Glory Boys

by Harry Bingham

  ‘It ain’t proper cold yet,’ he said. ‘It don’t get real cold for another few weeks yet.’

  Aside from a sour look, Willard didn’t reply. From Montreal, he’d travelled most of the way across Canada to Calgary, before taking a local train south to a nowhere-and-nothing stop on a nothing-and-nowhere railroad. The road from the stop had come all the way through Ruxion to the airstrip, where it ended in a big circle of churned dirt and bare grass. A couple of trucks sat, nosing the hangar wall like cattle feeding from a manger.

  Willard hurried up the low slope to the grey door at the back of the hangar. A primitive electric generator driven by stream water churned away in the woods somewhere close. A neatly painted sign said, ‘Ruxion Trading Corp. Please use bell.’ There was no bell. There wasn’t even a catch on the door, which was only held shut because it hung crooked from a broken hinge. Willard shoved against the door, the driver close behind.

  Inside was a second door, a wooden one, properly hung. Willard passed through into an interior of almost stifling heat. A cast-iron stove squatted burning hot against one wall, leaking red light and wood smoke in exchange for nearly all the available oxygen. There were three men present, one of them stretched out on a camp bed. The other two were playing cards for what seemed like a very small pile of money. A single dim bulb hung from a light cord. A hunting rifle, complete with a leather ammunition pouch, was slung from a couple of pegs over the camp bed.

  ‘Train was late,’ said the driver.

  ‘Yah! Figured,’ said one of the card players, throwing down his hand.

  ‘My name’s Thornton,’ said Willard. ‘From –’

  ‘Yah. Money man. Never expected to see one out here. ‘Course, it ain’t cold yet. Not real cold.’

  ‘I wanted to run a quick product inventory. We’ve been having some problems with our paperwork. Nothing major. Just wanted to check everything was in order.’

  In that environment, Willard’s words sounded, even to himself, like something from another planet. His confidence in his plan had begun ebbing long before his arrival in Montreal, let alone his journey out here, to a place that seemed like the end of the known world. What if he’d been wrong about Powell’s coded message to him? What if Larry Ronson had been too drunk to take on board the information that Willard had been so careful to give him? What if he’d been altogether wrong about Ronson and whose side he was on? If he’d been able to, Willard would have run – but what was there to run to? A two-hundred-thousand-dollar loan. One man dead and another man jailed. A life of hard work, poverty, exhaustion and fear.

  The card players exchanged looks with each other and the man on the camp bed. Willard felt a surge of anger. He shouldn’t even have to be here. He was frightened now, out of his depth, scared.

  ‘You want to poke around?’ The card player who’d spoken before spoke again.

  Willard nodded. ‘It won’t take long.’

  The men exchanged glances again. Willard didn’t understand the atmosphere and didn’t like his lack of understanding.

  ‘Sure,’ said the card player, the chatty one. ‘You need those?’

  There was a stack of papers clipped together in a cardboard carton under the camp bed. The card player, Mr Chatty, as Willard christened him, shoved the carton at Willard, who looked at the bundle of papers inside. The first page was entitled ‘Northern Furs & Hides – Loading Bill, Goods in Transit’. There followed five pages of detail. Willard glanced at the uppermost page.

  ‘Hides, tanned, (½ doz)

  4 rolls

  Roll (1)

  No. 11086

  Roll (2)

  No. 11087

  Roll (3)

  No. 11088

  Roll (4)

  No. 11089

  Beaver skins, tanned

  12 Boxes

  (min 60 lbs, wt net)

  Box (1)

  No. 1044…’

  The paperwork corresponded to the documents that had passed Willard’s desk in Wall Street, only here, of course, the detail was much greater, every single box-load itemised and numbered. Willard was no accountant, but he felt pretty sure that the most scrupulous accountant in the world would have liked paperwork like that.

  ‘Looks good,’ he said, hearing himself adjust his Princeton rhythms to the monosyllabic speech of the men in the room. ‘I ought to check off a couple of boxes, if I can. No need to do ’em all.’

