mass penny: offering given by the faithful at the altar rail to help in the purchase of candles, wine, and bread used in the ceremonies of the Mass. (the Catholic dictionary)

Mass Penny

"I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free."-Michelangelo

He holds his first angel when he's eight. It's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, delicate features and glittered wings, and he wants more than anything in the world to buy one for his mother and bring it home for her to put on top of their tree.

He has little money, some bit of an allowance saved from when his father was still alive, but it's enough, and he watches with wide eyes as the salesclerk wraps it and hands it to him with a smile. He tucks it inside his coat, buttoning it to keep it inside, and runs the two blocks home.

His mother's worn face lights up when she sees it, gently ruffling his hair with one hand as her other one brushes the paper wings. He climbs up on a chair and puts it on their little tree, the tiny thing that's nearly devoid of decorations and has only a single strand of faded lights. There's no presents for him, but they sit beneath the tree and sing carols, his eyes fixed upon the angel perched above him, bobbing as if about to take flight.

It's the last Christmas he'll ever spend with his mother. Three weeks past New Years she comes down with pneumonia - overwork the doctor says -and is gone.

His grandmother on his father's side comes for Conley, and he packs everything he can in his only suitcase, the angel carefully set just inside. But the drive is bumpy and when he opens it in his new bedroom both the wings are broken off, the glitter spilled across his Sunday shirt.

But he keeps it, anyway.

oooOOOooo

The first time he meets an angel - flesh and blood instead of fabric - she has no wings but is even more beautiful than he'd imagined they'd look in person, soft brown hair and British accent.

He's never been one to give his heart quickly but he loves her the instant he sees her. She's a quiet, unassuming woman, the kind other men might pass on the street and never notice. But she listens to his words, not the ones he speaks but the ones he writes, and sees his heart.

Angels were never meant to be flesh and blood, and she's fragile, far more than the Christmas topper he won't part with. He's three streets from her house when the bombs fall, and he runs even as he knows it's too late. He holds her in his arms, a broken, delicate body, and he doesn't hear himself screaming until he's hoarse.

The day they bury her he takes the tree topper, and puts it in a box in the back of the closet. He doesn't look at it again.

oooOOOooo

The next angel he meets has no wings either, and isn't beautiful at all, the polar opposite of the last person he called that. It's a soldier, mud-streaked, rough-voiced, and used to survival, a Jersey City boy who can win the shirt off your back in blackjack and charm every girl within ten towns in any direction with an Italian love song. There's nothing truly remarkable about him and he might have slipped past him entirely if not for his name.

Pete D'Angelo. From the angel. It's deeply ironic somehow, a name like that in the filth and blood of Italy, following him here like the grip of a bulldog's teeth that he can't shake off.

Beneath the calloused exterior there's a gentleness, a compassion buried at first glance. Conley sees it, and it somehow gives him hope, as if that tiny, flickering whisper of decency is the last good thing in this war. And it makes him angry, because he knows that the world will try to rip it out of him, demand and cost him more because he cares more.

Everyone always said that when he was angry, he wrote better, transcending common essays and passing into the sublime. He writes his best articles in Italy.

oooOOOooo

That D'Angelo survives the first three months in Italy is no small miracle.

The grenade had exploded against his back as he'd pushed Lt. Kimbro out of the way, driving shrapnel into his ribs, arm, and leg. The partisans who found him couldn't remove it and the Germans who took him next wouldn't. By the time he'd been rescued infection had set into the wounds, leaving him delirious with fever and pain, unaware that he was safe. The surgeons at the field hospital had removed the shards but the infection was another story.

"I'll have to amputate." The doctor says flatly. He's done four amputations already today, seen at least that many men die without one. "Both the leg and arm to save his life."

It won't save his life, Conley knows. It will kill him, because without two arms he can't play his music, and his songs are life and breath to him, keeping him going beyond the point of endurance for most men. With his strength of will D'Angelo could overcome the loss of a leg with little effort, hardly the sort of man who'd feel sorry for himself. But without the arm he'd shrivel up inside, slowly dying by inches. And Conley can't watch that happen.

