by James Salter
“Debrief later,” he told Grace. “I want to talk to you.”
“Yes, sir,” said Grace in a serious voice, his flying suit dark where he’d been sweating beneath his parachute.
The door closed behind them.
In the briefing room, Godchaux waited, biting at the corner of a fingernail and looking at the floor. When somebody asked him a question he answered with only a grin. He bit at his fingernail again.
“Pretty close on, eh, Captain?” Abrams said in some confidence to Wickenden.
“Too close.”
“Boy, oh, boy.”
“I wouldn’t talk about it,” Wickenden said. “You start talking about it and the first thing you’ll have the group commander down here wanting to know what’s been going on.”
“Captain,” Abrams said, wounded, “I wouldn’t say anything. You know that.”
“Just so you understand.”
“Sir, I’d never say a word.”
“Just forget it. Make believe it never happened, that’s the best thing.” The door to Isbell’s office had been closed for nearly fifteen minutes. “Staying up there like that to tangle with someone, knowing what the weather was,” Wickenden declared. “Plain stupidity.”
And a flight commander, he refrained from saying. Ought to be grounded, as well as that clown Godchaux, in there where the rest of them were coming in wanting to hear about it. Experience, he once told Wickenden, that was the thing. Correct. Using his head once in a while, that was the experience he needed. Just occasionally. Once a month, maybe. Even that would make a difference.
It was like an infection. Wickenden could see it spread. He could pick out the next one to do something brainless even if he’d never happened to lay eyes on him before. It was all over his face. “Captain, I can fly the airplane.”
“Oh, is that it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Maybe so. Every fool says that.”
“I’m not a fool.”
“You don’t have to be, but that doesn’t mean you won’t act like one.”
“I’m not a fool,” Cassada had said.
After a while the door opened and Grace came out, head bent forward a little as if in submission, lips compressed like a schoolboy. As he passed he looked at Wickenden and raised his eyebrows to show some sort of regret. In the briefing room Godchaux wanted to know if he was next. “Me?”
Grace shook his head. He took Godchaux by the arm and led him away from the others. They stood in a corner of the room.
“What did he say?”
Grace bent and took a light from Godchaux’s cigarette. “We were too low on fuel, that was basically it. He’s right, too.”
“I’ll say he is.”
“Exactly how much did you shut down with? I told him four hundred pounds. He said it was lower.”
“About half that.”
“Well, that is low. That’s much too low,” Grace said as if there was no way for him to have known.
“What did you have?” Godchaux asked.
“I wasn’t that bad off. I was low, but not that low.”
“Like how much?”
“I was low.”
“But what did you have?”
“Three hundred,” Grace said.
Godchaux grinned at him.
“No, you weren’t that bad off,” Godchaux said. “Do you suppose those Canucks ever made it back all right?”
“I don’t know. Maybe one of them did.”
“What do you mean?”
They were both grinning.
“One of them is probably still hiding in the clouds,” Grace said.
“I was about two hundred feet behind him. Even closer. I actually saw him turn his head and look back at me.”
“Jesus, it was perfect.”
Isbell was standing in the doorway to his office. He may even have been able to hear it. He knew Wickenden was looking at him. He went back inside and closed the door.
Down the hallway, near the latrine, was a sign that said flying was inherently safe but, like the sea, unforgiving. Wickenden, standing there, was able to hear Cassada, dog-eager, asking Godchaux if he had used flaps to scissor. Godchaux illustrated with his hands. “Right here,” he said, “I swapped them, brakes in, flaps down.”
Cassada was nodding. Wickenden walked past without seeming to pay attention. Afterwards he motioned to Cassada. “Come here a minute,” he said.
They stood by the blackboard. The room by then was empty. Wickenden looked down at the floor. “I’ve been in three other squadrons,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“This is your first, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sometimes the first is the last one.”
Cassada said nothing. Though it was a matter of only eight or nine years, he seemed much younger standing there. He seemed a different, unrelated breed.
Wickenden went on, as if thinking back, “I had a pilot in my flight you remind me of. Back at Turner. You’re a lot like him. You want to know how?”
Cassada remained silent. Wickenden raised his eyes.
“You couldn’t tell him anything. He was too smart for that. He knew too much.”
“That’s not me, Captain.”
“One day I let him go out alone, just local, and about ten miles away from the field he started some low-level acrobatics. Unauthorized, naturally. He dished out of the first roll. Went straight in.”
Cassada was returning his look, almost with a kind of pity.
“You could have put what was left of him in a matchbox,” Wickenden said.
“So?”
“I knew all along it was going to happen. I just didn’t know how. Or when.”
“Is that it?”
“No, that’s not it. I want you to draw a lesson from that.”
“What kind of lesson?”
“You know what kind.”
Cassada nodded somewhat tentatively. A pilot like Grace was what he wanted to be, a pilot everyone respected, who had flown in combat and been shot at, who’d been hit by ground fire like Grace and brought the airplane back somehow, a man you could count on.
