by Jim Shepard
He trooped them into the hangar, out of the rain. Bean’s mouth was bloody and the blood bubbled onto his chin. Lewis rubbed a toothmark out of his knuckle. Bryant’s ear was burning and he wondered what Hallet had done to it.
Gabriel confronted them with his hands on his hips. “So,” he said. “Let me ask you: have any of you come across, in your experience, the phrase ‘Dislike May Split a Crew’?”
Bryant gazed straight ahead. He could not look at Lewis.
Gabriel proceeded to dress them down. He was only a first lieutenant and not a very impressive one, though he meant well. Bryant thought about bacon.
He asked them if they thought he liked having to do this. “Is it that you don’t have enough to do?” he said. “Do we have to fill up every minute to keep you out of trouble?” Boredom was getting to be the explanation accepted for any of the aircrews’ actions that seemed unusually peculiar or pointless.
Bean and Lewis and Bryant spent the night guarding the fuel bowsers—huge, hulking, and filthy trucks that fueled the Fortresses before missions. The bowsers did not need to be guarded. The rain was a good deal more insistent. They stamped their feet endlessly in enormous shallow puddles and Bean hunched as though that would save some part of him from the wet, and touched his mouth tenderly with the tips of his fingers. He grumbled once that he got into trouble every time he associated with them, but otherwise the three of them remained silent, with the rain a steady rushing sound around them, and the chilled water sweeping down Bryant’s back under his rain gear like a sluice.
Ground school was back on the next morning. The weather was awful and there’d be no flying for the third day in a row. No one was complaining.
Bryant had arrived early, with Willis Eddy and Bean. Aircrew filled the seats in the briefing hut without excess enthusiasm. There was always the vague and unspoken hope that at some point they’d pick up something useful. Those attending expected little, did not sit quietly or refrain from cracking wise, as Snowberry called it, and remained stubbornly scattered throughout the room whatever the size of the crowd. They chewed gum and tested postures which might seem at once insolent and military. They yawned languidly. Someone nearby faintly tapped out what sounded like Gene Krupa. Bryant noticed Sam Hirsch alone a few seats ahead.
“What do you know about Hirsch?” he asked Willis Eddy. He hadn’t seen much of Hirsch, but he figured Eddy and Hirsch, bombardier and navigator, crammed together in the nose of the plane, might have had more contact. Eddy’s position was right up in front in the Plexiglas nose, over the bombsight, and Hirsch was right behind his seat, at the navigator’s table.
Eddy shrugged, uninterested. He looked over his shoulder as if hoping someone more intriguing might show. “Not much,” he finally said. “Doesn’t say much. From Chicago, I think.”
“Who’s he friends with?”
“Who knows?” Eddy was ready for a change of topic. “I don’t know much about Jewish guys. I guess, you know, they keep to themselves, we keep to ourselves.”
“What ‘themselves’?” Bryant asked. “He’s one guy.”
“Look, whaddaya want from me?” Eddy said. “I don’t know anything about him.”
“He’s kinda quiet,” Bean offered. “He seems like an okay guy to me.”
The three of them shifted for a better look and pondered the back of his head.
“Let’s go sit with him,” Bryant said. He hoped it didn’t sound too virtuous.
Eddy rolled his eyes.
Bryant and Bean moved up a few rows. Hirsch acknowledged them and returned his attention to the day’s instructor, who was pinning up some charts. They involved black silhouettes of aircraft from various angles, with large single letters beneath them.
“How you doin’,” Bryant said.
Hirsch nodded. “How you doin’.” He nodded at Bean.
The instructor introduced himself to guffaws as Lieutenant Mipson. He called for general quiet. Someone in the back sang the first bars of “My Old Kentucky Home.”
“I don’t see much of you around,” Bryant said.
“I don’t see much of anyone around,” Hirsch said.
Lieutenant Mipson sat, apparently relying on his dignity to provoke a general hush.
“Well, you should come along when we do things,” Bryant said. “They’re a pretty good bunch of guys.”
Hirsch looked at him, and nodded.
A staff sergeant helped pull the screen down in front. It slid back up, and there was scattered laughter and applause.
