Space: A Novel

by James A. Michener

  ‘You spoke rather well of them the other day. After they saved your tail.’

  ‘In an emergency they’re useful. But to answer your question. I gave the Marines all sorts of hell till they allowed me to opt for flight training. You know, as a kid I used to take cars apart. Father came home one day, his whole Packard was strewed acrosst the lawn. He like to died. I got a real feel for engines, Pope.’

  ‘Why aren’t you in fighters?’

  Claggett ignored the question. ‘When I left Pensacola, I reported to VC-4 in Atlantic City. You ever fly off that field? Telephone wires right acrosst the end of the runway. We ast the government four times to take them down or we were gonna crash into houses. Said it was too expensive. So one night we cut ‘em down.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Well, I did. Everyone at the base knew who did it, so I got some fryin’, but the command was glad to see them down. Only next day they put ‘em up again and fined the squadron. Who gives a damn?’

  Pope never did discover just how his rambunctious colleague had found his way into Banshees, but an older Marine who flew in from one of the carriers said, ‘The Banshee requires the best judgment in the business. Or it did when we were testing it. And they chose Claggett because—’

  ‘Were you in flight test?’

  ‘Two years at Patuxent River.’

  ‘Good duty?’

  ‘Best in the world. I flew forty-seven different planes. Invaluable.’

  ‘How do you get that duty?’ Pope asked.

  ‘One morning the Angel Gabriel knocks on your door. Strictly luck.’

  ‘But don’t you have to know airplanes?’

  ‘Everybody knows airplanes. What you have to know is Gabriel and his cockamamie horn. Toot, toot, we shoot.’ And he waved his right hand high in the air.

  A few nights after this, when planes were grounded, Pope accompanied Claggett to a movie on the base. It starred an actress John had enjoyed in Gone With the Wind, Vivien Leigh, and an actor with whom he was not familiar but of whom he had heard much favorable comment. Claggett said, ‘You’ve got to see this guy Brando. Terrific!’

  The film was called A Streetcar Named Desire, which Pope thought ridiculous. His opinion worsened when he found that Brando played a sloppy, profane ignoramus who went around in a dirty T-shirt. ‘This Kowalski is a bore,’ he told Claggett during the first intermission when the reels were being changed. ‘I’d kick him out of my house.’

  But when Blanche DuBois began to act the irresponsible, addle-pated sister-in-law, Pope became uneasy and wondered why Kowalski didn’t kick her out. As the seamy details continued to unfold, Pope became actually nervous, for the picture of family life being offered was not at all what he wished to see. ‘That woman’s impossible,’ he mumbled.

  ‘You’d kick her out, too?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘All she needs is a good screwin’.’

  Pope never responded to such talk, not because he was prudish, but because he believed that when he married Penny Hardesty in his Annapolis days he settled once and for all any problems relating to sex, and he was always vaguely disturbed to find that other officers felt otherwise. He was extremely happy with Penny and was repelled by the harsh view of marriage being presented in this movie, and when the Brando-Leigh relationship became downright ugly he could not stay to watch.

  ‘I’ll see you at the hall,’ he said as he slipped uneasily from his seat. Claggett could not understand his friend’s behavior, but when half a dozen other pilots rose to leave the improvised theater, he grabbed one by the arm and whispered, ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘I don’t fly all day to see this crap at night,’ the Air Force major snapped.

  ‘What crap?’

  ‘A dame like that.’ The Air Force man pulled his arm free and stalked out of the shack.

  Later, Claggett realized that this film had struck too close to the lives of the fliers, for as he heard them talk about it he learned that some had wives who were as flighty as Blanche DuBois; others had homes which were threatened by circumstances not unlike those that separated Kowalski and his wife. These pilots, who were risking so much against the MiGs and the darkness and the upreaching mountains and the watered gasoline, wanted films that showed placid family life: contented wives in picket-fenced gardens watching over well-behaved boys who were playing Little League baseball.

  He sought Pope and asked, ‘Did the movie really hit you so hard?’

  ‘I walked out, didn’t I?’

  ‘But why? It was just a movie, and a pretty good one.’

