Miracle at St. Anna (Movie Tie-in)

by James McBride

  “Okay.” He sighed. “I’ll get Captain Nokes to let you escort the child back to division headquarters. You can take him all the way there, then go to ordnance and work in supplies. I’ll get Lieutenant Birdsong to write it up. He’s colored, he’ll do it. You’ll be twenty miles from the front, all the way back to Viareggio if you want. Get all the tail you want down there for two dollars.”

  Train shook his head. “I ain’t going back. I’m done fighting for white folks. Up here, it don’t count what they say. It ain’t like back home. They got no say here. White folks got no say here,” he repeated. The thought panicked him as he said it. The white commanders liked him. They always said he did good. They knew everything. He trusted them. Now they were dying, too. He’d seen that. His world was upside down. He watched Stamps glare at him.

  “You’re acting like a goddamn fool,” Stamps said.

  “I’m setting here till I figure out what’s next,” Train said.

  “What’s next is the Krauts come down that hill in the morning, that’s what’s next.”

  “They won’t find me here.”

  “Where you going?”

  Train rubbed his statue head silently. He decided not to tell anyone anything else about his invisibility. He pointed out the doorway of the barn to a ridge to the southwest, Mt. Cavallo, right at the eye of the Mountain of the Sleeping Man. “Ain’t no firing that way,” he said.

  “You don’t know what’s there,” Stamps said. “The boogie man’s that way.”

  “Well, he got to move over, ’cause Sam Train’s coming to shake his hand.”

  Already, Stamps could see the flares starting to light up the sky. “It’ll be dark in a couple hours. We’ll rest till oh-four-hundred tomorrow. Then I’m sending Bishop and Hector up here, and if you’re not ready to go, we’re arresting you and taking you back. You’re lucky Captain Nokes isn’t here. He’d shoot you on the spot.”

  Stamps ground his foot into the floor of the loft, pushing some hay back and forth. This was a truly fucked-up situation. He hated Nokes. It was Nokes’s fault that Train had snapped. If Nokes had fired the artillery right, they’d be back at camp getting ready for Christmas dinner in a few days. He had a sudden vision of himself pointing his rifle at Nokes’s face and spraying bullets at it. He quelled the thought as the kid stirred, then sat up. He leaned over to look at him.

  “Get some sulfa powder from Hector and try to give it to the kid,” Stamps said. “It’ll bring his fever down. He got a fever, don’t he?”

  “I don’t know what he got.”

  Stamps tried to place his hand on the kid’s forehead, but the shaking boy watched him through fluttering eyelids and drew away, pushing his body into Train’s chest.

  “What you gonna feed him?” Stamps asked.

  “I gived him some food I got, some chocolate and D rations. He likes the hash.”

  “Okay. Take some of Hector’s if you run out. And feed him good. He’s got a long walk tomorrow.”

  Stamps reached for the loft’s ladder.

  “I ain’t got no disserpation with you, Lieutenant,”Train said.

  “Disserpation?”

  “Fuss. I ain’t got no fuss with you.”

  Standing on the ladder, Stamps felt his heart sagging. He had marched with Train for six months, trained with him, fought with him, shared latrines and foxholes with him, and realized he had never gotten to know him. He didn’t want to get to know him. It was better that way. It was better that he thought of him as a dumb nigger, because if he didn’t, Train reminded him of somebody else he knew, somebody he loved very much . . . his own father.

  “All right, Train. Get some sleep and be ready tomorrow.”

  Train watched as the sun began its descent behind the forbidding mountains. Over the scattered firing in the canal below, he heard a woman’s voice on a loudspeaker, saying warmly in English with a German accent, “Welcome to the war, Ninety-second Division. What are you Negroes fighting for? America doesn’t want you. We want you. Come to us. I got something nice and warm for you. You can have all you want,” followed by the blaring sound of relaxing jazz. Still crouching, Train turned away from Stamps, the flares outside silhouetting his huge brown face against the mountains. “Tomorrow may never come,” he said softly.

