Asimov's SF, February 2010 (11 page)

Marco screamed. I may have screamed too. I don't remember. All I remember is Marco—pale, eyes frantic, hands shaking—grabbing at the shaft, wanting to pull it out, but not wanting to because when he touched it, it hurt too much. Keith's friend ran over and we both stood beside Marco. There wasn't much blood, but there was this arrow sticking out of him, and we didn't know what to do. We'd seen lots of westerns, but we still didn't. Did you try to pull it out? It didn't have an arrowhead on it. It was just a wooden arrow with a smooth metal tip on it. Could you pull it out safely? Were you supposed to wait and let a doctor do it? How could you pull it out safely if the person was trembling and might at any moment start screaming and flailing at you?

"Stop moving!” I said.

"
Che dolore! Che dolore
!” Marco was saying, but he wasn't crying. He was being strong.

"I know it hurts, Marco, but you've got to stop moving. It's in your neck."

We could hear shouting outside on the hill. Keith and Bobby had heard Marco's scream and knew why he was screaming.

They were inside in no time, running toward us, Keith without his bow, his brother still holding his. I jumped to conclusions.

"You shot him, you asshole!” I screamed at Bobby, not caring if it made him mad. “Keith said you wouldn't keep shooting and you did."

Bobby was looking at the arrow, at Marco's neck, Marco's face, how hard he was shaking. He took Marco by the arm—his good arm—and said, “We need to get him out of here."

"You shot him,” I shouted again.

"No, I didn't,” Bobby said. He didn't say it angrily. He just said it, as a fact, looking at Keith.

Then I knew what had happened. There had been only those two windows left. Keith had known his brother wanted them. Not to be bested, Keith had gone for one of them. Even though we were inside, he'd gone for it, thinking, “What's one arrow in such a big building and only three boys?” When he'd heard the scream, he'd dropped the guilty weapon.

"You said you wouldn't shoot,” I said to Keith hoarsely. It was stupid to keep saying it, but I didn't know what else to say.

"Fuck you,” Keith said back, and I thought he was going to hit me.

"We need to get him out of here,” Bobby said again, his hand on Marco's good arm as he tried to guide him toward the door. “Tell him to stop wiggling, Brad. Tell him it's dangerous."

"I already did,” I said, but did it again.

Marco did his best to stop wiggling, to not grab at the arrow again, and we were all heading toward the door—

When a figure, a woman, stepped from the shadows of the corner.

We stopped dead. Were we imagining this? No, it was definitely a woman, a young woman, and she was looking at us silently. Where had she come from? Was she the one who'd made the first sound, and had been watching us all this time? But Keith had checked that corner, hadn't he? He'd kicked litter around there, hadn't he? He'd have seen her. There'd been a table in that corner, nothing more, right? Or had he missed her in the shadows? Had she been sitting on the floor maybe, and he'd missed her? Why would anyone do that, though? Why would anyone, especially a woman, sit in the shadows of this building watching us?

Not knowing what else to do—you could tell that even Bobby wasn't sure how to handle this—we continued toward the door; but when we were almost to it, she stepped in front of us. She was smiling, and clearly she was not going to let us pass.

"Where the fuck did she come from?” Keith whispered.

She was wearing a little cape—a gray one. It was hot that day, but she was wearing a cape. She was crazy, that was obvious, or she wouldn't be here. She wore a dress, basically the kind all the young women wore on the
passeggiata
in the evening at the waterfront—the kind they'd been wearing for decades—and she was pretty, though her eyes were a little far apart and her lipstick wasn't on quite right. She was wearing a little cap, too—a cap made from the same gray cloth as the cape. She didn't seemed scared of us, and she didn't seem frightened by what had happened to Marco. She seemed concerned, sure, but calm, as if this happened all the time, boys and arrows and screams and wounds.

What do you do with a calm crazy woman standing in your way in an old building? We weren't sure. We just knew we needed to get Marco out of there and to a real hospital.

"
Voglio aiutare,"
she asked calmly.

"What did she say?” Bobby asked.

"She wants to help,” I answered.