“I’ve never known any Jewish guys,” Bryant remarked, and wondered if he’d said the wrong thing. “I grew up in Rhode Island, and I didn’t meet any.”
Hirsch didn’t respond.
“I hear there’s a big one coming up, maybe, when the weather clears,” Bryant said. “Maybe even Berlin.” When the conversation flagged, rumors were a help. No one knew anything.
“I’m a Jew,” Hirsch said. “We don’t fight. We sit in the rear, going ‘Here’s five hundred. Keep attacking.’”
Bryant laughed. The lights went out. The screen to their right lit up for a second or two, flashing an aircraft silhouette, and went dark.
“Right. Any ideas?” Lieutenant Mipson called.
“An Me-110,” someone called out.
“An Me-210,” someone else said.
“A Bristol Beaufighter,” a third voice called.
“I didn’t even see it,” Bryant whispered.
“An Me-110,” Lieutenant Mipson said. The men hooted and laughed, delighted with the lilt in his voice. All officers and desk warriors were continuously watched for any signs of cowardice, hypocrisy, or effeminacy. “This?” he said, and a plane flashed for what seemed less than a second. Bryant had no idea.
There was a short silence. “Gene Tierney,” someone said. Everyone laughed. It was Lewis.
“Try it again.” He flashed it once more, for a bit longer.
There was some coughing. “I was better off when I wasn’t looking,” Bryant whispered.
“A Heinkel?” someone offered.
“What sort of Heinkel?” Mipson said into the darkness.
“An obscure one,” Snowberry said from somewhere behind him.
“A 189,” Mipson said.
“That’s a 189?” Bryant asked.
“You, Sergeant.” Mipson pointed to Bean. “What’s this?”
Bean gazed at the screen, his eyes like a rabbit’s caught in the headlights. “Sir?” he said. “A Dornier?”
“A Mosquito,” Mipson said. “About as wrong as you can be, Sergeant.”
From the back someone made the sound effects of skidding tires, smashing glass.
Lieutenant Mipson announced a spot quiz, with some weariness. “Ten planes for two seconds apiece,” he said. “Take out papers and number them from one to ten.”
The lights came back on, and it was noisy out of all proportion to the task supposedly being performed. They numbered their papers, and waited. Bryant’s column of numbers strode off to the left as it descended. The lights went off again. Men made kissing noises.
“One,” Mipson said. A Focke Wulf 190 appeared on the screen.
There were boos and hisses. “Gene Tierney,” Lewis called from the back.
“Quiet,” Mipson scolded.
Another went up. A Dornier something, Bryant knew. 217? He glanced at Hirsch’s page in the gloom.
Another. An Me-109. The men cheered the most familiar silhouette in the Luftwaffe.
Seven more went by. Bryant figured he’d gotten five. They were gone so fast. The lights were back on, and they were stretching and trying to look at each other’s papers.
“Now the chart,” Mipson said. He went from A to Q with his pointer. Then they did lookalikes from confusing angles. Bryant mistook a Spitfire for a Messerschmitt.
They filed out peeved at their ignorance and angry with this kind of desk fighting anyway. Beside the door was a morale poster, a drawing of a Focke Wulf 190, probably the best of
the German interceptors, with its broad snout comically exaggerated, its squared wings shortened and absurd. The caption read Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wulf? Beneath it someone had written, We are. Following that was a row of signatures, running off the paper and a good ways down the wall. Lewis Peeters was the first name on the list. He’d also drawn in, in some detail, the Focke Wulf’s underwing cannon.
After the afternoon session Bryant and Hirsch waited for Snowberry and Lewis to file out. Hirsch seemed reluctant to wait. Bryant called the two of them over when they emerged, but when they arrived he discovered he had no real idea of what to say. They stood in a foursome awkwardly. Hirsch was an officer, a second looey himself, which made things more difficult. They were tech sergeants.
Lewis tested and worried a loop of string, the movement of his hands relaxed and intricate. Snowberry regarded the process, then Hirsch, with interest. Lewis said, “Lieutenant, maybe you can answer a question Strawberry here is having trouble with. You’ve seen us in action as a crew. Think we have a chance of getting through the doors of the mess without hurting ourselves? What do you think of what we got here? A wop at one of the waist guns, this Long Islander in the top turret, and Strawberry, who should be thirteen next April, in the belly.”
