Aces

by T. E. Cruise

  Gold was enjoying himself. He was seeing the country, and the captain paid his hotel expenses as well as fifty dollars a week. Gold would have been supremely happy if he wasn’t so lonely. He was as alone now as he’d been in the German Air Service, except that now he was ostracized not only as a Jew but also as a German. All of the captain’s pilots were military trained, and old grudges forged during the war would not easily die.

  Hull and Lester Stiles were the ringleaders in the crusade to give him the cold shoulder. Gold supposed that he understood the way that they felt: after all, he had been responsible for knocking them out of the sky and into a German P.O.W. camp…

  (Three)

  The Trent Hotel

  Magnolia, Missouri 9 May 1921

  The lobby of the Trent Hotel was plushly carpeted in crimson. Above the walnut-wainscoted walls was green-flocked wallpaper. Cattlemen lounged on brass-studded leather furniture, smoking cigars as they commiserated over the dismal price of beef on the hoof.

  Herman Gold and Captain Bob Brooke were seated in leather armchairs beside a huge potted fern. The captain was wearing a gray wool suit; Herman a tan corduroy Norfolk jacket, a white shirt, a maroon four-in-hand, and olive twill trousers. He’d taken to tucking his trouser bottoms into the tops of his high boots, in emulation of the captain. On the captain’s advice he’d also let his curly red hair grow longer and had the beginnings of a decent moustache. The captain said it made him look older, and more like a rake, which helped make him more credible in his role as Count Fritz, the man who had taught the Red Baron how to fly.

  Gold and the Captain were passing the evening reading newspapers and enjoying the breeze set up by the softly whispering ceiling fans, when the telegram the captain had been waiting for finally arrived. Gold lowered his newspaper and watched as the captain tore open the wire, then read it.

  “They went for it, son.” The Captain grinned. “We’ve got our commitment from Americana Oil. They’re notifying their dealers all across the country to provide us with gas for the rest of our tour.”

  “You did it, Cap.” Gold shook his head in admiration. “I didn’t think you’d pull it off, but you did. Free gas…”

  “Not free,” the captain admonished. “We’re paying for it, in advertising. Tomorrow I’ll have the mechanics paint the tail of every one of our airplanes with the Americana trademark.” He laughed. “Except the Red Baron’s, of course. That wouldn’t look too good for Americana now, would it? To have their trademark on the tail, and Hun Crosses on the wings.”

  “I guess not,” Gold said quietly, and buried his nose in his newspaper.

  “Oh, hell.” The Captain frowned. “Here I’ve gone and hurt your feelings.”

  “You know, Cap, when this tour is over, I’m going to look forward to just being an American.” Gold sighed. “It’s not easy playing the villain all the time.”

  The Captain nodded. “Well, son, to me, you are an American. The good Lord saw fit to grant you the gift of bona fide Yankee ingenuity.”

  Gold chuckled. “Thanks for saying so, Cap.” He laid aside his newspaper on the hotel’s leather-inlaid coffee table. “So what’s next?”

  “Next I contact Stallion Motor Supply and Medallion Tire. I’ll tell them that Americana has accepted my proposal and ask do they want to come aboard. If so, we’ll paint their trademarks all over everything, and I’ll have parts and rubber as well as gas and oil, without paying out a single greenback.”

  “Real canny of you, Cap.” Gold smiled.

  Captain Bob regarded him. “Tell me something, son. You spend your evenings with me because you’re interested in business, or because the other boys give you the brush-off?”

  “A little of both, I guess,” Gold admitted. “I’m sorry the others hold what I am against me, but that’s been happening to me all my life, more or less, so I suppose I’ve grown used to it.” He paused. “At least, I’ve learned to tolerate it… Anyway, I do want to get ahead in life, so I want to learn about business. I no longer believe I can accomplish much by working for someone else, not even you; no offense meant, Cap.”

  “No offense taken, son. I think you’re thinking right.”

  “I’d like to make my mark in some facet of aviation,” Gold confided. “But I don’t have your salesmanship abilities.”

  “The good Lord has seen fit to grant only a precious few the gift of profitable gab, starting with that greatest of all salesmen, Jesus Himself,” the Captain intoned. “But as for you, son, don’t you worry, one of these days you’ll see your opportunity, whatever it may be, and you’ll take it. I’ve no doubt of that.”

