Miracle at St. Anna

by James McBride

  Train, sitting at his bedside in a crouch, stopped singing and leaned over. “Got no more chocolate, boy. Can’t help you there.”

  Train leaned forward and he and the boy stared at each other. All his life, for twenty-one years, Train realized, he’d never owned anything, and here this boy was offering him his heart. He could see it. No one had ever offered him anything in the world. The world was a confusing place. He remembered the day he was drafted. He was pulling a mule across Old Man Parson’s field and his aunt Vera came out to him. She was visiting from Philadelphia. She said, “I’m gonna kill Jing-a-ling.”

  Jing-a-ling was Train’s cousin, whom they also called Sticky. Jing had started a reading business for the colored of Mt. Gilead, because the last colored who could read, Reverend Willard, had run off with a fourteen-year-old named Peaches. Jing couldn’t read, either. In fact, the only words he could read were “pink” and “noodle” and “Cadillac,” but he told everyone it was about time the colored of Mt. Gilead started to do for theyself since the white man was always telling them what to do with his funny white dollars. Everyone agreed.

  The colored of Mt. Gilead were getting their mules confiscated, going to jail for tax evasion, and getting evicted, ever since Jing started his business. It was a disaster, the letters piling onto Jing’s kitchen table. But no one got suspicious, because Jing made a big score for an old man named Jumbo Dawson, who had gotten hit by a white man driving from New York to Florida. The white man broke Jumbo’s leg in three places and punctured a lung. His lawyer wrote Jumbo three times offering a settlement, and each time Jing, who answered everyone’s mail, sent a letter back to the man with a picture of the pretty brown girl from the Jet magazine centerfold and a pink Cadillac, because he thought the letter was from the Department of Motor Vehicles, since Jumbo had been trying to get his license for four years, ever since his wife ran off with a light-skinned Negro named Linwood, who had a car.

  The white man was irate. After Jing’s fourth letter, he sent Jumbo eight hundred dollars and told him to get lost.

  So no one got too suspicious of Jing-a-ling’s business. The white man’s ways had always been a mystery to the colored of Mt. Gilead anyway, the way he counted his money, his crops, his time. A Negro getting his land confiscated or going to jail for tax evasion or being bamboozled, these were cause-and-effect matters in a mysterious and cold world. Avoiding the white man’s evil was like dodging raindrops anyway—sometimes your number just came up.

  Train’s draft notice was tossed in a pile of tax liens, arrest warrants, winning sweepstakes notices, free circus passes, and death notices on Jing-a-ling’s kitchen table. Train would never have known he was drafted if Aunt Vera hadn’t come to visit from Philadelphia and gone through the letters.

  Standing in the field under the hot sun, Train’s aunt Vera waved the notice in the air. “You been drafted!” she said.

  “What’s ‘drafted’?” he had asked.

  “To fight. The Japs done attacked Pearl Harbor, and the Negro’s finally gonna fight.”

  “Who’s Pearl Harbor?”

  “Git on down to High Point right now!”

  His grandma gave him some bones and dust in a black bag to wear around his neck for good luck, and he was gone.

  The army was a confusing place. They gave him pictures, and training manuals to read. They pointed at things for him to shoot at. They put him on a boat. They told him Hitler was a bad man. But nothing they gave him was his. All of it had to go back to them—the gun, the clothes, everything. They had been clear about that. The only person who had given him anything was Bishop. Sure, he whupped him in cards, but Bishop knew about things. He had given him knowledge. He had told him it was a white man’s war. And Train had believed him, until now. Until he looked into the boy’s frightened eyes and saw himself.

  “I’m scared, too,” he said, patting the boy gently. “That’s why I follows the Good Book. You know what that is? See, everything’s already been decided. The Good Lord, He spares who He want to and He strikes who He want to. So you just have to go along. And after a while, you don’t even know you’re going along because you don’t know that there is anything else to do, see. You don’t even have to think about anything else.” He sang gently,

  If I can help someone along the way,

  If I can help them from day to day,

  If I can help someone not do wrong,

  If I can help them through this song,

  Then my living would not be in vain . . .

  The boy smiled.

