Fireworks Over Toccoa, page 15
Her head jolting to the right, she saw the sign for Owl Swamp Road, the turn she needed to make, flying by in the streaming rain.
“Damn it!”
Lily hit the brakes hard, and they locked up, the tires hitting more water than they could disperse and the Packard losing traction with the road. Frantically Lily turned the steering wheel and jammed the brakes, but there was no response as the tires slid along a slick layer of rainwater covering the surface of the asphalt like a bowling ball flying down a waxed lane, like an unsteered sled on a sheet of ice, until the car flew off the road and onto the shoulder and hit the thick, soaking clayous dirt and skidded and splashed to a muddy stop just inches in front of a massive oak tree.
Tilted sideways in the mud on the side of the road, the Packard’s red brake lights shone bright through the murky rain.
Inside the car, Lily stared at the tree right in front of her as bucketfuls of wet Georgia red clay, the color of blood, just sprayed up from her car, dripped slowly down the trunk.
Rain still pounding, wipers still beating, Lily took a deep breath and tried to compose herself, but the mud running down the tree seemed to point out to her just how serious the state of her life had become.
Sitting in that car on the side of the road in her robin’s egg blue dress and her pearls, the rain falling all around her, Lily felt like nature was trying to keep her from Jake. For her own good? She didn’t know. Were forces conspiring to keep her in her place? She didn’t know. But among the haze of questions, strangely, she could feel a clarity rising. If nothing else, a childlike determination, manifest in adult woman form.
For if she was in fact destined to be some eighty-year-old lady sitting on her porch with nothing in her life on which to reflect and savor but Tanqueray and tonics and buttered saltines and silver and china and goose, that stinking bloody goose, and a heart kept comfortable but never heated or stirred or truly known, she would surely go mad, but one more time…if she could have just one more time to touch Jake Russo again, to feel the warmth of his face, the embrace of his arms, to look into his eyes just one more time…that might be enough. Could she give him up after that? She did not know. But she was sure beyond all boundaries of doubt that if she did not have one more time with him she might as well hit the accelerator right now and put this vehicle and herself into that oak tree, because she truly felt that from this moment on her life would be unlivable if she could not see Jake Russo one more time. And it was going to take a hell of a lot more than rain to keep her from him.
Lily hit the gas again and the Packard’s rear wheels spun in the mud. She could not believe this. She was not going to be stuck here by the side of the road. No way! Steeling her grip on the hard ridges of the wheel, she hit the gas again hard, dangerously so. The tires threw mud into the black sky, but the car didn’t move.
Lily didn’t care if this was nature trying to stop her or test her, or kill her, she didn’t care about anything except seeing him again, and a determination, even a recklessness that she had never before known she was capable of, raged through her and she shook the wheel, turning it back and forth, her foot pumping the gas, and finally the Packard lurched out of the red mud and onto the road and she whipped the wheel around, quickly turning the Packard, and headed back in the direction she had just come.
Her mind and body as alert and focused as they were designed to ever be in a time of crisis, Lily saw the road she had missed, slowed the vehicle, and made the turn, and then she pressed hard on the gas again, increasing her speed as she drove anxiously through the fog, her heart pounding, her mind running, as she prayed that he was still there, prayed from a place in the core of her core, please, please, let him know she was coming, let him know she would be there, please, let him wait, oh, please—let him wait. Racing in the pouring rain down Owl Swamp Road, Lily pleaded with all that she was and all that she would ever be that she be given one more chance to see and touch and hold and kiss Jake Russo.
She threw open the door of the cabin and just stood there, breathless, completely drenched and covered in wet mud, illuminated by a crack of lightning behind her.
After a moment, Jake walked over to her.
He had waited. All afternoon, into the evening, of course he had waited.
A WALK IN THE RAIN
They tore at each other’s clothing, and before they were even fully undressed they began to make love, hard and fast and furious. No moderation, no deliberation. Their enmeshed bodies both now wet. Their cries immediate and full and unending, of both what they were doing to each other and all that was pent up leading to this. It was as though a match had been lit inside the fireworks truck and everything exploded all at once. He bit his lip. Her necklace broke and pearls spilled and scattered all over the wood and dirt floor.
Neither had ever had a need so complete, to be entirely with the other. A confluence of drives had come together and both knew that this bond, hearts pounding, flesh contracting and releasing, the building cadence and culmination of it all, joined them not only to each other but also to something beyond themselves, and now, no matter what and in no matter what way, this connection would always be.
What ever questions may have remained since last they were together were now answered.
Afterward, they lay on the blankets in the flush of a fire that Jake had made in the stone hearth. Rain continued to fall, its thumping patter made soft and mellifluous by the kudzu.
As reflexively as he breathed, Jake stroked her soaking wet hair. Lily reached out to his face, touching his mouth tenderly.
“You’re bleeding,” she said.
Lily wiped blood from his lips. She saw that his eyelids had fallen and she realized that he was asleep.
Lily smiled, partially out of relief. For this was the first time that she had ever seen Jake Russo sleep. This was the first time she had ever seen him at any kind of rest. She kissed him on the head, and that was when she realized that she loved him.
