Victoria hung up and sat there, suffused by wistful nostalgic love. Sarah brought a tray of chicken salad and iced tea out on the deck. As Victoria started to tell her the good news, the buck and the doe emerged from the woods. He was nuzzling her. Out of the trees whizzed an arrow that struck the buck squarely in the chest. He bounded high in the air and came down on crumpling legs. The doe vanished into the woods in three huge leaps. Two men emerged from the woods with longbows and quivers of arrows on their shoulders. There were broad grins on their brutal faces.
“You sons of bitches!” Victoria screamed.
She ran into the house and seized Billy’s shotgun off the wall. From a drawer she scooped a handful of shells and shoved them into the chamber. Outside the men were standing beside the deer, glaring at the house. Victoria aimed the gun in their general direction and fired. The men fled into the trees.
Victoria reloaded the gun and ran down to the buck, who lay on his side, barely breathing. One eye rolled up toward her; it seemed to ask a question she could not answer. Victoria put the muzzle of the shotgun behind his ear and pulled the trigger. She turned to a trembling Sarah and said: “Sometimes I think the world would be a better place without men, don’t you?”
Sarah was enormously tempted to agree with her. But her hateful heart whispered: it’s too soon.
HOUSE ON FIRE
“Where’s Liz?” Cliff Morris asked as the family assembled in the living room to drive to Buchanan’s 1967 Christmas party.
“She’s not coming,” Sarah said.
“Why not?”
“She says she refuses to toast the war machine.”
Cliff’s face darkened. Seventeen-year-old Charlie grinned in anticipation. He loved these brawls between Liz and her father. He was 100 percent on Cliff’s side. Their quiet middle child, Margaret, looked stricken. She tried to stay neutral but she secretly sided with her older sister.
“Liz!” Cliff roared.
Liz slouched downstairs. She was a brunette beauty with her father’s chiseled features. Her silken hair streamed to her waist. She wore blue jeans and a work shirt, the uniform of her generation. She had graduated from Stanford last year and was getting a master’s in art history at UCLA. Her boyfriend, a political scientist, was the leading antiwar activist on the campus.
“Either you come to this party or you move out of this house,” Cliff said.
“I’ll be gone when you come back,” Liz said.
“You better get ready to pay your own tuition from now on,” Cliff said.
“I’ll get a job. Maybe on your assembly line. What will you do when they catch me sabotaging one of your murder machines?”
“I’ll personally escort you to jail!” Cliff roared.
“Commie freako,” Charlie said.
“Junior fascist pig,” Liz replied.
“Shut up, all of you!” Margaret wailed.
“Second the motion,” Sarah said. As usual, she remained perfectly calm, in total control of her feelings. She had become the family arbiter, the semi-outsider who was able to adjudicate among these overwrought Americans. “We’ll discuss this tomorrow. You can postpone your evacuation for a day, Liz.”
The Christmas party was bigger, louder, more crowded than ever. It spread over three hangars, with a dance band in each one. New planes were on display, the sturdy ground-support craft, the Thunderer, already in production, a mockup of a needle-nosed high-performance fighter, the SkyDemon, and a gigantic painting of the projected new transport, the Colossus. Buchanan was booming. The workforce was over fifty thousand. The champagne flowed. But Sarah Morris sensed an undercurrent of malaise.
For one thing, everyone, even Cliff, had to pass through a metal detector to get in. There were uniformed security guards at the doors; dozens more roamed the hangar floors. These days every company in the aircraft industry was the target of a continuous stream of bomb threats and vows to sabotage the production line. In California particularly, the rising protest against the war in Vietnam had focused on the American bombing offensive, Operation Rolling Thunder.
What multiplied the malaise was the failure of the offensive. The Communists seemed as potent as ever and they were shooting down an appalling number of American planes. For the disciples of air power this was a very disturbing development that they tried desperately to explain away. One part of Sarah’s mind secretly exulted in this spectacle. Another part—her public self—deplored and regretted it and even sympathized with Cliff as he struggled to explain it to Charlie and his sisters.