“You couldn’t tell him anything,” Wickenden repeated.
“That’s not me.”
“You think not?”
“No, sir, and I’m going to be alive after you are.”
Wickenden’s face hardened.
“Never happen,” he said grimly.
The flight commanders’ meeting was always at the end of the month, a discussion of concerns and of what things were coming up, ending with Isbell asking each of them directly about any particular problems. Wickenden sat without saying a word, looking bored.
“Nothing?” Isbell said.
“No.”
Isbell knew the truth. Wickenden was waiting for the others to leave, the lesser others. At last they did and Wickenden stayed behind, his mouth in a thin line, staring down at his hands and working the Zippo lighter, open and shut. At last he said, “I know you don’t want to hear this, but it’s not going to go away.”
“What’s that?”
“Cassada.”
“What’s wrong? What’s he done?”
Wickenden opened and clapped his lighter closed several times. Finally he said, “It’s not what he . . . It’s what he’s going to do.”
“Have an accident.”
“He’s going to kill himself. I know what I’m talking about. I had another one just like him, in the States.”
“The low-level acrobatics.”
“That’s right,” Wickenden said. When he spoke, everything was final. It was like someone beating a carpet, flat, heavy blows. “You could have put what was left of him in that ashtray.”
“I suppose you told Cassada the story.”
“Certainly.”
Isbell could imagine it. Maybe you don’t think so, but I’ve had them like you before. The difficulty was that once you said I can’t do anything with you, what was left after that? I
t was an ultimate statement.
“Well, I had my doubts about putting him in your flight. I didn’t want to put him with Grace or the others. You’ll just have to make it your job to keep him from killing himself.”
“Nobody can do that,” Wickenden said.
“They can’t?”
“He has the mark of death on him.”
“Oh, my foot.”
Wickenden began clapping his lighter shut again.
“The mark of death,” Isbell said. “You once told me the same thing about Dumfries.”
“It’s true.”
“You’re getting to see it in everybody. Look at me, do I have it, too? If I don’t, I’m going to be worried.”
Wickenden had his eyes on the lighter held in his lap, lifting the lid and snapping it down. He knew certain things. Nothing could change them.
“You know more about flying than he does, don’t you?” said Isbell.
“Yes.”
“You spent four years,” Wickenden’s eyes shot up at this, alert at the number, “learning leadership among other things, didn’t you? They were still teaching that up there, weren’t they?” He could see Wickenden taking the inside of his cheeks between his teeth. “Well, weren’t they?”
“You know just what they teach.”
“I should.”
Wickenden clapped it again.
“You’re the senior flight commander,” Isbell said. “Ops officer is the next step. If I weren’t here you’d probably be ops officer. You’d be telling your flight commander the same thing: take care of this man. Find a way.”
Silence.
“What more do you want?” Isbell asked.
“All right, sir.” He was chewing on the walls of his mouth. The three words were an ancient, a cadet formula.
“Who else should I give him to?”
Wickenden sat motionless.
“Who would you suggest?”
“It wouldn’t matter who you gave him to. There’s a hierarchy . . .”
“A what?”
“A hierarchy of knowing.”
“What is this, some Eastern religion?”
“And he doesn’t know where he is in it. He won’t ever know.”
Isbell rubbed his ear and seemed as if he might sigh. Without another word Wickenden got up to go. Isbell nearly stopped him but they had been through things before. There came a point where nothing that was said made a difference. Wickenden would stand silently, wearing intransigence like a coat of arms.
He walked out the door.
“Wick!” Isbell called, the tone half apology.
But Wickenden chose not to hear.
Late in the fall ten planes went to Munich again to take over the alert from Pine’s squadron which had been there a month. There was, for a moment, the lapping of two cultures, a few words here and there, a greeting, a taunt. Squadrons were distinct. They were identical and unique. Pine had been known, when asked for a favor by a rival squadron, to say, what do I get in return?.
Isbell, one foot on a chair, was being briefed and taking some notes, perhaps the name of a bar or a couple of telephone numbers he would post later. As soon as Pine and the rest of them left, he pointed to a broom in the corner. Phipps picked it up and began sweeping. Outside, the first engines of the departing planes were being started. Cassada, the pale imprint of an oxygen mask still on his face, kneeled with the dustpan. Isbell had gone.
“That’s right, lady,” Cassada muttered, “I’m a jet pilot.”
“Hold it flatter,” Phipps said.
In the barracks they dragged their bags along the wide hallway and banged open doors. At the far end there was an empty room. Phipps arrived first. In the top drawer of a bureau there were still matches, coat checks, halves of tickets—weeks of someone’s pockets emptied at two in the morning. Phipps was throwing them into the wastebasket when Dumfries appeared.
“Anybody in here yet?”
“No one but me,” Phipps said.
“Don’t you want the lights on?”
“What? No, leave them off. Cassada may be coming.”
Dumfries gave a confused smile and struggled in with his bag. He stood looking at the empty beds and finally chose one against the wall. He dropped his things on it and brushed himself off.
