Miracle at St. Anna

by James McBride

  The four men scrambled back into the rear jeep. Birdsong lay in the snow where he’d been dropped, grasping his neck and sucking air. “Christ!” he said. “What’s wrong with you, man! The hell with you!”

  Artillery was banging all around them now. The villagers who had returned to watch the event, frozen in terror, were backing away, fleeing. But Renata, Ludovico, and Ettora remained, transfixed, watching.

  Bishop withdrew his rifle from Nokes’s ribs, and the captain quickly holstered his revolver and leaped into the driver’s seat of the lead jeep, starting the motor. Two men from the rear jeep leaped out and tossed Birdsong into the back of Nokes’s jeep, then remounted their jeep. Nokes swung his jeep around. He pointed his finger at Bishop as if to say “You” but said nothing more, and roared off. The second jeep, holding the other four men, roared to life as well and swung around in a tight circle for Stamps and his men.

  The shelling was hammering all around now, striking several houses. The Americans and the villagers could see the Germans’ helmets mounting the top of the ridge above them to the east and then descending. The second jeep hesitated a moment, waiting for Stamps, Hector, Bishop, and Train to jump in. The soldiers yelled, “For Chrissake! C’mon!”

  Stamps nodded to Bishop and Hector. “Y’all g’wan.” They didn’t move.

  Shelling had reached the other side of the village. It struck a house and then walked in their direction.

  The second jeep roared off.

  The four soldiers watched as the two jeeps, in single file, flew through the gate, forded the tiny creek in front of it, then hit the other side of the ridge, bouncing upward and churning up snow and mud as they headed across the western curve of the mountain. They saw the eighty-eight shells whizzing toward Nokes’s jeep, which was in the lead, explode in front of it, pop behind it, then strike it dead on. The jeep exploded into a ball of flames as the second jeep veered around it, flipped on its side, and fell over the ridge, tumbling over, then exploding into a fireball.

  It was as if they had never been there.

  From the direction that Nokes had come, they could see the helmets of the Germans bobbing down the ridge. The artillery fire was hitting the houses and flying into the air like tiny flocks of birds, striking the stone houses and sending chunks of debris airborne into the piazza, the rocks and shrapnel striking the stone walls with loud pops. They could see the backs of the villagers who had fled over the rear wall of the village, the skirts of the women disappearing over the southern ridge, blowing in the winter wind like stray flowers.

  Stamps tried to think. If they were surrounded, their best bet would be to get to a high point to fight the Germans off. The ridge above St. Anna’s church was the highest point.

  “Follow me,” he said.

  The soldiers and the remaining Italians followed, save one. Ludovico turned to see Ettora standing alone in the piazza as shrapnel pinged around her and artillery shells whizzed by. He peeled off, leaving the others as they fled toward the rear wall, his old frame shuffling through the snow back to Ettora. “Come,” he cried.

  Ettora shook her head. She was pasty-faced. She sat down in the snow.

  “Please, come. Ettora, get up.”

  She looked at him as she squatted on the ground in the snow, Indian fashion. “My eyes are not so good,” she said, “and I’m tired.”

  She had cracked, Ludovico knew it. The St. Anna thing had done it. He decided to humor her. She could be stubborn. He knelt. “Your eyes are fine,” he said. “They look fine.” He wanted to say they looked beautiful but could not bring himself to say the words. He cursed himself. If he could not say it now, could he ever?

  She smiled at him. She had always known what he felt. She knew him like a book. “My spell worked, didn’t it?”

  “Yes, it did. It worked.”

  She laid her head against his arm as he crouched next to her. Only then, as she turned on her side slightly, did Ludovico see the blood oozing from her stomach, from around a large piece of shrapnel, its hot metal end still poking out.

  From behind him, Hector, who was last, behind Stamps and the others, heard a howl, like a dog yelping. He turned to see Ludovico leaning over the old woman, the line of red from her stomach making a small trail in the snow. Renata saw it, too, and tried to run back. Stamps grabbed her, and she kicked and screamed at him. “Get him, Hector!” Stamps yelled.