Cliff went off to work the crowd in the next hangar. They always separated at big parties to achieve maximum contact. Susan Hardy cruised toward Sarah, a dark brown Scotch in her stubby hand. She was virtually spherical now, with a balloon body supporting a smaller balloon face. She never wore anything but immense flapping muumuus, which covered everything including her feet. But her eyes retained their fierce intelligence and there was nothing spherical about her tongue. She had become a virulent critic of the war.
“I saw a top-secret report on our actual plane losses over ’Nam,” she said. “The numbers are unbelievable.”
Susan always started her conversations in the middle these days. She was full of energy; an hour or two with her left Sarah feeling exhausted. Susan’s divorce from Sam Hardy was a spectacular success. She had taken half of everything he owned—in cash. Sam had been forced to sell almost every piece of real property in his name except his car. Susan proceeded to compound the torment by getting a job in Buchanan’s public relations department, which enabled her to keep tabs on her ex-husband’s anemic love life and self-destructive drinking.
Lately Susan had become interested in attacking the American war machine—a target more worthy of her mammoth animosity. She had been trying to enlist Sarah in the campaign but she was much too busy fighting her private war against Billy McCall to be helpful.
“You must hear things from Cliff, Sarah. Just pass them along to me. I know what to do with them,” Susan said sotto voce, while Margaret and Charlie gazed at the swirling crowd and the planes.
“I never know what’s important and what isn’t,” Sarah lied. She was using Susan to rehearse her role as the sweet, slightly bewildered wife. She was not about to risk Cliff’s career to feed Susan’s insatiable appetite for revenge on the whole male sex. She only wanted revenge on one particular male.
“Sarah, you’re looking so lovely,” Adrian Van Ness said, as Susan Hardy ballooned conspiratorially off toward the bar. “It must have something to do with growing up in England. All that rain on your skin.”
Beside Adrian stood Victoria Van Ness McCall and her husband. Billy gave Sarah his usual mocking smile. She returned it with maximum malice. You won’t be smiling at this time next year, hero, she thought. You’ll be the laughingstock of the aircraft business.
Sarah knew all about the plan to put Billy in charge of the giant transport and watch him fall on his face. She had given Cliff the idea one night after they had cavorted on that dark current that electrified their bedroom. Get Adrian to give him some big job. Something he can’t handle, she had whispered.
Sarah introduced Charlie and Margaret. “We thought it was time they started enjoying the fun,” she said.
“Have you finished testing the Thunderer, Colonel?” Charlie asked Billy.
“The first ones’ll be over ’Nam in a couple of months.”
“Could you give me a look at the cockpit?”
“Sure,” Billy said.
For a moment, watching them stroll away, Sarah almost cried “Stop!” or something equally absurd. Charlie was as tall as Billy now. He was still mesmerized by planes. The physical resemblance remained oblique. No one but her would ever know the possible, even the probable secret.
“You can cross me off your benefit list,” Victoria said. “We’ll be leaving for Louisiana soon. Billy can hardly wait to get to work on the Colossus.”
A pulse throbbed in Sarah’s throat. Adrian had been almost t
oo amenable to making Billy the project manager of the Colossus. Sarah had grown alarmed. She did not trust Adrian. Those hooded eyes were too cold. What if Billy pulled it off—built the biggest plane in the world?
Victoria talked about her determination to have a child. Billy had finally agreed to it. She hoped it would be a girl. Her father would adore a granddaughter. “Isn’t it strange the way most men favor boys, but Daddy doesn’t? I can’t imagine how he would have treated me if I’d been a boy.”
It was a kind of fugue in two themes, Daddy’s fondness and Billy’s readiness to have a child. The ideas, the images, wound strands of wire around Sarah’s throat until she found it more and more difficult to breathe.
“Fascinating,” Sarah said, watching Charlie and Billy climb up on the Thunderer’s wing and lean into the cockpit. In profile the faces were virtually identical.
“I’ve been thinking of putting most of my money into Buchanan stock. Daddy said if I did he’d give me a seat on the board. I think he’s teasing but it’s a good idea, don’t you think? A statement of confidence in the company’s future?”