  Mr Chatty jerked a finger at a second wooden door, set into the wall that separated the little office space from the hangar proper.

  ‘She’s loaded, you know.’

  ‘Loaded? Already?’

  Mr Chatty shrugged. ‘Your train was late. We didn’t sit around crying.’

  Willard opened the door. The hangar yawned huge and cold around him. He groped for a light switch and flicked it on. The pale Canadian sky was framed like a wide open mouth by the open wall on the far side of the building. The aircraft, a massive one, dominated the space. Willard estimated her wingspan at more than seventy feet, the upper wing pair a full eight or nine feet above the lower set. Her metal body bulged backwards from her nose. She looked like a submarine had ploughed forward into a set of airplane wings and become lodged. Not exactly nice-looking, thought Willard, but plenty of muscle. Even with fuel on board, she’d carry literally tonnes.

  There was no way into the plane except via a wooden stepladder which leaned up against the side. Some gasoline-slopped steps further back showed how the aircraft was refuelled. A row of red ten-gallon fuel cans were ranged along the wall behind.

  Willard climbed up into the cockpit. The instruments were more modern than those Willard had been used to, but the main difference from his old Nieuports and Spads was the cockpit itself. On this monster, the cockpit was entirely closed off from the sky. It had a metal-skinned roof and thick glass windows. Willard thought how strange it must be to fly and not feel the wind. But he wasn’t here to compare planes. He was here to check boxes.

  He clambered back into the hold and looked at his first box. A number chalked on the side corresponded to a number in the loading bill: a consignment of beaver skins. The box was put together from pine boards and nailed shut, but Willard had brought some basic tools up from the hangar, including a crowbar. Willard wrenched the lid of the box open, gashing his palm. He swore and probed the box with a flashlight.

  It was beaver skin all right. Or at least, if it wasn’t, then some other bunch of small furry animals had died to fill the box. Willard shoved his hand down to the bottom of the crate. He found beaver skin all the way. Fear prickled through Willard’s skin, he didn’t know why. He assaulted another box. Blood dripped from his open wound first onto the wooden case, then onto Willard’s trouser leg. He swore again but got the second box open. This one wasn’t dead beavers, it was dead something elses. Willard checked his list. Arctic fox. The silvery fur shone blue in the torchlight. Willard thought of Annie: he’d jokingly promised to bring her back a coat from this trip. Her presence seemed real and close. Rosalind, strangely enough, he could hardly even picture.

  Willard swept the light around the metal hold. The light was dim, but he could make out the big rolls of cowhide looming out of the shadows. The hold smelled of fuel oil, leather, pine resins, and the faint but odious smell of the tannery. There were a load more boxes to check. Willard didn’t feel like checking them. He felt suddenly nauseous and scrambled out of the hold, out of the cockpit, and too fast down the rickety wooden stepladder.

  Tariffs.

  A Republican Administration had slapped import tariffs on most things, including Canadian furs. It was fairly obvious – obvious from the moment that Willard had found the tiny dot marked ‘Ruxion’ on the map – that no Customs official was ever going to catch a glimpse of any US-bound cargo. Of course, somewhere down the way the documents would acquire a ‘Tariff Paid’ stamp on them, but Willard assumed such things could be either bought or forged. So this was Powell Lambert’s game: a smuggling racket dressed with Wall Street f
lair.

  He felt sick and uncertain.

  He made his way back to the stifling little room where the four Ruxion men chatted together in the half-darkness.

  ‘That’s all I needed. Thank you.’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  None of the men made any move to get up.

  ‘Is there any chance of a ride back to the railroad? My train out leaves in ninety minutes.’

  The driver shook his head. ‘No train today.’

  ‘No? I was told in Calgary…’

  The driver found something he didn’t like in his throat and hacked unpleasantly until it was cleared. ‘Don’t listen to them in Calgary. There’s a slip just two, three miles down the line. Won’t be another train back up again for a week or two. Depending on the weather. If it snows before then…’ The driver shrugged.

  Willard felt like he’d just been sentenced to a fortnight in hell and the man was shrugging. ‘I have to get back out,’ he said in a rising voice. ‘I simply can’t… Can I borrow the car? I could buy it.’

