Excerpt from
The Blood of Saints

SALVATORE

My father told me the story of how the statue of Saint Sebastian came to the village of Melilli, the village I grew up in. A ship was caught in a furious storm and ran aground in Megara Bay, and the saint was pushed ashore by the waves. All the sailors survived and thanked their cargo for their lives, but none of these men could lift the statue to carry it off. Word spread, first among the shepherds, then to the local villages and cities, until news reached the bishop of Syracuse. In three days he came with clergy and a crew of men to claim the saint. And again the saint was too heavy to lift. From all over the province people gathered on the beach, waiting their turn to try to break the spell and lift the statue. Some of the men built a fire and some of their women cooked. At night there was prayer and in the day their prayers failed them. But when the procession from Melilli arrived, our priest claimed the statue saying, Since the making of the world, Saint Sebastian has been painted here on the grotto wall in our village, here before even Sebastian himself was born, before his statue came. This is Melilli, the martyr Sebastian, tied to a tree and porcupined with Roman arrows. Then our farmers raised Sebastian on a wooden pallet and placed the poles upon their shoulders, and a great cheer went up among them as all the clergy prayed and made the sign of the cross. He is one of our own! they shouted. First God, and then Saint Sebastian! Another cheer seized the men and they carried the saint home, one of our ancestors, a Vassallo, among the bearers.

The men sang during the hour-long walk back to Melilli. When they reached the village center, on the ridge overlooking the bay, their knees buckled. The men cried out. A force had suddenly weighted down the statue. The priest kissed the wooden crucifix around his neck and said, No man can shoulder the might of God. So they left the statue there and built a church around it, the Basilica of Saint Sebastian. That was May 1414.

As a child, I loved that story. As a child, I believed–as everyone believed in those days–that Saint Sebastian would protect the people of Melilli forever. When an earthquake destroyed much of our village, it was by his glory that we lived to marvel at the statue unharmed among the church ruins. Etna erupted, we prayed to him, and our homes were spared. He saw us through war and occupation. Saint Sebastian always keeps us safe; he will always keep us safe. My father had said these words as we hid in the cave, hulling a bag of almonds with my younger brothers while my little sister and mother prayed their rosaries. All around us, Germans and Allies fought. Such noise as you would never imagine possible.

When the Allies captured Sicily in August 1943, men and women–children, too–all applauded defeat, all gave thanks to God and to the saints. In Melilli, we danced and cheered and cried, tired of hiding in caves, glad to be rid of Germans and Italian Black Shirts. I was a boy then–nine years old. I had come from the cave with my family to celebrate in the public square. A group of men ran down the steps of Saint Sebastian Church shouting, He’s safe! Our saint is safe! The crowd cheered for the statue and for the four descendants of the original bearers. Bring him out, they chanted. Vassallo, Morello, Cardella, Santangelo, bring him out! My father, along with these three men, went into the church to answer the call. My mother hugged my sister and then me. She went to hug my brothers, but American jeeps rumbled by, and we all turned to look and clap. When the convoy was gone she shouted, Emanuelle! Leonello! But the twins were lost in the crowd. She took us each by the wrist and dragged us along the cobblestones, through the stomping legs and feet. She called for her sons while looking out from the top of the church steps. My father came to the door and asked what was wrong, and she yanked at my arm and said, Sal didn’t keep an eye on the twins and they’ve run off. My father mussed my hair and said, Salvatore, find your younger brothers. The men inside the church called to him. Raphael, they said, hurry up. And he winked at me before going back in. I heard their voices: One, two, three! And then a groan and the people roaring as my father came out again, shouldering the statue with the other bearers. They clamored down the steps and parted the revelers as if it was the Feast of Saint Sebastian, when they dressed in white and wore red sashes and marched through the streets chanting, He is one of our own! First God, and then Saint Sebastian! They went around the rubble at the corner of Via Marconi, where our house once stood. There were no homes there after the Allied invasion. Only foundations. Family plots filled with stone.

So I ran from the celebration and found my brothers in our father’s almond orchard. The twins sat facing each other in a clearing among the trees. They banged rocks on an unexploded shell set between them. Emanuelle! I yelled, turning off the dirt road and running into the orchard. Leonello, what are you doing? Get away from there! They turned and smiled–that’s all I have of them before the flash and crack like the brightest lightning and the loudest thunder, before the tinny ringing in my ears, before the shock that came through the ground, up my legs, and into my chest, before the force of it knocked me down, and drove the wind out of me.

I can still smell that day in my sweat–a smell so thick it was in my throat. The choking stench of rotten eggs and smoke, a dry smell like something overcooked. It turned my stomach.

When I opened my eyes the clouds looked like the bowls of curd my father made from milk and lemon juice. Everything moved around me except for the ground flat against my back. There was a low throbbing in my head, and a ringing in my ears like the handheld Sanctus bells that the altar boy rings at the consecration during Mass. I threw up.

Emanuelle? I said. Leonnello?

I looked at where my brothers had been and couldn’t understand what was wrong with what I saw–an arm by a patch of dandelions. Then I looked at my hands and saw the blood there, and I knew that what was wrong was that arm in the grass was bent at the elbow the wrong way. And I wasn’t sure I understood how it got that way.

I rubbed at the corners of my eyes, feeling dirt caught there but the feeling would not go away. I kept on rubbing–it was all I could do to stop thinking about what was in my eyes and about the fumes and what they’d carried into my lungs.

I don’t know how long I sat in the orchard before I saw my father. He had been on the dirt road from the cemetery when it happened. He’d left the men and the statue, and the rest of them redistributed the weight of it on their shoulders. He approached, slowly, then dropped to his knees at the edge of his land, mouth agape. No sound came from his throat. He was only an image of a scream. A crowd gathered as my mother rushed by and stood in the orchard. She swayed, turning in circles, her dress billowing around her like an umbrella spinning in a storm of dandelion seeds set free by the explosion. She knelt among the naked dandelion stalks to pick up a hand, cradled the bloody palm against her cheek, and began to wail. I wondered which twin the hand had belonged to, and if a mother could tell the difference.