Blood Alone by James R. Benn Page A

safety, home, and a life to be lived vying with his sense of duty. The war had made it possible for me to think and believe entirely contradictory things. I knew I wanted nothing more than to go home, and yet I was willingly being carried to the front lines, the only place I would find what I was missing, what I needed to feel whole again, to understand what home really meant.
    The sound of artillery fire faded as we drove. I put it out of my mind because to think too much about what we were doing to the enemy did no good at all. The same kind of bombardment could land on me tomorrow, so it was best not to imagine the results or think too deeply about it. Shrapnel didn’t care about the color of the uniform it shredded.
    Occasional rifle fire rippled across the landscape, but it was impossible to tell if it was from the side, front, or rear. A few quick pop pop pops and a burst of machine-gun fire here and there—the sounds of tentative skirmishes rather than a full-scale battle. Traffic slowly thinned out, vehicles taking turns or pulling over and stopping to disgorge GIs in fresh uniforms, their clean shirts and full packs marking them as replacements for units chewed up since the landings.
    We drove a while through silent, gently rolling farmland, the soil almost black where it had been recently turned. Kaz took a side road, little more than a dirt track, and pulled over. Banville pulled the jeep off the road and into a field of ripe grain. The stalks fell away from us, the wind from the sea carrying the faint smell of salt as it brushed our backs. Banville took a gas can from the back of the jeep and sprinkled gasoline over it, then lit a match and tossed it into the backseat. A soft thurmp and flames burst over the vehicle, shimmering in the hot air, red-yellow brightness quickly dulled by black smoke from burning rubber.
    Banville got up front with Kaz and we drove off, leaving the harsh sound of an exploding fuel tank behind, the smell of gas and rubber trailing us. Sciafani looked at me. But I was a stranger here myself. Or maybe not. The burning wreck disappeared as we turned a corner. There was something familiar about Banville and fire. I wondered what it was. Thinking about fire caused a pounding in my chest, so I tried not to dwell on it.
    We drove on, the road winding and rising as we passed more farmland. Grain was everywhere, ready to harvest, but farmers were scarce. So were farmhouses, for that matter. We drove through one small village that could’ve passed for a heap of stones if it wasn’t for the blue daisies neatly bordering small vegetable gardens. The houses were squat and square, built from white-gray rock that looked like it had been bleached in the sun for a hundred years. A woman dressed in black, squat and square as her house, fed an outdoor oven from a stack of firewood. The oven, made from the same stone but blackened by smoke, looked like a charred entrance to the underworld.
    “She makes the bread di campagna ,” Sciafani said. “They cook outside to keep the house cool.”
    “They?” I asked.
    “The peasants,” he said.
    “So I guess your mother cooks inside the house then?”
    “It depends upon which house. But never mind about my mother. Tell me where we are going.”
    “Sorry, Dottore, but all I know is that Kaz can be trusted.”
    “Is he a relation of yours?”
    “No,” I said. “He’s Polish, I’m Irish.”
    “You have known each other for a long time?”
    “No,” I said, “about a year.”
    “A year? Then he is a staniero to you. As you are to me. A stranger. You cannot know a man well enough to trust him if he is not a relation, or if you have not known him since you were both bambini .” “You wouldn’t trust anyone except a blood relation or childhood friend?”
    “Why should I?” He looked at me, his dark eyes steady as the truck rumbled over the dirt track.
    “Because you have to, when there’s no one else. Kaz and I have gone through a lot