American Army, which hadn’t carried out its part of the arrangement by building the reviewing stand and bringing in the flags and drapes and signs of welcome, as well as the food and refreshments for the feast.

  “Probably those fool soldiers have taken our money and gone off on a drunk,” Signor Spinelli, who was one of the few visitors to the café that night, declared. “It doesn’t matter to them if Signor LaGuardia comes all the way to Tocini and finds nothing to welcome him.”

  Everyone in the town dressed in his finest next morning. All the men were shaved and wore black ties, and all the women smelled sweetly of perfume they’d secreted for just such a great occasion. But these people, who were people used to hard work every day, sat around stiffly, uncomfortably, not knowing how to pass the morning till the arrival at three o’clock of His Excellency.

  At twelve noon Signor Grossi sent two of the town’s fastest runners, Luigi Santonastasi and Pietro Spinelli, a quarter of the way down the mountain to a point on the road where they would see far off the approach of His Excellency’s party. And then the town began to wait—fretfully, awkwardly, silently at times and at other times in wild discussion. They waited in their homes and in groups on the street. They did not wait in the café, for that had been closed at Signor Grossi’s order.

  But three o’clock arrived and no Luigi, no Pietro came on the run to announce the great news. An hour more passed—still nothing happened. Finally Luigi came back alone.

  “We haven’t seen a thing,” he said. “Should we go on looking?”

  He was sent back, but by now a feeling of dread, the kind of feeling that comes only to people who begin to realize that they are about to be terribly disappointed, was spreading across Tocini.

  And then evening fell, and all knew he wouldn’t come.

  “We’ve been swindled,” people said. “Fiorello LaGuardia might not even be in Italy, and even if he is in Italy he won’t come to a little town like this.”

  “Those Americans have stolen our money,” others said.

  “Mannaggia gli Americani!” someone mumbled, and more people took it up.

  When night came the town went to bed. But few slept soundly: such rage as none had ever felt before was boiling in their breasts. Tocini for the first time in three hundred years knew the blind hatred that welds a whole people into an angry, heedless, warlike unit.

  And as the days of that week went by, they didn’t forget. They went on with their work, without a “further order” they cut the ropes that kept their animals off the streets, they sat in the café and drank in the evening. But they couldn’t forget. Tocini’s greatest day had come and gone, lost, and no man alive then would ever forget the treachery of the swine Americani. The robber Americani.

  Their lives, however, were too well ordered to be changed even by so great a treachery. By Friday they’d refrained, in silent agreement, from talking of the outrage. Sullenly they pulled down the ribbons draped across their windows.

  On Sunday morning all got up at five-thirty and went off to church. Signor Grossi too came to church as usual, accompanied by his brother-in-law an
d his father-in-law, and sat in his special pew. But the townspeople noticed a change in him: he was grave, grayfaced and, some thought, leaner.

  Signor Grossi went back to his house afterward, rested, and then ate dinner with his two relatives. His meal was no lighter than usual—spaghetti, pork, greens, wine—but he ate it now in a slow dull manner, not greedily as before.

  He had been lying in the darkened bedroom on his big double bed only ten minutes after dinner when he heard sounds of excitement in the street. In heavy well-fed stupor he heard them first as something far off that didn’t concern him. But suddenly like an electric shock the idea struck his brain: Fiorello LaGuardia is coming after all!

  He sat up, tried to shake the grogginess out of his head. Had he dreamed the noise? No—no, no, he could still hear it. He caught the word Americani and he was on his feet buttoning the top three buttons of his trousers, shoving his arms into his coat. They were coming after all!

  Dazed by the glare of the street, he stood just outside his door while the townspeople stampeded by heading for the road that led down the mountain.

  “Stop! What’s going on?” he shouted.

  Only one man called back over his shoulder, “The Americani!” but even he didn’t slow up.

  He became part of the running herd then—though Signor Grossi gave more an impression of hopping than of running. But the crowd didn’t halt at the edge of town, it streamed on down the mountain. Panting, soaked with sweat, his side hurting, he could go no further. As the last people galloped by he slumped down on a rock to get his breath.

