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

Author:James McBride
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

If I can help someone along the way,

If I can help them from day to day,

If I can help someone not do wrong,

If I can help them through this song,

Then my living would not be in vain . . .

The boy smiled.

“You like that, don’tcha? That’s an old church song, boy. My grandma teached it to me. And I’mma teach it to you. It’s just words. When you say words, they don’t mean much. But when you sing ’em, Lawd, they seem to get a whole lotta power. I see that now. Words, trees, rocks, everything the Good Lord touched with His hand, got power in it. You believe in miracles, boy? I got something to show you. Look’a here.” Train pulled the large head of the Primavera from its netting. He had polished it up all through the night, so now it was clean and shiny. “See this here? It’s magic, boy. Makes you completely invisible. Don’t tell nobody ’bout it, y’hear? Tha’s jus’ for you ’n’ me to know. You see? You rubs it like this. Like a genie in a magic bottle, ’cept no genie do come, not yet, nohow. You wanna try?”

Train picked up the boy’s limp, cold hand and ran his tiny fingers across the statue head, and as the boy felt the gentle curves and slopes of the sculptor Tranqueville’s great creation, the great Primavera of the Santa Trinità Bridge in Florence, he recognized that she was the woman from his first dream, the one who had waved at him in the field. She was one and the same, and he knew then that what Arturo had said was true, that his friend was a magic giant, because this woman was a piece of candy from a dream that no one could know about. This candy had to come from a magic castle. It was hard candy, too, the sucking kind, the kind he liked the most. He wanted to sit up and lick it, devour the whole thing, but he was too tired to move. He stared as the giant’s huge brown eyes blinked and he gently lowered the statue head so that it was next to the boy’s own, right on his pillow. The boy could have turned his head and licked it anytime he wanted to, but he decided to wait until Arturo came. They would eat it together. It would probably take them a whole year.

The boy gazed up at the giant, who appeared misty, his eyes blinking in concern. “You are magic,” the boy said softly in Italian. With great effort, he reached up to touch Train’s face. Train knelt on one knee and took his helmet off so that the boy could reach him. The boy stroked Train’s face gently with one hand. “Turn your head now,” he said. “Please turn your head now and make it my birthday. Why won’t you turn your head?”

Train crinkled his face in puzzlement. “I don’t understand what you want, chil’,” he said.

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