  The boy dreamed of a woman standing on a hill. And in his dream she waved at him. Her hand was frozen in the air. He did not recognize her, but he saw her clearly, at the edge of a grassy field near a tree, hand held high. She seemed tired. He stood and watched as she waved, then she faded away. When he awoke, he was lying on the floor, the chocolate giant crouched over him, watching. Underneath the giant’s arm was the head of the woman from his dream. The giant had only her head. The boy regarded the Primavera’s head, his eyes wide in fright.

  “Ain’t nuthin’ but a good-luck charm, boy. Got magic in it. You wanna touch it?”

  The sound of the giant’s throaty voice was soothing, but when he held the statue head out and picked up the boy’s hand so that he could touch it, the boy drew his hand back.

  Train placed the head on the ground. “I guess you hungry, ain’t ya.”

  The boy ignored him. His chest hurt and he felt cold. Something inside him, deep inside, was not right. He looked up at the giant and felt as if a great haze were covering his eyes, as if he were looking at the chocolate giant through sheer white curtains. He watched as the giant shifted, slowly pulled out a tin of K-ration hash, speared some with a field fork, and offered it to him.

  “You like this, don’tcha?”

  The boy ignored the fork and stared mutely as the giant’s lips moved. He had slipped again to that quiet place where there were no voices and no sounds. He decided to check with his friend Arturo to see if he was home. He closed his eyes. Arturo appeared right next to the giant’s shoulder, both of them hovering above him. Even standing up, Arturo wasn’t as tall as the crouching giant. The boy noticed that Arturo was wearing suspenders and no shoes.

  Arturo scratched his head absently. “I have lice,” he said.

  “Where am I?” the boy asked.

  “You are in the world.”

  “What’s the world?”

  “The world is a giant’s head, and we’re living on his head, and when he turns his head, it’s your birthday.”

  The boy watched Train take off his helmet and sigh, then scratch his nappy head of hair.

  “Who is he?” the boy asked.

  Arturo was indignant. “He’s a chocolate maker who gives it out for free. And did you save some chocolate for your friend? You did not!”

  “I did,” the boy said. “I saved you some.” From his pocket, he produced a piece of D-ration chocolate that Train had given him.

  Hovering over the child, Train watched incredulously as the boy pulled the piece of chocolate from his pocket, held it in the air, and chatted with it amiably before devouring it.

  “That was good,” Arturo said. “I have had that only twice before in my life. Tell me about the chocolate maker. Does he drink motor oil and eat babies?”

  “No,” the boy said.

  “Touch him and see.”

  Lying on the floor, the boy reached up and motioned for Train to come closer. Train complied, thinking the boy wanted to whisper something to him. Instead, the boy raised himself on his elbows and gently ran a hand across Train’s face, then through the rough texture of Train’s wooly hair. “If I turn your head,” the boy said softly, “it will be my birthday.”

  Train didn’t understand. He felt the little hands pulling at his head, the innocent young eyes searching his face, and shame washed over him like water. A white person had never touched his face before. Never reached out and stroked him with love, and the force of it, the force of the child’s innocence, trust, and purity drew tears to his eyes. He expected to feel nothing when the boy touched him, but instead he felt mercy, he felt humanity, he felt love, harmony, longing, thirst for kindness, yearnings for peace—qualities he’d never known existe
d in the white man. The boy ran his hand over Train’s face and held the big man’s nose. His innocent eyes searched Train’s, and as their eyes locked, Train could see inside him and saw not derision, or fear, or loathing, but hurt and searching and pain from a thousand indignities. He saw light, darkness, flickering hope, but most of all he saw in the child’s face a reflection of himself. He had never seen that in the face of any person before, white or colored, not even a child. He stared at the boy, transfixed.

  “Good God, boy, you got power in yo’ hands,” he said.