  Hector didn’t want to go back. There were several Germans not a hundred yards off now. The village was in chaos, people running back and forth, smoke pouring out of houses, Germans kicking in windows on the other side of the village. He decided he wouldn’t go. He’d had enough pain. He wanted to die with San Juan on his breath, dreaming of the beach at Christmas, the lights, his mother nearby, the smell of rice and beans in his nose. Hector Negron from Harlem was not going any fucking place. Hector Negron from Harlem was no hero. Fuck Stamps. Hector Negron was no soldier. Hector Negron was a boy who could barely read but could speak three languages by the time he was seventeen. How about that? Everything he did had error in it. He was a mistake, as his father used to say, a mistake that made more mistakes that were followed by still more mistakes. No mistake is going to be made unless my son Hector is involved, his papa used to say. At times he’d wanted to kill his father, the old bastard, and now, at the moment of his imminent death, Hector saw him, saw him bright as day, standing in front of him. It made him furious that his father, drunk as always—drunk from San Juan to Harlem—would stand there screaming at him, telling him he was nothing but a shit, a dirtbag, scum, even at the moment of his death. Yet Hector did what he always did when he was a boy back home in San Juan. He ignored the drunken screaming, hoisted his father onto his back, and carried him home, as his mother had always instructed him to do. Only when he was clear of Bornacchi’s wall did Hector realize that the screaming man he was carrying over his shoulder was Ludovico, and that his father, thank God, was nowhere to be found. He was already dead, long ago, back in America.

  21

  THE STAND

  The shelling was all around them now, and they fled through the deep, slippery snow up the road, following the Italians toward the square and the church. They’d left the mules they bought from Ludovico in the alley behind Ludovico’s house—they were useless now, Bishop said. Renata knew of a cavern near the church where everyone could hide.

  Train saw no hiding anywhere. It had all seemed too confusing to him, a big mystery, the shouting captain, grabbing the man by the neck, the boy. All he wanted was a bath and some sleep and to get home. He had the vague notion that his grandma would take the boy, but he had no idea how to get him home. He’d thought he would hide him—he was small enough—in his pack and get him on the boat and maybe nobody would tell; or maybe he would pay Bishop back his money and Bishop would help him; and then when they got home he’d show him Old Man Parson’s field where his dog was buried and you could hear him still barking at night. There were all sorts of things that fathers did with their sons. That’s how it was done, wasn’t it? He wasn’t sure.

  Train was sorry the captain was dead. The man had tried to wrong him, but he wasn’t worse than anyone else, people who took his money, ordered him around. He had wanted a simple thing. Now it was all gone bad.

  The few Italians in front of them splintered off into the woods and disappeared, but the soldiers, Ludovico, and Renata pressed on, led by Stamps. They followed the twisting road around the ridges and up to the church again. The screaming man, crazy Eugenio, was gone. In his place was the angry swishing of shells, which sounded like a windstorm. The shells whipped past them, hitting rocks and sending boulders careening down the mountainside. Every so often, one of them leaped to the side to let a boulder pass, and tree branches landed in the snow around them with loud cracking noises. Train was amazed at how beautiful everything was. Every time he felt invisibility coming, it made things beautiful. He felt it coming now. He wanted the boy to become invisible with him today, that was his goal. If h
e could’ve closed his eyes, he would’ve closed them and wished it for the boy, but he had to follow the rest, so instead he wished it with his eyes opened, and he squeezed his hands like he was squeezing his eyes tight, and in doing so, he squeezed Angelo so hard the boy cried out and then looked at him and said, “You’re squeezing me too hard.”

  “I’m sorry, feller.”

  “You tired? Is that why you’re squeezing?”

  “Awful tired.”

  It didn’t occur to Train until he had climbed over the next boulder and set of ridges that he’d understood every word the boy had said.

  “Good Lord, is you . . . ?”

  “Where’s your invisible castle?”