Tullahoma, Tennessee, January 30, 1942
The young soldier stood near the thick-gauge chain-link fence as inconspicuously as he could. It was very high and topped with rolled razor wire. Five feet inside was a second identical fence, same height, also topped with razor wire. Through the dual fences he could see dozens of men in fraying green apparel as they marched from their rows of hastily constructed plywood huts to a mess tent. Trenches had been dug between the huts to drain off water, but they were filled with ice. The ground throughout the encampment was covered with half-frozen mud, broken apart by jeep tracks, and the men slogged through it. Already showing obvious signs of malnourishment, the men shivered in the bitter conditions. Many blew into their raw hands, fingers exposed through torn cotton gloves, exhaling billows of moist fog.
He had tried to prepare himself for what he saw, but he had no idea Tennessee could be so cold. He had no idea this place would be so brutal.
“Ernesto Russo. Have you seen Ernest Russo?” he said to some of the men as they slogged by.
The men looked startled, even scared, and quickly moved on. A few shook their heads.
“Ernesto Russo. Has anyone seen Ernest Russo?” He said it louder so some of the men walking farther inside could hear him. But no one responded. A couple just shot him worried looks. Who is this young man? He had a very short crew cut and wore an Army uniform with no insignia, denoting a new recruit who had not yet completed basic training.
“Ernesto Russo.”
“Halt! You there! Halt!” a voice screamed from the guard tower. A machine gun in the tower swung around on its mount and trained on him.
Adrenaline surged through his veins. He wheeled around toward the forest. Poised to make a run for it.
“Halt right there!”
The pinewoods were just twenty, maybe thirty feet away. He could make it.
The men inside froze still and watched.
Another gun trained on him. Two more guards began yelling.
“Stop where you are!”
“Don’t move, Private!”
Just as he was about to run—
“Don’t shoot!” A voice called out from inside. “That’s my son!”
“Papa!”
He turned and saw his father, Ernesto, cling both hands on the inside fence. He grabbed the outer fence. Separated by the sixty inches of frozen soil, they faced each other through the chain links.
“What are you doing here? Are you crazy?”
“I had to know you were okay.”
“Jake. Jake. You shouldn’t have come.”
Before he could answer, a jeep pulled up behind Jake and two Army sergeants jumped out and grabbed him.
“Get your hands off me!” Jake started to shake them off, but the armed soldiers made it immediately clear who was in charge here.
“Please, give us a minute,” Ernesto pleaded. “That’s my son. Please. Just one minute.”
“That your father, Private?” one of the guards asked.
“Yes, Sergeant.”
The guard softened. He looked Jake up and down, evaluating the situation. He saw RUSSO lettered on Jake’s plain Army uniform and immediately understood. The guard deeply respected the importance of his duty. But this was a part of it that he hated. The gray area. There were very few questions in this war. Good and evil were clearly identifiable. Usually. The sergeant had found, or at least had begun to sense, that those parameters didn’t always apply so neatly here in his hastily constructed internment camp. Nevertheless, he told himself, the evil they faced was so grave and victory over it so vital, his duty in this gray place was necessary.
“One minute,” he said.
Both sergeants stepped back and lit cigarettes. The running jeep engine spewed exhaust into the frigid South Tennessee air.
“Look at you.” Ernesto took in his son’s uniform and buzz cut.
“They recruited me just a few weeks after they grabbed you.”
“You look good.” The older man’s sallow eyes beamed with pride. “But you shouldn’t have come, Giacobbe. How did you find me?”
“Congressman Bowers spoke to the FBI and told Mother. I got a letter from her last week at Fort McClellan, in Alabama, where I’m doing basic. We got a leave before they ship us off next week.”
“And this is where you came?”
“Why are you here?”
“Jake…”
“How can I fight? Who am I fighting for? What am I fighting for?”
“So many questions.”
“Who am I?”
“You are Giacobbe Antonio Russo. Son of Ernesto, nephew of Federico. You are my flesh, the blood of Italia, and you are an American. Do you understand me?”
“Mother said the FBI wouldn’t explain why you were here.”
“When your uncle came over after fighting in the First World War, every month I sent five percent of the family’s earnings to the Associazione Nazionale Famiglie dei Caduti in Guerra. To help families of Italian veterans who suffered from the war. But not all the money goes to the families. Some of it ends up in government hands.”
“You can’t help that. And you hate the fascists.”
“I speak their language.”
“The language of our ally when Uncle fought for them.”
“And of our enemy this time. Son, your uncle is an ex-Combattenti, an Italian war veteran, who lives in my house. Our money has helped Mussolini. And I have exchanged formulas for high explosives with Italian nationals.”
“Fireworks! That is why you’re here?”
“I am here because of fear—which is exactly what is driving those black boots across Europe. Fear is not rational. Fear does not differentiate between the ideologies of those who speak a common language. Yes, I hate fascism, and it can only thrive when there is fear. That is why you must fight. Listen to me, my son. America is a lumbering adolescent. But one day, if given a chance, this country will grow up, and you will be part of it. Fight for it. Fight for that chance. But do not let what you see, what your uncle saw, blacken your heart. War can get into a man’s mind and blood and never leave, like a delirium. Listen to me. War is a dark fever, love its tonic.”
