looked at his wife, the scars and wrinkles of age and economic hardship dissolving as he remembered the sweetly singing girl he had fallen instantly in love with so many years ago. They had been young, so young back then, with dreams of conquering the world, but as with everyone else the world had fought back and taken its toll. Now he was dying. The foundry soot and flames had given conception to their devil spawn, the thing that grew within his lungs and liver.
Antonio Galen knew he was being eaten from within, that soon his beloved Anna would be alone. The boy had to stay, at least until after.
She started to ask again: Why not tell him? But then she remembered her own father and the men of the village where they were born. It was a loss of face to show weakness, to admit it even to one’s children and sometimes even to one’s wife.
She knew her husband and she knew her son. They were so alike. She feared the outcome of the impending contest of wills. The very thought of it worsened the chest tightness she had told no one about. The women of her village were not so different from the men: They kept their vulnerabilities to themselves.
His bags were packed. It was his last day at home.
“I have to go, Papa.”
“A son must respect his father’s wishes.”
“Papa, you’re not listening to me!”
Then he did something he had never done before. He was a man now, stocky, muscular, and full of the electricity of his prime. He reached out and touched the now-shorter, gray-haired man. He meant it as an entreaty, a way of breaking through the wall between them.
For the first time, his father turned and faced him. The old man’s fire-darkened eyes stared at his son for a moment that would haunt the young man forever. He saw his father’s jaw muscles tighten and his facial expression harden as he spoke to him for the last time.
“Non ho figlio!”
As Antonio Gallini uttered those words, Pietro Gallini’s ghostly laughter echoed in his mind.
CHAPTER 2
Chrysalis
“She’s really going to the prom with you?” Edison said to himself as he looked in the mirror.
He still couldn’t quite believe it—he’d actually asked her to the senior prom and she had accepted. What would Galen have thought?
Galen.
Because of him, Edison had been able to finish high school without too many bruises. For one thing, the rabbity kid had developed the small-animal instinct of running at the slightest hint of danger. For another, the calls of “Let’s get Four Eyes” had become a distant memory ever since that chance meeting with Greg Thornton in the stairwell when, miracle of miracles, he’d found a protector and a friend in the schoolmate he came to call Big Brother.
Galen was long gone, but the effects of their friendship lived on in the confidence Edison had gained about himself.
Still, he missed the big guy. They had made quite a team in radio club, and life had gone a lot smoother when they’d put their heads together on school projects. They had won the science fair two years in a row, and that last idea of theirs, a device to make people’s hearts work better, had become a legend among the high school faculty.
“Mr. and Mrs. Edison, it’s so nice to see you again this year. The boys have done some splendid work again with their project. I just hope the judges will be able to understand it!”
All of the exhibits at the East Coast Science Fair, where their son and his friend Robert Galen had entered their project, dazzled Ron and Gloria Edison. They shook the hand extended by Concepción High School’s principal and nodded thanks.
“Ron, why don’t you walk around and check out the competition, while I see how the boys are holding up.”
“Sure. Just come get me if anything happens.”
So Gloria walked back to the boys’ exhibit and Ron wandered down the aisles of displays representing the different age groups, from junior high on up. Some of the stuff was routine, but a lot of ingenuity showed as well.
He was proud of his boy, who could beat him hands down with anything mechanical or electrical. Bobby truly was his father’s son. He smiled quietly to himself as he remembered how the boy had found that old cathedral-style Philco radio in the attic—the one he himself had rescued from the trash, fixed up, and given to Gloria as a wedding gift back in 1941—and actually restored it to working condition.
How much he had loved those old broadcasts.
“Okay, guys and gals, jivesters and beboppers, this is your old professor, Kay Kaiser, and his School of Musical Knowledge. We’re gonna play some special stuff for all our brave men and women in the armed forces overseas. Maestro, let’s hear it!”
As Ron’s mind drifted, he could hear the strains of “Don’t Sit under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else but Me” pouring out of the radio’s single speaker. And he could see himself getting up to turn the volume down then going back to sit next to his wife of one month.
...
“Honey, I got my notice. We ship out in two days.”
Gloria looked at him, the lanky Michigan farm boy she’d fallen for at first sight at the enlisted men’s dance, but she didn’t say anything. Back then he hadn’t known, hadn’t seen in her eyes, the secret she carried.
“Will you write to me?”
He hadn’t known, as he’d gazed at his rosy-cheeked Gloria, why the tears had begun to glisten in her hazel eyes. He’d just pulled her to his chest and hugged her.
“Silly, you know I will,” she replied.
Then she hugged him tight—as though she couldn’t let go.
...
“Ron, I think the judging is going to start soon.”
He snapped out of his flashback and turned around to see her standing behind him.
“Okay, let’s head on over.”
Just then, he noticed a man standing next to a young girl and her exhibit in the junior high school section. He knew that face!
“Wait a minute, Gloria, there’s someone here I think I know, but I can’t remember from where.”
As he started to walk toward the man it hit him.
Ira. It’s Ira!
Now he was standing on the deck of the troopship conveying its human cargo of soldiers to the War in Europe, headed toward Naples now that Italy had fallen to the Allies.
He could feel the letter in his pocket that he had been carrying with him everywhere.
Dear Ron,
Congratulations, Daddy, you have a son!
I didn’t want to tell you that last day. You would have tried to stay and we both know that wouldn’t have been possible. Our little Bobby, Robert Aaron Edison, was born on September 18th. Now there are two of us you have to return to.
Be careful. The Red Cross lady said she would get this letter to you.
I love you!
Gloria
He had received it months later, just before he shipped out, but he had read it every day.
...
“All hands, commander on deck.”
He stood at attention by his bunk.
“At ease, men. The Dewey is transferring a platoon of Marines to our ship by special orders. Must be secret stuff for them to transfer troops from the Pacific. I know it’s already crowded, but