Frank Polizzi - Somewhere in the Stars

“You know I have a problem fighting Italians.”

“I know. We’ll fight somewhere else.”

“It’s not just that. What about Papà? Am I supposed to run off and leave him in that place? What about my mother? Look at the way she reacted after leaving Papà sealed in with his paesani like anchovies in a tin. One way or another, he’s still in the can to me, no matter how decent they may treat him.”

“Geez, cuginu. I feel real bad for Ziu Gaetano too. But sooner or later you’re goin’ to have to make a decision.” Paul looked out the window. “You know what I’m getting at.” He took a long drag on the fag. “I thought we’d stick together through this big mess. You know, watch out for each other like we was brothers.”

“Right now, all I can think about is my father. I can’t erase that look on his face when we left him there in Montana.”

“I feel it in my bones. They’ll let Ziu Gaetano out before I get to boot camp.”

Nick didn’t believe the crap Paul was peddling but he would always be famigghia. “ Minchia , you’d better drive ‘black beauty’ back to Mike’s shop, or he’ll come looking for us with that thick leather strap from his barber chair.” Nick smiled thinly as he drove away.

That night Nick sat in the backyard near his father’s fig tree, still protected with its galvanized, bucket hat, wrapped in tarpaper crisscrossed with twine. He turned his head when a light switched on and saw his mother gazing from her bedroom window. When she realized that Nick noticed her, she closed the wooden, venetian blinds. He imagined that he had interrupted an astral projection of his mother, while lighting up a Lucky Strike, and then through rings of smoke Nick began to see faces.

The first one was Paul, their last conversation still in his thoughts. His emotional ties to his cuginu went as far back as he could remember. He spent more time with his cousin than kids from the neighborhood. From the very beginning Nick would win all the academic awards, while Paul just got by in school. Even in baseball, Nick could hold his own in competition with Paul. But when it came to street fighting, it was the other way around. Many times Paul interceded for his cousin. Though his feelings never cooled for Nick, he sensed Paul could not accept his Jesuit school ways. They had two divergent mindsets that intensified throughout their high school days. They had this symbiotic relationship but Nick reflected whether they could maintain any relationship at all, if he refused to go off to war with his cousin, which brought Nick to a second face in the smoke when he lit up again. It was Deborah’s but her soft looks disappeared before his eyes as if in the trail of a magician’s vapor.

And then there was the visage of his father, more like a death mask. Nick could not comprehend how they could have imprisoned Papà who was bonu come lu pane, an accolade fit for Sicily or America. His own nephew volunteered to fight for America but that did nothing for his father. Maybe if he joined up, the Feds would let his father go. Nick didn’t know what to think, but felt it was his only shot at freeing his father. Then he remembered an old Sicilian proverb his mother used to repeat: ‘’ U Signùri rùna ‘u viscuottù a cu nun’ avi rienti’— ‘God gives biscuits to those with no teeth.’ He didn’t know where to go with all of this, like he was in a constant state of confusion at a time in his life when all he wanted to do was to have some fun. Maybe all his cuginu wanted was for them to be inseparable again, like when they were kids, except this time they would be playing a deadly game they couldn’t possibly conceive of.

Nick had a premonition that other things would come chugging after them from nowhere, like the nightmare he had after his father was abducted, the two cousins wildly pumping a hand cart on a deserted spur with a black locomotive steaming right behind them. They came to a switch track and a grinning, bespectacled trainman diverted them onto another track, while the locomotive raced passed them by, its violent airwaves almost sucking them in. They pumped their way through a dark forest and came out the other side, which gave them a sensation of safety. They rambled along until they spotted a tunnel bored through a hill. Nick noticed the headlight of another black locomotive curving into the same hole. He yelled at Paul to jump before they entered the tunnel, but his cuginu didn’t listen to him. Nick’s voice turned faint and no matter how wide he opened his mouth, no sound came out. He tried to drag Paul off but his cousin resisted, and right before the entrance Nick jumped into a river, whose current bashed him around the rocks jutting before a precipice. He woke up screaming so loud, Lucia came running in, crossing herself over and over. ‘Figghiu miu, figghiu miu .’

Fort Hood, Texas, a flat endless place of raw heat with little or no shade, was not on anyone’s list of favorite sights to visit. It had the perfect terrain for an unexpected tornado to toss someone closer to the sun. But it was wartime and this was one of the best places to get tank training. They came from boot camps all over America to form the tank battalions waiting to be assigned to the divisions that would battle the German war machine, which had already trammeled most of the European continent. Tank Destroyer crews would train here till they got things one hundred percent right. The only thing saving America for the moment was the Atlantic Ocean.

On a Monday in August just as dawn broke, the GIs piled off the buses to be sorted out into armored troops. Nick, drowsy and disoriented, could hardly make out the recruits who swarmed around him, but as fate would have it, Nick and Nathan fresh from boot camp at Camp Roberts, California, ran into Paul just arrived from Fort Ord, California.

“Madonna, miu cuginu !”

“Nick!” They kissed each other on both cheeks and hugged.

“The Army screwed up. Swore up and down we’d be together from the start.”

“It’s nostru destinu, Nick.”

“What did I tell you, Paul? Push for tank training. Oh, you know Nate.”

They shook hands. “We will be the three moschettieri ,” Paul boasted as they laughed and remembered their meeting.

“What’s so funny, you dickheads? Get in line!” a master sergeant barked, one of many sergeants screaming that day, as they tried to untangle the mass of humanity lining up. The trio marched along with hundreds of other new arrivals in a neat column.

Having been separated for basic training, they weren’t taking any chances and managed to finagle their way into the same barracks set aside for tankers. Nick and Paul were catching up on family stories while Nathan listened with interest, when a sergeant barged into the barracks. He straightened out the brim of his Brown Round, an old campaign hat that he always wore. Everyone dropped what they were doing and stood at attention. Sergeant Ackers swaggered around eyeballing anyone caught staring at him.

“What really gets to me is the army is so desperate for bodies, we are inducting any male specimen that can breathe.” Sergeant Ackers stopped abruptly, brandishing his barrel chest like Roman armor, his bare forearms tanned leather. “Now look at what we have here, not one but two Eye-talians, Spataro and Burgio, and their pal here, Fein. Now let me guess. German name, right Fein?”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

“And I’ll bet you’re a New York Jew too.”

“San Francisco, Sergeant.”

“Great.” The sergeant grinned. “We’ve got three guys who have ties to the Axis armies.” He tapped Nathan’s face. “Just kidding. I reckon you fellows were born here, so I’ll let it go at that.” The sergeant strode over the polished wood floor to the center of the room. “What are the rest of you losers looking at? You are not going to disgrace me, are you?”