"No." The word leaves his mouth before he realizes he spoke, and Captain Benedict's eyes jerk sharply to meet his. "Surely you can wait for another day, to give him a chance."

The doctor hesitates, then nods. "One day. No more if you want to save his life."

He hasn't prayed since the Blitz but he tries, truly tries, but the words won't come. Instead he sits in a half-bombed little village church for six hours, hands folded, eyes staring at the wooden cross until they blur. Echoes of D'Angelo's voice whispering the Rosary filter through his mind but he doesn't know the words because he isn't Catholic. His hands tremble as he lights a candle and pulls money from his pocket for an offering on the altar. The coins lie silently, a mass penny for a man clinging to life by a thread.

It's morning when Hansen comes up behind him, footsteps echoing in the hollow walls, helmet clutched in his hand, and tells him, face weary but shining, that the fever has broken, the penicillin finally working on the infection, and that he'll keep both limbs as well as his life. Conley doesn't speak. He only lowers his head, silence the only prayer of gratitude he knows.

He thinks D'Angelo's luck is still with them, that the war will be over soon and their squad won't shed more blood. He never was good at guessing the holecard.

oooOOOooo

Two weeks before the last battle a bomb explodes inches from him, driving a shard of shrapnel deep into his typewriter. His guardian angel, or perhaps the one in flesh and uniform, saves their life, because he's unhurt and D'Angelo barely scratched.

A few days after that D'Angelo brings the typewriter back, repaired and good as new, the result of Gibson and his hours of work, marred only by a deep scar where the shrapnel struck, the machine blocking it from their bodies. He's so grateful for the machine back that he doesn't even notice D'Angelo isn't playing his guitar until he asks.

"It broke in the bombing." He says with a careless smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "But it doesn't matter. I'll get another one when the war's over."

"A better one." Conley adds, mentally promising himself that he'll buy it himself. But a chill crawls up his spine.

oooOOOooo

In the end, D'Angelo is the last casualty in their squad, the final man even wounded. They're dug in near a German bunker when he starts to throw a grenade and takes a round in the chest as Conley watches, stomach forcing it's way into his throat and heaving. D'Angelo jerks, horribly, and slides to the ground, landing face down in the dirt.

Somehow, they get him back, dragging him into the trenches and rolling him over as Conley's hands peel his clothes away from the injury. For an instant he's numb as Gibson, the scared, green kid, puts his hand across the wound, holding down as the blood spurts between his fingers. Conley's eyes go to Captain Benedict, and for a moment he thinks he won't order them back, not with that cold, vacant look in the officer's eyes. But he focuses and says the words, and Conley's hands grip under D'Angelo's arms, lifting him between the men, as they carry him off the field, the Captain's grip replacing Gibson's on the wound far too close to the heart.

Impossibly, he'll never know how, D'Angelo is still breathing when they reach the field hospital, painful rattles and gasps for air spaced between long silences, the pitiful struggle the only sign he's alive as the doctors start to work on him. It doesn't matter this time whether he'll be able to lift his arm and play a guitar or lose a leg because it's a question of whether or not he'll survive the night. All the men who can donate blood and Conley watches it trickle into D'Angelo's veins, even as he knows it isn't enough to replace all he lost.

No one expects him to live. It's one of the tragedies of war, Conley supposes, that a man learns in scant weeks to judge the hopeless from those who can be saved with the worn eyes of an aged surgeon, and even he can see it written across D'Angelo's face with every shallow breath and flickering heartbeat. Somewhere else there might have been a chance. But not here, and if he was a superstitious man he would have seen it coming, right from the moment his guitar broke, as if that simple wooden instrument contained D'Angelo's soul and very life.

One by one all the men leave: Lucavich for a few precious moments of sleep, Captain Benedict to receive orders, and Gibson, not by his own desire but because Conley sees the paleness and strain in the boy's face and sends him away. He should be working on his next article but he feels dry, as if all the words have been stripped from his bones and he's said far too much already. It's no longer important to write, not with men bleeding out and a friend dying beside him, a friend who'd die alone if he left, so he stays.

