Free Prince of Peace by James Carroll Page A

scrambling over the lip of the hole. "Let me go, you fuckers! Let me go!" Because of his size and toughness Pace threw the second soldier aside effortlessly. Maguire slugged him, but the punch seemed only to quicken his belligerence. Pace began to pummel Maguire, but Maguire clung to him. Pace tried to get away and he dragged Maguire with him. "You fucker!" he screamed. "I'll kill you!" Maguire held on until Pace fell into the fresh crater of a 175. It was still warm, but it was deeper and more secure than the ditches the men had dug, which were like shallow graves.
    Even in the crater the hysterical soldier continued to slug away. Maguire covered his face and let Pace hit him. Most of the blows were lost in his heavy clothing or against his helmet. Eventually the Italian kid collapsed on top of Maguire. He was weeping. Maguire made no effort to get out from under him, but only closed his arms around Pace and held him. At first he envied him the catharsis, but then he realized that he'd shared it. They both felt purged. The terror of that night, Maguire saw, would be a bond forever.
    In the release, the evaporation of tension that followed Pace's outburst, both men settled into a kind of sleep. One hears it said that such a drifting off is not uncommon during prolonged sieges. The psyche has its ways of escape even when the body doesn't. Some Londoners never slept well again after the Blitz ended, but during it, even in the rank discomfort of sewer tunnels, they slept like children. Neither the noise nor the cold, extreme as both were, penetrated the consciousness of either soldier for several hours.
    Maguire woke first and he was amazed to realize he had slept. He actually felt a kind of refreshment. The artillery fire was still on, merciless as ever, but he wasn't cold. Pace was still on him, like a blanket. He was snoring lightly.
    Maguire didn't move. Beyond Pace's collar, like a dream, he saw the morning star, Venus, hanging in the east above the notch in the hills where the sun would rise soon. Automatically Maguire's hand went to his breast pocket, to touch Father O'Shea's New Testament, as if it was going to save him or already had.
    On the roof of his apartment house on Cooper Street, Michael and I had slept out through countless summer nights, though not in each other's arms. Imagine the cries resounding through Inwood of "Fairies! You fucking fairies!" It would have been disgrace enough to have it known that we called the roof our "lone prairie" and pretended that the straining barrel-staved water tank was our Conestoga wagon. When Venus appeared—it was the last star to fade because of course it wasn't really a star but a planet which reflected the coming sun's light instead of getting washed out by it—he always woke up and nudged me. We New York City boys did not take our heavenly bodies for granted. In our pale night sky only the luminaries shone because the dispersed light of the city screened all the ordinary stars and planets out. New York was that way with people too, although we didn't know it yet. Shining in that firmament meant, fortunately, as we would learn much later and separately, either burning to extinction or reflecting the light of some other star.
    Venus seemed closer than ever that morning in Korea, and even though the barrage was still on, it seemed to Michael he had already survived it. His lucky star. The night was almost over. And what better omen for the day than the worn little book in his pocket.
    The good book. The Bible. The glad tidings of Jesus Christ. Michael was no more religious than any of us, but like us he'd gone to religion class, however automatically, every day of his school life for twelve years. He'd heard the Scriptures read every Sunday and most first Fridays for eighteen. Surely he could remember some proverb, some parable, some saying of Jesus that would help him now.
    He squinted at the morning star and a line popped open in his mind like the "Bang" on the