  “You like that, don’tcha? That’s an old church song, boy. My grandma teached it to me. And I’mma teach it to you. It’s just words. When you say words, they don’t mean much. But when you sing ’em, Lawd, they seem to get a whole lotta power. I see that now. Words, trees, rocks, everything the Good Lord touched with His hand, got power in it. You believe in miracles, boy? I got something to show you. Look’a here.” Train pulled the large head of the Primavera from its netting. He had polished it up all through the night, so now it was clean and shiny. “See this here? It’s magic, boy. Makes you completely invisible. Don’t tell nobody ’bout it, y’hear? Tha’s jus’ for you ’n’ me to know. You see? You rubs it like this. Like a genie in a magic bottle, ’cept no genie do come, not yet, nohow. You wanna try?”

  Train picked up the boy’s limp, cold hand and ran his tiny fingers across the statue head, and as the boy felt the gentle curves and slopes of the sculptor Tranqueville’s great creation, the great Primavera of the Santa Trinità Bridge in Florence, he recognized that she was the woman from his first dream, the one who had waved at him in the field. She was one and the same, and he knew then that what Arturo had said was true, that his friend was a magic giant, because this woman was a piece of candy from a dream that no one could know about. This candy had to come from a magic castle. It was hard candy, too, the sucking kind, the kind he liked the most. He wanted to sit up and lick it, devour the whole thing, but he was too tired to move. He stared as the giant’s huge brown eyes blinked and he gently lowered the statue head so that it was next to the boy’s own, right on his pillow. The boy could have turned his head and licked it anytime he wanted to, but he decided to wait until Arturo came. They would eat it together. It would probably take them a whole year.

  The boy gazed up at the giant, who appeared misty, his eyes blinking in concern. “You are magic,” the boy said softly in Italian. With great effort, he reached up to touch Train’s face. Train knelt on one knee and took his helmet off so that the boy could reach him. The boy stroked Train’s face gently with one hand. “Turn your head now,” he said. “Please turn your head now and make it my birthday. Why won’t you turn your head?”

  Train crinkled his face in puzzlement. “I don’t understand what you want, chil’,” he said. Suddenly, he heard the floor creak behind him, and he snapped his head around sharply to look behind him for the source of the sound. The boy felt Train’s head turn, and he lay back, closing his eyes, exhausted but satisfied—when there was a boom, from the giant’s magic, no doubt. When the boy opened his eyes again, through the haze of misty consciousness that clouded his vision, he saw that the chocolate giant had disappeared, and in his place he had left a most wonderful birthday present: rabbits. White ones. Brown ones. Spotted ones. Black ones. All across his bed, all over the room. Just like in his other dream. Rabbits everywhere.

  12

  HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN

  The division on the other side of the Serchio Valley broke through on the wireless radio at three A.M. Stamps, Bishop, and Hector were sitting in a lean-to in the alley behind Ludovico’s house, huddled around a small fire warming their hands, when the radio, placed in Ludovico’s back window and wired to a wall outlet inside his bedroom, suddenly buzzed to life. Stamps nearly fell over as he stood to grab it and pull it down from the window. He squatted beneath the window ledge with the radio’s telephone headset between his legs. The signal was scratchy and faint, but it was Captain Nokes all
right, and he wanted to know their position.

  “Somewhere west of Gallicano,” Stamps said breathlessly, trying to keep the relief out of his voice. “We can see Mt. Forato.”

  “Mount what?”

  “Mt. Forato.”

  “Where is that in relation to here?”

  Stamps kept the talk button up. “We’re the ones that’s lost, and he’s asking directions. Dumb motherfucker.” He pressed the talk button. “East of the Cinquale Canal someplace. Straight up toward Mt. Forato. There’s a church bell tower there. That’s the best I can do.”

  “Have you seen any Germans in the last eight hours?”

  Bishop snorted. “No, motherfucker, just Jabbo Smith and his jug band.” Stamps waved an impatient hand to shush Bishop and pressed the talk button again: “Negative. But there’s plenty.”

  “We want you to capture and hold one. It’s important.”

  “We’re trying to get back, Captain.”

  “Just hold.”

  “Hold for what?”

  “I’m ordering you to hold for a German prisoner, and we’ll get a fix on your position. We’re sending help.”