  ‘Did it get any better? After I left?’

  ‘She continued her dance. Stupid, mixed-up broad.’

  Now Claggett grabbed Pope’s arm, a habit of his, for he never liked to see a friend walk away angry. ‘Sit down, Pope. You mustn’t take things too serious.’

  ‘I don’t understand you, Claggett. You show me this picture of your beautiful wife while you’re looking for the photograph of the Jo-san you’re shacked up with.’

  ‘I found that pitcher,’ Claggett said enthusiastically, and from his wallet he took the snapshot of a lovely Korean girl, sixteen or seventeen years old, in one of those appealing dresses in which the beltline came just under the breasts, with the rest of the dress falling free in one handsome, unbroken sweep.

  ‘Ain’t she somethin’?’

  ‘Why do you fool around with her? If you have …’

  Claggett now produced the familiar photograph of his wife, Debby Dee, and placed it on the bar table beside that of his Jo-san. ‘Two superior chicks.’

  ‘Where is your wife?’

  ‘Iwakuni, I guess. She followed me to Japan, and I suppose she’s livin’ it up over there. She usually has somethin’ cookin’.’

  This was so distasteful that Pope rose abruptly and went to bed, but he was so accustomed to flying at night and sleeping in the daytime that he tossed in restlessness, and after about an hour of frustration he rose, slipped into his fatigues and returned to the officers’ club, where Claggett still sat, this time with the Air Force major he had spoken to in the movie. They were talking about women.

  ‘I don’t care to waste an evening watching some sick babe making a fool of herself,’ the major said, indicating a chair that Pope could use if he cared to join them.

  ‘But most women are that way,’ Claggett insisted.

  ‘Rubbish! I’ll bet you three-fourths of the fliers in this unit are married to perfectly normal women.’

  ‘Granted,’ Claggett said. ‘But the normal woman is usually just as screwed up as that sister-in-law in New Orleans.’

  ‘What in hell are you saying, Claggett?’ the major cried.

  ‘Statistics.’

  ‘Not covering the people I know.’ The major turned to Pope and said, ‘You … I always forget your name.’

  It irritated Pope that Air Force types, especially majors, feigned not to know the names of Navy fliers who joined their units. ‘Name’s Pope.’

  ‘That’s right,’ the major said. ‘Pope. Pope. You fly the special F6F.’

  ‘F4U night fighter.’

  ‘Pope, F4U. What we’re arguing about, Pope, is women. Claggett here says that all women are pretty much like that mixed-up babe in the movie.’

  ‘I know. He was selling me that line before I went to bed. But—’

  ‘Now wait,’ Claggett protested. ‘You can’t use Pope as evidence. He’s a notorious straight arrow.’ He said this with a kind of affectionate, patronizing sneer. Pilots were characterized by other pilots in brief phrases which summarized a whole constellation of attitudes, thus identifying the man without need for elaboration. Randy Claggett was referred to respectfully as a front runner or a super stick, the first referring to his known willingness to volunteer for any difficult flying job, the latter to his skill in performing it. Beginning fliers fantasized about earning either of these accolades; Claggett had both.

  John Pope, as Claggett had warned the Air Fo
rce major, was a notorious straight arrow in that he didn’t smoke or drink, he exercised to keep his weight down, he performed any task with rigorous perfection, he didn’t use profanity, and he stayed away from Jo-sans. It was assumed by fellow pilots that one day Super Stick Claggett would be dead and Straight Arrow Pope an admiral.

  ‘Yes,’ the major said with a broad, welcoming smile, ‘I’ve heard you were a true straight arrow, Pope. As such, you couldn’t possibly agree—’

  ‘Wait a minute!’ Claggett interrupted. ‘His wife’s just made herself a lawyer. Puts her completely outside our argument.’

  The major drew back and looked at Pope in obvious confusion. ‘A lawyer? You mean, she works at it?’

  ‘Yes, she’s legislative assistant to Senator Glancey of Red River.’

  No one spoke. Neither Claggett nor the major could comprehend how a pilot in military service could sustain a marriage to a woman who held her own job away from the base. Many wives often worked, military pay being what it was, but only as schoolteachers or secretaries to commanding officers, and always on the base or close to it.