The days pass in a blur after that, like the bottom of a house of cards pulled free, sending a dozen scattering all around him. The war ends, quietly and quickly from where he is, because the dying don't celebrate when the rest of the world does. The men are discharged and wait to be shipped home, and D'Angelo is still alive, forcing each ragged breath of air through a damaged chest. There's still no hope, even if he's fought this long, because the human body is fragile and can only survive so much before his strength is drained.

Conley finds work at the hospital, not the empty, seemingly useless writing, but bathing and feeding and carrying stretchers as the less wounded ship home and the others struggle to gain enough strength to join them. The hands that join him belong to a young nurse, an Italian girl who speaks only a few words of English and tends to D'Angelo tenaciously, as if she's capable of single-handedly holding death back until he's able to fight for himself.

Conley loses track of time, a pall-bearer waiting for a man to die, only he doesn't. One day the breathing eases, the next his heartbeat strengthens, and finally he opens his eyes and asks where he is in a rusty whisper.

That night, after the doctor has looked at D'Angelo, smiled, and said "he's out of the woods", Conley sits on the edge of his cot and weeps.

He thinks it's the first time he's cried in longer than he can remember.

oooOOOooo

He finds the house easily and walks up to it, steps slow and deliberate. He hesitates for only a moment before knocking, and she comes to the door, D'Angelo's wife, the Italian nurse from the hospital. The screen door opens and her face lights, words tumbling out in a mixture of English and Italian as she clasps his hand, pulling him inside. She calls, drawing back, and he comes down the stairs, stepping close until he's right in front of him.

He's thinner than he was, cheekbones sharp against the planes of his face, hair slightly longer. The olive tones of his skin are no longer tanned and weathered from the constant heat of an Italian sun, the scars fading into white. But he's well and strong and alive.

"Conley." His roughened voice is gentle, filled with the weight of memories and shared tragedies. His hand extends, stopping halfway. And then his arms are around Conley's shoulders, pulling him into a tight hug as Conley's hands grip his back. D'Angelo pulls away first and Conley looks behind his shoulder to see his wife at the foot of the stairs, an infant in her arms. She smiles, faintly, holding out the baby, until Conley takes her.

She settles in his arms, snuggling against him as if she somehow knows him, trusts him, and he looks down into the small features. She has D'Angelo's eyes, black and bottomless and bright with life, as vivid as her father's were the day he first met him.

She's light in his arms, dark eyes wide and fathoms deep, staring up into his face with the innocence of only the very young, those who have never seen a war or yet learned the meaning of the word. He closes his eyes and it comes rushing over him, the explosions against the darkness muffled by the sound of dice cracking against a helmet, shuffled cards and dogtags, the orphan children staring at him with hollow eyes, the weight of a soldier's gun on his back, whispered singing over a guitar wherever I may go, whatever I may do, till the end of time..., the whiteness of Gibson's face frozen with fear, and his own hands slick with D'Angelo's blood.

Her tiny fingers curl around his thumb and his eyes open, finding his cheeks wet with tears.

"She's beautiful." He says quietly, and D'Angelo takes her, kissing the soft hair before handing her to his wife. D'Angelo turns back to him, and his eyes are bright, not dull as they were in those last days before his last wound.

"You still have my old typewriter?" D'Angelo asks and Conley smiles in spite of himself at the old joke between them, nodding.

"I must owe you a fortune by now in back rent."

A faint smile brushes D'Angelo's lips but he doesn't tease, only stretches out his hand as Conley's grasps it.

"Paid in full." D'Angelo says, quietly, and there's a hundred unspoken words of gratitude within his eyes, for a friendship forged in the furnace of Italy, for donated blood and held arteries, a name in the newspaper, and a friend who stayed with him in the hospital. "You come back, anytime."

"I will." His hand drops, and they step apart. No, he amends, not apart. No one who's been through a war together are ever truly apart. But for now he'll go back to his world, the apartment, the job he's been offered at the newspaper, and D'Angelo will go on in his, with his wife and daughter, rebuilding everything he's lost. Conley leaves the house, glancing back only once, shrugging his shoulders, finding them strangely unburdened, the sun warm against his back, and the ground devoid of mud and blood.

He thinks later, when it's quiet, he'll pull out the old typewriter. And he'll write.