Casualties of War: The Advocate Trilgy

by Bill Mesce

  A bored Woody Kneece sat across the cabin from Harry, absently picking at the strings of Sparks’s guitar. “How many times you hear me say today I wished I had a camera?”

  “I lost track after one hundred and sixty-two.”

  “Right now I’d trade that camera for a magazine or a book or something. Still, I’ll bet this is better than your boat ride, huh, Major?”

  “It’s dryer.”

  Kneece chuckled. He tilted his head back against the fuselage, musing. “I keep thinking they skedaddled you out of London so fast to make that boat home, I’ll bet you barely had time to pack.”

  “Barely.”

  “That last case, that file was still open when you left. That didn’t bother you, leaving an open case like that?”

  “I had other things on my mind just then.”

  “Did you know somebody else was going to sign off on it?”

  “When I got around to thinking about it, I assumed as much.”

  “That didn’t bother you? Somebody else closing your case?”

  “A case closes. You go on to the next one. Captain, the file may have been open when I left London, but that case was over.”

  “Investigation kinda dead-ended?”

  August came back to Harry for a passing, mordant moment. “That’s a good way of putting it. Dead end.”

  “I wonder what Grassi and this fella Ricks thought about that? If they felt the same way as you? The way everybody makes Grassi out, I can’t see him quitting on anything, even if all the cards were played out.”

  “I don’t know what Grassi and Ricks thought. I never asked them.”

  “You guys all served together. I figured you’d at least drop a line to say hello. Not about the case or anything. Just, well, you know.”

  A memory, very specific now: Peter Ricks, sitting with Harry in his darkened quarters, Harry much further into a liter of scotch than was good for him, Ricks’s face an unhappy combination of frustration, resignation, defeat.

  “When I left,” Harry told Kneece, “I don’t think any of us had anything to say to each other. You keep going back to that case, Captain.”

  “I haven’t asked you about the case, sir. That’s privileged, you said.”

  “You’re asking me about everything about that damned case but that damned case, Captain.”

  Kneece struck a final chord on the guitar and let the notes hang in the air until they faded into the drone of the engines. Carefully, he set the guitar on the bench, then stepped across the cabin and sat beside Harry. “I’m just trying my best to figure this thing out. I got this uncle —”

  “The one with the broken hand?”

  “Yup, same one. He’s with the police back home. There’s a view that that kind of truck is a little déclassé for family hands.” Kneece made as if to flick soot from his fingertips. “But, seeing as Uncle Ray — that’s his name, Ray — Uncle Ray’s from my mama’s side, not in the bloodline, they live with it. Even let him sit in the front room when he comes by But, see, I like ol’ Uncle Ray Sometimes in the summer he’d take me around in his patrol car. And I guess watching him at work, it kinda took with me, enough so’s I left North Carolina for what we call the State Constabulary, which didn’t make Daddy or Mama too happy. I learned a lot about how to do the job from Uncle Ray. I mean, it’s not like we were big city cops or G-men or something. Somebody gets drunk, throws a punch, somebody pulls down somebody’s fence because he figures it’s on his side of the line, somebody’s running a little shine —”

  “Shine?”

  “Moonshine.”

  “I thought that went out with Prohibition.”

  “People still like the taste of shine when it’s cheaper than taxed likker, Major. But what I’m saying is maybe the worst that happens is once in a while, somebody grabs his rabbit gun and peppers some fella’s bee-hind he found out is diddling his sweetie. But even when it’s small-time, Uncle Ray taught me there’s always three pieces to the puzzle: who did it, why’d he do it, and —”

  “What’d he do.”

  Kneece grinned. “Now, according to Uncle Ray, the what is usually pretty easy Somebody broke in and took the family silver, that’s a what. And if you know who, Uncle Ray says you can pretty much figure out why. But if you don’t know who —” “Why gives you who.”

  “You sure you don’t know Uncle Ray? Sounds like you heard this before. Well, Uncle Ray’s formula doesn’t work every time, but it’s a good way to start.”

  “This is all a roundabout way of saying what? That you think your ‘why’ is in my case back in August?”