"Right,” Keith snorted. “He needs a doctor."

"Yes, he does,” Bobby said.

Marco was staring at her as if in a trance—as if this were all a dream. He was in shock, and in shock you can be awake but dreaming, too.

"Marco?” I said, and he didn't answer.

She was looking at him as if she knew him—which made no sense. How could Marco know her?
He
wasn't acting like he did.

"Let me help you,” she said in Italian, and Bobby didn't ask for a translation.

She came over to them, and Bobby stepped back.

"What are you doing?” Keith said to Bobby. “She's crazy. We need to get out of here."

Bobby was staring at her as if in a dream, too.

She was close enough to us all that you could hear the rustle of her dress, smell her perfume, even smell the wool of her cape and cap—as if it were winter and they were wet.

She took Marco's good arm—Marco let her, and so did Bobby—and led Marco to the corner. We followed.

There was indeed a table there, and it wasn't empty. It was covered with all sorts of things, the very things I'd imagined had once been on tables here. Hadn't Keith seen them? First-aid things, gauze and bandages and needles and bottles of tablets and rubber tubing and thread for stitching.

"Those weren't there—” Keith started to say, but didn't finish.

The woman was pulling the table out into the light, and we were helping. She sat Marco down on a stool—the one she'd been sitting on in the shadows, I guess—and inspected the arrow, where it entered his neck above his T-shirt. With scissors from the table she cut away his shirt, and then, giving him something to bite down on—a thick wad of gauze—she pulled the arrow out carefully, watching the angle of it.

Marco should have been screaming, at least crying, but that would have embarrassed him; and besides, she was right next to him, her perfume in his nose, the smell of her clothes, too, and her touch, the touch of someone who seemed to care, even if she was crazy. He was looking up at her puzzled, but grateful.

She had a glass of water on the table, too—perhaps because she'd been thirsty, sitting there in the abandoned building all day. Who was she? Why was she here? Why did she have a table covered with first-aid things? Were there men, migrants from the south, living in these olive groves and she wasn't crazy at all; she was married to one of them and sat here in case one of them got hurt? Or was she crazy as a loon and did this because she thought she was someone else and was waiting for someone who'd never come? But if she was crazy, where was her family? Where did she live? Why did they let her do it? Alone in an abandoned building where men—men more dangerous than us—could stumble in one day and maybe hurt her?

She gave Marco three pills to take with the water, which he did, and did not try to stitch up the perfect little hole left by the arrow.

"
Ha bisogno di un'iniezione
,” she said.

"He'll need an injection,” Keith's friend—whose Italian was obviously better than the brothers'—said.

"Sure,” Bobby said. He was looking impatient, as if the mystery of the woman had been only a moment's dream, and getting out of this place was what really mattered—which, for Marco's sake, was true.

"
Dovete portarlo subito in ospedale
,” she said.

"Hospital, yes,” Bobby said before anyone could translate it.

Then she said something that stopped my heart. She looked at Keith and Bobby, who were side by side now, cocked her heard just a little, and asked gently:

"
Perche avete rimosso la testa della statua
?"

Keith and Bobby had no idea what she was saying, and it took me a second to find the courage to tell them.

"She wants—she wants to know why you took its head ... the statue's head."

Keith jumped, and even Bobby, calm as he usually was, stepped back.

"What?"

She was waiting for an answer. Then she said: “
Perche? Perche la testa di una donna morta tanti anni fa e cosi triste nei suoi ultimi anni...."

I looked at Keith's friend, but the Italian was beyond him.

"
Why
?” I began—wishing I weren't the one to have to do it. “
Why the head ... of a woman dead all these years ... and so sad during her final days...."

Keith was looking at Bobby. Bobby was looking back. They'd both lost some color in their faces.

Keith said, “No one could have seen us—it was night. It was—"

"Shut up, asshole,” Bobby answered. “Who cares if she saw us?"

As Bobby guided Marco through the door, and Keith—looking both afraid and angry —muttered what sounded like, “Bitch!” everyone followed, but I trailed behind. I couldn't help it. I couldn't stop looking at her, and neither could Marco. Even as Bobby pushed him through the door, he was looking back at her as if he did know her. A chill ran down my neck.

