B for Buster

by Iain Lawrence

  There was no ground below me, no runway or buildings, nothing to be seen at all except the southern horizon with its humps of hills. It was easy to imagine that I was flying. And suddenly I was high over Germany, slipping through the darkness. I held the column, and heard in my mind the drone of the engines. Then a night fighter came swooping in from ten o’clock high, and I banked to the left, climbing to meet him. He zoomed past, so close to the cockpit that I ducked my head. Then I rolled us right over, pulling back on the column, and we went spiraling down in a corkscrew. I felt the kite shaking, but I held it steady. I leveled out at a hundred feet and dashed along above the ground, weaving past trees and houses, over hedges and under wires. “Pilot to navigator,” I said. “Pilot to navigator.”

  And I heard his voice; I really did.

  I heard it in the darkness, in the silence of the bomber. It was faint and tinny, a breathy whisper through an intercom that wasn’t plugged in. It was a terrible voice, full of worry and fear. “What’s the course?” it asked. “What’s the course for home?”

  I bolted upright, my hands jerking from the column. I listened to the silence, to my own breaths. Then I looked behind me, down the empty length of the fuselage. “Ratty?” I shouted. My voice rang through the metal tunnel. “Ratty, you there?”

  It was something he would have done, scaring me with whispered voices. But no one answered.

  “What’s the course?” whispered the voice again. It echoed in the fuselage. Another answered, “Two-one-niner. Steer two-one-niner.”

  My skin prickled all over. From my head to my feet I felt touches of ice.

  To the south, the spidery crescent of the new moon came riding up the hills. Its silver glow fell through the canopy and the Perspex in the nose, and I saw the navigator seated at his desk. He was there but wasn’t there; he was the gray and silver of the moonlight, the blackness of the shadows. He was a collection of shapes. But I saw the leather on his helmet and the sheepskin at his collar. I saw the light shining on his rubber mask as he slowly turned his head.

  I bounded from the chair and went clanging through the bus, nearly panicked by the noise I made. What sounds were hidden in my thudding and my banging? Was the navigator clomping up the steps? Were the buckles jangling on his boots? Was he shouting at me in his ghostly voice, “Where the devil are we?”

  I reeled from wall to wall, half crouched, half running past the struts and past the beds. I tumbled through the door. I fell, got up, and fell again. Then I scrambled away like an animal, my hands just paws on the ground. But fifty feet from Buster, I stopped and pulled myself together. Sounds and moonlight; that was all that had scared me. I had heard creaks of metal, maybe crows on the roof. I hadn’t heard voices, and I hadn’t seen people at all.

  It was easy to tell myself that, but harder to believe it. Crows didn’t fly at night. But I had never doubted that ghosts were real.

  I made myself turn back and look at Buster. I half expected to see the gunner in his upper turret, the bomb aimer peering out, white-faced, from his bubble. But there was only the machine, huge and empty. Nothing there, I told myself. Nothing there.

  I backed away from Buster, then turned around and ran across the field. I never stopped until I reached the huts.

  Ratty and Buzz looked up as I stumbled in, but only for a moment. They were used to seeing me running places, barging in through doors.

  “He’s terrified,” said Buzz.

  “Who?” I said.

  “The Southern Canadian,” said Buzz. “I bet that’s important. Hey, Kak, what’s a six-letter word for terrified?”

  They were still at their crossword; they were still on the same clue. But the sofa was empty.

  “Where’s Pop?” I asked.

  “He just popped out,” said Buzz. He shook with his horsey laugh.

  I stretched out on the sofa, trembling inside, wishing I had never gone to see stupid B for Buster. I heard my mother’s nagging voice: “Well, you got just what you deserved. That should teach you,” Mother always said.

  I stared around the walls, at the painting of King George VI, at the dartboard on a wall riddled with tiny holes. The dance music ended on the wireless, and a posh sort of voice started reading the news. Back home in Canada, the government was rationing meat. The American army was beating the Japs on Attu Island, way far away in Alaska. I couldn’t have cared less.

