Street Boys Page 3
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A HIGHWAY ROAD, TWENTY-FIVE MILES OUTSIDE OF SALERNO
SEPTEMBER 26, 1943
Steve Connors shifted gears on the jeep and eased it gently past a large hole in the dirt road and onto a long patch of brown grass. He killed the engine, grabbed a newspaper off the passenger seat and stepped out of the jeep. He lit a cigarette as he walked and folded a four-week-old edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer over to the sports section. He scanned past the headlines, searching for the baseball standings and the box scores.
“Why we stopping?” Scott Taylor asked, sitting in the front seat of the jeep. Taylor was twenty-four, a year younger than Connors. He was tall and muscular with short blond hair and pale skin that was quick to redden under the Italian sun, a high school football star back in his hometown of Pittsburgh. The two had known each other since basic training and shared a mutual respect for their respective battle skills and a dislike toward one another for almost everything else.
Connors flopped down under the shade of an old fig tree, leaning his head against its rugged bark. “Germans mine everything,” he said. “A road leading into Naples is one they wouldn’t miss. Which means we have to drive on grass. Which means before I start, I need a break.”
“I don’t need convincing,” Willis, the medic, said, jumping out of the backseat of the jeep and walking toward Connors and the shade. Willis was still a teenager, even though he tried to act older. He was the only child of a single mother who worked as a schoolteacher back in Davenport, Iowa. Willis was slight, had thin brown hair and walked with a farmer’s gait. He was a good medic and never panicked under the rush of battle. “Besides, you can only ride in these jeeps for so long. Makes your whole body numb.”
“I’ll wait here,” Taylor said, stretching his legs out and lighting a cigarette.
“That’s a good idea, Taylor,” Connors said, his eyes still shut. “I’d hate to have some sheepherder come along and drive off with the jeep.”
Connors tipped his helmet down across his face and allowed his mind to drift back to the many lazy afternoons he had spent across the river from Covington, sitting in the cheap seats at Crosley Field. With a youthful and still innocent exuberance, Connors would cheer the Cincinnati Reds to victory, savoring the win even more if it was brought about by the exploits of his favorite player, first baseman Frank McCormick.
Connors didn’t have much nostalgia for home, other than the normal longing for family and familiar faces and places. But not even the brutal events of a war could diminish his love for baseball. He longed for a game that was at once so simple yet so strict with its traditions and its rules. He loved the finality that embraced the two teams at the completion of nine innings, only to see each one grasp a new beginning with the start of the very next game. He lifted his helmet and gazed out at his surroundings, craters and rubble dotting a landscape once rich with vineyards and villas, and knew that such simplicity never could be applied to the much harsher rules of war.
After each Reds home game, Connors and a small pack of friends would drive over to Bob’s Restaurant, a twelve-mile run off the flat-road highway connecting Cincinnati to Cleveland, and order up a tableful of onion-smeared cheeseburgers and a platter of gravy fries, the entire greasy meal washed down with long-neck bottles of root beer and cream soda. Those days seemed so far removed from him now, distant memories from an orderly world.
The months he had spent in Europe, fighting battles in places he used to read about in schoolbooks and novels, had changed both his outlook on life and the direction he envisioned for his future. If America had been able to steer itself clear of war, Connors would have finished off his years of law school, settled down with a local girl and carved out a life as a tax attorney working for a Cincinnati firm, walking a similar life path as his father. And, much like his father, Steve Connors knew he would have lived out his days a happy man. But now, after all that he had seen and all that he had done as a soldier, he realized he would never be able to accept such a set-in-stone existence. He wasn’t quite sure what his new course would turn out to be or what events would enable him to give it shape and substance, and for now he didn’t feel any urgent need to know. For the moment, Connors was content with the knowledge that he had not only survived the rugged call of battle but thrived under its constant, daily pressure.
