by James Salter
Isbell said nothing to him but went into the next room, picked up his things and took them out to the ship. To the east it was becoming light, a great, forlorn light that seemed to sweep in from the steppes. The air was still, a sea-like calm. He laid his parachute against one of the wheels and began to walk around the airplane, starting at one wing and then following the fuselage to the tail, running a hand over the chilly skin as he went, sometimes patting it like a horse as if to calm it. He was entering the realm of his true authority. He had barely finished the walk-around when the horn sounded. He saw Cassada running out the door, pulling on his gloves as he went, the blare of the horn flooding around him, the crewmen coming after.
Quickly Isbell pulled on his parachute and climbed into the cockpit, fumbling for the safety belt buckles. The horn kept blowing in panic. The high whine of the engines starting began.
Off on the first scramble, early in the day, no finer time, cold and quiet, the smoke coming straight up from the towns. Munich was blue, deserted. The roads seemed dusted with chalk. The trains were running empty, the streetcars.
At altitude it was silent. The controller directed them north. Serene, pure as angels they flew. At Ingolstadt some clouds began, a thin, floating fence that went up towards Berlin, grey as a river. Cassada was in position just where he was meant to be, off to the left, looking past Isbell towards the sun and the unknown east. It was there the enemy lay, sometimes inactive, sometimes flying themselves on a parallel course waiting for the slightest violation of the invisible border, or lurking below the contrails, unseen. The controller would call them out but not always, and when the ground was covered by clouds there was always the slight chance of error, a mistake in position or which radar blip was which. The threat of the unexpected was always there. Come and get us, Isbell thought to himself. We’re here in the open, alone. Bring us down. Try.
There was nothing, though. No targets, the controller advised. They flew almost to Frankfurt and then turned back. Cassada’s plane went from black, to gun color, to silver as he swung from one side to the other in the brilliant light.
They had spoken hardly a word. The earth lay immense and small beneath them, the occasional airfields white as scars. Down across the Rhine. The strings of barges, smaller than stitches. The banks of poplar. Then a city, glistening, struck by the first sun. Stuttgart. The thready streets, the spires, the world laid bare.
A light mist was still rising off the fields when they landed. They walked in together.
“What a day!” Cassada said.
Isbell agreed. His body felt empty. His mind was washed clean.
“Ingolstadt,” Cassada said. “Have you ever noticed Ingolstadt, passing over?”
Isbell nodded. “They’re all different. They have their own shapes. Some of them you can recognize just seeing part of, through a hole in the clouds. Ingolstadt’s like that.”
“I look down and think how I’d like to be there—even if I don’t really want to. Do you know what I mean? You’ve . . . have you ever been there?”
“A couple of times.”
“What’s it like?”
“I don’t know,” Isbell said. “It’s not as great as it was this morning.”
Cassada was looking around, taking things in with his sea-blue eyes, the flawless day.
“You could say that about everyplace,” he commented.
It was true, Isbell thought, exactly. He felt a desire to reply in kind. It was not often you found anyone who could say things.
“You’re flying a good wing, Robert,” he said.
“I guess I ought to be.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’ve had enough practice.”
“Don’t be too impatient,” Isbell said. “Just be ready. You know Napoleon’s maxim: every soldier carries a marshal’s baton in his knapsack.”
There was a silence.
“Whatever that means,” Cassada said.
They went to breakfast in the small dining room behind the kitchen at the club. The waitress was sleepy. It was not much past seven. They played with the forks, not talking, waiting to be served. In the air was the warm smell of food.
“It’s been a year or more, hasn’t it?” Isbell said.
Cassada pressed a tine into the tablecloth.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“It doesn’t seem it.”
“No?”
“Seems longer to you?”
“Some of it’s been great,” Cassada said. “The flying. Gunnery.”
“So, what is it you’re not getting?”
“I’ve learned some things.”
“I’m sure you have. You’re going to get your chance,” Isbell said. “Don’t worry. It’ll come.”
“Yes, sir. I know. It’s in my knapsack or something.”
“You’re going to win. You’ll win big one day.”
“You think so?”
“Everything you want.”
Cassada was pressing a small square into the tablecloth, two parallels, then connecting them.
“Captain,” he said, “it was great flying with you today. All I want is for someone around here, someone with authority, to have a little confidence in me, that’s all.”
“I have confidence in you. Just be ready.”
“For what?”
“For everything you expect to be.”
“You amaze me, Captain.”
“Why?”
“It’s nothing like that. We’re talking about two different things. I don’t know. I just don’t understand, I guess.”
There was suddenly a great deal Isbell wanted to say. They could have talked. They could have pushed the plates aside and leaned forward on their elbows, talking while the dust floated sideways through bolts of sunshine and the eggs turned cold, but it didn’t quite happen. The moments don’t fulfill themselves always. Somehow they started eating in silence and it was impossible to begin.
