Read Online Street Boys by Lorenzo Carcaterra - Free Book Online Page A

cupped his hands around his mouth, balancing himself against the bumps of the small waves. “Lift your nets,” he shouted to the boys in the other boats. “And hold them above your heads. Stand as steady as you can.”
    The boys grunted and grimaced as they went about a task that normally required the girth and strength of grown men. They struggled with the nets as a few of the younger kids fell over the sides of the boats and one nearly capsized his small vessel. “Have them bend their legs,” Maldini told Vincenzo. “It will help steady their weight.”
    Vincenzo shouted out the new instructions and then looked back at Maldini. “How far do the nets need to be tossed?” he asked.
    “Enough to stretch them out,” Maldini said. “Fifteen feet would be a decent throw. Even ten feet would be acceptable. Anything less, we would pull up nothing but sand and shells.”
    “They’re not strong enough to make that long a throw,” Vincenzo said, sitting back down in the boat, his hands resting on Maldini’s knees.
    Maldini stared at Vincenzo, the stubble on his face glistening from the spray mist of the waves. He then turned to look back at the boys struggling with the nets. “Grab that rope from the bow,” he ordered. “Run it through the ring behind me and then go boat to boat and link them together. It will keep us in tight formation. I’ll meet up with you and Franco in the last boat.”
    Vincenzo tore off his shirt, ran the thick chord through the circular ring at the nose of the boat and dove into the sea. He swam with one hand, holding the rope above his head with the other, pulling it toward the extended arms of a curly-haired twelve-year-old. “Give it back to me at the other end,” Vincenzo told him, “then jump into the water. It will be easier for you to empty the nets from there.”
    Maldini was in the water, swimming toward the last boat on the line. He stopped and turned back toward Vincenzo. “Have the youngest child swim to shore,” he called out. “We need more boys. As many as can be found. It will take many hands to lift the nets from the bottom.”
    Franco and Angela helped pull Maldini into the last boat.
    The older man was winded and had swallowed enough water to give his throat a salt burn. “Do you think the apostles had as much trouble with
their
nets?” Franco asked.
    “Probably not,” Maldini said, still gasping. “But they had Jesus on their side. You’re stuck with me.”
     
    The boats were lined up and tied together, bobbing in unison to the splashing beat of the waves.
    More than seventy-five boys, heads floating above the rising tide, swam on either side of the small crafts. Maldini stood in bare feet, square in the center of the first boat, the edge of a rolled-up fishing net gripped in his hands. Vincenzo, Franco and Angela flanked his sides, each holding the same net, waiting for Maldini to give the order. “The higher we throw it, the farther out it will go,” he shouted. “It should float up and out, unfurl like an old flag. Angela, you tell us when.”
    Angela steadied her feet and tightened her grip. She looked down at the water to make sure none of the boys were close enough to get trapped in its pull. “
Forza, Italia!
” she yelled as she reached up with all her strength and, along with the three others, fell back as they let the net go. They sat in the boat and watched the net float in the air, gently spread out and cover the water as if it were a crisply ironed tablecloth.
    “Did we do it?” Franco asked. “Is it out far enough?”
    Maldini rubbed the top of the boy’s head, both of them watching as the net sank slowly to the bottom of the bay. “You did well, Franco,” he said. He turned to face the others. “You all did. But we still have four nets left to throw. And after that comes the hard part. Pulling them up.”
    “We only have three more nets for the guns,” Angela said as she glanced down the side of the boats.
    “That’s right,”