Chapter Twenty-One
Quinn and Alessia lie in the grass on the hill.
“So this is it. ‘The hill of infinity,’” Quinn says.
Alessia makes a sound of amusement in her throat. “That’s why we’re here? My brother told you about it?”
“Over and over again. The site of a spiritual epiphany in ‘L’infinito,’” Quinn says in Giuseppe’s grandiose manner.
“He had a romantic side, my brother. And he loved Giacomo Leopardi’s poems.” She turns, faces Quinn. “I honestly have no idea about Leopardi or any of it. Giuseppe loved this town so much; I couldn’t wait to escape.”
“But you’re here now.”
“Yes. Giuseppe loves home but decides to join the army to see the world; I rush off to Rome the first chance I get, and I am back.”
“What did you do in Rome?”
“I was studying acting at the Accademia Nazionale d’Arte Drammatica.” There’s a melancholy in her tone. Before Quinn can ask why she left, she says, “Then my parents got a knock on the door about Giuseppe.”
Quinn imagines the movie in his head. Understands now why Carlotta responded the way she did when another stranger knocked on their door.
“You came home to take care of your parents.”
“Wouldn’t you.” It’s not a challenge, not a question, just a statement.
He decides to tell her: “My parents are gone.”
She sits up now, looks at him. “But you said…”
He sits up too, shrugs.
“What happened to them?”
She’s very direct, this beautiful woman, and he likes that.
“I think we’ve had enough sadness tonight.”
She shakes her head, like we’re just getting started.
“Okay,” he relents. “My dad died when I was twelve, a car accident. My mother, she was murdered two years ago.”
This elicits a reaction. “Murdered? By whom?” She speaks English well, with a formality that is charming, even given the topic.
“They haven’t caught him yet.” Police still haven’t made an arrest. Haven’t found the Red Flag file his mom’s coworker told Quinn about.
He called the investigator every week when he was in the military hospital in Switzerland.
The cop said they’ve got no new leads, but they’re running tests on the bloody hammer.
A new technology called DNA. The tests take a long time.
But the investigator said they could be ready this week.
Quinn plans to call for an update in the morning.
Quinn’s mind flits to the night he found the hammer, to him calling the police, to the cop with the hound-dog face interviewing—no, interrogating—Quinn.
How’d you know where to find the hammer? You put it there?
You have problems with your mom?
When Quinn told the guy he was in juvenile detention when his mom was murdered, the cop charmingly asked, You get one of your shitbag juvie friends to take care of her? It took everything Quinn had in him not to leap from the chair and lunge at the cop.
They listen to the sounds of the night for a long while: the wind, a car miles away, the chime of the bell tower.
At last, Alessia says, “Tell me what happened to Giuseppe.”
He owes her this.
“There was a guy in one of the regiments. He was a bad man.”
Quinn recalls the day when everything changed. He’d been in-country for only a month, was sitting on his bunk in the heat, writing a letter to his brother. Telling him about the crazy local insects and reptiles: black mambas, giant fire ants, poisonous centipedes, and terrifying toxic spiders.
“Writing your imaginary girlfriend, Yank?” a voice called out.
Sven from the Belgian force. A menacing man who was unquestionably a schoolyard bully when he was young.
He was a big guy in his thirties, spent a lot of time at the makeshift gym.
He’d constantly stalk through the barracks trying to stir shit.
Quinn suspected it was Sven who used his notebook to light a fire in the burn barrel they used as a barbecue grill.
Quinn’s father taught him that bullies love a reaction, so ignore them. That’s what he did.
“Yank, I’m talking to you.”
Before Quinn responded, they got the alert about the need for riot control in Kismayu. Sven got off on conflict and roughing up locals, so the all-hands-on-deck call made him forget about Quinn, for the time being.
When they arrived at downtown Kismayu, a chopper had already flown low and dusted the crowd, and a platoon from Alpha Company had things under control.
With the disturbance cleared, they had been ordered to patrol the area, look for weapons. That was a large portion of his job during his short time there: confiscating the endless supply of weapons hidden in homes, wells, even graves.
“Giuseppe came along even though we didn’t need a translator,” he tells Alessia. “I was patrolling with a small detail and I heard a woman’s voice coming from one of the alleys. Something sounded off. I went to check and found Sven had a local woman backed up against a wall.”
Alessia swallows.
“I asked if everything was okay, and he told me it was fine, to leave. But it was clear, things were not fine for the young woman.” He thinks back on the scene.
“I told him it wasn’t safe for her, that I’d escort her home.
” Quinn feels a tiny tremble through his body at the memory.
“He got angry, raised his gun, and I thought he was going to shoot me. But then Giuseppe appeared with his own gun raised.”
“And that’s how my brother was killed? By the Belgian soldier on our own side?”
“No, not directly,” Quinn says. “Sven stood down, stormed off, but he was furious with me and your brother. We escorted the woman back to her home. She was shaking the entire time, perhaps worried we might hurt her. It was almost dark, so we had to check in with our patrol leader. When we returned to the checkpoint, though, no one was there. We were alone, just the two of us.”
“Your own men left you behind?”
“We think Sven told them all were accounted for.”
They were alone in hostile bandit territory. It started with a bandit who got off several rounds, hitting Quinn in the leg. Giuseppe dragged Quinn into a decrepit building, not realizing there were three hostiles inside.
“Your brother was hit in the chest but managed to take out two of them before he went down. The third guy was already on top of me, trying to jam a knife into me, since he must’ve been out of ammo.
I was weak and in shock from the shots in the leg.
” He doesn’t tell her about the terror as he held the knife at bay, but not far enough to prevent the sharp edge slashing a jagged path down his face.
How he knew he couldn’t hold the attacker back much longer.
How Giuseppe somehow found the strength and charged the man, ramming him off Quinn.
It was enough for Quinn to scramble to his rifle, get off a shot.
But not before that same blade plunged into Giuseppe’s chest.
Quinn feels tears roll down his face. “I let him down.” The guilt ravages him; so does the rage. But he doesn’t tell her that. Or that one day, he’ll find Sven and make him pay.
Alessia is holding him now. They sit like that for a minute. Then she leans back, takes his chin in one hand and wipes his tears away with the other.
And she kisses him.