Evan Hunter - Sons

“I don’t know anything,” Ace answered. The kerosene lamp on the table sputtered and then flared. Yellow light spilled onto the stone floor in a wide flickering circle. “What’s that?” Ace asked. He was pointing to a flimsy structure at the far end of the room, shaped somewhat like a skeletal isosceles pyramid with four shelves. It was difficult to see anything too clearly in that dim corner, but the bottom shelf seemed to contain tiny figures representing the Holy Family, and the Three Kings, and a few shepherds and sheep and angels and what appeared to be a lopsided camel, all of them standing on a pile of straw Francesca had doubtlessly brought over from the barn. The other three shelves, spaced at intervals inside the open pyramid, each smaller than the next in ascending order toward the apex, were empty.

“ Il presepio,” she explained.

“Tell her to talk English,” Ace said. “Talk English!” he shouted at her, before I could say a word.

“It is a custom,” she said, and shrugged. “For Christmas.”

“What’re the empty shelves for?”

“Gifts.”

“Don’t expect any from us,” Ace said.

“I was not expecting any from you.”

“Damn straight,” Ace said. “Where’s the glasses? I thought you were bringing glasses.”

“Coming,” Francesca said, and went barefoot to the wooden cabinet near the stove. “Was it bad?” she asked.

“It was marvelous,” Ace said. “Fucking marvelous.”

“We lost Georgie Heffernan,” I said.

“We lost some others, too.”

“Yes, but we personally lost poor Georgie.”

“So what? She doesn’t even know who poor Georgie is.”

“Was,” I said.

“Was. So what? Fuck him. Come on, Frankie, bring those glasses over here.”

“He’s upset,” she said to me.

“Who’s upset?” Ace said. “Here I am in lovely Italy a week before Christmas about to fuck a pig I wouldn’t look at back home, why should I be upset?”

“He didn’t mean that,” I said. “Come on, Ace, come on.”

“I meant it,” Ace said.

“He meant it,” Francesca said softly, and put three glasses on the table.

“Give her a drink,” Ace said.

“I don’t want anything,” she said. “I was sleeping when you came.”

“Give her a drink, Will. We sent a man all the way to Cairo for this scotch, you damn well better drink it. You better drink a whole lot of it, Frankie dear.”

“Have a drink, Frankie,” I said.

“All right, but just a little.”

“A lot” Ace said. Pouring, he mumbled, “Bet old Skipper ain’t fucking a pig like you, you can bet on that.”

“Tell him to stop,” Francesca said. “He doesn’t have to come here if he doesn’t want to. No one forces him to come here.”

“Oh, shut up,” I said. “Drink your fuckin’ whiskey, and shut up.”

“You too,” Francesca said, and angrily lifted her glass and threw off the three fingers of booze without stopping to take a breath. “More,” she said, and held the glass out.

“Thinks it grows on trees,” Ace said, but he poured the water tumbler half full again, and again Francesca drained it without batting an eyelash.

“Where’s the governor?” Ace asked. “Out with his prize pig?”

“Asleep,” Francesca said.

“He falls asleep quicker than most of us, you know,” Ace said.

“How come?” I asked.

“Only got one eye to close.”

“Ask me, he’s only got one ball, " I said.

“Just between you and me. Mac, you better have three of them,” Ace said, and burst out laughing, and then said, “You know that one, Will?”

“Yeah, I know that one.”

“This guy walks into a bar, and he says...”

“He knows the story,” Francesca said.

“So what?” I said. “If Ace feels like telling a little story, what’s wrong with him telling his little story? Did you fly to Poland today?”

“No,” Francesca said.

“So shut the fuck up, and let him tell his story. Go on, Ace, tell your story.”

“I forget the story.”

“It was about Georgie Heffernan,” I said.

“No, Georgie’s dead, the dumb bastard. Have another drink, Francesca.”

“I hate you both,” Francesca said, but she held out her glass.

“So hate us, who cares?” Ace said. “I’m going to bed.”

“So am I,” I said.

“Buona notte,” Francesca said, making it sound like a curse, and not moving from the table.

Ace and I went into the bedroom. Gino was snoring away in his underwear. Ace pulled back the blankets and said, "Out, shit-head!” and the old man sat up and stared into the darkness with his one good eye, and then realized it was us, the liberating Americans, and immediately got out of bed, and shuffled and scraped his way out of the room. He said something briefly to Francesca outside, and then we heard the front door open and close, and we knew he was on his way to the barn. As we undressed, I could hear Francesca muttering to herself in Italian, the repeated click of the bottle’s lip against the rim of her glass, the sound of the whiskey being poured. Ace and I climbed into bed.

“Come on, pig!” he roared, but Francesca did not reply.

In a little while, we were both sound asleep.

Perhaps it happened because we were both so drunk. It happened many times afterward, however, when neither of us was drunk, so I can’t use that as an excuse. Perhaps it happened because we had seen Georgie Heffernan go down in flames. But we had seen bombers knocked down before, and our reactions were always the same, and they had never precipitated anything like this. Perhaps it happened because of Archie Colombo’s story about the jet, and the possibility that we might meet one on the raids to come and be defenseless against it.

Or maybe, I don’t know, maybe it had something to do with the fact that we had already flown thirty-two missions, with rest leaves to Rome after the twelfth, Capri after the twenty-fifth, and eighteen missions to go before we would be sent back home. Maybe after thirty-two missions with your hands and your feet freezing cold and your head pounding, you got too tired or too scared and just didn’t give a damn any more. Maybe you could only pretend for so long that everything was quite normal, thank you, and that escorting bombers over enemy targets was exactly what you’d be doing if asked to decide on any given day (“You anxious to get killed?” my father had said at the dinner table in our East Scott Street house on a day in March of 1943, when my mother was still alive and I was in a hurry to fly airplanes).

I heard someone weeping, and at first I thought Francesca had crawled into bed and was crying because of the way we’d talked to her earlier. I guess that was why I readied out, I’m sure that was the reason, thinking that Francesca was the person crying, and putting my arm over her shoulder next to mine, and then hearing Ace say, “Skipper, I’m afraid,” and knowing all at once it was not Francesca, knowing that Francesca was not lying between us, she had not come to bed. “I’m afraid,” Ace said, “I’m afraid, I’m afraid,” and I kept my arm over his trembling shoulder, and he moved his face in against my chest, his tears falling on my skin, and said, “I’m afraid, oh Jesus I’m afraid, Skipper,” and I said, “Come on, Ace, it’s okay, come on now.” He must have recognized then that I was not his older brother but only a friend named William Francis Tyler who had flown a harrowing mission with him that morning and afternoon, he must have realized then that we were not brothers. But he did not move away from me, he seemed to come closer instead, and I suddenly found both my arms around him, cradling him as though he were a baby, while he wept against my chest.