  Gold tapped his newspaper. “I’ve been reading about the air passenger transportation business in Europe, Cap,” he said excitedly. “I think there could be a future for that here.”

  “I don’t think so, son,” Captain Bob said. “Europe’s roads and bridges and railways got all torn up during the war, and they’re always crossing this or that channel, or sea, or whatever, to get where they’re going. Now consider America. We’ve got nothing torn up, and just a few itty-bitty rivers to cross, now and again. Anyway, over in Europe, life’s cheap. You won’t find God-fearing Americans risking their necks in uncomfortable flying machines to go visit grandma on Thanksgiving Day.”

  “They go for rides with us, Cap,” Gold respectfully pointed out.

  “Thrill seekers ain’t going to keep an air transportation company in the green.”

  “I guess what’s needed are better, safer planes. Maybe that’s what I ought to concentrate on,” Gold mused.

  “That’s right, you’re a bit of a mechanic,” the Captain said. He took a cigar out of his jacket breast pocket and nipped it with a golden cutter on the end of his watch chain. “I’ve heard that you’ve been tinkering on my airplanes; improving their performance.” He struck a match and puffed on the cigar to get it going. “My mechanics tell me that you worked miracles on that Hisso-powered Jenny. That after you were done modifying her structure and engine she could pull stunts like no other Jenny, no matter how skilled the pilot.” He ignored the stand ashtray beside his chair, flicking the spent match into the nearby potted fern.

  “I’m good with machines, but I want to be more than a grease monkey,” Gold said. “I’m reading up on aero-engineering and design. I have books sent to me from New York City.”

  “Yeah, well, whatever, son.” The Captain nodded. “Me, I never liked to get my hands dirty. But if you ever should come up with a new thingamajig, don’t you hesitate to bring it to your old pal, the Cap, you hear?”

  “Sure, Cap,” Gold murmured evasively. If there was one thing he’d learned from Captain Bob, it was never to give anything away.

  “I don’t know shit about inventing, son, but I can promote the hell out of anything,” the Captain declared. “And promotion and advertising is ninety percent of it today, and will be ninety-nine percent in the future. You mark my words. This war we’ve just been through has rattled everyone’s cage pretty good. What folks are going to want is for somebody to tuck them in and tell them a bedtime story about how everything’s going to turn out all right. That’s what salesmen do, they tell bedtime stories.” He rattled his newspaper. “Just like President Harding.”

  (Four)

  The Golden Hotel

  Atowa, Kansas

  2 June 1921

  Gold was on his way upstairs to his room after dinner when he heard Hull Stiles call out, “Hey! Wait a minute! I want to ask you something.”

  Gold waited for him on the landing. “What’s up?”

  “I wanted to ask you…” Hull began, but hesitated, nervously fingering the ends of his moustache. “Back during the war, you know? When you shot down Lester and me, we’d both noticed something, and we’ve always been wondering about it. I was hoping I could ask you about it now…”

  Gold nodded. “Go ahead.”

  “Your plane had only one machine gun. Isn’t that so?”

  Gold sighed. “Yes, only one.
”

  “I mean, it wasn’t like one of your guns jammed, right? You had only one.”

  “That’s right, Hull. I carried only one gun.”

  Hull nodded. “How come?”

  “It’s a long story,” Gold began. “Let’s just say that with one gun I felt I could shoot down airplanes without harming the pilots.”

  “That’s what my brother and I thought,” Hull replied. “Back then as well as now, I mean. We talked about it a lot in that P.O.W. camp. It had seemed to us that you went out of your way to choose your shots, to not simply spray the cockpit.”

  Gold looked away. “Hull, I don’t mean to be rude, but it seems like such a long time ago.”

  “That’s what Les and I have been thinking recently,” Hull replied softly. “We’ve talked to the others about it. Everyone thinks you’re a good pilot, and all…” He blushed. “Hell, I guess what I’m trying to say is that maybe it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie…” He trailed off.

  “Yeah, I guess that is best,” Gold said thickly. “Well…” He smiled hard.

  Slowly, Hull extended his hand. Gold shook it.

