The Miracles of Santo Fico (16 page)

Adrenaline carried Leo quite a ways up the hill, but by the time he reached the top his heart was pounding like an angry drum, his lungs burned, and he felt as if he might have thrown up had he not so effectively taken care of that earlier. But the quaking and rumbling had stopped; all that could be heard now were the whines and yowls of distant dogs and the intermittent wails of terrified people. These indistinct cries came from places beyond the edge of darkness and seemed far away and otherworldly.

Leo staggered his way around to the front of the hotel, trying to ignore his trembling legs, churning stomach, and the desire for cold beer and a cigarette. The moon was long down, but the sky was clear and the stars were close and bright, allowing almost enough light to make out ghostly shapes and phantom shadows in the darkness. When he had rounded the corner coming up the hill, he’d looked over the low wall and into the back garden of the hotel hoping to find three figures huddled by the chinaberry bush at the back gate, but everything was one great shifting shadow and he heard no sound. He moved across the empty piazza at the front of the hotel and still couldn’t be sure of what was real and what wasn’t. At least the hotel was standing, but the harder he strained to see, the less sure he was of what he saw. Where were they? Why weren’t they outside? Why couldn’t he hear them? If the roof had collapsed, then from the outside everything might appear normal, but Marta and the girls could be in their beds, buried under piles of beams and plaster and tile.

At the far end of the building—the side that overlooked the bay—there was a wide staircase that led directly to the family’s living quarters. As a boy Leo had raced up and down those stairs a thousand times and that was his route of choice now. He pushed through the gate and was fumbling his way across the verandah when he saw three ghostly apparitions clinging together like spirits floating slowly down the staircase. Nina led the way, her sure hands following the rails; Marta and Carmen still clung to her and gripped handfuls of each other’s thin nightgowns.

“Marta . . . !”

Marta hated that she recognized his voice, but hated even more that she was glad to hear it.

“What do you want?”

“Are you all right?”

“Have you come to rescue me again? Last time you came by here in the middle of the night to do that, you were too late and I broke your nose. Go away or I’ll break it again.”

Leo expected no less, but for Carmen and Nina their mother’s cryptic remarks certainly raised questions. Both girls wanted to know more about failed rescues and broken noses, but Nina had a more urgent concern and she spoke directly to Leo.

“Have you seen Uncle Elio? I heard a big noise from the church. Can you see him?”

She may have spoken to Leo, but it was Marta who won the fearful, stumbling race across the suddenly treacherous piazza. Narrow white flashlight beams and broad golden glowing lanterns were appearing down the side streets of the village. Voices were calling out of the darkness; neighbors calling to neighbors in fear, or for help, or just to hear another voice.

Leo caught up with Marta at the church doors, which, of course, were open. It would never occur to Father Elio to lock any church door. When Leo pulled one of the great doors back he and Marta were greeted by a rolling wave of dust that poured out like a thick fog, spilling down the steps.

“Uncle Elio!” Marta screamed through the open door in spite of the choking dust. “Uncle Elio . . . !” But the church was silent.

Marta threw herself into the black cloud of dust, but in just a few meters she was tripping and falling over unsteady mounds of broken plaster, jagged tiles, and splintered beams. She called for Father Elio, but her only reply was an occasional explosion of falling debris. Great chunks of plaster and tiles dropped from thirty meters over her head, bursting like bombs and refilling the dark air with more dust. Someone called her name, but the fine dry dirt filled her lungs and eyes and she lost all sense of direction. Scrambling across a mountain of shifting debris in what should have been the center aisle, Marta tripped over a plaster slab and landed hard against something jagged. She felt a searing pain in her hip and tried to call out, but she couldn’t catch her breath. Time and direction blurred and her mind was filled with the image of her uncle buried beneath the wreckage of his church. She crawled forward, but again Marta heard her name being called from the bottom of a black well. She tried to answer, but all that came out was more choking and gagging. Something closed around her leg and pulled at her. She fought hard as she was dragged painfully back across the broken mounds of rubble; sinking deeper into a confused darkness, kicking with all her might at whatever gripped her leg. Suddenly everything seemed to give way. She was tossed and jostled in the air like a sack of potatoes and reluctantly she gave herself over to the spinning, tumbling fall. Wherever she was going, she would land eventually and deal with it then—and the blanket of dust swept over her and covered her mind.