  “I figure you, and Armando Grassi, and this Captain Peter Ricks musta got some pretty high-up people awful riled. And scared, too.”

  “Scared? How do you figure that?”

  “Look at how fast they shot you out of England. Did you know they had Ricks on a troop transport into the Mediterranean within twenty-four hours of shipping you out?” “No, I didn’t.”

  “And soon as Grassi was well enough to travel — zip! Ricks into the Mediterranean; Grassi to Greenland; you back to the States. They put y’all where y’all couldn’t cause any more trouble. And they put a lotta space between you, like they didn’t want you talking to each other.”

  “I wouldn’t think the States is a place to send someone where you don’t want him to make trouble. Awfully close to Washington.” He wasn’t trying to shut Kneece’s musing down now, just testing the theorem.

  “Unless that someone is so happy to be Stateside. You were happy to be Stateside, weren’t you, sir? I mean, if I had a wife, a coupla kids…”

  “That’s a lot of impressive supposition, Captain.”

  “We’ve got a lotta miles to go yet, Major, and calling me ‘Captain’ all that time is gonna rub me like a stiff collar. What say you make it ‘Woody.’”

  “OK, Woody. Good thinking. But you’re wrong. Let me tell you something about the case in August you don’t know. It was over before I ever climbed on that boat. You think maybe Armando Grassi got himself killed trying to pick up a loose end from that case? There were no loose ends. That case had as dead an end as you can get.”

  *

  “White Pigeon” — the aerodrome at Goose Bay — sat approximately one hundred fifty miles from the Labrador coast, near where the head of the Hamilton Inlet narrowed to become the Hamilton River. The airfield was a single, busy landing strip and a scattering of clapboard buildings. Bound on all sides by pine forest and snow from one horizon to the other, Goose Bay promised even fewer creature comforts and distractions than Presque Isle, six hundred miles south.

  Harry looked at his watch, then back out the window to the rapidly advancing dusk. “This can’t be right,” he said, tapping his watch. “This says it’s not even four.”

  “You ever hear that bit about the Land of the Midnight Sun, Major? Well, that’s in the summer. In the winter, it’s just the Land of Midnight. Summer, the sun hardly goes down; winter, it hardly comes up.”

  The Dakota fell into a lazy circle above the landing strip. On the runway below, Harry saw another Dakota, its propellers revving to invisibility before it began rolling down the tarmac.

  As Harry’s C-47 circled the far side of the field, he noticed a jumble of scrap wood, tins, and the multicolored spreads he assumed were food trash. The camp dump, he guessed, and moving through it were burly shapes, paradoxically hulking and pillowy white. It wasn’t until one of the shapes sat back on its hindquarters and buried its blunt snout in an upended packing crate that Harry could make them out.

  “They like to go through the garbage,” the flight mechanic told him. “It’s like a smorgasbord for them.”

  “Polar bears?” It was Kneece, returning to his earlier enthusiasm. “Are those real polar bears? Funnier looking than I’d’ve figured.”

  “Yeah, they look kinda cute from up here, Captain. But do yourself a favor and don’t go bumpin’ into one.”

  The other Dakota rose slowly to an altitude cl
ose to where Harry’s ship was circling, then made a shallow bank to the south. “Headin’ home,” the flight mechanic explained.

  A few minutes later they were on the ground. The flight mechanic was reaching for the hatch, but Doheeny stopped him with a shout as he hauled himself out of the cockpit. “Stripes! Don’t you dare open that door until you’re in uniform!”

  Grumbling, Doheeny’s crew followed the captain’s example, reaching into their parka pockets and coming out with Santa Claus caps: red, a trim of faux white fur, a furry white ball attached to each flopping peak. Doheeny went them all one better, attaching a tatty Santa Claus beard to his ears.

  “C’mon, Sarge, get that headgear on. And hand me the mailbag!” Doheeny took a stand by the hatchway, mailbag on shoulder, a thick-leafed sprig in his other hand.

  “What’s that?” his flight mechanic asked.

  “Mistletoe!” Doheeny grinned. “Real mistletoe! I picked it up back at Presque Isle!” He beckoned the flight mechanic to swing open the door. Though a blast of frigid air nearly took away his ragged prop beard and sent Harry and Kneece deep into their overcoats, Doheeny stood in the doorway with his Christmas cheer unperturbed.