  “How long?”

  “Two or three days. Get a prisoner.”

  Stamps kept his finger off the talk button while Bishop cursed aloud. If a German showed his face, the last thing in the world Stamps would be thinking about was holding him prisoner. He’d shoot the shit out of him and run the other way. But he kept his thoughts to himself. Nokes had said nothing about food.

  “Can we arrange a drop?” Stamps asked. “We’re running out of food. We’re eating nuts and berries out here. And these folks ain’t the friendliest. We got wounded, too.”

  “How many?”

  “One. A kid. Italian kid. Needs a hospital.”

  “Just sit tight till we come.”

  “Kid can’t wait that long, sir.”

  “Hold tight, y’hear! Get a prisoner and hold him. That’s straight from Colonel Driscoll. I’ll radio you oh-four-hundred tomorrow. Don’t move. Out.”

  Stamps flung the microphone from him and stood. “This is a joke,” he said. He glared at Bishop. “Your fuckin’ friend goes AWOL, and now this God-and-country motherfucker wants us to get a prisoner. Something’s cookin’ ’round here and he ain’t telling. Dumb white cracker.” He paced the narrow alleyway as he spoke. The radio telephone receiver, still attached to the radio sitting on the window ledge, dangled where he’d flung it.

  Bishop, still seated on the ground, grinned at Stamps. “So he’s a white cracker, now,” Bishop said. “I thought you liked him.”

  Stamps stopped pacing and stood over Bishop. “Who said I liked him?”

  Bishop smirked. “I seen you shining up to him all the time. Been shining up to him since he joined us. And now he’s a white cracker.”

  “Just ’cause I ain’t a tap dancer like you don’t mean I like Nokes,” Stamps said. “Besides, he ain’t the worst.”

  “He left us high and dry down at the canal. You told him three times to fire the eighty-millimeter and he didn’t fire it. I heard that myself.”

  “So what? He wasn’t the only white captain sitting two miles back radioing orders to niggers two miles up front. That’s how they work it all over. Plus Nokes reports to Colonel Driscoll, and Driscoll’s fair. He does right by the colored.”

  “Driscoll don’t like you either.”

  “Like I said, he’s fair.”

  “He’s a white man, and the only reason white folks is fair ’round here is ’cause the Germans is cutting their toenails too short to walk and they’re running out of white boys to die. So now the great white father sends you out here to shoot Germans so he can hang you back in America for looking at his woman wrong. You think that’s fair?” Bishop pulled out a cigarette and lit it slowly. “Now I remember why I runned up here. I got a better chance with these Germans than I got with my own. Least I know what side they on.” He took a deep drag and blew a smoke ring.

  “Well, you can walk up that ridge and make friends with them anytime you want,” Stamps said.

  The window above them opened and Train stuck his head out. “What y’all fussing about, huh? We got to come up with a plan or something. This little feller’s fever’s coming down. Hector, you got some mo’ magic powder?”

  Hector waved his hand at Train to go away. Bishop said, “The plan is to get my fourteen hundred wampums outta you and go home, that’s my plan.”

  As Train frowned and disappeared from the window, Stamps smirked down at Bishop. He couldn’t help himself. “Don’t you feel stupid now? How you gonna get your fourteen hundred dollars up here, Bishop? There’s no money ’round here.” He laughed softly.

  Bishop could feel the blood rushing into his face. He glared up at Stamps, thought for a moment about knifing him, then calmed himself, ignoring the challenge. There was no money in it. He shrugged. “I was drafted. That’s my excuse. Far as I’m concerned, the Negro was better off as quartermasters and cooks. It’s safer. The Army should never made the Negro into combat soldiers, right, Hector?”

  Hector remained silent, watching the whole exchange nervously. He was a Puerto Rican. He had his own problems. He wanted no part in this. There was no point. “Two or three days up here is a long time,” he said.

  Stamps silently agreed.