  ‘Need the car,’ said the driver. ‘Need it here.’

  Willard blinked in astonishment. Imprisoned in Ruxion of all places! No linen. No hotel. No company. And – great God! – if the snow came early, then there was no telling how long he might be stuck. Willard began to regret the entire venture. The four men in the room exchanged vile, nodding, amused grins. Willard felt like the new kid at school being deliberately intimidated by his elders.

  Then the man on the camp bed spoke, the first time Willard had heard him say anything. Most of the man’s teeth were either missing or so brown that they were invisible inside his mouth.

  ‘Fly,’ he said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I know who you are.’

  ‘Fly?’

  ‘Willard T. Thornton. America’s favourite ace. Huh? I’m right, huh? Guy like you shouldn’t need a railroad.’

  The suppressed mirth around the room broke out into open chuckles. Willard noticed that none of the men’s dentistry was all that great.

  ‘You mean fly that airplane south?’

  The man on the camp bed relapsed into silence, except to repeat with a kind of sigh, ‘Willard T. Thornton, huh? Willard T. Thornton.’

  Mr Chatty indicated his camp bed companion. ‘Ben’s sick. Chest cold. Been coughing up stuff all morning. He’s the pilot around here.’

  ‘I’ve never flown a thing like that before,’ said Willard, fending off the suggestion. ‘I was a pursuit pilot, not a … not a…’ He faded out, unable to think of any description other than ‘goddamn smuggler’.

  ‘Flies just the same,’ said Ben the Pilot. ‘Don’t fly no different.’

  ‘The plane oughta go out today any road,’ said Mr Chatty. ‘It’s loaded, fuelled, ready to go. No telling how long Ben’s gonna be out. If you want to be out before the snows…’

  Willard was about to snap something expressing his total lack of concern in Ben’s wellbeing, but he held himself back. It was fly the plane or sit it out in Ruxion. Neither option seemed great, but one of the two seemed a whole lot worse than the other.

  ‘I don’t have maps,’ said Willard hoarsely. ‘I’m gonna need maps.’

  58

  The cement block sat in the wall as snug as any of its neighbours, with no more than a thick fingernail’s gap showing at any point.

  Abe had a flat-bladed decorator’s knife in his right hand. The knife had its tip turned down into a little hook. Abe probed around the block, found an opening, then slid the knife home. He fished carefully, then felt the tip of the knife catch. He pulled carefully until the block began to come free. When a clear half-inch of block was exposed, he put his hands to it and lifted it out. Behind the block was a cavity, packed with documents: Bosse’s list of information requests and their own list of what had already been accomplished. Abe took both.

  Meanwhile, in the hangar, Pen was getting dinner going. In a breach of her normal slacks-and-shirt policy, she was wearing a pretty cream sleeveless dress with matching flat-soled pumps. If she hadn’t mussed up her hair within minutes of combing it, she might have been almost smart.

  She’d brought food – potted meats, cheeses, salads, olives and bread – and laid it out on a board table covered by a clean white sheet. On a table to the side, stood a gramophone and dance records. Although, strictly speaking, Sweet Kentucky Poll was no longer entitled to her own hangarage now that the two DH-4s needed space, Abe hadn’t been able to bear the idea of putting her out with nothing to wear. So he’d ordered a canvas canopy from a fisherman’s store in Brunswick, but until it came, Poll continued to occupy the hangar, nosing the table like a wolf come to share with the mice.

  The men came to join Pen. Both of them were in shirtsleeves and neither wore a tie. Initially, Arnie was nervous at Pen’s sudden air of femininity, but she resolutely refused to acknowledge that anything had changed and he soon acclimatised. He stole a slice of sausage which he ate quickly with his long, bony fingers.

  ‘Nice,’ he commented.

  ‘Mason’s providing the wine,’ said Abe, producing a couple of bottles. ‘I hope it’s OK.’

  Pen turned the bottles into the light. The wine was from one of the great French vineyards, one of the best pre-war vintages. ‘Good? This is exceptional.’