  Then he had an idea. He walked a hundred yards farther to a small two-story stone house, the house of Maria, Filippa and Costantina, that was the last house in the town and therefore overlooked a large part of the road, and entered it. No one home. He climbed the stone steps to the second floor and from a window, saw.

  The crowd had stopped the small army car half a kilometer away, at a level spot on the road. As more and more people added themselves to the perimeter of the circle, the shouts became louder and angrier:

  “Where’s LaGuardia?”

  “If you think you’re going to cheat us again you’re mistaken!”

  The blond soldier in the car still sat with his hands on the wheel, as if expecting to be permitted to drive away at any moment. But the dark young-looking soldier beside him was waving his hands, motioning the crowd off the road.

  “Porconi Americani, give us back our money!”

  “We’ve waited all week to get our hands on you!”

  “Strunzi! Strunzi Americani!”

  “No capish! No capish!” the dark American was shouting back. “Via! Via! No capish!”

  With that, two men—Antonio saw that one of them was Vito Galgano but the other fellow he failed to recognize—leaped into the back of the car. The dark American rose up and half turned toward them before they caught him and threw him, twisting and flailing in the air like a fish, out into the crowd. And the crowd in screaming fury was on him, beating each other to get a chance at him. The driver had stepped on the gas, he was plowing through the crowd, but the crowd had him too now, he was being beaten, a knife was flashing—no!

  No, he’d torn through them and was running off across the field, the crowd streaming after him like ants after a wounded moth. They had him again, they——

  Antonio lunged down the stairs and out the door. He must get there before they killed both of them—but no, they’d probably already killed both of them.

  Never before had he made his fat body go so fast. But what he came on when he turned the corner of the road was no longer a scene of violence—only two large masses of silent people, each crowded around something that Antonio knew was the body of an American soldier.

  “Attention!” he screamed, still fifty yards from either group. “Attention! Listen to me!”

  Slowly, almost reluctantly, they straggled toward him. Their faces now were placid, no trace was left of the fury that had marked them only ten minutes before.

  “You’ve killed them, haven’t you!” Antonio screamed. With the crowds thinning away from the bodies, he could see that each, the blond one and the dark one, had been laid on its back, the hands thrown above the head as if in an agony of despair.

  “You fools!” Antonio screamed. “You fools, you’ve signed your own death warrants. Now the Americani will come and destroy all Tocini.”

  “They stole our money and they tried to get away,” grumbled Vito Galgano from somewhere in the rear.

  “Not these two!” Signor Grossi screamed. “Not these two, you fools!”

  No one answered this new reasoning. They could only stand there, with the look of darkfaced idiot children, betrayed and expecting punishment.

  Signor Grossi pushed through them, went first to the body of the blond soldier, whose boyish face was swollen and blackened beyond recognition, and then to the dark one, who seemed hardly touched save for the blood-stiffened shirt with the tear where the knife had penetrated.

  Antonio turned. They hadn’t moved to follow him.

  “We must hide them,” he said. “They and their car must disappear from the face of the earth. We must remove their tracks from this road and we must search everywhere so that no trace of them remains—no blood, no cap, no handkerchief, nothing.” His voice had grown hoarse, yet in his terror his brain worked swiftly, as it had never worked before. “We’ll break the machine down into parts and hide them in the cave. And the bodies——”

  Slowly he raised his round black unhappy eyes, as if for divine guidance. Miraculously they came to rest on the tower of the ancient castle which sat, in the very center of the town, on the highest rise of ground. And then it was clear to him where they must hide the bodies. The castle must shelter the bodies, in its deepest dungeons. The castle must again protect Tocini from its enemies. The castle, the castle alone, could hide the last evidence of the town’s folly, its mortification, its guilt, forever.

  THE TERROR IN THE STREETS

  SHE CAME THERE that January because in all of Greenwich Village only Downing Street invited her. She’d been living with Alma, cooped up in that tiny room of Alma’s off Washington Square, and by her third week of searching for a place of her own she was willing to consider anything. The Village had been most attractive to her because she’d lived there for five years before the war. But just when she was ready to reconsider, to start searching in Brooklyn or far uptown, she came on the sign, a battered piece of tin swinging in the wind from its single twist of rusty wire—APARTMENT FOR RENT, Inquire Within.