  “Ho! Ho! Ho!” Doheeny declared, holding the mistletoe over his head. “Which one of you good little boys has a kiss for Santa?”

  A voice from outside: “Hey, Sanny Claus! Kiss this!”

  *

  The Negro cook in the mess hall offered them a choice of breakfast, lunch, or dinner: this was clearly a twenty-four-hour operation. The air crews and field personnel now eating — some in civilian garb, some in the uniform of the U.S. Army, and some wearing Royal Canadian Air Force blue — ranged from the bright-eyed and fresh-shaven to the red-eyed and bewhiskered, some almost dozing over their plates.

  Above the mess counter was a row of drawings, crayon-rendered holiday pictorials in the splashy style of young children. Most featured a stick-figure family waving hullo before the living room Christmas tree, though there were more fanciful artistic endeavors, such as one featuring Father Christmas astraddle an Army cargo aeroplane being tugged through the skies by the requisite complement of reindeer. Most were addressed to “Daddy,” though there was one to “Cousin Sonny,” another to “Uncle Bob,” and one to “THE BEST BRUTHER IN THE WURLD!!!!”

  “Come wit’ da Christmas mail!” the cook informed Harry.

  He pointed to a drawing featuring a man with his face colored in brown crayon, a massive mushroom-shaped appendage on his head, standing next to a more recognizable depiction of Father Christmas. “Das from my daughter ‘Lores. See dat? She thinks I’m all a way up at da North Pole wit’ Sanny Claus!”

  Harry and Kneece, each carrying a bowl of the dinner stew, joined Doheeny where he sat with his crew. Despite the ovens and the potbellied stove at the other end of the mess, Harry and Kneece kept their coats on. The flyers had shucked their parkas, but still wore their leather aviator jackets.

  Kneece smacked his lips over his first taste of the stew. “Damn, this is good!” His eyes narrowed in calculation. “What is that? Tastes a little like venison.”

  “Probably caribou,” Doheeny replied. “They trade the Eskimos for it.”

  “Those polar bear steaks they get sometimes are good eatin’, too,” the second pilot said. “Especially the way Sambo there fixes’em,” and he nodded at the cook.

  Kneece leaned over to Doheeny and discreetly whispered, nodding at the copilot, who munched on a thick wimpy as he paced round and round the table. “Is there some reason he won’t sit with us?”

  “Hey, Junior!” Doheeny called to the circling copilot. “The captain here wants to know why you don’t sit down.”

  The copilot licked at the grease bleeding from the sandwich onto his hand. “I spend the better part of every day with my arse in a cockpit seat. I’m not sitting now.”

  “My fellas are going to be hitting the sack early,” Doheeny told Harjy and Kneece. “We’re going for takeoff at 0300. You fellas can always catch up on your sleep on the plane.”

  “Why so early?” Kneece groaned.

  “Where we’re going, they’ve only got a couple of hours’ light each day. So, we have a choice. Take off in the light, land in the dark, take off in the dark, land in the light, but there’s no way to do both. And Bluie-West-One — that’s the field we’re going for — it’s kind of dicey getting in there on a good day If I can, I prefer going in there with daylight, particularly since we don’t know what the weather’s going to be like.”

  “Which, this being winter, is pretty crappy a lot of the time,” the copilot contributed.

  Doheeny nodded. “I checked in with Ops and they’ve been out of radio contact with Bluie-West-One for four days, and haven’t been able to raise anybody in Greenland in two. Could be weather interference, or maybe some of the transmission towers are down. This time of year…” He shrugged, as if to say such circumstances were the norm. “I’d prefer to wait until we heard from them, but since this is a priority flight, well…”

  “So it’s an early reveille,” Kneece concluded good-naturedly.

  They could hear the cough and sputter of an engine startup outside, then another, setting the tableware rattling on the table.

  “Where do they all go?” Kneece asked.

  “East is Greenland. Some go west, making for Alaska. Some north; there’s other fields up the Labrador coast.”

  “Captain,” Harry asked, “I don’t know if it’s a security thing or not, but can I ask what you’re carrying that makes our flight a priority?”