  I rolled on my back and looked at the curved ceiling, then down along the blackened pipe that twisted toward the coal stove. I saw the light shining on it, and it looked like an arm, like a tentacle, groping toward the ceiling. Buster was jammed with pipes like that, with hoses that snaked in every direction. That was all I’d seen, just a bunch of wires and pipes and hoses. I laughed from relief.

  “What’s so funny?” asked Ratty.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Popped out,” said Buzz, without looking away from his crossword. “He just got the joke.”

  He made me think now, with that stupid joke. I lay on the sofa where Pop had been and wondered if there wasn’t another explanation for what I’d seen. Maybe there really had been a person in Buster’s dark nose. “Where did he go?” I asked Ratty. “The old guy?”

  “Wheezy jeezy, I don’t know.”

  “You think he went out to see Buster?”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged, as though I had no idea why anyone would do that.

  “Maybe he’s pretending to fly,” said Buzz. “Bet he is. I bet he’s sitting in Lofty’s seat, pretending to fly the crate. He’s crazy, that guy. Just like a kid sometimes.”

  I was sure I was right. He was probably still out there, sitting in the doorway and laughing at his joke. Maybe he was just where I’d left him, waiting to scare me again. “Let’s go and see.” I leapt from the sofa. “Let’s surprise him.”

  Ratty frowned, looking more like a rat than ever. “No,” he said simply.

  I went by myself. I stepped out of the hut, onto the grass, and stared across the field. Buster stood in the moonlight, black on black, looking sinister and not quite real. I didn’t go any closer.

  Metal squeaked behind me; a breath grunted in the darkness. I smelled birds and rotten straw. And out of the night came Dirty Bert, pulling a bomb trolley. He had a pigeon on his shoulder, and he walked in a hunch, like a half-crazy old pirate.

  Every squadron had a pigeoneer to care for its flock of homing birds. In every bomber, on every op, a pigeon went along. It carried a metal cylinder strapped to its leg, and would fly home with a message if the kite was forced down. At our Operational Training Unit the pigeoneer had been a smart young man who had always dressed as though on parade. He had raised the birds as a hobby in peacetime, and had asked to look after the loft. He kept it as clean as a kitchen, and when he wasn’t tending pigeons, he was tuning instruments on the bombers. But here at the Four-Forty-Two, the squadron’s pigeoneer was a dismal man.

  He was known as Dirty Bert. He lived in a hut adjoining the loft, and everywhere he went, he carried the smell of birds. Day in and day out he wore the same blue coveralls, crusted with mud and droppings. His entire life was spent caring for birds, and washing latrines.

  I was sure he would pass me by. He rarely spoke to anyone, nor anyone to him. But he called out as he trundled toward me, “Good evening, sir.”

  No one ever called me sir. I was only a warrant officer, no more than a glorified sergeant. I actually looked behind me to see if there wasn’t a real officer there. But Bert was talking to me.

  “Lovely night, isn’t it, sir?” he said.

  “Yes. It is.”

  “Not flying tonight, sir?”

  “No.”

  He swung his bomb trolley round in a circle, not even grunting at the effort. It was a massive thing, meant to be hauled by a tractor. But Bert just pulled it by hand. “Having trouble with the motorized, sir,” he said.

  “The what?”

  “The motorized loft, sir.” He tugged the trolley forward, p
ushed it back, looking like an oversized boy with an oversized wagon. Bert was one of the biggest men I’d ever seen, with hands the size of boxing gloves. His barnyard smell made me sneeze.

  “Bless you, sir,” he said.

  I sighed. “You don’t have to call me sir.” He was so much older that it made me feel ridiculous, as though we were playing a childish game.

  “But you’re an officer, aren’t you, sir?” asked Bert.

  “Just a WO.”

  “Ah.” He nodded. “Well, it’s one and the same to Percy, sir.”

  I didn’t understand.

  “The pigeon, sir.” He pointed a thumb toward the bird on his shoulder. “Ol’ Percy tipped me off, sir. ’E stands at attention whenever ’e sights an officer. Must ’ave seen your badges, sir.”

  I touched the tiny thing on my sleeve. “In the dark?” I asked.