  “There.” Hull smiled shyly. “A bunch of us are taking a drive out to some hog farm that Eddie claims he knows about. He says they got some kind of still or speakeasy going on out there. White lightning, and like that.” Hull shrugged. “Maybe some girls, I dunno…”

  “Gee.” Gold shrugged, still smiling fit to bust. “Sounds good.”

  “Yeah, it does… Probably won’t amount to shit, though. Eddie’s a talker. Anyway.” Hull looked down at the dusty toes of his scuffed boots. “Feel like coming for a ride?”

  “Sure.”

  Outside the hotel, a bunch of pilots were piled into the circus’s puke-green, beat-up Oldsmobile. It was a soft-top, and missing its windshield. Lester Stiles, wearing his flying goggles and leather helmet, was behind the wheel, gunning the engine to keep it from stalling.

  “Achtung!” Lester called out as Gold and Hull approached.

  Gold flinched, feeling unsure. If they expected him to laugh, forget it. He’d be friends with them as their equal, not their clown.

  Lester grinned. “Sorry, Herman, I just had to get that last one out of my system. Squeeze in, pal. We’ve been waiting for you.”

  Chapter 6

  * * *

  (One)

  Outside Doreen, Nebraska

  9 July 1921

  The show site was a yellow-tan expanse of hard-packed earth and cropped grass, bordered by tall cottonwoods and chokeberry. The field was up against a straight-edge gravel road, set like a tile beneath the faded blue sky, amidst the amber and green vastness of the plain.

  It was late afternoon, and hot. The high temperature and low barometer had combined to make poor flying conditions. Added to that, all through the difficult show the Jennys’ radiators had been boiling over. One pilot had been scalded by a blast of rusty steam and had needed to see a doctor. He’d been rushed back to Doreen, a prosperous farming and manufacturing town fifteen miles away, on the banks of the Blue River.

  Gold had just finished his Red Baron stint, ending the show. The crowd—business had been good here the past few days—was gradually disbursing. The pilots, anxious to get out from beneath the broiling sun, were peeling out of their sweat-soaked flying gear and hurrying to the automobiles for the drive back to the hotel in Doreen.

  Gold was sitting in the scant shade cast by the scarlet Jenny, waiting for her engine to cool down so that he could check it over. While he waited he thought longingly about a nice cool bath and some lemonade.

  “You ready to leave, Herman?” Hull Stiles called to him.

  Gold waved him off. “I’ll catch a ride in later. My temperature gauge was in the red all through my performance. I want to make sure I haven’t done in the Hisso.”

  Hull nodded and headed for the cars. One by one the automobiles set up dust clouds as they made their way off the field, kicking up a spray of gravel as they fish-tailed onto the road. The terrain was so flat that the cars were visible long after the sound of their engines had faded. Gold watched them go, feeling envious.

  His thoughts turned back to the Hisso. The Jenny already had a custom-built, extra-large radiator. Maybe he could rig up some sort of supplementary, extra-capacity cooling system to give him an extra margin of safety…

  He found a scrap of paper and a pencil in his trousers pocket and began a preliminary sketch of his idea for an improved radiator design. As he hunched over his drawing, drops of sweat running along his nose plopped onto the paper, blurring the pencil lines.

  “Entschuldigen Sie…”

  Gold glanced up, startled to hear German. The man standing before him was gray-haired and barrel-chested. He looked about sixty. He was wearing work shoes, a pair of faded denim overalls that were the same washed-out blue as the sky, and an old-fashioned white shirt, minus its detachable collar.

  “Guten Tag, Herr Strohgruber,” the farmer greeted Gold. “Ich heise Carl Schuler,” he introduced himself, doffing his wide-brimmed, sweat-stained linen hat. He cocked his head, his brown eyes speculative as he regarded Gold. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” he asked politely.

  Gold shook himself out of his surprised stupor. “Ja! Et tut mir leid!” Gold apologized. “Sehr angenehm, Herr Schuler. Yes, indeed, I’m very pleased to meet a fellow countryman,” he repeated, enjoying the opportunity to speak German. “But I’m afraid my name isn’t Strohgruber. It’s Herman Gold.”

  “A name is a name,” Schuler philosophized. “What matters is that you’re a German, like myself.” He thumped his chest. “I am pleased to meet a fellow countryman.”