Phipps came running out into the cold, looking around frantically. Damn it, he thought—the lot was empty. There was one car. He ran towards it.
“Hey, hold up!” he shouted, struggling to get his arm in the flight jacket sleeve. Exhaust was coming up in back of the car. He tried to open the door. It was locked. He beat on the window with his palm.
Cassada reached across and unlocked the door. Phipps slid in beside him.
“Thanks. I was afraid everybody had gone. Jesus, this seat’s cold.”
Cassada was working the choke to get the engine warmed up. Minutes went by, it seemed.
“We’re going to be late,” Phipps said.
“We’ll make it.” Cassada looked sleepy. His eyes were red.
“It’s four minutes till.”
“I know.”
He began to back up, rolling the window down to see. He pulled onto the road and rubbed at the frosted windshield with his fist. Hunched over, looking through a slit of clear glass at the bottom, the width of a pencil, he began to drive. Phipps, wiping at the windshield himself, said, “We’re not going to make it at this rate.”
Cassada speeded up a little.
“Can you see?” Phipps said.
“It’s the back I’m worried about. I can’t tell if anyone’s behind us.”
“Take a chance.”
Cassada shifted into third.
“I don’t want to get a ticket,” he said. “The major pulls your license.”
“You won’t need a license if we’re late.”
They began to go faster. Phipps looked at his watch.
“Open it up, Robert. We’ve got two minutes.”
The clear area on the glass was growing bigger. As they turned past the end of the runway they were doing forty-five.
“I’m just waiting to hear a siren,” Cassada murmured.
Phipps rolled down the window to look back.
“There’s nobody.”
They were going fifty.
“About a minute and a half,” Phipps warned.
�
��I know.”
“Come on.”
“They’ll throw us in jail. It’s a twenty-five-mile limit.”
“I tell you nobody’s behind us.”
The heater was finally beginning to work. Phipps sniffed the warming air.
“What have you been carrying in this car? Flowers?”
“What?”
“It smells like it.”
They had swerved in behind the hangar. The doors flew open and they ran for it. As they sat down, Isbell looked at his watch.
“That’s cutting it pretty close,” he commented.
Cassada was sitting at the end of the first row, head down. He glanced up but did not answer. His head was down later, too, when Wickenden gathered the flight. Cassada listened like a boxer between rounds, head bent forward, hands dropped loosely between his thighs, as if his manager were telling him things there was no sense paying attention to, in thirty seconds he’d be in there alone again. He yawned with his mouth closed.
It was perfume, thought Phipps suddenly. That was the smell.
“You must be making out all right in Munich,” he said to Cassada later.
“Munich? Yeah, it’s a good town.”
“Where do you go?”
“I’ll tell you sometime.”
The truth was he wandered around Munich at night. He went to the Regina Bar, the Bongo, the Coliseum once or twice. He hadn’t the money or time to cut a swath and in fact had not found a girl. The perfume was from a girl he’d driven home, a girl he would never want to be seen with.
Still, Munich freed him. He went in with Godchaux sometimes though usually Godchaux had a date. One night he met a woman who was divorced and had lived in the States and even for a while had a job there. She was a fabric designer and shared an apartment with her mother. The mother was not in the apartment that night. They sat on the couch—it was actually a daybed with small pillows—and talked. Suddenly she leaned over and kissed him as a man might do. Cassada was a little drunk—they’d met in a bar. He felt her hand slip inside his clothes. He said nothing.
“You’re very excited,” she whispered.
It was silent for a while. He began hurriedly to unbutton her dress but suddenly it was too late. She made a sound like inhaling and withdrew her hand.
“Do you have a handkerchief?” she asked.
He’d seen her several times after that though he was not really attracted to her—she talked only about her mother and herself—and then near the end of an evening in a place called the Elysée he stood near a girl at the top of the stairs that led down to the Damen and Herren. She had a Slavic face though he did not recognize it as such, wide across the cheeks, and cropped dark hair. He stared at her.
“You probably don’t speak English, but so what?” he said impulsively.
She looked at him.
“My name is Robert. I just thought you look great standing there and you have a terrific face.”
“You, too,” she said.
He was stunned into silence, but something had happened. It was as if they were at a dance, she seemed to accept his invitation, to nod yes. Her face was singular. It possessed a light or perhaps it was clarity.
“I didn’t know you understood what I was saying.”
“If you knew, what would you have said?”
“I’d say, I hope you’re not leaving. I . . . I’d like to listen to you for a while.”
“To listen to me?” She gave a slight smile. “That wouldn’t be so interesting.”
“I’ll make a bet.”
“A bet?”
“It’s too hard to explain. You live in Munich?”
“Yes.”
“Me, too.”
“In Munich?”
“Well a little outside Munich. Fürstenfeldbruck.”
“So, you’re a pilot.”
They were words Cassada loved. Everyone that didn’t know anything about this.
“Yeah. I’m a fighter pilot.”
“Maybe I could guess it.”
