The Woodcarver's Secret (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (27 page)

“Where are you?” Roberto asked. “You seem a million miles away.”

Patricio shrugged and put his letter away. “A little incident at home.
Mamá says it is fine.”

Roberto had torn the remaining brown paper from his parcel.

“This funny old box,” he said, holding it with both hands. “My
mamá
kept it on a shelf in the living room. It’s been
around forever, maybe from my grandfather’s side? Oh well, it’s full of cookies
now and that’s what has
my
interest.”

He raised the lid and held the open box out to his friend. “Have a
couple.
Bizcochitos
con
canela
.”

The first bite filled Patricio’s mouth with the warm, familiar cinnamon
flavor of home. His mother often baked a similar recipe and he found that the
memory was nearly enough to bring tears. He cleared his throat noisily and
thanked Roberto for the cookies.

“Remember the day we met, on the train? You had empanadas from home and
you shared with me. So, this is my way of sharing back.”

So much they had endured together. Patricio had heard men talk of the
bonds of wartime, lifelong friendships that formed because of the trauma. No
one mentioned that simply sharing cookies was a part of that. In the distance,
the heavy thuds of shelling punctuated his thoughts.

Rowdy voices caught his attention, a half-dozen soldiers laughing
together, light roughhousing as they walked along the street. No doubt they had
already located the bars, or the women. Patricio bent his knees, drawing his
legs in close. Roberto had the wooden box on his lap and was balling up the
paper in which it had been wrapped. One of the soldiers came to a dead stop in
front of them.

“Hey,
amico
! Where did you get that?”
He was staring hard at the wooden box.

Roberto placed a hand protectively over the lid. “A gift from home.”

The dark-haired soldier knelt a few feet away, while his buddies
staggered on down the road.

“My uncle had one just like it,” he said. “Back in the old country.
Torino.”

He held out a hand. “Marco Santini. Company A. I’m from Jersey—New
Jersey—but my family, they come from Italy. I was just there, stationed on the
Italian Front. Crappy job but I get sent there cause I can speak enough Italian
to issue orders at those
stupidos
. Man, talk
about cold! Snowy mountains, terrible clothing … Italy not at all ready to be
in a war, I kept telling my Uncle Giuseppe. But, you know, he’s nothing to do
with the government. He’s a bishop, doesn’t get to make those decisions.”

Marco shook his head. “Bad place to be all last winter. Belleau Wood
was … well, awful … but I’ll take a summer battle over a winter one any day.”

Roberto looked confused.

Patricio spoke up. “So your Uncle Giuseppe—he had a box like this one?”

“Oh. No, that was Uncle Marco. I was named for him. He’s the one in
Torino. Giuseppe was in Rome, actually kind of high up in the church, emissary
to the Holy Father, I think. Something like that.”

He touched the box with his index finger. “So, yeah, the uncles came to
see us once and that’s when Uncle Marco had the box with him. He’d packed his
socks in it. I was pretty little then, so I was fascinated. Giuseppe was
telling us how he’d found this old thing down in some vault at the Vatican,
locked away in this big room full of stuff, like treasures. Except all the
other treasures were gold and silver and shit like that. The box was really
ugly and plain compared to everything else so I guess he used his ‘power of
office’ or some such and he took it. Laughed about how it was the cheapest
birthday gift he’d ever given Uncle Marco. Marco just stayed quiet. I got the
feeling he really loved the thing. He seemed pretty attached to it.”

“It couldn’t have been this one,” Roberto said. “It’s been with my
family in Panama for a long time.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure it was. I mean, the one my uncle has couldn’t
have left Italy for a hundred years or more, not until he brought it with him
on that trip. It’s just funny, you know, to see two of them. Who’d be dumb
enough to make two boxes alike, when neither one of
them’s
exactly a work of art—know what I mean?”

Santini stood up and gave a little salute before dashing off to join
his friends who were now two blocks away.

“Quite a talker,” Roberto observed.

“Yeah.” Their eyes met and they laughed. Then Patricio remembered their
earlier conversation. “So … your leg. What’s going to happen?”

“Oh, not much. They’ll take me to the hospital up the road, docs will
take off those two bad toes and I’ll rest up awhile. Probably be back at the
front with you in no time. A few weeks.” He shrugged it off as though he
believed that was all there was to it. “They told me a transport leaves at
three o’clock. I suppose I better get back there.”

He started to rise and Patricio saw his friend’s face go white when he
put weight on the bad foot.

“I can’t believe you walked those six miles this morning.”

“Hey, they promised a hot bath.” Roberto found his balance, forcing the
heel to take the weight. “And mail—don’t forget the treats.”

He nearly tipped over when he waved the box of cookies toward Patricio.

“Let me carry that for you. I’ll walk you back to the truck.” Once
again he wished for his lucky Spanish
real
. Right now he would give it
to Roberto to ward off a bad outcome from the foot surgery.

He tucked the letters into his tunic and the wooden box under his right
arm, offering his left as support for Roberto’s increasingly bad limp.

“Nearly there,” Patricio said. “Lucky you, getting a ride
and
going farther from the front.” The sounds of gunfire had grown progressively
louder from the south. The rest of them had better get back to their company
soon.

The troop transport vehicle sat in the middle of the Paris-Metz road,
facing the opposite direction from the way Patricio would need to hike back to
their bivouac area. Two other vehicles, one an escort and the other carrying a
general, were idling in front of it. A corporal waved Roberto forward.

“We’re rolling in five minutes. Good thing you got here when you—” His
final words vanished in an explosion of fire, dirt and hot gas.