  The boy dropped his hands from Train’s face and lay back. He was exhausted. He saw Arturo watching.

  “Can I ask you something?” the boy asked Arturo. “ Sure.”

  “Sure.”

  “Who am I?”

  Arturo seemed troubled. “If you have to ask, I don’t know.”

  The sound of thundering footsteps mounting the ladder caused the boy to turn his head, and in that moment Arturo disappeared. Stamps hurriedly climbed into the loft and with two steps was standing over Train and the boy.

  “Get up Train! We got to roll,” he said.

  Train, still staring at the boy, spoke from his crouch. “He got the power, Lieutenant,” Train said. “He got the power!”

  “What?”

  “The boy. He sat up and touched my head. He got the power of God in his hands. He blessed me. I could feel it. This is my lucky day. Yes, Lord, thank you, Jesus—praise God! He got the power. Wanna feel it? Touch his hands, Lieutenant.” Train grabbed Stamps’s hand and tried to force it on the boy. “You’ll feel it, too. Touch him.”

  Stamps yanked his hand away. “Get a grip on yourself, man! Hector saw something out there. We gotta book—now. You comin’ or not?”

  Train rose to go, excitedly gathering his things as Stamps stared incredulously. “I think your cheese slid off your biscuit,” he said. “You need a fucking doctor, I think.”

  “Don’t need no doctor.”

  “Then why did you run this way in the first place? Whyn’t you just run back to our side instead of getting us all fucked up way out here?”

  Train shrugged. He didn’t have a side. One way had seemed as good as the other. No white man could protect him out here. “I ain’t ask you to come,” he said. He didn’t need Stamps and the others now. He had protection—two protections now, the statue head neatly tucked into his waistband and an angel, a real one. He picked up the boy and cradled him. He began to hum “Take Me to the Water,” a soft, deep, throaty hum from within his chest, as he approached the ladder, turned, and climbed down. Stamps followed him, still furious.

  The boy settled in the giant’s warm arms as the deep singing voice covered him like a blanket. He felt like he was swaddled in cotton. He buried his head in Train’s chest. He wished Arturo would come back so he could tell him the feeling of it, the feeling of being buried in chocolate and hearing the sweet music, but Arturo would not come, so he slept again and dreamed of the woman waving at him. He wanted to ask Arturo why the woman kept waving at him. He wanted to know why she was waving at him to go away.

  7

  THE CHURCH

  The four soldiers had got about a hundred yards down the ridge toward the American side when a German patrol spotted them and chased them back up the ridge and down the other side of the mountain, toward the Serchio Valley, and now they were lost. They walked for four hours in the freezing rain, over jagged ridges, through valleys, past caves, along perilous cliffs. They had no map, a dead radio, no idea where they were going other than that they were traveling away from the last patrol they’d seen and that they had to find shelter and food before night. Whenever they saw a fire or a cluster of houses, they walked into the hills to get around it, and in doing so walked within four hundred yards of half a dozen American forward artillery observers and Italian partisans who could have saved the boy’s life: Lieutenant Horace Madison in Seravezza, Lieutenant Jimmy Suttlers in Cerreto, Bruno Valdori of the Valenga partisans in Ruosina, all sitting quietly in warm houses next to warm fires eating hot food, awaiting orders to deliver coordinates that would rain artillery fire down on the mountain towns where the Germans were hidden. But once the soldiers got past Ruosina, there were no forward artillery observers around for them to blunder into. They’d ventured far beyond the American outposts, and they were on their own. The freezing rain fell heavier as they trudged farther and farther into the mountain forest, transforming the already slippery slopes into thick, red mud.

  With each slip in the mud, Stamps, who was in the lead, cursed aloud, “Dumb bastard, sending that fool over the hill.” He couldn’t get over it. He didn’t blame Sam Train. He was convinced now that Train had snapped, and everybody knew Train wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer in the first place. But Bishop, he had power over men. Even Stamps owed him money from cards. They’d never gotten along. Bishop represented the kind of Negro that Stamps despised; his type set the race back a hundred years with his silly grinning and shining in front of whites and hustling his Negroes with God talk and playing cards.