Marta awoke on the steps of the church to stars shining out of the black sky. Carmen and Nina knelt beside her. Someone was coughing and gasping for air and she thought it was herself, but after a moment realized it was Leo. It was Leo who’d entered the crumbling cathedral, found her, fought her, and carried her out to safety—and she was stung by the thought that he finally got his rescue after all. She tried to speak, but her voice was thick with dust. She swallowed hard and tried again.

“Where’s Uncle Elio?”

A thin voice called out of the darkness at the far corner of the building, “Here . . . I’m here.”

The old priest was out of breath and covered with dirt, but he was alive and climbing the steps toward them. The three women collapsed on the exhausted old man, clinging to him as their tears smeared the dirt from their faces with the dirt on his.

“Something fell . . . The ceiling, I think . . . It has to be. I tried to turn on the lights, but I don’t think we have electricity. Everything was dark. I had to go out through the garden. Some of the old wall has fallen, but I couldn’t see . . . I couldn’t see if . . . I couldn’t see.”

Father Elio’s dry voice was filled with dread. Everyone knew what it was that he couldn’t see and what filled his heart with fear. If the garden wall collapsed, had it crushed the frail fig tree? Was the Miracle destroyed? But before anyone could respond, a high, frightened cry cut through the darkness.

“Father Elio!”

A lantern was running across the piazza toward them. When it reached the bottom step they could see that it was attached to Angelo de Parma’s skinny grandson, Frankie. Barefoot and dressed only in his underwear, the boy was wild-eyed and out of breath.

“Father Elio! My grandfather told me to get you! Nonno’s house fell in! He’s buried! And his dog too!”

Elio struggled to his feet, rubbed his face harshly, and took a deep breath to clear his head—there would be much to do all over the village and that would keep him from thinking about . . . Don’t think about it! Too much to do.

The old priest was amazingly calm as he quickly divided up chores for those around him. Leo would gather volunteers. Some of them would meet at Nonno’s old shed down by the pier to begin digging and the rest would spread out to discover if more buildings had collapsed on their sleeping neighbors. There might be injuries. Many would be frightened and looking for refuge. Marta and the girls would open the hotel for everyone and would prepare coffee. There was much to do. But when they were ready to go, they discovered their lantern-bearer frozen like a statue.

At first Frankie was humiliated when he realized he was standing in front of Carmen Fortino in his underwear. Carmen, who was of course used to adolescent infatuation, perceived the boy’s embarrassment and played on it for a moment out of habit. However, Frankie had discovered that if he held the lantern at just the right angle he could see many secret features of Carmen’s body through her thin nightgown and he couldn’t help but offer her an innocently lecherous grin. But before Carmen understood what was going on or Frankie could get what he considered a really good look, Father Elio was hurrying the boy back across the piazza toward the harbor road.

It didn’t take long for word to spread throughout Santo Fico as to who had suffered what. There was an abundance of cuts and bruises, a fair amount of hysterics, and one suspected heart attack that turned out to be nervous indigestion. The injured and frightened, almost by instinct, began gathering in the piazza where they discovered candles and lanterns burning in every window of the hotel and they were drawn to it like moths. Marta and the girls had their hands full supplying coffee and tea and wine and whatever else a distraught neighbor might need.

It soon became obvious that everyone in the village, and probably the region, would have a fair amount of cleaning up to do. There was going to be a run on roof tiles for weeks to come. Fortunately for Santo Fico, it appeared that the only severe damage to buildings was Nonno’s ancient shed and the church. But what had happened to the church was still unknown, and would remain so until sunlight. Father Elio refused to think about it; his only concern at the moment was Nonno.

A dozen workers in a variety of nightshirts moved with eerie slowness through the mound of rubble that Nonno and the gray dog had called home. The glow of kerosene lamps, with their tall shadows flickering against the back wall of Angelo de Parma’s tall house, accentuated the ghostly quality. The men worked as quickly as they could, but they had to be careful. When the lights hit from a certain angle it appeared as though Angelo de Parma’s great two-story back wall had shifted and was now leaning toward the sea. And, as if to thwart their efforts, great red tiles would occasionally slide off Angelo’s roof and shatter on the cobblestones, landing dangerously close to workers.