Sarah gazed into Victoria’s wide heavy face and confronted Adrian’s cold analytical eyes. Was it possible she knew Sarah was her secret enemy? This babble was all part of a carefully calculated plan to unnerve her? For the twentieth time Sarah discounted the idea. She possessed this woman. She was her. Every touch, every kiss, Victoria experienced in Billy’s arms belonged to Sarah.
“How does Billy feel about that fellow who set a new speed record out at Edwards the other day?” Sarah asked.
An Air Force major had flown another experimental plane, the X-15, made by North American, at an astonishing 4,138 miles an hour.
“He hasn’t said a word to me about it,” Victoria said.
Frank Buchanan limped toward them, his lined face exuding Christmas cheer. He kissed Sarah and Margaret, then Victoria. “I just saw your mother,” he said to Victoria. “She’s improved a great deal. We had a very pleasant conversation. It’s remarkable how much of her memory has returned.”
“I almost wish it hadn’t. She remembers every bad thing I ever did or said,” Victoria replied.
“It’s just her old determination to speak the truth no matter how much it upsets people,” Frank said. “She told me I was getting uglier by the minute.”
“We adore you anyway,” Sarah said.
“That’s what an old lecher likes to hear,” Frank said, giving her a hug.
Charlie and Billy rejoined their circle. Frank shook hands with them. Sarah could see Charlie was practically exploding with some sort of good news. “You look like you’ve just seen all your Christmas presents in advance,” she said.
“Colonel McCall says before he goes to Louisiana he’d like to teach me to fly,” Charlie said. “If it’s okay with you and Dad.”
“He knows more about the inside of a cockpit than I did when I was his age,” Billy said.
“Say yes, Mom. I’ll handle Dad,” Charlie said.
Billy’s smile radiated mockery. Did he know? Sarah wondered. Was he showing her what he could do in retaliation? Take away the son she loved more than both her daughters?
Was that true? Did she love anything or anyone any more? Was it all possession, greed, desire? Sarah relived the vow she had made that day in the desert when she heard Billy inviting Victoria to Catalina. That oath of eternal hatred and revenge spoken to the sun and wind and emptiness. Was that the only thing she loved?
“How can we refuse an offer like that from the best pilot in the country?” Sarah said.
She was in perfect control of her feelings as usual. “Do you wish you’d been flying that new rocket plane out in the desert?” she asked Billy. “It wiped out your old speed record rather completely.”
“Only kids go for records,” Billy said. His smile was as bright—and meaningless—as ever. He was in perfect control of his feelings too.
“I can’t wait to get up there,” Charlie said.
“I think we’ve got a born pilot here,” Frank Buchanan said.
ASSASSIN TIME
“Cassie? Listen—I’m afraid it’s another late night.”
“It’s okay. I understand. I married an aircraft company.”
The joke was starting to wear thin. Dick could hear the weariness in Cassie’s voice. “It’s this goddamn TPP contract—you’ve never seen anything like it,” he said.
“I know, I know.”
“Kiss Jake for me.”
“The last time I did that, he said, ‘Daddy? Who’s he?’”
Dick slammed down the phone and cursed Adrian Van Ness, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and the aircraft business, in that order. For the past six months he had barely seen his wife and son. The design and engineering departments had been working with him on the Total Performance Package for the giant transport, the C-116—known as the Colossus. It was turning into the most elaborate document ever contrived by the mind of man. Every possible contingency in the development of the plane, every imaginable expense, had to be analyzed, described, and costed in quintuplicate. As Buchanan’s money man, Dick was intricately involved in this process, which Frank Buchanan repeatedly called idiotic.
No matter how hard they tried, they were never going to be able to anticipate the problems that might arise in developing a plane this big. Rolls-Royce was still trying to design an engine strong enough to lift it. The Air Force was still debating crucial factors such as the takeoff and landing speed.
Billy McCall, the plane’s project manager, agreed with Frank Buchanan about the idiocy of it all. Like everyone else, Dick assumed Billy had gotten this job because he was Adrian Van Ness’s son-in-law. He did not have the executive experience to handle something this complex. He was simultaneously supposed to supervise the construction of a new plant in Louisiana and keep track of the paperwork in Santa Monica. It was impossible and Billy did not even try. He let Dick handle the Santa Monica end of it.