  “I . . . What you say, boy?”

  “Is heaven a place where the houses are made of candy and you can break off a piece and eat all you want?”

  “Why, I guess so, boy.”

  “And if you want it to rain in heaven, it’ll rain, but not on other people, just on you. Is that right?”

  Bishop was four feet off. Train caught up with him. “He’s talking to me, Bishop! He knows everything. He can talk good now! Can it rain on two people in heaven, Bishop? At the same time? Can it?”

  Bishop turned to him angrily and said, “I just ’bout had enough of you, man. G’wan. Git out away from me. Fuckin’ idiot.”

  “I jus’ wanna know. Can it rain on two people at once in heaven? What do the Bible say on it?”

  “Ask me on the boat going home, nigger. I just wanna tell you, you don’t owe me no more money. Don’t do nuthin’ for me. Just keep off me, y’hear?”

  “What’d I do, Bishop? I’m jus’ telling you, the kid spoke to me. He speaks English. Look!”

  He looked down at the little boy just as he felt a pop. The boy gave a shudder, and suddenly was pasty-faced and still. Train shook him.

  “Good God, Bishop! Bishop!”

  Bishop walked on, following the others to a small ridge adjacent to the church. As the giant placed the boy down, a German machine-gun emplacement began chewing up the piazza from a nearby ridge. Train set the boy on the ground in the open piazza in front of the church, fully exposed to the machine-gun fire that raked the square.

  From across the piazza, the three retreating soldiers looked back and saw the giant kneeling over the boy as artillery shells and shrapnel flew about him and machine-gun rounds ricocheted off the church bell, making a ghastly ping-pong sound. Chips of the church façade whooshed past him, rocks and debris were falling on him, but the giant colored man appeared oblivious, unfazed, as if he were in a Sunday park reaching down to touch a flower. He gingerly reached a large hand down and gently shook the child, then removed his helmet and leaned in closer to talk to him. Finally, he placed the boy over his shoulder, the child’s lifeless arm slung across the giant’s forearm like a white stripe. The giant continued to stroke the child’s head and talk to him gently, as if the tender words and gestures would awaken the boy and make the whole nightmare disappear.

  Bishop, standing on a ridge above the piazza, leaped down and ran back toward Train. Stamps yelled, “Let ’im go! He’s made up his mind already.” Bishop ignored Stamps and dashed toward the piazza, ducking behind trees and rocks as he ran.

  Bishop was five feet from Train, debris and fire ringing off every rock and tree, when he saw Train get hit. The giant looked up in surprise, then leaned over on one knee. He placed one hand on the ground and gently lowered the boy, placing his body between the machine-gun fire and the boy. He yanked the statue’s head out of its netting and cradled it in his arm as rounds hit him again, this time square in the chest, and knocked him five feet from the kid and onto his back in the center of the piazza. “You can’t touch me,” he screamed. “I’m invisible!” Bishop saw Train’s face then, and in that moment, the moment between Train’s dying and his own imminent sweet release from life, he realized everything he had missed in his own scurrilous life, the opportunities lost, the friendships destroyed, the blown chances, his opportunism, all couched behind the granite wall of distrust and hate that he’d built between himself and others, because of the white man’s ignorance, because of his own lies, and most of all because he’d given up on God so long ago. As Train raised his head in agony, Bishop heard the words, “You made my mother die!” and he wondered how Train knew it, knew the true reason for his lack of godliness, and it was several moments before he realized that it was he who had uttered those words and not Train, who lay on his side ten yards away from Bishop and five feet from the boy. The machine-gun fire ripping up the piazza walked back over to Train and hit him again. The giant, incredibly, turned on his back and breathed in gasps, still alive.