"
Lo conosce
?” I heard myself say to her. “You know him?"

"
Si
,” she answered, her eyes on Marco. “
Lo conosco da sempre
."

Yes. I know him always
.

I'd never heard the expression before, and would never hear it again.
To know someone
always
.

What she said next, her eyes still on Marco, I would also never forget:

"
Grazie per il regalo di lui.
"

Thank you for the gift he is.

The chill did not go away. I walked quickly to the door, not looking back. I didn't want to see what was in her eyes, even if it looked like love.

Afterward, the doctors said we'd done the right thing not letting Marco walk back to my house, but simply having him sit at the foot of the statue, keeping him awake, while I, since my Italian was better, ran to the nearest house on the path home and had them call my dad, who came in our car and drove Marco to the hospital in La Creccia.

The doctors also complimented whoever had removed the arrow and given Marco antibiotics—an old-fashioned kind, sulfonamides (Marco had one in his pocket still). When we said a woman in the old German hospital had done it, they thought we were drunk, I'm sure. We insisted. A woman had been there. “Well,” they said, “she must have been a nurse. She knew what angle to remove it on, and the danger. The tip of the arrow was near the carotid artery. If she hadn't removed it and the boy had fallen on it...."

A month later, when Marco's wound had healed, my parents said what I'd known they would say—that I had to go to the man in the villa, who indeed did own the old hospital and all the land up from the cove, and apologize in person. I was, after all, the son of a Naval officer and therefore an ambassador from America, though apparently not a very good one; and I needed to try to fix the damage. My dad would go with me, it was decided, and that was because Keith and his brother weren't going. They were back in school in Rome; and, rather than having them apologize in person to the owner, Commander Speer had paid the man three hundred dollars and returned the head of the statue, which Bobby had been keeping under his bed and Keith had decorated with some of his sister's lipstick. He was of course also paying for Marco's medical bills, since these would have been a hardship for any Vecchia Erici family.

You could tell from my mother's look what she was thinking when she heard that Commander Speer wasn't making his boys apologize in person. Maybe this is how fathers from families like that behaved, but this was not going to be how
we
were going to behave.

The owner told my parents that a face-to-face apology wasn't necessary, that he didn't need additional monetary compensation, that an apology on the phone was quite sufficient; but my father insisted. He and I would visit the owner the next weekend.

The same day my dad spoke to the owner by phone, I ran into Marco at the wharf. He had his fishing pole and I had mine; and my real friends—the ones from the “right” families—weren't with me because they didn't like to fish. It was that simple. Stamp collecting, maybe, and playing war in the olive groves, and soccer; but not fishing, especially from the wharf or
passeggiata
rocks, where people could see you and think you were a technical-school kid. “You're an American,” Carlo said. “You can get away with it.” I wasn't sure exactly what I was getting away with, but I went ahead and fished, and that day Marco was there.

When I told him what I had to do, that my dad would be accompanying me to apologize, he said, “If I go with you, maybe your father will not have to.” I could tell he felt bad about the windows, but I knew that wasn't the main reason he offered. We were still friends—even if friends usually don't get you shot in the neck with an arrow—and that meant something to him, as it did to me. He didn't ask whether Keith and Bobby would be going. He knew I'd have mentioned it if they were. He didn't even seem angry at Keith. Boys like Keith—and arrows falling from the sky—were to be expected, and you accepted them and went on with your life.

He was right, it turned out. If he came, my parents agreed, my father wouldn't need to. “That's very kind of Marco,” my mother said. A part of me was of course thinking that if the victim of the shooting was with me, the owner might not be as angry, but I certainly wasn't going to admit it.

When we reached the statue, it was still headless. The head hadn't been put back on yet. Could you even do it? Could you glue cement?. She might be headless forever, and Keith and Bobby would have gotten away with murder again.

Instead of taking the gravel fork to the hospital, we took the one to the left, toward the villa, a much longer walk.