The Treasure in the Field

By: Lux Perpetua

The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again and out of joy goes and sells all that he has, and buys the field. Matthew 13:44

Chapter One:

I really should have paid more attention in Italian 101, Emily Poiger thought as she closed the door of the enoteca behind her, and slipped two bottles of cheap red wine in her tote-bag.

She checked her watch. She had a good ten minutes before Battersby, Todd, and Krista showed up, and the coffee bar across the piazza looked very inviting.

She waited in line to order a cappuccino inside and then wandered back to the little tables and chairs outside. She set down her tote bag, bottles clinking, at an unoccupied table, and leaned back in the wicker chair, resting her feet from the three-mile trek from the station that morning. She yawned, watching the Italians milling around the piazza. A small boy hopped over the low basin and frolicked in the fountain; his grandmother scolded him, pulling him out of the fountain by his shirt-collar.

Emily checked her watch as she waited for the cappuccino to materialize. 1:20 already; Battersby, Todd, and Krista were late again. Nothing new there. Emily sighed, you’d think I might get a little more respect, with me providing the booze and all.

She leaned forward, chin in her hand, staring across the piazza. She hardly looked up as the waitress appeared with her cappuccino and the bill, folded up under the coffee cup.

Until two weeks ago, she hadn’t known Battersby, Todd, or Krista from Adam, but that was the strange nature of study abroad programs – how being dropped in a foreign country suddenly makes one best friends with one’s fellow citizens within a span of hours, if not minutes. English never sounded so beautiful, so welcome, so… homey until she heard it two weeks ago on Battersby’s lips, after four weeks of being stuck with her Italian host family.

Battersby’s lips... She was having a tough time deciding between Todd and Battersby. Battersby had that tall, blond, and handsome thing going on, while Todd was one of those dark artistic types. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the luxury of time. Krista had started eying Battersby with interest a week or so ago; Emily had better make her move fast if she didn’t want to get left in the dust again.

Emily yawned, sipping her cappuccino. She could try and make a move, but she really didn’t have the energy right now. Maybe she should just settle for Todd. She did like artistic types. Problem was, the last artistic type she had “dated” had turned out to be gay. Todd didn’t seem gay, though; he didn’t ogle men’s butts the way theatre/prelaw Chris used to.

Emily sighed. Her mom had sent yet another email yesterday, reminding her to sign up for that LSAT course when she got home. The LSAT. Eww.

Emily took another sip of her cappuccino. Why couldn’t she be like Lisa and just take a year off after graduation and travel around sketchy parts of Europe “finding herself?” Maybe do volunteer work in Peru or Argentina. Play with orphans in Nicaragua or something like that. But no, Emily Poiger had to get a job and start paying off those student loans pronto. Shame she didn’t have Daddy footing the bill like Lisa did.

Daddy. Emily’s nose wrinkled in distaste. She hadn’t seen her father in almost five years, and she would like to keep it that way, thank you very much. A regular old S.O.B. She remembered Mom’s words, Never settle, honey, never settle. But was she settling with Todd? Emily sipped her cappuccino again. There she went, thinking in circles. But it wasn’t as if a relationship with Todd would go anywhere. It was just a fling; it didn’t mean anything. And she needed an overseas fling. It was almost required. You know, gelato at Piazza Navona. Check. See Venice. Check. Pose with the David in Florence. Check. Eat something with tentacles. Check. Have fling with hot Italian guy, or at least some hot American student. Check.

Then distantly, she heard a thud, like a rocket, or a firecracker, then she heard one again, slightly closer. She drained her cappuccino, frowning. That was weird. She hadn’t heard that there was going to be any kind of festival in Adesso today. Usually they publicized these sorts of things.

Then another, and another.

Emily took out her change purse, put a euro on the saucer, and got up to leave. She checked her watch. Almost 1:35. She had told Battersby and 

Todd to meet her at the main piazza at one. They couldn’t have gotten lost, could they? Adesso couldn’t have two main piazzas; the town was hardly half a mile across.

The run-down pensione across the piazza exploded.

Emily cursed, crawling under the flimsy table. No, that wouldn’t do. She crawled under the tables to the low brick wall, hardly waist-high, that separated the café’s tables from the piazza. She huddled against the wall desperately as a flying bit of debris shattered the café’s huge picture window.

The neon letters of Bar Europa fizzled and tumbled off, crushing two rickety tables across from her.

She covered her face with her hands, “O my God, o my God, o my God…”

Another piece of debris shaved off the top of the hedge. She curled up in a ball, trying to make herself as small as possible, o my God o my God o my God…

A strip of siding peeled off off Bar Europa and fell, pinning Emily in a tiny air-pocket beneath it. A driving, hot wind swept through – from the pensioni across the street? – and one by one Emily heard the thuds of the tables and chairs bouncing against the strip of siding. Then all was still.

