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As winter approached, the shadows grew longer and the sun weaker. The valleys grew dark, wet and cold, the mountain tops grew moody and even colder. The weather could change in the span of minutes, going from a clear sky and a light breeze to howling winds and the darkest day to be seen on earth.
When Don Camillo travelled up for the first time since the beginning of autumn, he was met with leaves, twigs, broken branches strewn about and even at one point a fallen tree blocking the usually rather orderly dirt streets. The view of the dirty road made him shiver with the thought of what must have happened for everything to look like this. What if something happened to the group? Worry made him go faster, but the wet dirt street wouldn’t allow for much.
When Don Camillo finally reached the camp site, he was shocked to find it in such disarray. Crates and boxes laid carelessly piled together and barely covered with leaves, branches and some camouflage net. A tree lay broken over half the camp, some of the small tents and dug-outs were damaged and tarpaulins lay ripped. The stolen cross-country car that Don Camillo had seen last time, was nowhere to be found.
Men and women were bustling about, collecting and mending the ripped tarpaulins, reorganizing the crates and boxes – some of them labelled, others unlabelled – others digging holes for supportive beams, reassembling tents and hacking away at the fallen tree.
There was a small fire nearby, where a mass of several people huddled together wrapped in blankets. Some of them were injured, Don Camillo noticed, all of them looked dead tired and only few of their faces were familiar.
“What happened here?”, Don Camillo asked Smilzo, who happened to walk by him with a crate in his arms, looking determined, but just as tired as the others.
“There’s like five events I can tell you about, which one do you mean?”, the young man answered. Were he not so tired, it would have been cheeky, but as it was, he just sounded worn out.
“All of them”, Don Camillo said “in chronological order.”
“Oh Lord”, Smilzo sighed and put down the crate that he was carrying. He opened it, threw one look inside and closed it again, looking pained.
“What?”, Don Camillo wanted to know and crouched down beside him to have a look inside as well.
“That was the only wine we had”, Smilzo lamented and sighed dramatically, but collected himself when he caught the priest’s unimpressed look. “Alright, alright, I’m spilling the beans, Reverend. There was a hell of a storm going on up here for the last few days. At least it didn’t snow or anything, but there was a thunderstorm one evening and it rained like Noah last saw it. We’re just glad it didn’t flush us down the mountain.”
“How many of your five events was that?”
“About two, I’d say.”
“Then what’s the other three?”
“Next must have been the tree over there. It fell one night. Poor Giulio over there was hit full-on by it while he was out on watch. One hell of a hubbub. Ever tried to sleep next to a breaking tree? We thought the earth was splitting up beneath us!”
“And how is Giulio?”, Don Camillo asked. At the question, Smilzo looked to the side and didn’t answer for a moment.
“Took us a while to notice”, he mumbled finally, looking ashamed to admit it “Only noticed it when it was change of watch and nobody could find him. It took us half an hour more to get him out from under the tree. It was still raining and the ground was much worse than now.”
Don Camillo threw a surprised and worried look over to the masses by the fire. Sure enough, he found Giulio sitting among them, huddled together with two others under a blanket, his head bandaged, one arm in a sling and looking a bit sick, but otherwise fine.
“His arm had to be set, and he’s having a cold, but otherwise he’s pretty much fine”, Smilzo hurried to explain. Don Camillo believed him.
“What else happened?”, he wanted to know.
“After the incident with the tree, Peppone doubled the watches. For two days, everyone had to pull double shifts. It’s not like anyone could sleep with this god forsaken howling anyways. The wind is loud up here…”
Smilzo snuffled, then looked up when a small guy with stubbles and a beret sitting cockily on his head approached.
“Everyone settled in?”, Smilzo asked. The man nodded and threw a curious look at Don Camillo, who stood up to his full height.
“Oh, right. Comrade, this is our chaplain. Don Camillo, this is the first mate of Aldo’s group. They got here about yesterday. Their whole camp got torn apart by the storm. Peppone’s currently on the way to get whatever can be salvaged.”
“By car, I assume?”, Don Camillo asked as he shook the first mate’s hand. The two nodded, when in the distance, the sound of a motor was to be heard. Everyone looked up tensely, but when the watch did not sound alarm, they relaxed again and a few minutes later, the car sound stopped.
A group of people came walking through the underbrush, carrying boxes and tarpaulins, Peppone at the front, his red neckerchief shining proudly.
He looked dead on his feet. Dark circles were under his eyes. When he spotted Don Camillo, he nodded shortly and gave a grunt that could be interpreted as a greeting, but more he did not say. Don Camillo nodded back, but thought it wise to leave him be with questions. Instead, he picked some of the things from Peppone’s arms.
“Where to?”, he asked and said nothing to the relieved and thankful look he received in return.
If the last days were really as hard as Smilzo had said, then the least he could do was to lend a hand.