None of his combat moments, he honestly believed, required bravery or defiant acts of courage, and none contributed to his abilities as a soldier. He simply was a young man incapable of accepting defeat from anyone, at any time, and that is what helped fuel his desire not only to fight but to survive. It was a character trait that had followed him from early childhood and one he had never taken the time to notice. Especially since his unwillingness to concede a loss usually occurred over such unimportant events as a Little League baseball game, friendly nights of poker or a drag race in a remodified Chevy down dusty Graves Road outside Batavia, Ohio. But in war, such a trait looms large enough to gain attention and change the course of a man’s life.
Connors rested the sports section on his legs and looked out at the silent countryside. The area between Rome and Naples had been shelled hard, destroying most of the standing structures and turning Mussolini’s modern roadways into a graveyard for busted tires and broken axles. Yet despite all the damage, the region still retained the core of its stunning beauty and hard-to-resist charm. It was a stubborn land, much like the people who had lived off it. He lit a fresh cigarette, rubbed at the back of his neck and stared over at Willis, stretched out under the tree across from his. He glanced over at Taylor, stubbornly stewing in the front of the jeep, the sun turning his cheeks and forehead the color of beets, and shook his head.
In many ways, Connors feared for his future back home in America more than he feared any battle he would face here in Europe. He was a less complicated man living in Covington. There, he had understood his place and his standing, all the pieces of his life evenly and conveniently sorted and wrapped. But all that had changed, starting in those first weeks at basic, going right up to the final bullet he had fired during last week’s taking of the Salerno beachhead.
It often startled him to discover how calm he was in the midst of battle, how in check his emotions stayed and how he was able to rein in his fear and use its energy to his advantage, even as all around him the faces of the familiar fell dead. He thrived on the confrontation with the enemy and seemed impenetrable to their vicious and steady assault. No one in Covington would ever have envisioned him to be the soldier he had turned out to be. Back home he was the guy who was always quick with a sharp answer, ready and eager to make light of any situation. On European soil, he proved to be even quicker with a rifle, finding peace in the hard moments of a tense fight. He knew he would never find such peace back home, sitting in a quiet corner of a tax attorney’s office. He wondered if all that would change for him yet again, once he got back Stateside and lived among the surroundings he had always called his own. Part of him hoped so.
And, strangely, part of him didn’t.
The dog’s growl forced open his eyes.
Connors turned his head and saw a cream-colored bullmastiff standing a few feet to his left, its thick jowls curled in anger, a wide blotch of blood staining its massive left hind leg. He stared at the dog for several seconds, trying to decide if it was looking for a fight or just on a break from one. He lowered a hand off his leg and stretched out his fingers, reaching for a pack of Necco wafers wedged in the center of his K rations. The dog caught the hand motion and took two steps forward, heavy paws digging into the soft, dark dirt. Connors pulled the wafers from his pack and tossed them toward the dog, watching as the animal’s eyes shifted away from him and toward the food. He sniffed at the wafers, small lines of foam forming at the edges of his jaw, and then raised his right front paw and kicked the package back under the shade of the tree. Connors slapped his hand against the dirt and laughed. “I can’t even get a starving dog to eat this shit,” he muttered.
“He’s as scared as he is big,” Connors said. “So if you’re going to move, do it slow.”
He heard the rifle click and turned to see Taylor standing in the front seat of the jeep, his weapon pointed down at the dog. “So long as that dog stays in place, you do the same,” Connors told him.
“We’re here to find two soldiers,” Taylor said. “I didn’t hear anything about any dog.”
“Pull that trigger and you’re going to have to deal with me.”
Connors stood and, with one hand held out, fingers curled inward, took several slow steps toward the mastiff. The dog lifted his head and crouched down even more, his growl holding steady. “I’m gonna check your wound,” Connors said in a soft voice. “See how bad it is and if there’s anything I can do about it.” The dog began to sniff at his knuckles. “All I ask is you don’t take a chunk of my ass.”