  ‘How do you handle it?’ the major asked, but before Pope could answer, Claggett asked, ‘You got a pitcher of her?’ and Pope produced three snapshots of Penny, each quite feminine and lovable. The two fliers, studying with great care, deduced that she was a brunette, about a hundred and five pounds, petite, bright, witty, with flashing eyes and a strong sense of duty.

  ‘No,’ Pope corrected. ‘She’s not what they call petite. About five-four, but you’re right, she does have drive. Votes Democratic sometimes.’

  Again the two pilots were mystified, for the wives of young officers who hoped to become admirals were well advised to vote Republican, and their husbands were almost obliged to.

  ‘With a solid, safe woman like her,’ the major said, ‘you didn’t like the movie either, did you?’

  ‘Why do they make films like that?’ Pope asked. ‘The dirty side of life?’

  ‘War’s a pretty dirty side,’ Claggett observed, ‘and they sure make movies about it.’

  ‘But war’s unavoidable,’ Pope said. ‘We’re at K-22, three men, three different services because the Communists made us come here. You don’t have to make a movie about a doomed woman like that one.’

  ‘Shakespeare wrote his plays about doomed people,’ Claggett responded. ‘You ever see Othello?’

  ‘Where did you ever see Othello?’ the major asked with obvious surprise.

  ‘We got little theater at Texas A and M.’ He laughed. ‘The big brass of ROTC on campus were disgusted with the plays bein’ shown. All defeatism … downers. So they organized a special series. The Problems of Command. Ibsen’s Enemy of the People to show the conflicts of public office. Shakespeare’s Coriolanus to show divided loyalties. The Caine Mutiny. And Othello.’

  ‘What was it supposed to show?’ Pope asked.

  ‘The sour relationship between a commandin’ officer and some jerk on his staff. Best play of the lot.’

  ‘Did Debby Dee see the plays?’ Pope asked.

  ‘I didn’t know her then. She was varsity cheerleader at Texas Western.’

  So many fliers protested the showing of a downbeat film like A Streetcar Named Desire that the K-22 commander summoned the education and entertainment officer and chewed him out: ‘There will be no more films like that shown on this base. We want only patriotic, upbeat stuff like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.’

  A notice was posted in the officers’ mess to the effect that henceforth all movies would be screened prior to showing and that undesirable films would be shipped back to the depot in Tokyo. Who would do the censoring was not indicated, but the entertainment officer told his friends that it would be himself, the chaplain and a colonel.

  When Pope read the notice he chanced to see above it a mimeographed announcement which obviously came from the Bureau of Naval Personnel, and he supposed that it had been forwarded to K-22 by some aircraft carrier operating in the Japan Sea:

  NAVY AND MARINE FLIERS

  For the class starting on June 15 there will be a few openings at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station for pilots with wide experience who wish to become test pilots for the newer types of aircraft. Apply in writing with full credentials and recommendations to …

  The phrase newer types of aircraft had been inserted with the specific purpose of attracting pilots like John Pope, and the bait was shrewdly placed, for that morning he drafted a letter to his commanding officer, still aboard the carrier, seeking permission to submit his application.

  It would never have occurred to him to confide to anyone his secret ambition to become a test pilot; straight arrows proceeded strictly by the book, kept their aspirations to themselves, and either succeeded or failed according to their demonstrated abilities. It was an impressive dossier that he was able to forward to Washington: unblemished flight performance in nine different aircraft; no disciplinary action; three trains destroyed, with Claggett’s photographs to prove it; two medals to substantiate the kills; and superior ratings from every commanding officer under whom he had served.

  But there was one nagging omission which a casual reader of the application might overlook but which a Navy selection board would spot immediately: he had never engaged an enemy plane in combat, neither a Russian MiG nor a North Korean Slow Boy, and since he flew only at night, it was unlikely that he would ever encounter a MiG, for the Russians refused to squander these valuable planes on speculative missions. His only chance for aerial combat lay in tracking down a wooden Slow Boy, and this he was determined to do.