The guards tossed their cigarettes to the ground and approached Jake. “Okay, let’s go.”
Ernesto pressed his face to the fence, gripping it. “Promise me that you will always leave your heart open.”
The guards took Jake by the arms.
“Promise me!”
Dachau, Germany, April 29, 1945
The smell from the furnaces lingered. It ruminated through the woods well beyond the razor-wire-topped fences that surrounded the muddy camp like a nightmare that remains upon waking. Indeed, it was a smell that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Sulfurous and singed, coppery sweet, the remains of deer after a wildfire. It was nauseating, the stench of madness.
Hair long, uniform tattered and bloodstained, years of war behind him, Jake still had no reference point for the things he encountered in this place.
With their former prisoners sitting and lying nearby, coughing and shivering in striped rags, too weak to care about attempts at rapid justice, the two guards were dragged out by their hair. They begged for their lives in German and broken English.
Smith & Wessons out, waving wildly, pointed at them as they screamed for mercy.
“Sprechen sie Deutsch?”
“Shut up, you murderer!”
“Sprechen sie… Coca-Cola! Coca-Cola!”
“Shut up!”
“Bitte! Bitte! Don’t kill me!”
“Murderer!”
Sidearms aimed at their heads as they writhed on the ground squealing in terror. Pop! Pop!
Jake took it all in, emotionless, dead to the world.
“War is a dark fever, love its tonic.” Ernesto Russo stared out at Jake from behind the fence. “Promise me that you will always leave your heart open. Promise me!”
Toccoa
“Jake,” Lily said softly.
Jake opened his eyes and looked into hers.
“I love you, Lily. I’ve seen enough and done enough to know what is true, and nothing has ever been truer. I love you.”
“I love you, too. I feel like all my life I’ve been waiting to love you.”
“Come away with me.”
“Jake. Don’t.” She kissed him on his lips to silence him before he went any further.
He pulled away, refusing to be silenced. “I’m serious, Lily.”
“I have a duty here.”
“Come away with me.”
She meant to say no and end it there, but another word came out. “Where?” she found herself saying.
“Nantucket. Boulder. Chicago. Soon after, Latin America. Brazil. They love fireworks in Rio. My family will send the shells down there on a containership and we’ll shoot magnificent shows over Copacabana Beach at night and we’ll lie in bed in our little flat nearby till noon. We’ll eat in the cafés off Visconde de Pirajá in Ipanema and you can spend the afternoons working on your mosaics. After that, we’ll go west to Lima and shoot over the great waves at Huanchaco Beach, and then catch a ship north, through Baja, maybe Cabo, then we’ll shoot the skies across the Southwest, La Jolla, Taos, then maybe on to New York and Paris. Definitely, we’ll get a show in Paris.”
“Do you pray, Jake?”
“I used to.”
“Why’d you stop?”
“It stopped working.”
“So you think it did work once?”
“I don’t know.”
Lily closed her eyes for a moment. Jake just watched her, wondering if she was thinking or praying.
“Do you ever wish you could divide yourself in two?” she asked. “One life could follow all the wishes of your heart. The other life could fulfill your duties.”
“You are living two lives, Lily. One is in a big beautiful house in town. The other is in a kudzu-covered cabin. You’ve been living this way your whole life, but I don’t think you can keep doing it. I think you’re finally at a fork in the path and you can’t go both ways and if you try to divide yourself, sooner or later you will fall apart.”
“I know. I know.” A lump growing in her throat, Lily remembered her father’s words.
Jake put his hands on her face. “Part of you is Lily Davis and part of you is the ghost of Lily Davis, escaped from the shell that once contained her. Part of you is that Nunnehi, Lily, one of the Cherokee’s invisible people, that part of you that lives here in the woods.”
She turned away for a moment. He could see this was really getting to her, but he had to say it.
“Don’t you see,” he said, gently but firmly. “My darling, Lily, you are Princess Toccoa.”
Lily nodded, fighting tears, this truth sweeping over her.
Jake looked at her hard, continuing. “Before you walk out of this forest you have to make a choice about how you want to live the rest of your life. I want you to live it with me. I want to take care of you. But it has to be your choice. I won’t say anything else about it.”
“I wish we could just lie here and listen to the rain and hold each other like this forever. Can you make this night last forever, my dear Jake? Can you use your magic to do that for me?”
“I can make it last for a few more hours.”
They lay together like that well into the night, holding each other in the firelight, safe and warm, while the storm outside screamed like a banshee in the wood and rattled the world.
After scrambling to gather as many of the pearls from the broken necklace as they could find, they left the cabin in a rush before dawn. Fed by the intense heat that had warmed the waters more than usual all along the eastern seaboard, the fast-moving storm had been quite severe. Unexpectedly so. It grew suddenly in intensity and size through the night, downing trees and causing power outages as it quickly made its way north. Several pines were down in the forest. Large broken branches lay across the path. The creek had overflowed its banks, so much so that the floor of the cabin had actually been quite muddy near the walls. A few of the pearls had disappeared in the soft, wet clay.