  “You damn right it’s a long time,” Bishop said. “We’re on the highway to heaven up here. Sitting ducks. For what? For nothing. Over a scam. That’s what this whole war is. A scam. Whites killing whites. Whites killing Jews. For what? ’Cause they dirty? I read that in a book someplace. The Germans don’t like the Jews ’cause they dirty. Like all these damn Germans ’round here . . . Hell, I ain’t met one German over here yet who didn’t have nothing for soap and water to do. The Negro don’t have doodleysquat to do with this . . . this devilment, this war-to-free-the-world shit.” Bishop stubbed out his cigarette. “They better not talk that boogie-joogie to me. White folks own the world, goddammit. We just rentin’.”

  Stamps was amused by Bishop’s rancor. He was surprised that Bishop was so insightful. “This is about progess for the Negro, Bishop, that’s what this is about. They said the Negro couldn’t fight. We’re proving he can. That’s progress.”

  Bishop snorted. “Progress? How ’bout that time we was on training maneuvers back in Arizona and we stopped at that restaurant for lunch, and them German POWs was being marched around out there, and they served them inside the restaurant while we had to stand outside at attention in hundred-and-ten-degree heat. And only after the so-called enemy ate inside did they serve us—from the back door, by the outhouse, on paper plates. You forgot that?”

  “I remember it,” Stamps said softly. The memory was a knife in his heart, the entire company of two hundred Negro soldiers standing at attention in the sweltering heat while twenty German POWs sat inside the cool, empty restaurant, laughing and joking, happy to be safe in America, knowing they’d get home after the war, eating ice cream with the white MPs guarding them. And he, fool that he was, Mr. Big Lieutenant, kept the company in line, telling them to keep quiet, hold down the chatter, cut the complaining, this is the Army, dammit. Always the professional soldier, always following orders, like they taught him at officer candidate school, always playing it straight. Sometimes he felt like his conscience wanted to snap in two. He was constantly caught between the desires of his men and the demands of his superiors, who were slaves to the propaganda, too. They all were slaves. Each and every one of them. White and colored.

  Bishop glared at him. “They don’t give a damn about you, and they’ll forget you five minutes past breakfast when this war’s all over. You’ll see.”

  Stamps shrugged. “Maybe so. but I ain’t fighting for them. I’m fighting for my children, if I have any. And my grandchildren, if I get some. I’m fighting for Huggs and Trueheart Fogg, remember them? And Captain Walker. You forgot him, didn’t you? Yeah. That white man saved your ass. He took the point at Lucca when y
our squad was supposed to take it. He got stitched nine ways to Sunday ’cause of y’all. A white cracker. From Mississippi. Best goddamn captain we ever had. You think we’d be hung up out here if Walker was running things instead of Nokes? You think we’d be setting here?”

  Bishop was silent. Walker would have hiked up that mountain and fetched them. He’d have walked it alone if he had to. He’d have cussed them out and called them niggers because he was a snakebitten bastard, but he wouldn’t have been calling them on any goddamn radio like that coward Nokes, telling them to get prisoners while their balls were in a sling. Walker had always looked out for his men. He had always kept his word. Bishop felt a pang of deep regret and looked away. Fuck it.

  “Walker’s dead,” he said. “Plus, he didn’t like niggers nohow.”

  “Yeah, well I’m fighting for ’im anyway.”

  “Remind me to tell Mr. Charlie to raise your allowance when you get home.”

  “Fuck you, man!”

  Bishop laughed as Stamps rose and took a few steps down the alley away from them. The soft sound of Train’s singing stopped him. Hector, sitting on the ground next to Bishop, his feet splayed out by the fire, listened to Train’s singing, too, as it blended with the howling wind, which had returned, bringing the rain back with it. They felt the first moist drops, then the freezing downpour began. Against the background of the splattering rain, they could hear Train singing louder, some hymn. Bishop recognized it. “Take Me to the Water.” He liked that song.

  “Damn fool,” Stamps muttered. “The best thing he done so far is to fall through the floor and find them rabbits. You can’t trust none of these people here.” He turned to Bishop and Hector. “Germans be damned, we ain’t looking for nobody. We got to sit tight for two days, three days, so we sit tight. In the meantime, we better watch these ridges and hills. This ain’t the best position. We’re below everything. These little streets can’t cover us from above, so we got to watch from the edge of town, by the walls near the gate. There’s only one way in and one way out—that front gate. So we watch that. We’ll split the watch up. Who wants it first?”