  At two o’clock on the morning of 12 May 1952, when eagle-like Altair was flying toward the apex of the heavens, a radar watcher just south of the battle line detected a blip which had to be an airplane of some sort coming south toward the huge gasoline dump at Inchon. An alert was sounded and Pope’s F4U leaped into the air.

  The heavy plane climbed to 7,000 feet and headed northwest to intercept the intruder. In the starry night Pope spotted the enemy well below him, plodding along with its burden of TNT. Breathless with excitement, he swung into position well aft of the Slow Boy, shifted about in his seat till he found the best position, and zeroed in, his guns ready to explode on this perfect kill.

  In fact, he was so intent on his mission that he failed to see the second half of this night’s North Korean effort: a MiG flown by a Russian pilot whose job it was to shoot down whatever careless American pilot started after the Slow Boy. By the time Pope realized that he had stumbled into a trap, the MiG was firing its tremendous guns, and Pope, sick with fury at having been tricked, felt bullets striking his F4U.

  It absorbed a hellish beating but tried valiantly to fly on. A wing trembled, half cut off at its base, and then a tank exploded. In flames the F4U spiraled toward the ground, crashing some fifteen miles north of the battle line. Americans and Koreans alike saw it come down, and by 0430, when sunlight was threatening to end the night, teams from both sides were converging on the wreckage, and it was an even chance as to which would reach it first. For some minutes they were aided by an immense burst of flame to the south: the Slow Boy had dumped its bombs on a gasoline depot.

  The North Koreans came by foot from a nearby base, the Americans by helicopter from a field to the south, but all were preceded by a low-flying plane of tremendous speed, Randy Claggett’s Banshee. As he photographed the wrecked plane he caught in his cameras the distinct picture of a downed aviator some distance away, his parachute beside him, his arms raised and waving.

  In the officers’ club at K-22 Pope and Claggett held a gloomy review:

  ‘Sonnombeech, Pope, we came here in January to shoot down Slow Boys. It’s June and we’ve accomplished nothin’.’

  ‘I saw a Slow Boy. What I didn’t see was his MiG.’

  ‘We’ve scrubbed two F4Us and I didn’t get any pitchers worth a damn. The Navy must be real proud of us.’

  ‘You took on four MiGs that day.’

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p; ‘And you did get three trains.’

  ‘Hitting a train on the ground is not blasting a plane in the air.’

  In their depression they fell ominously silent as a plane revved up for takeoff. They listened to it speed down the runway, stutter with soul-shaking terror, then catch its breath and soar into the air.

  ‘Pope, I was intended to be a fighter pilot. I watch these F-86 clowns, I could die with envy.’

  ‘I don’t know. When I was down in that rice paddy waiting to see who was going to come through the trees, my side or theirs, I didn’t have a single regret. I love to fly, and you know what I thought? War is the ugly price you pay so that you can have the fun of flying.’

  Claggett drank his beer gloomily and took deep offense when Pope ordered a second ginger ale. ‘Goddammit, how can a pilot drink that horse piss?’ When Pope showed no inclination to defend his preference, the wiry Texan reached out and with a swipe of his hand knocked the ginger ale to the floor and said with passion, ‘Pope, I been awatchin’ you, and you know airplanes. I have deep respect for men who take planes seriously. Ain’t many of us do. I got a proposition for you. Which I would be pleased if you took it seriously.’ And from his blouse he produced the notice which had been posted on the bulletin board. True to form, as soon as he had seen the notice he quietly snaked it off the board, on the principle: ‘I don’t want no competition.’

  ‘Navy’s callin’ for a few knowin’ men. Would this application be of any interest to you?’

  When Pope studied the form that Claggett extended, he saw something which amazed him: ‘Randy, did you get a master’s degree at Purdue?’

  ‘Like the man says on the third line, “Number One in his class of sixty-seven.” ’

  ‘Why do you talk that illiterate Tex-Mex?’

  ‘I study hard so I can live the way I want. I want to talk Texican. I want to live tough.’

  ‘With this record, they’ll accept you for sure.’

  ‘I hope so, and I wish you’d apply, too. We could be a team.’