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“I do not have one single damn wrinkle—”

“You get closer to death, you get so you can see it through theto clear now” There is so Jasper switches to an oldtionna end!”

Daddy D ie “I am twenty-nine years old Only in the da back to Jasper, Daddy D says, “Difference between us isn’t age, it’s experience I aood woman who kno to be a bad woman; and I’ve known the love of bad women who kno to be worse woee, Alabama, and, son, those are some very bad, very, very bad wo wreck, a husk of a man”

Laughter is spreading, even to Walter, a welcoh chattering teeth

“staggering around the streets inon Jesus to takeeven ie and stops hi Jasper, have experienced nothing”

Frangie wants to ask Daddy D what he knows about the Tuskegee base where she’s heard theycolored pilots But the back-and-forth is drawing the attention of other scared soldiers, giving the and circling, so she makes a mental note to ask later

“As much as I love to hear your Granddaddy Reo when you could still interest a woman in your noithered-up—”

And on it goes until there’s a whistle blast and the boat finishes its rotation and heads toward shore The conversation dies

The sea is still up, not the gale they sailed through to get here but still agitated enough that boats ahead and behind can cohs betaves The landing craft skids down the back of one wave, settles a beat, then powers up the slope of the next one There’s nothing but walls of black water to be seen at the bottoh, and not much ht is losing its absoluteness and there is the promise of dawn in the east

Suddenly a nearby cruiser opens fire with its big guns, ejecting six-inch shells in volcanic eruptions of fire and s secondsonetwothreefourbefore blosso as they strike a distant hill In the dark where the hills are only shadows, the shells see in midair Other shells from other ships blow up behind the small town of Gela, and sometimes land in the town itself

“Eye-ties are catching hell,” a soldier remarks

“More hell they catch, the less we do,” another soldier says

Should I pray for the shells to strike true? Shall I pray for my enemy’s death? Blasphemy, surely But I do want them to die if it means I won’t

Now the guns of the fleet are firing with some steadiness, ship after ship enveloped in fla Explosions that seem small compared to the moment of their eruption on the invisible hills, on the barely visible towns to the north and dead ahead The noise ruines and slapping waves The flashes illuminate faces for snapshots of expression, here an open mouth, there wide eyes, a head lowered to kiss a rosary

With all the noise, at first no one hears the Heinkels co in out of the northwest until the antiaircraft batteries on the ships open up too late, chatteringthousands of red tracer rounds of sun fire to lacerate the sky