  Bishop saw Stamps cross the far side of the piazza and open up on the machine-gun emplacement, which was inside the ground-floor window of a nearby stone house. He saw Hector run around to the side of the house, fall behind some debris, then get up and rip a hand grenade from his belt and toss it inside the window. He heard a boom, then the machine gun spit again. Hector had missed. Stamps ran up and fired dead into the machine-gun emplacement even as slugs hit him and cut him practically in half. Bishop saw Stamps fall nearly inside the window, his hand ripping a live grenade from his belt and dropping it over the sill of the window as he almost fell inside it. The force of the explosion lifted Stamps into the air and slammed him against a tree. His face, Bishop saw, was a mangled mass of flesh. The fire from the second machine gun, also in the house, ripped across the piazza past Train’s back a third time as Hector crawled around the side of the window and from beneath it tossed a grenade inside before rolling away. The explosion blew, and the machine gun quit. Bishop ducked behind a large tree that shielded him from the fire and headed toward Train in the center of the plaza in a crouch. He was just three feet away from Train now, shielded behind a large piece of concrete debris. He could hear him coughing.

  “Stay there a minute,” Bishop said.

  Train lay on his side, staring at Bishop, his eyes wide. “I’s all right. I’s all right. I’mma pay you back. Every cent.”

  “Be quiet.”

  “Lord. I can’t breathe. I can’t turn my head. Is the boy livin’?”

  Bishop glanced over Train’s shoulder. “He’s living,” Bishop lied. “Hector got him.” He suddenly felt ashamed, ashamed that lying had always come so easy to him.

  “Tha’s good. Tell Hector he’s got to take him home. You can’t take him with you, Bishop, all that gambling and stuff you does.”

  “Why, Train, did I ever tell you the story about Shine and the signifying monkey?”

  “Forget that. You gonna do like I said? My grandma’ll pay you ever cent you is owed. You makes Hector promise to take him home.”

  “I’ll do it. Now shut the fuck up.”

  “Lord, Bishop! I see the dog at Old Man Parson’s place! He’s buried in the field out back. I knew he was there! I hear him barking! And there’s Uncle Charlie, fiddlin’ . . .”

  Bishop reached out and grabbed Train, trying to pull him behind the piece of concrete. He finally managed it after the third try.

  The giant’s gaze was blank.

  Bishop didn’t know why he did it, but he had to. He sprinted across the open piazza and swept the lifeless child into his arms. The machine-gun rounds pinged all around him, heavy shells were falling now from the American bombers, which had finally arrived. He sprinted across the piazza again to the cover of the church doorway. He ducked under the doorway, right under the bust of St. Anna, and in the shadow of the charred, blasted-out doorway, quickly examined the child.

  Bishop couldn’t see where the boy was hit, but he was clearly dead. Probably shrapnel of some kind. Dime-sized shrapnel would take anybody out. He turned to run inside the darkened, burned-out church, and it was at that moment, as he turned to run, that he felt himself get hit in the back. The bullet didn’t feel hot, as they said it would. Rather, it felt cool. But the force of it was strong and made him kneel. The love. He got up to run again an
d felt himself get hit in the back again, and he knelt again. The Love. He felt cool air blowing in his throat, then felt himself, rising, flying high into the church rafters, high, across the pulpit, over the broken and charred pews, then around, still holding the boy, until he was face-to-face with the statue of St. Anna. And as he stared at her, he understood what Train had understood. She was breathing, she was crying, she was real, she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life. He understood it all then, who God was, why the mountains were formed, why rivers ran from north to south, why water was blue and not green, the secrets of plants, and his own purpose in running up the ridge after Train. He had found his lost innocence, found it in the giant’s belief in love, the giant’s belief in miracles, the giant’s love of a boy who was one of God’s miracles. Bishop felt himself floating down, and he placed the boy on the ground, grasped his tiny head, took a deep breath, and as two more bullets passed through his chest and into his liver and lungs, snapping the veins like twigs and he felt his life draining from his feet, he pressed his lips to the boy’s lips and softly breathed two big puffs of air into the boy’s mouth and felt him twitch. He gently laid the boy’s head down. He saw the bust of St. Anna above him smile, then he rolled onto his back and closed his eyes forever. Deep and comforting silence descended on everything he had known and would ever know.