Victory Road. Mark Bowlin
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of faith. He said that Abraham took a leap of faith when he set out to obey God’s command to sacrifice his son because he knew that such an order was unreasonable, absurd…I don’t know, unlikely to come from God. Yet that is the essence of faith: the belief in something that you know intellectually to be unreasonable, absurd, or unlikely, yet you also know in your heart is as certain, as real, as the fact of your hand in mine.” As they walked outside into the daylight and towards a bus stop, he stopped and faced Gianina. “Love is like that, I think. Maybe it takes a leap of faith to believe that when the war ends, you and I will be together. It’s absurd to think that, yet I do.”
1235 Hours
Naples, Italy
Many regard the Neapolitan pizza as the best in the world. Sam certainly thought so, but he had never had anything else. He, Jim Lockridge, and company commander Bill Spaulding had waited for Perkin and Gianina to join them for lunch, after which they all would return to the base together and oversee the final preparations for moving out. With his stomach rumbling, Sam decided he couldn’t wait indefinitely, so he gave his cousin five minutes past the appointed time and then ordered pizzas for the table.
Sam seldom ventured far from the company. He despised Naples. The near total destruction of the city and the poverty and misery of the people quickly became oppressive. While anything could be found for a price—anything—Sam felt guilty for spending money on food in the city when so many people around him had neither. The plight of the children of Naples was deeply disturbing to Sam, and he had written home to his wife Maggie that he would buy all the change he could from his soldiers before venturing out so he would have coins to give the kids. There was never enough to go around. With few exceptions, Gianina being one, Sam had little regard for the people of Naples. He understood that times were hard, but he saw little effort to rise above the tough times. Instead, he saw theft and vice on a previously unimaginable scale. Jeeps had to be guarded—taking the rotor was not good enough—supply depots had issued shoot-to-kill directives—and the pimping of female family members was rampant. Despite the best efforts of the Allies, jeeps continued to be taken, stolen American and British supplies were brazenly sold on the black market at inflated prices, and boys gleefully sold their mothers or sisters for cigarettes. Sam knew that most of the crime and vice, particularly the vice, was with the collusion of unscrupulous Allied soldiers, but that endeared him to Naples even less. The whole city was corrupt and corrupting.
“So where are we headed, Jim?” Captain Bill Spaulding, the Able Company commander, knew that there were few options, but speculating on future movements was an obsession for the soldiers.
“North,” Jim said teasingly.
“I swear, Jim. I count two professors as close friends, and you both don’t know shit sometimes.” Both Jim Lockridge and his fellow graduate student at the University of Texas, Perkin, had recently been informed that their written defense of their respective doctoral dissertations, sent from an American encampment in North Africa, had been successful.
“That’s not true, Bill. I know a lot. It’s Perkin that don’t know shit.”
“Well, he knows enough to have the prettiest girl in Naples,” Sam defended his cousin and stood up to kiss Gianina as she and Perkin arrived.
“Thank you, Sam. You men are terrible to each other. You should not say such things, Jim.” Gianina kissed each of the men in turn in the European style and took a chair at the table which the grinning intelligence officer held for her. She sat down a large bag that she had brought from her apartment.
“Gia, there was no offense intended for you—only for Perk. My lord, I like that necklace!”
The Italian girl fingered her emerald necklace and held the stone out for the men to admire. “Perkin gave it to me. Isn’t it lovely?”
“That one’s nice as well, but I meant the longhorn. It makes me nostalgic.” Jim and Perkin had been classmates at the University of Texas.
Sam snorted, “Makes me queasy.” Seeing that Gianina didn’t understand, Sam said words he would never have uttered to anyone else. “I’m just kidding. It’s…beautiful. Here, let me pour you a glass of wine.”
The lunch progressed with small talk dominating the conversation. Inevitably, the subject drifted to the weather. It had been getting considerably cooler at night, although the daytime was pleasant enough to be outside. The rains were coming though, Gianina warned, and it would get cold in the daytime very soon. It was while they were on the subject of the weather that Gianina reached into her bag and pulled out several heavy, dark brown pullover sweaters and handed one to each of the men, including Perkin.
Bill Spaulding protested for the group. “Gia, thank you, but these must have cost a fortune. We can’t take these.”
She shook her head and wagged her finger at her friends. “You can’t turn down a gift from a Neapolitan. Besides, my landlady and her daughters made them all just for you—I couldn’t knit to save my life. She is so grateful to Perkin that she wanted to do something nice for him and his friends. Did he tell you what he did?” The men shook their heads, and while Perkin looked embarrassedly off into the distance, she said, “He paid my rent for a year, and bought a large ham and all sorts of fresh food from the black market for Mrs. Casetti and her girls. We have been busy canning it all for the winter. It may not sound like much, but simple things like rent paid in advance and a few kilos of tomatoes and flour are enough to keep her daughters out of prostitution. We have so little, and you Americans are so generous that she asked me what she could do for Perkin. I said a jumper would be nice. So she made one for each of you. Please accept them. It will get very cold in the mountains this winter, and I don’t think that you, you…,” she grinned, “cowboys understand what true cold is.”
“I don’t know what a jumper is, but I sure appreciate the sweater. I hate the cold—I can’t remember the last time it froze on the ranch.” Sam was delighted with his present. It was hard to find clothes big enough to fit his frame.
“Excuse me, gentlemen.” The speaker was Sergeant Jack Younger. The sergeant was Sam’s platoon sergeant and a very capable soldier, and he had several Able Company soldiers in tow. As he was in the presence of his company commander, he knocked out a sharp salute that was casually returned by the officers sitting at the table.
“What’s up, Sergeant?”
“Sir, me and the boys wanted to know if we could borrow Miss Gianina for a minute. There’s supposedly a supply of Mussolini stamps left at the post office yonder that you have to ask for, but we can’t seem to find anyone who speaks English. Every time we mention Mussolini, the fella behind the counter starts turnin’ red. It’ll only take a couple minutes. Please, ma’am?”
“I didn’t know you were a pederast, Sergeant,” Sam said.
“I ain’t, sir!” cried Sergeant Younger. He too started to turn red in the face.
“Sergeant, I think he meant philatelist,” intervened Jim Lockridge quickly.
“I’ll be happy to help.” Gianina stood up and motioned for the officers to sit. She kissed Perkin on the cheek and whispered in his ear, “You stay here and explain to Bear what the difference is. I can’t wait to see his face. Finish your lunch and maybe we can go back to my apartment again. Think about that while I’m gone.”
The officers sat at the table and watched Gianina and the four soldiers walk the hundred yards to the post office. Knowing that she was being watched, she put a flirtatious swing in her step and turned partly around once to blow a kiss to Perkin.
“My God, Perk,” sighed Spaulding. “You don’t deserve a girl like that.”
The other officers agreed wholeheartedly, and Perkin basked in their jealousy. There was a lengthy discussion of Gianina’s beauty and intellect, during which Perkin showed his friends the medallion of Saint Michael she had made for him. After expressing their amazement at its detail, the conversation switched to the distinction between buggery and stamp collecting, and they were still laughing at Sam’s mistake when an earsplitting