“Rhode Island,” Bryant said.
Hirsch gave the matter some thought. “Seems an all right group,” he said. He sounded wary.
“And then the lieutenant here,” Lewis said.
Hirsch gave him a tight smile. “I have to go,” he said.
Bryant watched him leave. “What’d you do that for?” he asked.
Lewis said, “Bryant, sometimes you are so rock stupid that it makes us want to sit down and cry for the Army.”
“What? What’d I do?” Bryant asked.
Lewis repeated his question, adding a little more whine. The effect was not flattering. He said to Bryant, “Remember you said you wanted advice before, from an old hand? Well, here’s the advice: Don’t make plans.” He repocketed his string and left with Snowberry without issuing an invitation to follow. Bryant straightened his belt and tried to appear as though he had a reason for standing alone where he was, feeling like someone just in from overseas, without a buddy in the world.
He sulked the balance of the afternoon. He sat near the hedges on the perimeter, under the overhang of a small house which served as an information booth and guard hut. The mist glazed his boots and the dry area beneath the overhang resembled a small beach. He had more mail, from Robin, so the sulking was easier to pull off. As far as he could make out, though, he was unnoticed where he was, and his irritation in all likelihood remained unrecorded. Half the squadron was up practicing assembly and cooperation with escort fighters, and the rumble above the cloud cover was constant and exciting.
Robin was Robin Lea, an Englishwoman who lived with her mother two villages over. She was in training as a Civil Defense clerk. They’d seen each other four times and she’d charmed and fascinated Bryant each time. She had spoken to him persuasively about the failures of appeasement and the sorts of insects they’d find, were they to dig up the earth ridging the hedgerows. She was kind and patient with what he felt to be his stupidity. He had confided to her his fears of inadequacy and she had assured him that many of his friends, Lewis included, probably felt that way too, and that it was most likely a reflection of his growing knowledge. He had danced with her the third time they’d been together and she’d worn a green silk dress that had flexed and shimmered with light. He thought she was very beautiful.
Lewis and Snowberry were mainly interested before meeting her in finding out if she had what it took. He’d done his best to describe her and had finally settled on comparisons and had left them with the suggestion that she was a “heavier Gene Tierney.” It had gotten a big laugh. They’d never forgotten, and Lewis’s adoption of Gene Tierney as his pin-up love afterwards had not been a coincidence.
Bryant had protested their laughter, and Lewis had responded that he didn’t like the sound of that “heavier.” “You can tell us,” he had said mildly, with paternal sympathy. “Is she a lard-ass? Is that the problem?”
“In England, the term is ‘overlarge,’” Snowberry said. “As in, ‘That freight car is overlarge.’”
“Aw, the hell with that,” Lewis had said, wrapping an arm around him. “Looks aren’t important.”
Snowberry and Piacenti had hooted and wondered aloud if Lewis liked boys.
Lewis said, “What we need to know before we give our blessing is this: has she got a good heart? Will she take care of him?”
“He says she looks like Gene Tierney,” Snowberry said.
“He’s right,” Lewis said. “She’ll take care of him.”
They had been watching a dull three-legged race organized by the special events, or morale, officer. He was a gawky and shy Iowan so useless his duties had since been unofficially assumed by Stormy, the weather officer. Snowberry had gone from finger to finger on his outspread hand ticking off his reasoning. “Here we’ve got a good crew, a Christian crew, a stable crew, and what happens? Cheating, fornication: Could the Axis Have Planned It Better?”
Bryant had protested, feeling the color coming into his face. Piacenti had looked dubious. He had asked Bryant if Bryant had told Lois about their “just seeing each other.” Bryant had hemmed and hawed.
“There it is,” Snowberry had said. “We know what Bryant wants and we’re all disgusted. Why don’t we just come out and say it?”
“C’mon,” Bryant said. “I don’t know what to do. We haven’t done anything. I don’t even know if I should keep seeing her.”
Lewis wondered aloud just who was in the driver’s seat.
“This is stupid,” Bryant said.