Still shaking, Emily stretched in the dark, pressing her palms against the rough grooves. She gave it one heave, then another. It didn’t budge.

“Sono americana! Sono americana, ayudame,” she shouted desperately in a mishmash of Italian and high school Spanish. But nothing disturbed the silence. Nothing, that is, except the screams and desperate prayers, until they too, died away, leaving Emily with nothing but the silence.

Then she heard the voices. First, someone shouting in Italian, then someone else shouting in English – blessedly American English. Those long Midwestern o’s never sounded so good. Then the American shouted in badly-accented French, and the Italian shouted in German. “Is anybody here?”

“Me!” Emily shouted, her voice reverberating. “Me! I’m here! By the café! I’m here!”

“Are you injured?” the American said.

“Not too bad,” Emily said.

“Were you sitting outside by the patio?”

“Yes!”

“I think we’ve got you.” The American said something in Italian, and slid a few blocks of wood under the bent piece of siding. “We’re going to prop these blocks under the piece of metal so it doesn’t crush you if it shifts. Do you know if there’s anyone else here who needs our help?”

“I don’t know. I heard a lot of screams, but that was a while ago…”

The Italian said something, and the American lapsed into Italian himself.

Creaking above her; Emily looked up, as two men pulled the piece of siding back.

The American was in his mid-twenties with shaggy brown hair and a ratty backpack slung over one shoulder. His t-shirt was streaked with dust and ashes; his jeans were dirty and ripped, too. The Italian was an older fellow in his mid-thirties, just beginning to get paunchy from a steady diet of complex carbohydrates. He had on a now-filthy business suit, and a small duffle bag slung over one shoulder.

She brushed shards of glass off her arms. Her arms were bleeding in dozens of tiny rivulets. She touched her face, and her hand came back sticky, too.

“Who are you?” she said.

“Tobias Price,” the young man said, “And this is Signor Nogarola.”

“Your name is Tobias? That’s really weird.”

Tobias laughed. He turned to Nogarola, and said something in lightning-fast Italian. Nogarola laughed himself and unzipped his bag, taking out a few bandages and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. He dabbed it on Emily’s arm. She yelped.

Tobias unwound a bandage. “Remember, big girls don’t cry.”

Emily stretched out her arm, trying not to laugh. Tobias wound the bandage around her arm. Blood seeped through the gauze almost immediately; he pulled out another roll, winding it around the other.

“Per favore,” a woman moaned from inside the café. “Ragazzi, per favore…”

Emily twisted around.

“Stay here.” Tobias unzipped his backpack, pulling out a little bottle of olive oil, and handed the backpack to Emily. He and Nogarola stepped carefully around the debris. Glass crunched under their feet as they crept into the cafe.

They knelt beside the waitress, who had been crushed under a fallen beam. Nogarola took her hand; she squeezed it white. He brushed back her hair with his free hand, whispering Italian prayers with her as Tobias unscrewed the top off the little bottle. He smeared the olive oil across her forehead, whispering to her in Italian. The waitress sighed; her hand went limp, and dropped.

Emily hugged Tobias’s backpack to her chest. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”

Nogarola and Tobias crept out of the café. Nogarola took the bottle of olive oil out of Tobias’s hand and said something in Italian. He gestured towards Emily. “La ragazza americana…

Tobias nodded. “Giorgio’s going to keep looking for survivors. I’m taking you back.”

Not that she had much choice; Tobias steered her around the broken, gurgling fountain and piles of debris, his hand on her shoulder. She kept clutching his ratty backpack, staring in miscomprehension at the bombed-out piazza.

“We just went here for the weekend – oh my God – “

Tobias took his backpack back, and slung it over his shoulder. “Do you have your passport with you?”

“Yeah. In my bag... But the rest of my stuff’s all locked up at the train station – is the station still there?”

“I haven’t been that way.” Tobias steered her down a narrow side-street. After a pause, he said, “You came here for the weekend?”

“Yeah, we wanted to go and see Ravenna tomorrow, me and Battersby and Krista and Todd… we’re all studying abroad in Florence... I’m from Maryland, but they’re from Wash U. Battersby’s really tall, he’s got blond hair, looks like Hansel from Zoolander, if you know what I mean. And Krista’s got that ringlet thing going on… Todd, he’s really artsy, always wears black and listens to these bands that nobody’s ever heard of… I don’t know why I’m telling you all this crap… are you with the government or something? Or are you and Giorgio some kind of Red Cross people? And what about not getting stitches? I’m totally freaked out,” Emily said. “Are you a doctor?”

“I’m not a doctor. I’m not with the Red Cross, and I’m not working for the American Embassy.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I was passing through,” Tobias said.