  Gold, smiling, got to his feet to shake hands. “Did you see the show, Herr Schuler?” he asked in German.

  Schuler nodded. “My daughter and I. My wife, she wouldn’t come. She said it would make her dizzy just to watch. My daughter even took a ride.”

  “But not you, sir?” Gold smiled.

  “Ah, no, Herr Gold!” Schuler laughed. “Never in a thousand years would you see me in such contraptions! I don’t even like motorcars,” he confided. “My daughter, however! That child is afraid of nothing.”

  “We pilots have found that it’s the children who take to flying the best,” Gold agreed.

  “But you in your German airplane!” Schuler shook his head in admiration. “You were quite wonderful!”

  “Danke,” Gold said shyly.

  “Herr Gold,” Schuler began. “I understand that your show will remain here?”

  “Through tomorrow.”

  “The ticket seller assured me that you really were German, but I wanted to find out for myself,” Schuler continued. “It’s been a long time since I have had this pleasure of speaking my native tongue with someone outside of my family. Would you care to come to my home for supper this evening?”

  Gold hesitated. “I wouldn’t want to put you to any trouble—”

  “No trouble at all!” Schuler said heartily. “Please, Herr Gold. It would give me great pleasure. You know, when I came to this country with my father and mother I was a mere boy. Everything was so strange! How I longed for home! You must be homesick for Germany a little, yes?”

  “Often, I am,” Gold admitted. “Especially since we arrived here in Nebraska.”

  “Here is not like Germany,” Schuler nodded solemnly. “So, you will come? You’ll have a taste of home. My wife is from Alsace, but she nevertheless cooks true German style.”

  Gold looked down at himself. He was wearing dark brown, greasy moleskin trousers tucked into his high boots, and a threadbare, gray flannel work shirt that lay plastered to his sweat-soaked torso. “I’m afraid that I’m hardly dressed to come to supper. All of my good clothes are back at the hotel in town…”

  “It means nothing to us!” Schuler firmly declared. “We’re a farming family. After supper I will take you back to the hotel in Doreen.”

  “You’re very kind. I accept your generous invitation, Herr Schuler.” Gol
d smiled. “Give me just a few moments to see to my airplane.”

  “Of course,” Schuler said. “My daughter and I will wait for you in our wagon at roadside.”

  So this poor fellow still drives a wagon, Gold thought as he quickly performed a cursory but thorough maintenance check on the Hisso. Gold considered using a horse-drawn wagon to get around in this day and age to be the height of hicksville, and typical of Nebraska. He thought about borrowing a circus jalopy so that he could drive himself back to town after supper, but decided against it. He didn’t want to take the chance of insulting Herr Schuler by suggesting that he was above the farmer’s modest means.

  Gold knew from his reading that agriculture in the Midwest had been hit hard by the postwar economic downturn. All through the fighting, and for a couple of years after the Armistice, the United States government was buying all the crops and livestock these farmers could produce. A lot of these farmers mortgaged themselves to the hilt, paying too much for land in order to expand, thinking the government-inflated prices would last forever. They didn’t, and a lot of farmers in these parts lost everything when the bubble burst. Captain Bob had said that the reason the people hereabouts had the cash in their pockets to patronize the circus was due to the fact that Doreen had a strong industrial economy… And there was some tree-farm operation that employed a lot of people.

  The Hisso looked as if it had survived the radiator boil-over. Gold nevertheless asked the mechanics—who had to remind him to switch back to the English language—to pay special attention to the cooling system. Gold tried to get the worst of the grime off his hands with a kerosene-soaked rag. He dug out of his back pocket the battered, gray felt fedora he’d taken to wearing to keep the sun off his head and headed off toward where Schuler was waiting in his wagon.

  The two horses hitched to the wagon were huge and brown, with massive, shaggy hooves. It had been a long time since Gold had been around any mode of transportation that didn’t drink gasoline. He’d never liked horses anyway. He gave these beasts a wide berth. They stank to high heaven, but as he watched them constantly flicking their tails to shoo the flies from their backs, Gold decided he was grateful for their presence, and the open-air wagon. He didn’t exactly smell like roses at the moment, either.