They had cheered for their team in the three-legged race, Lambert Ball and Willis Eddy, who were trundling along the course dead last. “Bigger question,” Lewis had said. “Is it just the hots? Is the Brit better? Now didn’t he compare what’s her name—Lulu—”
“Lois—”
“Lois—to someone else, for us? Another movie star? Before he met Gene Tierney?”
“Yes he did,” Snowberry said. Snowberry had always claimed to be the smartest kid in his high school, and at times like these Bryant could imagine it: the wise-ass kid, always ahead of the teachers. “Remember? Jean Arthur, he said.”
“She does, sort of,” Bryant said miserably.
“I’ve seen her picture,” Snowberry reminded them. “I think he means Chester Arthur.”
“How about Sergeant Bryant?” Lewis said. “Two movie stars, not one. And he claims he’s got troubles. You’re wasting our time. And taking advice from those who truly need it.”
“Who’s Chester Arthur?” Piacenti asked.
“So one knows about the other but not the other way around,” Snowberry said, summarizing. “Well, it’s the Army way. Though you’re not going to meet my sister.”
“Look,” Piacenti had finally said, irritated and trying to bring a little common sense to bear on the subject, “so you got a girl back home and a girl here. I don’t see the news. Some girls, you know.” He made a motion with his fist. “Other girls you marry.”
“It’s not like that,” Bryant murmured.
“It’s not like that,” Piacenti repeated. He looked at Bryant as if he’d messed himself. “Look: what’s so difficult? I got a fork, I use it for meat. I got a spoon, I use it for soup. How complicated you want to make this?”
“Everybody repeats everything I say,” Bryant said.
“Listen to Il Duce, there,” Lewis said. “He made the trains run on time.”
Bryant’s sulk had petered out without attracting much attention. Everyone was staying inside because of the drizzle. A small boy peered around the side of the hedge delineating the base perimeter. “Hello,” the boy said.
Bryant said hello. He thought, Why is he standing in the rain?
“Are you working?” the boy said. He was round-faced, with light hair. �
�Are you planning a bombing mission?”
“They’re all planned,” Bryant said. “Now I’m reading letters.”
The boy hesitated. “That’s very nice,” he eventually said.
Bryant opened Robin’s letter. “What’s your name?” he asked. The boy was wearing black shorts so large his knees were covered. He was scratching a leg with his shoe.
“Colin,” he said. Bryant made a show of starting to read. “Are you from Texas?”
Bryant shook his head. “Rhode Island.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know where that is,” the boy said after a while. The mist fused his light hair together at the ends and darkened it. Bryant pulled Robin’s letter from the envelope and counted the pages.
“Do you know anyone from Texas?” Colin asked.
“I may,” Bryant said. “I’m not sure.”
The boy was apparently working his courage toward something. Bryant waited a moment before beginning to read.
Dear Bobby,
Your letter made me happy and sad—happy because it recalled you so vividly to mind, and sad for the same reason. You are too far away. You have a worrisome occupation. I am alone, save Mother. Those are enough reasons to be sad for now, I think.
Mother’s visiting her eldest sister, my aunt Susan, for the week, and I’m rattling around the place alone (save the geese). In my training program there’s some sort of confused reorganization going on, or consolidation, so I’m perfectly idle this week and the next two. Mother has suggested that there are many things I could do in town. I’m trying right now somewhat unsuccessfully to persuade myself that I am not afraid of spiders in the bath or baby bats in the shed. If I want to live in the country so much, I tell myself, I have to get used to the night creatures and night noises of a house.
The house: the house is a lot of work as well as pleasure. I have barely any time at all for my painting. There is little that doesn’t need help, from the garden to the roof slates. Another thing I can do with this time to myself. I’m trying to do as much myself as I can. Mother should be spared a good deal, if possible, and if you and Gordon are able to come up and take advantage of our local Civil Defence muddle (Jean, by the way, informs me that Gordon claims to be absolutely certain about visiting), I won’t want the four of us to spend our time tidying up. Today I painted the iron lattice garden gate and those nails you were gracious enough to admire are now largely a very inelegant black. Which makes me wonder if painted nails belong in the countryside. I fear not. Weren’t you the one who claimed to be incapable of imagining me in a farmhouse?