A week later—a week in which he spent exactly eight hours at home, most of them asleep—Dick stood with his hands on his hips, watching forklifters trundle tons of paper into the yawning interior of an Excalibur-derived transport. The TPP was taking up the entire cargo space of a plane that ten short years ago was the biggest set of wings in the air.
Billy McCall frowned beside him. “Do you really expect us to pay attention to all that wastepaper, Stone?” he said.
“Somebody does. The Secretary of Defense, for openers.”
“It’s like marriage, Stone. You can’t let the bastards grind you down.”
By this time everyone in the company knew that Victoria had failed to tame Billy. The old-timers, for whom Billy was a sexual as well as an aerobatic hero, had rooted against her all the way. They called Victoria “the Queen B” (for bitch) and eagerly retold Billy’s acts of defiance, such as failing to show up for Adrian’s sixty-fifth birthday party. There was a drumfire of names of women Billy was supposedly fucking at ten thousand feet.
Dick had declined Billy’s random invitations to join him in continuing bachelorhood. He was worried about the unhappiness in Cassie’s eyes. Practically from the day they married, the whole company had gone into a wartime production mode. The workforce doubled and so did Dick’s responsibilities.
“Still flying?” Billy asked.
“I don’t have time.”
“That’s what worries me about this fucking job,” Billy said.
Dick watched the Excalibur’s cargo doors grind shut on the tons of Total Performance Package paper. He shared Billy’s contempt for this harebrained attempt to control costs. They were fighting a war in Vietnam for which the Colossus was desperately needed. They had wasted six months writing the contract for it.
“Let’s celebrate a little, Stone. You can’t be an old married man all your life.”
They headed for a nearby bar. Billy wanted to talk about Vietnam. He was appalled by the way the air war was being fought. Thousands of planes and pilots were
being lost while the key targets in North Vietnam, the port of Haiphong, and the Red River dams, were off-limits.
“We could starve them to death in three months if we took out those two items,” Billy said.
Dick was not sure he was right. He tried not to think about the war. But he knew it was sapping the morale of the company. Alcoholism and absenteeism among the workforce had soared as parents quarreled with sons and daughters. The old elan, the sense of being on the leading edge of Jack Kennedy’s defense of freedom anywhere in the world, was gone. They had developed a siege mentality.
Billy began talking about how much he hated being grounded. He berated himself for giving up the chief test pilot’s job to become “a fucking bean counter.” Dick was surprised. He thought Billy was as ambitious as the next man. Becoming project manager for the Colossus was a very big promotion.
“Why did you take it?” Dick asked.
Billy was pretty drunk by now. He stared at his image in the mirror. He was still wearing his flight jacket and fifty missions hat, defying his elevation to the executive ranks. “Believe it or not, Stone, I did it to keep my wife happy. Does that make any sense to you?”
“Hell, yes. If you don’t keep them happy they can make you damn miserable.”
Billy finished his Scotch and shook his head. “It doesn’t make a damn bit of sense to me.”
Dick should have seen trouble plummeting out of the sky toward them like a Starduster shattered by whirl mode. But so many other things seemed on the verge of spinning out of control in the year 1967, he found it hard to focus on a single problem. It was especially hard to worry about Billy, who had repeatedly established his ability to live dangerously and somehow survive. It never occurred to him that on the ground Billy was as vulnerable as the rest of them.
Billy and Victoria departed for Louisiana. For nine months Dick did not give them or the giant plane more than a passing thought. Other planes, the endless war, the seething unrest in American cities and on college campuses, the birth of a daughter, absorbed his attention. A new chief engineer, a brilliant, cheerful Californian named Edwards, collaborated with him on a study that revealed Buchanan’s assembly line workers only spent 26 percent of their time actually making planes. The rest was spent looking for tools, schmoozing with friends, and betting on horses and football pools. Edwards hired more supervisors, decentralized tool storage, and raised production rates 40 percent—with fewer workers. Adrian was enormously impressed.
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