“Can you guess what happened next?” asks Joey.
Saul shakes his head.
“Yes, you can. But I’ll tell you. A new market emerged. People who offered to protect orange and lemon groves, for a cut of the profits. Networks of citrus bodyguards, if you will. It was usually peaceful, but there were people—would-be thieves, mostly—who were hurt, even killed, in that time.
“Our profession has gotten a bad reputation,” says Joey. “And to be sure, it has changed. We are not renegade orange soldiers anymore. There are ways we have been corrupted. There are people—there are people I have hurt, Saul, who I wish I had not. But I applaud the men who guarded those orange groves. They saved the livelihoods of whole families. They allowed children to come into the world, and old people to be cared for. They defended small farmers against the conflict and violence and desperation caused by powerful and faraway leaders. They took care of their own, rather than trusting the government to do it.
“You’re right, Saul, that war is a cancer. It is an ugly stain on the earth. It is the expression of deep human cowardice and fear. It is the whims of men in power, men who have rarely earned that power, sending children to fight their petty conflicts. It is the adult version of fort-building, pitting people against one another. They made Italy out of separate peoples, told us to speak one language, expected us to defend their borders for them. They made up those borders. They make up all borders.
“I know that you lost your home. I know that you lost your mamma. Saul, I am so sorry that happened to you.” Joey pauses. Saul is breathless and rapt. He can see his whole life running like a river from one end of his brain to the other. His mother, bending to hold his face.
“This is your choice, Saul. But please hear me when I tell you. I would never ask you to fight a war. I am asking you to be a part of a family. To build something, not to destroy it. To protect our oranges.” Saul cannot speak, but he overflows with gratitude toward this man, who has acted so like a father toward him. Who has, he realizes, taken Saul in, and who must have faced extreme opposition from his own community. Saul has always blamed Joey for taking his culture from him. He has never understood the magnitude of what he has been given in return.
Joey stands. He puts a small brown paper bag on the table. He nods to Saul, and presses his lips together. He says, “Let me know what you can, when you can. And please, pass this along to Sofia. I’ve kept it for her.” And then he walks out of the room, the door closing behind him like a sigh.
Saul already knows he will say yes. His head is buzzing; the afternoon light is beaming through the dusty window in otherworldly planes; the air fairly echoes, as though it remembers Joey’s booming voice.
Saul stands and walks to the table, wobbling like he has been at sea.
There is a note pinned to the outside of the brown paper bag. It says, Sofia: I think I always knew this was for you.
Saul unfolds the top of the bag and peers inside.
Sitting at the bottom, naked as a baby, is a gleaming pearl-handled revolver.
* * *
—
Later that day, Antonia is on her knees at the edge of the bathtub, trying to scrub out a dark ring while Robbie makes a mess in the kitchen, when she hears a door slam and then Paolo shout, “He’s being groomed, Tonia.” His angry footsteps cross the short expanse of their home. Paolo swings open the bathroom door and Antonia looks up at him with one eye. “Did you hear me?”
“I heard you,” she says. She had just that morning read about Famine, whose thinness and pallor and utter vacancy nonetheless inspired in others an insatiable hunger. There is something Paolo hungers for, uncontrollably; some bit of Antonia’s attention she cannot find within herself to give him. Her belly, no more an indication of where a belly might be found.
“Saul just called me at the office to tell me that Joey is making him his right-hand man. He’s being groomed to take over.” Paolo sits on the edge of the toilet and puts his face in his hands. “I thought it might be me. I thought my life was headed toward something more.”
“Paolo.” Antonia wants to say more than this. She can tell Paolo is waiting for something reassuring, that he is expecting her to make him bigger by giving him a small piece of herself. But she cannot give him any more, because she is feeling a wave of powerful disappointment. Their home, which is small and more chaotic than either of them had wanted, seems to shrink in on Paolo and Antonia in their bathroom. Escape seems impossible. Antonia has no more words to give Paolo. No more of her self. Just as the sea receives from round the world its rivers, and is never satisfied . . . all his eating only left him empty.