  Doheeny smiled broadly “You and your captain.”

  Harry turned to Kneece, seeking clarification, but Kneece’s attention seemed to be on his bowl of caribou stew.

  “Cap’n, that cargo we got is pretty important, too,” Sparks said.

  “Vital to the war effort,” the copilot said.

  “Couldn’t fight the war without it,” Sparks said. “Why don’t you tell these guys what they’re sharing their urgent priority with?”

  Doheeny chuckled and turned to his flight bag. “I happen to have the manifest right here. Let’s see,” and he flipped through the flimsies on a clipboard. “Desks, desk chairs, twelve typewriters, and the rest of this considerable poundage is miscellaneous office supplies: pens, pencils, erasers, typewriter ribbons, paper, and, let’s see, six, seven, hm, twelve different forms.”

  “Forms?” Kneece asked.

  “Can’t fight a war without having the right requisition forms, Captain. Didn’t they teach you that in officer’s training? That’s why we’re also carrying all this carbon paper.”

  “You need those triplicate copies,” Sparks said.

  “I thought they wanted quintuples now,” the copilot said.

  “I must’ve missed that memo,” Sparks said. “Didn’t get my copy.”

  “That’s because they were only doing triplicates,” the copilot said.

  The three flyers shared a teammates’ laugh.

  The second pilot and Sparks drifted off to their sleeping quarters; Kneece soon followed. “I’m not used to an evening nap, but I’ll see if I can force my eyes closed for a couple hours.”

  Doheeny swabbed the last of his bacon and eggs clean with a last bit of toast, then leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette. “No bed for you, Major Voss? You a fellow night owl?”

  “Sometimes it’s hard for me to sleep when I’m away from home.”

  Doheeny nodded. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?” He fetched two cups from the urn at the mess counter. “This your first time going over?” He extended a lit match as Harry drew one of his own cigarettes.

  “First time by plane,” Harry answered. “I was in London for a while.”

  “You don’t look like the kind of guy who’s off hunting medals. How’d they sucker you into going back?”

  “Business.”

  Doheeny nodded. He’d been carting military personnel long enough to know not to pry when information wasn’t voluntee
red. “There’s no reason we can’t make this a little less formal.” He held out a hand. “Jim.”

  “Harry. Can I ask you something, Jim? How’d they sucker you?”

  “You mean into this Army aerial bus service?” Doheeny smiled. “You fly for the airlines, pushing bodies here to there, that’s just being a flying cabbie. Remember: it wasn’t so long ago, a lot of these fellas had a stick in their hands when flying was still more an adventure than a business. Some of them miss that kind of fun. And some of them… I don’t like to use the word mercenary. The airlines have a seniority system. This gets the younger guys out from under, gives them a chance to command their own ship. And you’re wondering which of those is me.”

  “A man always looking to minimize his challenges doesn’t strike me as someone who misses barnstorming. And you look like you’ve been around long enough not to worry about seniority.”

  “I’d been flying with the line almost ten years. I’m pretty secure.”

  “So is it patriotism?”

  Doheeny let out a curt laugh. “I lost my patriotic fervor a long time ago, Harry. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for America winning and apple pie. I was a flyer in the first war, the Great War. I was with Rickenbacker in the old hat-in-the-ring squadron.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Sounds more impressive than it was. I only made the last few weeks of the war. Not long enough to do any damage or get any damage done to me. But it was long enough to get the bejeebers scared out of me. After that, I thought, ‘Next time, I’ll go if they ask me, but I’m not volunteering.’”

  “And this time they asked you?”

  “You have any children, Harry?”

  “Two.”

  Doheeny fumbled out his billfold, pulled out a small photograph. “Michael Sean. We named him after my father, and my wife’s father. That was taken when he was nineteen.” Harry saw a slight but handsome young man in Navy whites. Doheeny nodded. “I know. You’d never guess he was my boy. Those are his mom’s looks.”

  “Same with me. Ricky and Jerry” Harry turned over a photo of his own two.

  Doheeny was careful to wipe his hands clean before touching the photo. “Good-looking boys, Harry. Miss ’em?”