The dog licked at Connors’s hand, the snout of his nose rubbing against the side of the soldier’s leg. He gently patted the dog’s massive neck, searching for a collar. “Looks like you’re out here on your own,” he said. “Like us.”
Connors squatted down and looked at the wound. The bleeding had slowed, but the cut was still open and raw. “He looks like he might need some stitches,” Connors said to Willis. “You up for that?”
Willis walked on hands and knees toward the mastiff, stopping at eye level across from the wound. “Don’t see how I can botch it up any worse than I do on you guys,” he said.
The mastiff turned his massive head and stared at Connors. “You’re just going to have to trust us,” he said to the dog. “Same as we’re doing with you.”
Connors turned to Willis. “What do you need?” he asked.
“Get me some water from out of that stream,” Willis said.
Connors walked over to a small stream, pith helmet in his right hand. He lowered the helmet into the still waters and brought it back to the surface, thin lines slipping down its sides and onto his wrists. He came up behind the dog, still holding his place, and kneeled in front of the wound, pith helmet cradled between his legs. “Okay,” he said to Willis. “Now what?”
“I’ll get my pack and bring back the supplies I need,” Willis said. “You run water over the cut. Do it about two or three times if you have to, just enough to wash off the dried blood. Then I’m going to dab at it with some wet gauze, clean up the area around the wound. Then I’ll either tape him up or stitch him.”
“You ever have a dog, Willis?” Connors asked, watching the mastiff flinch as the water fell down the sides of his wound, turning the dirt around his back paws into small puddles of red soil.
“Grew up on a farm,” Willis said. “Don’t think there was an animal we didn’t have. How about you?”
“Always wanted one,” Connors said. “But my folks didn’t need another mouth to feed.”
Connors made four trips to the meadow and back, clearing enough blood away for Willis to get a good look at the cut. “He took a hit of shrapnel,” the medic said. “Nothing too heavy, just enough to slice him. I’ll put some medicine on it and then bandage it up. And if he can stop chasing rabbits for a few days, he should be good as new.”
Connors stood in front of the dog, watching Willis work on his wounds, his back to Taylor’s rifle. “What was the plan?” he asked Taylor. “Shoot me and then the dog?”
“Only if I had to,” Taylor said. “And believe me, I wouldn’t lose much sleep over either of you.”
“He for real?” Willis asked, gazing over Connors’s shoulder at Taylor.
“We run into trouble, we’ll be glad he’s with us,” Connors said. “The rest of the time he’s like having a rotting tooth.”
Connors watched Willis work on the mastiff’s wound for the better part of the next hour. He was careful not to hurt the animal, dabbing at the cut, never pushing or prodding. He ripped open a powder pack and poured its contents over the cut, patting the thicker parts into the open edge with a palm full of wadded-up Waldorf toilet paper. Then he triple-wrapped thin slabs of gauze around the edges of the cut and tied them into place under the dog’s stomach. For his part, the dog never barked nor growled, content to let the young stranger go about his business. The overhead sun was hot and bright, the branches of the trees wilting under its steady gaze.
When he was finished, Willis paused to wipe his forehead and take a long drink from his canteen. He passed a hand across his mouth and looked over at the dog. “He’s probably thirsty, too,” he said to Connors.
Connors nodded, bent down and patted the dog’s head. “I suppose we could be rubes and have you drink from the stream over there, but you’ve been pretty good about all this, so some fresh water isn’t all that much to ask in return.” Connors bent down, cupped his hand, poured canteen water into it and held it up to the mastiff’s mouth. He smiled as the dog lapped up four handfuls, the large tongue slurping his fingers dry each time. “Okay, bud,” Connors said, capping his canteen. “That’ll do you until your next fight.”
Connors walked back toward the tree, folded his newspaper and shoved it into his pack, picked up his gear and rifle and then headed for the parked jeep. He turned to look at the dog, the animal’s eyes aware of his every move. Willis stood across from him, his gear already on his back. Behind them, Taylor, his rifle at ease, sat back down in the front of the jeep, wiping the sweat from his face and neck with a white cloth. “You be good,” Connors said to the dog. “If you see any Germans, bite them.”