  “Oh, darkness doesn’t bother Percy, sir. ’E’ as the eyes of a—” Bert leaned toward me and whispered, “Of a cat, sir.” Then he winked, and nodded, and a little spiral of white droppings fell from his wedge-shaped cap. He touched the pigeon’s breast. “Best bird in the loft. That’s Percy, sir.”

  The little pigeon puffed itself up at the touch of Bert’s finger. It opened its wings and cooed with a funny little muttering sound. Its pink feet twitched on the man’s shoulder.

  “Would you like to ’old ’im, sir?”

  “No,” I snapped.

  I could see I’d hurt Bert’s feelings. I suddenly felt sorry for him as he stooped down to his trolley to fiddle with something that didn’t need fiddling with. I knew how he felt to be dismissed like that. I said, “You see B for Buster over there? That’s my kite.”

  “That so, sir?” he said a bit coldly.

  “Have you seen anyone near it?” I asked. “I thought there was a guy inside.”

  “Like a ghost, you mean?” said Bert.

  It shocked me that he came so close to the truth so quickly. I stared at him, but he didn’t look up.

  “You must see a lot of them, sir,” he said, still down by his trolley. “There, but not really there. Faces that you knew.” The pigeon fluttered across his bent back, from his left shoulder to his right. “You see them at breakfast, don’t you, sir? And at night? In the corners of your eyes. And when you look, they’re not there?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

  “’Ow many ops ’ave you flown, sir?”

  “None,” I told him. “Not yet.”

  “Oh, I see.” He stood up, his legs straightening like the struts on a landing gear. If Lofty stood on a step he wouldn’t have been as tall as the pigeoneer. “Well, sir. Not to worry, sir, I’m sure.”

  “I wasn’t really worried,” I said.

  “It’s the night, sir,” said Bert. “And this place, sir, with its ’ills and its ruins and such. You’ll get used to it, sir.”

  I felt angry at him then. He was talking as though I knew nothing, as though I was the greenest of sprogs. Then I realized that he was mostly right, but I wouldn’t admit it to him. “I’ve flown lots,” I said. “Hundreds of hours. I fly bombers, not pigeons. I know what I’m talking about.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “You’re quite right, sir.”

  It angered me more that he would agree with me so easily, just because he had to. I wished he would move along, but I saw that he could never leave his precious trolley. So I stood there beside him so that he wouldn’t think he’d driven me off. Then the bird made an odd little sound, and stiffened on his shoulder, and Bert said, “’Ere comes another one, sir.”

  “Another what?” I asked.

  “An officer, sir.”

  Out of the darkness came Simon, the Australian, his shoes tapping as he stepped from the grass to the tarmac. “G’day!” he shouted. Everything he said was a shout. “What are you doing out here in the never-never, and all by your lonesome, too?”

  It was as though Dirty Bert wasn’t even there, and again I felt sorry for the miserable pigeoneer.

  “Fetch the others,” said Simon. “Tell them the boys are coming back.”

  He went off again, and old Bert just stood there with the pigeon on his shoulder. I said, “I’d better go.”

  “Right you are, sir,” said Bert. “Good luck to you, sir.”

  I didn’t know why he wished me luck, but I didn’t think about it then. I ran to the mess to get Ratty and Buzz, and Pop was there again. He looked at me with such a friendly smile that I was sure he hadn’t tried to frighten me in Buster. “Where were you?” I asked.

  “Writing letters,” he said with a shrug. “Why?”

  “They’re coming back.”

  Ratty and Buzz leapt up from their chairs. Pop grinned and slapped my shoulder. Then we all ran out to watch Lofty coming home.

  The airfield was suddenly alive. Trucks and tractors bustled through the darkness. Erks headed off to their dispersals, the Chair Force to the tower again. The flares were lit along the runway.

  We gathered below the tower, a crew without a pilot. We listened to a distant drone that grew steadily louder and closer. Then the first Halifax thundered past above us, flashing its recognition signal. Someone asked, “Is that Lofty?”

  I was pleased that I could read the Morse better than the others. I rattled off the signals as each black machine passed overhead and banked to the right. Buzz was counting: “Seven, eight, nine.”