  As Bishop huffed and puffed up the ridge behind the other men, Bishop heard Stamps and ignored him. Bishop’s liking or caring about a person was in strict proportion to how much he could use them, so he wasn’t worried about Stamps. He was worried about himself. He was furious with himself for following Train across the canal. He couldn’t understand why he’d done it. The thing about Train owing him money was an excuse. Everyone owed him money. And as for sending Train to get the boy, he had no idea what he was thinking. He had seen the two feet under the haystack, it didn’t seem right, there was a lot going on, he couldn’t hear anything, Huggs was hit and his face was splattered everywhere, the white cracker Nokes didn’t believe they’d made it across the canal and didn’t fire artillery support, he thought he was going to die anyway, what the fuck. He had panicked and sent Train to do what he himself had no intention of doing. If he believed in God, he would’ve prayed then, but he didn’t believe in God. The preaching thing he did back in Kansas City was just a ruse to get some money out of some dumb niggers. Giving Train artificial respiration and bringing him back to life on the beach at the canal—that was some bullshit, too. He’d read about that in a magazine someplace, how a guy fell off a roof and a doctor shocked him back to life by pushing air down into his lungs. He didn’t know why he’d tried it. He thought that big mumbo-jumbo nigger was dead, and he was thinking about all that money, that’s what it was. Shit, fourteen hundred dollars was a lot of flow.

  As Bishop climbed behind the others, watching the steam rise from Sam Train’s back in the eerie, foggy rain, Bishop tried to decide which made more sense: fighting and keeping your pride like the Negro papers said, or bailing out and keeping your life intact. Nothing ever worked right in the division anyway. The good white commanders had transferred out before the company even left the States. The black first and second lieutenants ran everything, and they never knew more than five minutes of what the next mission was. Take this hill, take that hill. For what? The enemy came right back and took it the next day anyway. When Bishop first saw the mountain slopes they had to attack, he thought maybe jail was better. The Germans had blasted and burned away all the trees and houses and foliage so there was no place to hide. The Germans shot down. The Americans ran up. It was a turkey shoot. Their first mission outside Lucca, they had a good white captain named Walker, a man from Mississippi. Walker was a courageous bastard, Bishop had to admit it. Walker refused to stay back at headquarters and give radio orders like the other white captains. He told them, “When we climb that ridge tomorrow morning, I’ll be right there next to you,” and he was. When the order came to jump, Walker stood and said, “Let’s go,” and the Germans sliced, diced, sissy-fried, cut up, spanked, and chopped up every single foot of earth in front of Walker, and every soldier behind him who was stupid enough to stand up when he made the order got his ass shot off. Walker made it ten feet before he leaped into a foxhole. A shell came right af
ter him and blew him to pieces. Incredibly, what was left of him got up and staggered another five feet before the other bits of him collapsed, and not all of them at the same time, either. Lieutenant Huggs, he got his face shot off at the Cinquale Canal. All his friends—Jimmy Cook, Skiz Parham, Spencer Floor, Hep Trueheart, all of ’em deader than Calpurnia’s flapjacks. Now the whole thing was so fucked up he couldn’t stand it. He was still out here, Captain Nokes was back at base sipping tea, probably, and Stamps was running things, all because he’d panicked and followed the dumbest nigger in the world.

  “It’s working,” he growled, as Hector climbed in front of him.

  “What’s working?” Hector asked, the rain dripping off his helmet.

  “This stupid idea I had. To see how dumb you niggers were, following me across the canal. This kid’s gonna die, anyway. And us with him.”

  “Cut it out, Bishop,” Stamps snapped, as he climbed ahead. “We don’t need ministerin’. We got to find shelter to get outta this weather.”