“They’re not all moved out yet,” he said.
“I know.”
“I heard Captain Pine say some of them were going to stay over for the weekend.”
“Is that so?”
“They must like it down here.”
“I guess they do.” Munich. The blue twilight, trollies rocking along the streets and shop windows coming alight.
“I’d want to go straight home. A month, that’s long enough.”
“If it’s the same as last time they’ll probably have to go through town with a press gang to get them out of here.”
“With what?”
“A press gang. You know what that is?”
“Oh, sure,” Dumfries said. “I just didn’t hear you.”
He unzipped one side of his bag and took out a framed photograph of his wife. She came from a very fine family, he had mentioned more than once. Her father was a dentist. By profession, as Dumfries put it. They had carpet even on the stairs.
He put the photograph on top of the bureau, then dug into the side compartment and found his hairbrushes. He placed them beside the photograph. They were better for you than a comb, he had told Phipps.
“Why is that?”
“Have you ever seen a bald horse?”
“A bald horse?”
“It’s because they brush them.”
Phipps watched as Dumfries unpacked and put his clothes away, drawer by drawer, hiding his camera among the undershirts. The Russians must have them, too, Phipps decided. That was the only reassuring thing. He could almost imagine it, steep, terrifying battles high over Berlin and all the Eugenes crying their pitiful I’ve lost you’s, turning hopelessly through the confusion and heading off in the wrong direction.
Through the doorway then, holding in front of him a single bag as taut from things inside as a sausage skin, came Cassada, the bag hitting his knees as he moved. He reached out in passing and switched on the light. Dumfries straightened up, startled. Cassada looked from one of them to the other. “What are you doing, saving electricity?” he said.
He dropped his bag. “This is great, being down here, isn’t it?” He began to pull things out of the bag, dropping them everywhere, looking for something. Finally he took hold of a towel and snaked it out and around his neck.
“What do you think about going into town?” he asked, sitting down and hooking his finger into his bootlaces, jerking them loose.
“How?” Phipps said.
“Drive. I had an airman in maintenance drive my car down.”
“Yeah, maybe. I’m going to eat here anyway,” Phipps said.
“Me, too,” said Dumfries.
“What for?” Cassada asked, still trying to find something. “We can eat in town. You have any soap?” he finally said.
“Is that what you’ve been looking for?”
“Here,” Dumfries said.
“Toss it.”
Cassada trapped it against his chest with one hand and went to shower.
Phipps and Dumfries walked to the club. It was just becoming dark. The trees had some wind in them. The branches quivered. A good-looking cashier, a girl with a downturned mouth, was still working at the club, counting out money from the cash drawer with long fingers, converting military scrip into deutsche marks. She wore a thin, gold wedding band, perhaps to deflect questions.
Dumfries hesitated in front of her. “Hi, Marianne,” he said. Unsure of how to continue, he examined the movie schedule posted there, his belly stuck out like a brewer’s. “We just got down here today,” he said. “We took over from the 72nd.”
She nodded but did not comment. Dumfries thought of something.
“Say, remember that wine you once told me
about? Spot-lease? Well, I tried some of that.”
“Oh, yes?”
“It was good. Boy, I like good wine. That’s one thing about Europe.” He was smiling like a jazzman, a meaningless smile.
In the bar, in the dim light the pilots sat together. The dice were rattling.
“Hey, Phipps. Come on, you want to play?”
“You can’t lose in a big game,” someone said.
“Where’s Roberto?”
Cassada was known as a demon player given to wild calls.
“He went into town.”
“Already?”
Dumfries came in after a while and sat beside Phipps.
“She’s a nice girl,” he said.
“The cashier? What makes you think she’s nice?”
“I’ve talked to her. I just think she’s nice. Most of these fellows don’t even know what a decent German girl is like.”
“Some of them know.”
Dumfries began to talk about the maid they had, he and Laurie, how nice she was. He described her habits, her love of cleanliness and visits to her parents. She was very shy. As Phipps half-listened he suddenly realized what it was about Dumfries: nothing bored him. And calling the tight-skirted cashier, owner of a siren’s body, nice. She may have been a lot of things but nice was not one of them. Cassada was probably already driving to town. Phipps wished he’d gone, too.
In the early morning, before daylight, Isbell walked alone through the hangar past the planes being repaired, broken in two by the mechanics, the lines hanging loose, bleeding black into drip pans. The hangar lights were on though no one yet was working.
In the ready room Wickenden was posting his schedule as the members of his flight sat watching. Isbell stood near his shoulder for a few moments, unnoticed, then took the rag as Wickenden was writing and rubbed out the leader of the first two, Phipps, replacing it with his own name next to Cassada’s. Wickenden didn’t say anything. He kept on writing. Cassada sat stretched out in unconcern, his neck on the back of a chair and his legs in the G-suit chaps resting straight with only his heels touching the floor, doing everything he could not to look like the others. He’d watched Isbell without moving his head, out of the corner of his eye. It was just the way Godchaux sat.