Miracle at St. Anna (Movie Tie-in) by James McBride Page B

the report with him.
    Driscoll decided not to press it on him. It could wait. Instead, he sat down and lit another cigarette, thinking of the aerial photo and the priest’s information. He wasn’t going to worry about another crisis, he decided. Intelligence wasn’t his job. Yet the photo bothered him, like an itch that can’t be scratched. The steady supply of German prisoners who were turning themselves in had suddenly diminished—gone down to zero—and that was a bad sign. If Driscoll was planning a big push, he’d do the same thing, make sure nobody got through to spread word to the enemy. They needed a German prisoner, badly. He looked over the list of names of the squad in the Serchio Valley: Negron, Cummings, Stamps, Train. His finger stopped at the last name. He did not know every draftee in the division, but he damn sure knew this one. This was the biggest Negro he’d ever seen in his life. He couldn’t forget him. He’d met him his first day at training camp, back at Fort Huachuca, Arizona.
    It seemed like a million years ago. It was July, hot as hell, desert hot. Driscoll was standing in front of division headquarters and ordered the huge colored soldier standing nearby to take the supply truck parked out front over to the post quartermaster to draw rations for the newly arriving troops.
    The giant Negro got into the two-and-a-half-ton truck, started it, and drove it directly into the building where Driscoll was standing. He damn near knocked it off its moorings.
    Driscoll stormed out of the building, cussing the man up and down, ending with, “Where the hell did you learn to drive?”
    The man looked apologetic. “I’m no driver,” he said. “I never drove nothing but a mule.”
    Driscoll told the guy to move over, got in the truck, and drove it to the quartermaster’s himself. En route, he asked, “What’s your name, soldier?”
    â€œTrain.”
    â€œFirst name or last?”
    â€œMy ma calls me Orange ’cause I likes oranges, but most calls me Train.”
    Driscoll marveled at the man’s size. He was so big he had to crouch to fit into the cab of the truck. His hands looked like meat cleavers. They were clasped nervously in front of him. “You ready to say hello to Italy, Private Train?”
    The huge man’s face crinkled. “Who’s Italy?”
    Driscoll thought Train was joking, until he looked over and saw the man’s face was dead serious.
    â€œI ain’t fussy ’bout meetin’ folks,” Train said nervously. “I never met no woman, though. Not for dating and jook joints and the like. Never had no girlfriend. If Italy’s a woman, maybe you could tell me what to say to her.”
    Driscoll was astounded.
    â€œHaven’t you seen a map of the world, soldier?” he asked.
    The giant looked out the window as the barracks spun past him, building after building, and beyond it hot, white desert. “The world is a big place,” Train said softly. “It seem too big to fit on one piece of paper.”
    Sitting in his tent outside the Cinquale Canal, Driscoll set down the list with the four names on it. No doubt about it. That was him, the giant he’d met that first day in camp. The guy who said the world was too big to fit on one piece of paper.
    Too bad, he thought bitterly. The big galoot was sitting in the path of twelve thousand Germans and couldn’t even read a map. He hoped the information he had was wrong. If it wasn’t, he felt sorry for the poor bastard.

5
    THE STATUE HEAD
    The statue head that Sam Train found on the bank of the Arno River in Florence and carried into battle began its life as a chunk of rock in a marble mountain in 1590 in the town of Carrara, forty miles northwest of Florence. A marble worker named Filippo Guanio, dangling precariously from a rope strung from the top of the mountain, chiseled a long, straight line down a