Street Boys by Lorenzo Carcaterra

dry them out. The Nazis might be in the center of the city before one of us would be able to fire off a single shot.”
    “You’re not thinking!” Maldini said, between clenched teeth, his index finger jabbing against the side of his temple. “You’re ready to fight any Nazi who might come into Naples, but you don’t even know how to pull guns from still waters.”
    Maldini stepped away from the edge of the pier and walked in a tight circle around Vincenzo. “My daughter tells me you are a student of history,” he said to him. “You should know your religion as well.”
    Vincenzo glared into Maldini’s eyes, the older man’s harsh words a chilling challenge to the boy, forcing him to look beyond the words and pictures of old schoolbooks and confront the reality of his situation. If the leaflets were right and the Nazis were returning to Naples, it would not be words that would force them to take a step back, but the actions of the children that stood in a circle around them. Vincenzo looked away and glanced at the long row of fishing boats moored to the dock, their oars spread out on the hot ground to dry. “The boats,” he said.
    “That’s right,” Maldini said, smiling. “The boats. You will do as the apostles once did. You take the boats out and let the waters fill your nets. Only in place of fish, you pull up guns.”
    “Will you stay and help us?” Franco asked.
    “It is no longer my war,” Maldini said.
    “I will help you,” Nunzia said, arms at her sides, her eyes hard. “And so will my father. It is better for him to drink his wine in the middle of the bay than behind the window of an empty building.”
    Maldini stared at his daughter for several moments, then looked at Vincenzo and shrugged. “It is easier to fight a Nazi than go against the wishes of a Neapolitan woman,” he said.

11
    IL CAMALDOLI, NAPLES
SEPTEMBER 26, 1943
    Steve Connors lay prone in the warm grass and looked down at Naples. He rested his binoculars by his side and turned to gaze out across the bay, toward the islands of Ischia and Capri in the distance, and then back down to what had once been a city. The bullmastiff lay head first next to him, his face buried between two large legs, asleep. Taylor and Willis sat behind him, each picking at the contents of a small can of hash with the edges of a cracker.
    Connors ran a hand across the stubble of his chin, his eyes burning from the hot sun and the difficult drive. He had come to Naples expecting to see ruin, the same as he had come across at every one of his stops in Europe. But he had not been prepared for the level of destruction that stretched out before him.
    He lay there and stared at the devastation for nearly an hour. He had seen men die and had buried soldiers who had become friends in a short span of time. But those were losses sustained in the fiery heat of battle. What he saw now was affixed to a larger, even more frightening plateau. On that bluff, surrounded by pristine waters and lush islands, Steve Connors was made a witness to the price of war. There, during those long moments under the blazing Italian heat, the history of the most conquered city in Europe played itself out through the eyes of a tough young corporal from the small town of Covington, Kentucky.
    Naples has known neither peace nor prosperity in its centuries by the sea.
    It began as a Greek settlement, a port of rest for seamen coming in from Asia Minor, sometime in the fifth century. The Greeks named the town Neapolis, which translates to New City. Under their rule, Naples began to develop. An extensive roadway system modernized access into and out of the city, and its citizens were taught and encouraged to speak Latin. Soon, the Greeks were ousted and the remnants of the Roman Empire took their place, only to be supplanted by the Byzantines.
    From that point on, Naples became the lethargic host to a revolving door of nations quick to conquer and just as eager to leave behind snatches of