  Hopelessly she went toward it, wondering if at last there could really be a place for her in this city. The street failed to discourage her; nothing could discourage her now, not even the foul sweetish air that came from the open doors of the junk shop as she passed. Two mammoth trailer-trucks unloading their merchandise at the warehouse down in the middle of the block cut the street in half, and from somewhere close by came the dull roar of a factory. But she didn’t care, she stopped beneath the sign, read it again to make sure, then went up the five worn stone steps and through the arch that was the front door of the tenement.

  The names on the tall mailboxes were a strange assortment of unreadable lettering—some in Old World handwriting, others in typewriting torn from envelopes. Italian names, most of them. When she found T. Robini, Sup’t., she pushed the button, waited for the answering buzz, then started down the gloomy tile corridor toward Apartment 3.

  Yes, there was a vacancy, Mr. T. Robini told her. Framed in his doorway he looked like a monstrous Dopey from Snow White. His gray workshirt was open at the collar, revealing a heavy neck violently inflamed with some skin disease, and his black pants draped down from his enormous waist to bag loosely around skinny legs.

  She followed him up four flights of stairs and waited while he worked with the padlock. “We put better bolt on door,” he said. “This nice place.”

  It seemed fairly clean—no other virtues were apparent. A kitc
hen with a bathtub in it and two other rooms, none of them square, the windows looking out on a solid wall of factory. “Print books over there,” T. Robini told her. “Toilet in the hall, you share it with other family. You all alone?”

  “Yes,” she said, somehow unable to glance up into his wide simple eyes. “I’m a painter.” Why was she always impelled, when someone asked if she were “all alone,” to explain “but I was married for seven years—my husband was killed in Germany.” Or killed in Italy, or in Japan. Perhaps that would have been a sweeter truth than the fact that he had come back alive but not to her.

  “This place sixteen dollar a month,” T. Robini was saying. “You like?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “I’ll take it. When can I move in?”

  Of course Alma came, and approved. She puttered about nervously in her birdlike way, for some reason opening and closing all the doors between the rooms. “But it’s clean, Margaret,” she said. “And there’s lots of room. You can use this back one as your studio.”

  She found furniture on Carmine Street: a new bed, four second-hand chairs, a small table, two unpainted bookcases and an oil stove. Drapes over the windows helped to keep out some of the factory noise. Despite an inclination to ignore Alma’s advice, she made the back room her studio, and she painted the fireplace, which had long ago been walled up, a dark green. Then she hung several of her own paintings around the center room and proceeded to try to think of the place as home.

  Yet from the first day she was uneasy there. She worked on the large canvas she’d begun at Alma’s, but the booming of the printing presses distracted her, and she felt continually the urge to flee—to get down out of this shoddy building and even off this street.

  But when she examined all the possible reasons for her uneasiness, she rejected them. It was a miserable, suspicious-looking street, but after all its inhabitants were hard-working Italian families. Mr. Robini hadn’t bothered to replace the bolt on the door, yet the tenants around her should give her some sense of security. As far as the noise was concerned, she could get earstoppers to shut it out. It’s only because I’m used to a smaller town, she decided finally, thinking of two years she’d spent in New Mexico. Originally she had gone down there to be with Ric, but they’d had only three months in a furnished room together before he’d left with his unit for San Francisco and embarkation. Why had she stayed on? Not to remember their happiness, surely—there was nothing very rewarding to recollect from the torrid nights when he’d come into town from camp and slept with her. She had sensed even then that a separation of two or three years would only leave them farther apart. But she’d felt that if she waited in the place where he’d last seen her, perhaps he’d find it easier to come back to her—to begin their life again. As it turned out, that had been foolish. Long before he was ever due back he’d told her; yet she had waited on. She had waited till the war had ended, till a time she knew he must be back. One letter had finally arrived from New York, in which he’d said that the only thing for them was a divorce.