  ‘He said it was. I didn’t know.’

  They sat down and began to eat. Abe’s home was ready now. He’d built himself a kitchen, a bathroom, bedroom-cum-living room. Though Arnie was shacking up with Abe for now, he too was getting his own place built on site. But though Abe’s new home was more comfortable, the hangar had one overwhelming advantage: its size. With the table in the middle of the floor anyone outside trying to listen in would have been a solid twenty feet from the action. With the gramophone playing as well, any conversation would have been absolutely inaudible.

  They got down to business.

  ‘We’ve made a good start,’ said Abe, ‘but looking at this list of Bosse’s, we’ve got a lot still to do. We’re getting great photographic evidence. Pen, you’ve given us all we need on where Mason buys his stuff, who he buys it from, that kind of thing. But we’ve got nothing financial. We can’t prove how much money is coming in, what it’s spent on, or where the profits go. Bosse needs all of that. We need to figure out our next steps. What to do, how to do it.’

  Pen nodded slowly. It was a topic she and the others had been thinking about for some time. ‘Well, one place to start is the mail. All the mail from the United States to Havana comes through us. Arnie reckons he could build me a steam valve…’

  Arnie nodded. ‘Right. Running right off of the engine. Simple one-finger release. Pot of gum concealed in the cockpit side-panel. No problem. It can be ready in a couple of days.’

  Abe smiled, but – Pen fancied or was she imagining it? – there was something a little ghostly in his smile. ‘Good. Only, Arnie, you might want to put steam valves into both airplanes. I’ve got a fancy that Mason might start giving us his best stuff to carry.’

  ‘Huh? You mean Mason’s just going to hand us all his most crucial documents?’

  ‘Well, not all, just some. And he doesn’t know it yet.’

  Abe explained his idea: a beautiful one in its way. The length of Bosse’s list already seemed less daunting. They ate and drank. They listened to the dance music. The conversation began to drift. Arnie asked Abe about the time before the war when Abe had been a race car driver. It was a world Pen knew nothing of and Abe talked with absorption, passion and colour. He’d obviously loved driving and only the superior thrill of an aircraft engine had been able to lure him away.

  ‘But you don’t have a car here,’ said Pen. ‘You don’t miss driving?’

  ‘I’ve got Poll. I’ve got Sue. I even get to drive your sweet little Curtiss.’

  ‘That’s not the same.’

  ‘I guess I did my time on the racetrack.’

  An evasion. Pen was getting used to them. She noted to herself
how Abe’s involvement with racetracks had come to an abrupt end with the onset of war. His military career had ended with equal sharpness. So had his time with the Post Office, with pylon-racing, with movie-stunting, with test-flying and anything else he’d ever touched. The theme of deep involvement followed by abrupt termination seemed too often repeated to be coincidence. She couldn’t explain it. He wouldn’t talk about it. Although Pen had been working right alongside Abe for five weeks now, it seemed she knew him less and less with each passing day.

  Arnie had gone to get Abe’s deck of cards and was persuading him to do tricks. But Pen watched with a sceptical eye. She had never been interested in card tricks and she’d never flown as a pursuit pilot. But some of the patterns of thinking made intuitive sense to her. She could feel Abe trying to steer her eye in one direction and she taught herself to look hard in the other. The more she learned to ‘read’ the tricks, the less impressive they appeared. They seemed shallow, a distraction from the real world.

  The dance music upped its tempo. Pen felt an impulse to release her feelings in movement.

  ‘Arnie, do you dance?’

  ‘Uh, not really, I wouldn’t say –’

  Both men were like this. If she raised a topic that in any way connected with her other life – either her gender or her money – then both men instantly backed away. But she wasn’t having it.

  ‘Great,’ she said, scraping her seat back, ‘it’ll be great to learn.’

  She dragged Arnie up. He was a strong man, but came over a babe-in-arms when asked to lead Pen through the dance. But she persevered. She gave him the confidence to lead her correctly. He was a slightly literal dancer: too keen on getting the steps just right, not happy just to let the music flow. But all the same, she was pleased. She enjoyed her dance.