  The bombers started landing, one by one. They dropped from the sky with their airscrews set at fine pitch, their engines throttled back. Tires shrieked as they touched the ground, exhausts spluttered and growled. Each bomber rolled away, to merge again into the darkness, and the next one came, and the next.

  “Thirteen, fourteen,” counted Buzz.

  “There’s Lofty!” I said.

  His machine didn’t join the circuit with the rest, but came straight in, wobbling above the field. It sounded kind of ragged in a way.

  “He’s got an engine out,” said Pop.

  The Halifax flew along the runway, its wheels six feet above the tarmac, as though Uncle Joe had to force it from the air. Then it touched in a shower of sparks, in a rending of metal. Something banged and clattered along the ground as sparks flew up like balls of fire. The broken bits fell away, and the bomber rumbled on along the runway.

  There was a gap then, in the landings. A truck went out, and men with torches, and the bombers circled round and round. Then a twisted chunk of metal was carried from the runway, and Buzz started counting again as the rest of the squadron came in. Or most of the rest; one never returned.

  The ambulances went out with their bells ringing. Canvas-covered trucks brought the airmen from their bombers, and Lofty hopped down from the back of the first one.

  He seemed the same as ever, strutting in his gangly walk, smiling his old grin. In most ways he was the same old Lofty, but his eyes were somehow different. They didn’t sparkle anymore.

  That same morning Lofty bought a pipe, and he smoked it once. His face turned green and he coughed his guts out, and we never saw him light it a second time. But he kept it in his mouth, puffing and whistling through the stem. Once in a while he even took it out to tap it on a chair or something, as though to tamp his tobacco down.

  He never talked about that first op. We gathered from the others that it had been the usual sort of business, with searchlights and flak, and fighters here and there. Nothing outstanding; nothing alarming. But Lofty had changed. He had become more serious. He reminded me of Donny.

  CHAPTER 4

  OPS WERE CANCELED FOR a while, as the weather darkened over Britain. Behind blankets of cloud, the moon shrank to a sliver, then grew again. We cursed the clouds and the weather over Europe. Black nights were perfect for flying, but we were socked in, and stood down.

  We toured round the countryside on clattery old bicycles, played baseball with the erks, and partied in the mess at night, when all the games were rough and wild. We joined in the songs about searchlights and flak, as thou
gh we’d already flown twenty ops. We grumbled all the time. We had come to fly, but were bored to tears.

  The wireless news didn’t help at all. We were pleased when the Japs fled from Attu, when a U-boat was sunk in the Atlantic. But we really perked up our ears when we heard that the crew of the Memphis Belle, the first of the big American Flying Fortresses to finish a tour of duty, were given their tickets home.

  Ratty listened to that last bit of news without a single joke or even a hint of a smile. He looked almost angry, and I could tell what he was thinking, that he might have been a part of that crew—a hero already—if he hadn’t hurried up to Canada in the months before Pearl Harbor. Poor Buzz looked as worried as a dog. He always dreaded that Ratty would go away one day to fight with the Mighty Eighth, lured by the huge Forts and the glamour of flying in the sunlight. The Americans bombed Germany in the daylight, in bombers that bristled with guns.

  In cloud-covered Yorkshire, the only one flying was Donny Lee. And he did it on the ground; Donny was the only pilot who owned a car. It was a Morris, a tiny thing with seats for two but room for seven standing. He raced around the Yorkshire hills, with his navigator balanced on the fender, his rear gunner on the bumper, facing backward. He drove that black heap to Inverness and all the way to London.

  In the second week of June, the weather cleared. On the ninth, a Wednesday, Donny kicked me from my bed early in the morning. “Get dressed,” he told me. “I’ll take you for a spin.”

  I could hardly believe my luck. No one but his own crew ever went flying in the Morris. But he and I went rocketing out through the gate and down the road in a plume of dust. Donny drove east through that land of grass and sheep and scattered villages. He threw the black Morris round the curves, and wound it up when the road ran straight. The air gusted round the windshield, the engine howled, and the leather seats baked hot as pitch. With every shimmy and every pothole I heard bottles jingle in the boot.

  We crossed the River Swale, shot through Busby Stoop and Thirsk, then climbed into the Hambleton Hills.