The Tender Vine (Diamond of the Rockies #3)(94)

And so the devotion Flavio had once held for God, he now gave to Angelo DiGratia. God could have saved his papa, but hadn’t. At least the doctor had tried. Or had he? Even in his love, there was doubt.

And now he loved again—Ti’Angelo’s daughter. And again it was in the doctor’s hands to save or not save his heart.

Lorenzo nudged him. “Your turn, Flavio.”

Flavio lifted his second ball and went to the end of the lane. What did he care for a small metal ball on a stretch of sand when his heart was tearing in two? There were two other lanes in the long narrow building, but no one was using them. A withered Chinaman with a thin gray queue hanging down his back swept loose gravel into the left lane with a straw broom. Flavio lined up and eyed the lay of the balls before him. His arm and hand knew what to do, but his thoughts were distracted by the Chinaman’s motion, by the scritch, scritch of the broom. His strain grew until he was being racked, torn, limb from limb. He flung his arm back and sent the ball like a missile into the old man’s back.

“Aiyee!” The Chinaman dropped his broom and fell to his knees as Flavio found another ball and hurtled it toward his head. It glanced off the man’s silken hat, splitting open the top of his ear, and he collapsed, covering his head and squalling.

A hand gripped Flavio’s wrist, though he couldn’t make out the face. Then the red fury became Tony’s features. Flavio stared at him, shocked and paralyzed by what he’d done, thinking of the missiles hurled at his papa in the riot. He hadn’t seen it, but had heard the family talking before they sent him away. Violent people had killed his papa. Violence Flavio had always despised. But now . . . He jerked his arm away. “Doesn’t he know better than to sweep when I’m trying to make my shot?”

Lorenzo and Vittorio were staring. Flavio knew what they thought. He’d lost his mind. Reversed himself in the cheapest way. All his ideals, his philosophy, lost in a moment of petty rage. And inside he wasn’t sure he would have stopped until he’d stoned the man to death. Humiliated and terrified by what he had done without thinking, Flavio curled his lip. “Stupid Chinese,” he muttered. “Go back to China, old man!” He brushed off his sleeves, looked once more at the DiGratia brothers, and walked out.

He felt sick, as though something poisoned him. He had betrayed his nature, and still the strain was not relieved. The Chinaman wasn’t the source. The source and target of his rage was Quillan Shepard. He had told Carina he would destroy him. It had been words, bravado, to terrify her, to hurt her for saying she loved the man. But now he trembled. Now he believed he could actually do it. And in that thought, at last, the tearing inside him eased.

Carina stared in surprise as her brothers brought the old Chinese man into Papa’s medical room. They laid him, chattering and cringing, on the table. Tony raised a hand, pressing down against the air so the man would understand what he meant. “Stay here. Lie down.”

Carina saw the blood streaming from the old man’s ear. She couldn’t tell if it was all from the split at the top of it or if some came from inside, indicating injury to the brain and the inner ear. She looked from the Chinaman to her brothers.

Vittorio said, “Go get Papa. I’ll work on him, but I want Papa to have a look.”

Carina hurried out to find her papa. He was in the field, overseeing the removal of the vines. They should have been yanked out in the winter when they were completely dormant. It seemed crueler, somehow, to destroy them when they were making a weak, desperate attempt to grow.

“Papa—” she called—“Papa, Vittorio needs you. He has an injured Chinese.”

Her papa turned, started toward her. In a short time he reached her.

“A Chinese, you say?”

“Yes, Papa. He must have been struck with something.”

Papa shook his head and started for the house. “Where was he hit?”

“In the ear. There’s lots of blood, but I couldn’t see if it came from inside. He’s an old man, Papa. Who would do such a thing?”

“Who wouldn’t?” he said softly. “Was ever a people so despised?”

“They are strange, Papa. People don’t like what they don’t understand.” Papa frowned. “People understand less and less every day.”

They reached the house and went inside. Vittorio had cleaned the blood from the ear and was attempting to stitch the edges of the top together. He had been watching and learning from his papa for years. Now they worked together in both medicine and viticulture.

Carina saw a fresh trickle of fluid from inside the man’s ear. Trauma to the brain. There was swelling, too. She thought of D.C., Cain’s son, who’d been nearly killed by a head blow. But he had been silent and comatose. This old man chattered and shrieked in Chinese without end.

Papa approached him, laid a hand on his chest. The man became still, looking at Papa from his black almond eyes. “A candle, Carina,” was all Papa said.

Vittorio stitched furiously while the man lay still. Carina brought a candle, and Papa moved it across the old man’s vision. Then he handed it back to her and raised the man’s eyelids slightly with his thumb. Carina felt the familiar surge of pride and tenderness, watching her papa work. Only Papa could have eased the man’s terror with a touch.

She stepped back next to Tony. “What happened? Where did you find him?”