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

boy is white. You nearly died gettin’ him.”
    â€œNo, I was getting my statue head back. You can have him. Heah. Please take him.” He held up the child, who now was stirred awake by all the jostling and tried to cling to him. Bishop reached for the child, who shrank back against Train.
    â€œHe don’t wanna go,” Train said miserably. “Carry ’im, he’s little, Bishop.”
    â€œThey gonna put you in jail, Train.”
    â€œI hope so. If I could pay ’em to do it, I would.”
    â€œYou’ll pay me first, though.”
    â€œG’wan. I told you I would . . .”
    Bishop shrugged and climbed down from the loft. Stamps approached the ladder. “Well?” Stamps said.
    â€œI can’t do nuthin’ with him.”
    Stamps mounted the ladder again, his footsteps thundering as he climbed, shaking the loft. He stood in front of Train, hands on his hips. “Get up, Train, let’s go,” he said.
    â€œI got this child heah who won’t go.”
    â€œYou’re using that child,” Stamps said.
    â€œThe same way the white man is using me.”
    â€œDon’t start that mess. The boy ain’t got nothing to do with that.”
    â€œEverybody got something to do with everything.”
    â€œGoddammit, don’t double-talk me, soldier!”
    â€œHe don’t wanna go back! G’wan. Take him! I don’t want him.”
    Stamps could feel his heart pounding so hard it felt like it was going to burst through his mouth. He had a tremendous headache. His hemorrhoids were killing him. There were better ways to desert. Shoot yourself in the foot. Help a wounded soldier to the aid station and take off. Get trench foot, a condition in which the mud and rain made your feet swell and develop such painful, debilitating sores that you couldn’t walk. Train could’ve deserted ten times before. In Pietrasanta, when they were hung up in a paper factory for four days by German fire, soldiers fleeing with their eyeballs rolled back in terror, Train could’ve shot himself in the foot ten times or punctured his leg with a knife and called it a shrapnel wound and no one would’ve said a word. Why now? He had no idea. The Negro draftees from the South like Train were a puzzle to Stamps. He could not understand their lack of pride, their standing low, accepting the punishment that whites doled out, never trying to take the extra step. Yet in battle they were often tenacious fighters, smart, fierce soldiers who reacted to stress with calm and deliberateness. Why didn’t they save a little of that fight for the white man back home? Instead, they walked around like idiots, superstitious of every damn thing, carrying cats’ bones and Bibles and wearing little black bags filled with potions around their necks, with names like Jeepers and Pig and Bobo, kowtowing to the white man at every step. He didn’t understand it and he didn’t want to. To him, they were everything he did not want to be: dumb niggers, spooks, moolies. He’d been a champion swimmer at his segregated high school back home in Arlington, Virginia, the only Negro good enough to make the all-white regional team that won the state championship. To celebrate their victory, the coach took the team out for ice cream. He bought vanilla ice cream for the other swimmers. For Stamps, he bought chocolate. Stamps refused to eat it. The coach was indignant and demanded an explanation, but Stamps refused to explain. Even as a kid, he had wanted to be treated equally, and he couldn’t understand how anyone could feel or think otherwise. He was exhausted by these country Negroes. He’d seen them all his life, at the bus stop, in his neighborhood, the women swabbing floors, shelling peas, sitting on porches, laughing and joking like they didn’t have a care in the world, the men drinking themselves to death, hollering to heaven every Sunday, calling each other