As hard as Father Elio tried to put the fate of his beautiful little church out of his mind, images of the dust-clogged chapel and the terrible breach in the ancient garden wall attacked his brain. Every time a tile crashed near him he heard the terrible roar of his beautiful arched ceiling collapsing onto the mosaic floor. Stepping through the rubble of Nonno’s room, he pictured the rubble of his garden wall. He was expecting punishment, but never this. This was too much.

They’d been working their way through the wreckage for almost twenty minutes when Leo turned over a board and in the dim lamplight discovered a chunk of plaster that seemed to have a nose. As he bent down to inspect it, the chunk of plaster opened its eyes and blinked at him. Then it sort of smiled, and sort of wheezed, “Hey, Nico.”

“Hey, Nonno . . . Here you are.”

Tears welled up in the dusty old eyes. “I knew you’d find me . . . You’re standing on my stomach.”

Leo called out. Others quickly gathered around and so began the slow process of digging him out. But Nonno called to Leo, “Hey, Nico, you won’t leave me, will you?”

“No, Nonno, I’ll stay right here.”

But the old man wasn’t convinced, and when Leo moved back to let the other workers in, he sobbed, “It’s not like the mountains, Nico! I didn’t want to leave you! I swear to God I didn’t! Please . . . Don’t leave me here. Please don’t leave me . . .”

No one had any notion of the storms that were swirling inside Nonno’s head, but his panic was dangerous; every gesture he made came precariously close to knocking down the one remaining support wall. If it fell, a ton of ancient brick and plaster would slam down and press Nonno to the floor like a dry flower in a family Bible. Leo bent over his unexpected charge and spoke words to calm him.

“I’m here. Don’t worry. I’ll stay with you, but you have to hold still and let everybody work. Okay?”

“Okay.” And Nonno was calm again, but his eyes were still full of tears as he whispered just to Leo, “I’m sorry about the mountains. I should have just crawled under the snow and stayed with you and your brothers. Everything’s been bad since I left you. And now my house fell on me.”

“I know.”

“You won’t leave me?”

“No. I’ll stay.”

“Thank you. ’Cause when my house fell on me, I got scared. I think the gray dog’s dead.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll make it okay.”

Stabilizing the house would take some time. Meanwhile, Angelo de Parma’s roof tiles periodically dropping in like mortar shells was hindering the work. Something had to be done before somebody was brained. Lumber had to be gathered to brace the wall and also positioned to shield the rescuers and the defenseless Nonno. So half the workers scattered to gather boards and beams, while the other half stayed behind to protect the trapped old man. The protectors stood in the rubble and scanned Angelo de Parma’s roofline, brandishing garbage can lids to fend off the terra-cotta projectiles.

Father Elio asked Leo to take some men to the shed behind the church and retrieve some discarded lumber. When Leo suggested that it might be better for the old priest to take the men, he just shook his white head and said, “I can’t. I can’t look. Not yet.”

Leo understood. But he’d made a promise to Nonno that he would stay close. At that moment, Frankie de Parma was sitting on a pile of the rubble with his skinny legs curled up into a ball and holding a garbage can lid over his head like an umbrella. In the debris at Frankie’s feet Nonno’s dusty face shone like a china plate as the two of them chatted. Nonno would be okay for a bit and the trip to the church and back would take only a few minutes, so Leo grabbed up a lantern, recruited a couple of other men, and ran up the hill toward the piazza.

He really did intend to return.

TEN

I
n the darkness Leo couldn’t tell if the damage to the church was better or worse than he’d imagined, and he was in no hurry to explore again—at least not through the front doors—so he directed their path across the steps and around to the north side. They passed a gaping hole in the garden wall; this had to be where Father Elio had made his scrambling escape.

The lumber was right where Father Elio had indicated and in a matter of minutes the men who accompanied Leo were hurrying back across the piazza balancing boards on sheets of plywood. Leo lingered behind on the pretext of searching for more lumber, but he had something else on his mind.