“How could you guess it?”
She shrugged.
“So, listen. What’s your name?”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“No, what is it, really? Tell me. I’m absolutely serious, you have the face I’ve been looking for.”
“It’s no good to tell you my name.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Karen.”
“Karen,” he repeated. “Are you married? You’re not married or anything?”
“You’re so intense.”
“No, tell me.”
“What do you want to know again?”
She was very good-looking, her cheekbones and white teeth.
“Where’d you learn to speak English?” he said and before she could answer, “That’s really lucky. But you know something?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Yes, what?”
“I know something.”
She smiled and Cassada did also. It was a pleasure to talk to her. She spoke the same language, exactly. It would go back and forth between them. He would know her. Someone was coming up the stairs then—Cassada barely noticed—until an arm was put through hers, a man’s arm.
“Hey,” Cassada protested and then saw in disbelief who it was. He was unable to speak.
“Ready?” Isbell said to the girl.
“Wait a minute,” Cassada said. “What’s going on?”
“We’re leaving.”
“I mean, what is this?”
“What is it? What do you think?”
“No, no. I was here. I met you, didn’t I?” he said to the girl. She gave a slight laugh.
“I’ll see you, Robert,” Isbell said.
“Hey, Captain. This is not on duty.”
“Duty?”
“You can’t pull rank.”
“I don’t have to.”
“Let her choose.”
“You’re out past where you should be,” Isbell said calmly.
“No, no. Oh, no.”
“Let’s go,” Isbell said calmly to the girl. “See you later,” he said to Cassada.
Cassada stood there. The one woman in Munich, he thought, the one woman in all that time. He felt sick. He could not believe it. He went out to the street after them, almost trembling, but too late, they were gone, the red taillights leaving him behind.
A lieutenant named Myers had been killed near Toul. The paper didn’t give his name, just his group, but someone had learned it. It was the second accident of the week. There’d been a bailout over Kaiserslautern a few days before.
“Myers,” Godchaux said. “I knew him. He was in my class in flying school. Good pilot.”
Harlan was reading the paper.
“They all are,” he said from in back of the pages.
“All are what?”
“Good pilots. Whatever happens to the lousy ones? That’s what I wonder.”
It was one of the reasons to read the Stars and Stripes, starting in with a kind of sweepstakes excitement, wondering if there’d be one and if it would be anyone they knew. Harlan wasn’t that far off—it was sometimes the best ones. The best or the worst.
There was a wind blowing, a strong wind keening under the eaves and making a sound like a prayer call. Isbell stood by himself at the window. He could see the wind in the clear air and the shifting tone of the grass. Six planes were up and he was waiting for them to enter traffic. Not far from him Abrams sat squinting at the tape in the adding machine, printed with hour upon hour of flying time rich with error.
It was not that he was indifferent. He worked diligently, even after hours, round face shining with effort. Isbell had made up his mind more than once to get rid of him. It was hard to do. Some kind of lazy loyalty had crept in.
In the hangar birds nested in the rafters, skimming in and out the wide doorways. Isbell met Dunning there.
“Swallows,” Dunning said.
“Is that what they are?”
“That’s
what they are, all right.”
They were curving out into the brilliant day, swift, barely missing.
“They’ll be crapping all over the windshields,” Dunning commented.
There were a few planes there that maintenance was at work on. Dunning stood peering up into the shadows.
“I’ll have to get down here with a shotgun,” he said.
“Wickenden could probably do it.”
“I don’t want anybody blowing holes in the roof. I’ll do it myself,” Dunning said. “Well, they’re after us again. We have to send two pilots down to Tripoli. It’s part of a meet to decide which team from Europe will go to the States.”
“To Vegas?”
“Yeah.”
“We haven’t practiced.”
“We’re not even in it,” Dunning said. “It’s a two-group shoot-off.”
“Which ones? How’d they pick them?”
Dunning was patting his pockets, looking for something.
“They did it from the gunnery scores,” he said.
“And we’re not in it?”
“Yeah, I’d like to see the scores.”
“I can’t believe it. They were probably punching holes in the targets with a screwdriver. I’ve seen that.”
“Maybe we should have thought of that ourselves.”
His pockets, as he fished in them, seemed too small. He felt around his thighs.
“I’ve got the orders here somewhere. Here we are. A flight leader to be one of the judges and one tow pilot.”
“For how long?”
“Well, they don’t say. About a week or more, I’d guess.”
Isbell saw them returning, climbing down sun-browned from the cockpit.
“For the flight leader . . .” he said, considering.
“Reeves.”
“He’d be all right.”
“Who else do you think?”
“Me.”
Dunning gave a slow, knowing smile. He inserted the meditative tip of his little finger in his ear and moved it around, looking at the floor and then at Isbell.
“It’s only for a week,” Isbell said. “Things are winding down here. We’re going to be relieved on Saturday. Wick can run things.”
“I suppose so.”