Connors and Willis walked together toward the jeep, the dog following slowly behind them. “Thanks for doing that,” he said to Willis.
“He’s the first patient I’ve had since I’ve been out here who hasn’t bitched and moaned about my medical abilities,” Willis said.
“You two ready?” Taylor asked. “Or do you want to see if any birds need their wings mended?”
Connors tossed his gear into the jeep and jumped in behind the wheel. He turned the ignition key and started the engine, shifting gears from neutral to first. Then, for the only time that day, the bullmastiff barked, loud and often, running toward the jeep as he did, staring up at Connors with round, pasta-bowl eyes. Connors kept both hands on the steering wheel, his own eyes fixed on the empty road leading into Naples. He took one hand off the wheel, reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a piece of gum. He unfolded the wrapper and shoved the slice deep into a corner of his mouth. He turned to look at the bullmastiff, now sitting alongside the jeep. They stared at one another for several moments, the sun bearing down hard.
“Get in,” Connors said, reaching back to pat the rear seat. “Take you as far as Naples. After that, you’re back on your own.”
“Are you nuts?” Taylor asked. “We can’t take a dog with us. It’s against any orders anybody would ever give.”
“He could be a help,” Willis said.
“Another wilted mind heard from,” Taylor said, turning to glare at Willis in the backseat. “How the hell is a dog going to be any help? Wounded one to boot.”
“He might know his way around the city,” Connors said. “Sure to know it better than we do. Besides, it’ll give Willis something else to look at other than the back of your scrawny neck.”
“Which, I should mention, if it gets any redder I could heat my lunch on it,” Willis said.
“Give him some space,” Connors said. “He’ll need room to drool.”
Connors watched as the mastiff jumped into the backseat, his 140-pound girth taking up a solid portion of the rear, and nestled alongside Willis. “They grow dogs big around here,” he said, looking toward the road, turning the wheel to the left, grinding the clutch into gear, scattering patches of dry grass and dust in his wake, riding along the tree lines. “I hope the same isn’t true about the women.”
5
SANTA CATERINA A FORMIELLO, NAPLES
SEPTEMB
ER 26, 1943
The two boys knelt before the main altar of the old church, their heads bowed in prayer. The church, with its tilted dome and boxlike design, was a cherished remnant of the Renaissance, built in 1593 by Romolo Balsimelli, an obscure architect who never planned on his work standing for centuries, defiant in the face of war and neglect. The church was cool, dark and silent, the whispers of the two boys echoing off the stone walls and shattered windows.
“I can still smell the bowls of Mama’s lentils,” said Giancarlo Bardini, at twelve, the older by two years, sitting in a straw chair facing the main altar. “Me eating them with a spoon and you with bread.”
“Is Uncle Mario with us, too?” Antonio asked. He was shivering, huddled close to his brother, back of his head leaning against the top rung of his chair.
“Always,” Giancarlo said to him with a smile.
“And Nonna Maria?”
“In her chair, fanning herself,” Giancarlo said.
The older boy stood and looked around the empty, dust-filled church. “We need to go and join the others,” he said. “We don’t want to be left behind.”
“Just one more prayer,” Antonio said. “The one I always save for Mama.”
Giancarlo nodded, watching his brother walk the three steps up to the altar. “You say more prayers than a priest,” he whispered.
Antonio stretched his small frame across the base of the altar, stretching to reach the large cross resting in the center. His small hands gripped the base of the heavy cross, bedded down with jewels and sparkling stones. He slid it closer toward him, easing it across the smooth surface of the cold marble, and tilted it toward his face. As he reached up to kiss the crucified body of Christ, he saw the wires attached to the base of the cross and heard the click of the mechanism that snapped the fuse of the mine. Antonio let go of the cross, stepped back and turned to look at Giancarlo for one final time, his wide and frightened eyes telling him what they both already knew.