The Sicilian - Mario Puzo [64]
He explained that his purpose was not only to survive but to become a political force. He emphasized that they would not rob the poor. Indeed half of the profit the band earned would be distributed to the needy in the provinces around the town of Montelepre reaching to the suburbs of Palermo. Terranova and Passatempo would rule their own subordinate bands but would be under Guiliano’s overall command. These subordinate bands would not launch any money-making expedition without Guiliano’s approval. Together they would have absolute rule over the provinces that held the great city of Palermo, the city of Monreale, and the towns of Montelepre, Partinico and Corleone. He impressed upon them that they would take the offensive against the carabinieri. That it would be the field police who would go in fear of their lives, not the bandits. They were astonished by this bravado.
Passatempo, an old-fashioned bandit who believed in rape, small-time extortion and the murder of shepherds, immediately began pondering how he could profit by this association and then murder Guiliano and take his share of the loot. Terranova, who liked Guiliano and was more grateful for his rescue, wondered how he could tactfully steer this talented young bandit on a more prudent path. Guiliano was now looking at them with a little smile, as if he could read their minds and was amused by what they thought.
Pisciotta was used to the grand ideas of his lifelong friend. He believed. If Turi Guiliano said he could do something, Aspanu Pisciotta believed he could do it. So now he listened.
In the bright morning sunlight that lit their mountains with gold they all three listened to Guiliano, spellbound as he told how they would lead the fight to make Sicilians a free people, uplift the poor and destroy the power of the Mafia, the nobility and Rome. They would have laughed at anyone else, but they remembered what everyone who saw it would always remember: the Corporal of the carabinieri raising the pistol to Guiliano’s head. The quiet stare of Guiliano, his absolute confidence that he would not die, as he waited for the Corporal to pull the trigger. The mercy he had shown to the Corporal after the pistol misfired. These were all acts of a man who believed in his own immortality and forced others to share that belief. And so now they stared at the handsome young man, and they were impressed by his beauty, his courage and his innocence.
The next morning Guiliano led his three men, Aspanu Pisciotta, Passatempo and Terranova, down out of the mountains on a path that would let them out on the plains near the town of Castelvetrano. He came down very early to scout the ground. He and his men were dressed as laborers.
He knew that truck convoys of foodstuffs passed by here on the way to bringing their wares to the markets of Palermo. The problem was how to get the trucks to stop. They would be going at high speed to foil hijackers and the drivers might be armed.
Guiliano made his men hide in the underbrush of the road just outside Castelvetrano, then sat himself on a large white boulder in plain view. Men going out to work in the fields stared at him with stony faces. They saw the lupara he was carrying and hurried on. Guiliano wondered if any of them had recognized him. Then he saw a legend-painted large cart coming down the road, drawn by a single mule. The old man driving was known by sight to Guiliano. He was one of the line of professional carters so plentiful in rural Sicily. He hired out his rig to haul bamboo from the outlying villages back to the factory in town. Long ago he had been to Montelepre and had done some hauling of produce for Guiliano’s father. Guiliano stepped into the middle of the road. The lupara dangled from his right hand. The driver recognized him though there was no expression on his face, just a momentary flicker of the eyes.
Guiliano greeted him with the familiar style he had used as a child, calling him Uncle. “Zu Peppino,” he said. “This is a lucky day for both of us. I am here to make your fortune and you are