Patricio found himself lying twenty feet away, face down with Roberto’s
wooden box pressing into his chest. A high-pitched whine screamed in his ears,
but no other sounds came through. He shook his head and rubbed to get granules
of dirt out of his eyes.

When he could see through the rolling dust, the general’s vehicle was a
mass of tangled metal and the escort truck lay on its side a dozen yards
farther along what was left of the road. Men were running, their mouths working
but Patricio heard none of it. The truck Roberto had just climbed into was
nothing but a charred mass at the bottom of a crater.

* * *

“Patrick Sanchez?” The faint voice came from very far away. “Patrick?
Can you hear me?”

Patricio became dimly aware of a young woman’s face near his. Her lips
moved but the sound was unclear and seemed distant. He felt his eyelids flutter
and then he went back to sleep. A gentle touch on his arm wakened him at some later
time.

The same female face smiled at him. “Patrick?” This time he registered
enough to know that she had Anglicized his name.

“Pa—” The word caught in his dry throat and he coughed. Pain ripped
through his body. “Patricio. It’s a … Spanish … name.”

“Well, Patricio, it’s good to have you with us again,” she said. He
caught about three words of the sentence but her smile told him what she meant.

“My ears … I can’t hear too well.”

She nodded. “The doctor said that might be the case. It’s a miracle
you’re alive. You were standing right next to the place where the shell hit.”

He worked up a smile, still unsure what she was talking about. A
bandage on his face itched and blocked part of his right eye but he couldn’t
seem to move his hand to scratch it. Soon it was too much effort to decipher
her words. He slept again.

The light in the room was different when he woke this time. Three
shafts of golden sun came from behind him, hitting a pale gray wall somewhere
beyond his feet. As he watched, the light grew more intense, then quickly
faded. Sundown.

His eyes traveled the expanse above his head. Angels floated on fragile
wings above him; a white-bearded man in flowing red robes pointed toward some
people who stared upward at him in awe. Then Patricio knew. He had died. This
was heaven.

But if that were the case, why did his body hurt so badly?

He dragged his gaze away from the beautiful scene. Elaborately carved
stone molding decorated the junction where the painted ceiling met a wall. It
registered someplace inside him that he was in a building. He couldn’t remember
the last time he was in a building, and never inside one like this. He heard
himself moan.

A man in a white coat immediately appeared at his side. “Well, Corporal
Sanchez, you seem to be feeling a little better today. I’m Doctor Mitchell.”

“Corporal?”

“You received a promotion and, I believe, a couple of medals for
bravery.”

Patricio turned his head aside. Roberto was dead—he remembered that
much. What good were medals?

“Once the leg has mended you’ll be given light office duty for a few
months.”

Leg. Patricio looked toward the foot of the bed. A thick white cast
encased his right leg, which hung suspended from a contraption of metal and
wires.

He fumbled through the information, working to make sense of it while
the doctor talked quietly with a nurse who had appeared at his bedside and was
making notes on a clipboard full of pages.

“A box—” Patricio said. “I was holding a box.”

The doctor had a blank look but the nurse’s expression brightened.
“Yes, they found it. The medic said it was under your body and it looked like
something of a keepsake. It was on your stretcher with you when you arrived.”

She tucked her pencil behind her ear and set the clipboard near
Patricio’s uninjured leg. A metal-frame table sat beside the bed and she knelt
to pull something from its lower shelf.

“The box is right here,” she said. “A little scuffed but basically it’s
just fine.”

He reached for the box, laying it beside his hip, keeping one hand on
it. The ringing in his ears made him want to scream. Sensing his distress the
nurse injected something into his arm with a large hypodermic needle. She
pulled the sheet up to his chest and he began to drift away once more.

The next time he opened his eyes, the ward lay in darkness but for the
soft glow of a few small lamps. Patricio turned his head to the left—saw a long
row of white-sheeted beds filled with wounded men. The same to his right. Had
they been here all along? Some of them tossed in their sleep, some groaned with
the pain of their injuries. Aside from the patients, the ward was empty and
quiet.

He drew a hand from under the blanket and took inventory: A bandage
wound around his forehead, one very tender area beneath it; scabbed-over
abrasions on his nose and right cheek; wads of cotton in both ears—he pulled
them out; the right leg in its cast—he remembered that—and a length of gauze
around his right forearm. His hand touched something hard on the mattress
beside him. Roberto’s wooden box.

He pulled himself up against his pillow, awkward with the leg in its
harness, scooping the box onto his lap.
Roberto, my friend
— Images
filled his head—scraps of that mangled vehicle.
Your poor infected foot. You
thought an amputation was the worst that would happen
. Patricio’s tears began
to flow. The horror of the trenches came pouring back, all the times he had
been certain he would die, then the shock of the completely unexpected
shelling. He allowed himself the moment to mourn all that had happened to them.

Tears dripped from his chin, landing in the dust that coated the box.
Absently, he picked up a corner of his sheet and began to wipe it clean. The
dark wood became more attractive the more he rubbed at it. It felt warm against
his thighs. He laid both hands flat against the carved surface and a rush of
comfort traveled up his arms. He could hear a man three beds away whispering a
woman’s name, the swishing of sheets as the man rolled over in delirious
half-sleep. He paused and listened, picking up tiny sounds from all over the ward.

The box now appeared to be golden brown, not the uneven, blotchy dark
color as before. For the first time he noticed small stones of red, blue and
green, and they sparkled now as if lit by some inner source. He ran his hands
across the lid and down the sides. The colors intensified.

“You saved my life, didn’t you?” he whispered to the box. “There is
something magical about you.”

He slid back down, flat on the mattress once again, his hands resting on
the wooden box on his belly. He felt his eyes drifting shut.