by David Treuer
It was as if the volume had been suddenly turned off. Everything fell away. He couldn’t hear anything, not the shaking of the plane or the thrum of the four Cyclone Engines. Or the explosions in the air around them. Nothing. He reached up and felt around his head to see if he hadn’t gotten a piece of shrapnel stuck in his skull or in his neck. Keeping a steady level, he guided them in. Not that he even had to use the Norden: they were in the middle of the formation, and only the lead plane needed to use its sights. The rest were to release the bombs as soon as the lead plane did.
With one minute left, a plane just above and in front of them was hit in the waist by a flak burst. Pieces of the fuselage broke off and came flying by. Skin, ribs, a cowling from one of the engines. As the plane disintegrated, the crew began bailing out. The tail gunner came shooting out the back. Two more men, probably the waist gunners, stepped out of the middle of the plane. One man popped out of the hatch in the radio room. He wasn’t wearing a parachute. Frankie counted six in all. Amid paper, metal, ammunition, and maps, they came tumbling down around Neptune’s Bitch. Then one of the crew—and Frankie never knew who it was—pushed free of the doomed aircraft and tucked into a ball. He fell downward, turning slowly through the air. He held perfect form as he tumbled toward them and cleared their left wing with about three feet to spare, and was lost to sight.
Immediately after the lead plane dropped its bombs, Frankie pressed the bomb-release switch and said, “Bombs away!” into the intercom, and Lieutenant Adams banked the plane, and they turned toward home. But the image of the man, tucked, languid, rolling through the air, stayed with him.
After that first mission, and after the second and third and fourth, he had to admit to himself that he was good at his job, good at combat. He was good at filing away the fear and uncertainty. Unlike his crewmates, he didn’t have to deal with it afterward by talking about how scared he had been, if only to suggest how well he had held it together. He was good at ignoring everything—his discomfort, his isolation, the dim sense that he was one small, very dispensable part of a large operation. The other crew members had come to rely on this aspect of Frankie’s personality—his resolute, predictable quietude and precision. He liked to think it gave them comfort, the sober way he had of conducting the preflight check, of tending to the others when their oxygen lines got disconnected or cut, of manning the twin .50-caliber machine guns in the nose when called upon.
Being able to ignore everything that interfered with his job was something he was good at. But at Molesworth, because of crew rotation or bad weather, there were long stretches on the ground. That was when the worry crept in, when the fear settled down deep in the gut. He might be drinking at the officers’ club or reading in his bunk when, for no reason, he’d feel, he’d know, that if he didn’t run he would shit his pants. This never happened on missions, only when he had quiet time to himself. So the best thing was to work on the map table. To check and recheck Neptune’s Bitch. But sometimes, even when he kept himself busy—he might be over the table practicing with the sights, or checking and rechecking the .50s or recalibrating the Norden—that terrible day in the woods came back to him—Billy saying, “Wait, wait,” then the shot, the girl’s legs kicking and slowing and stopping in the leaves.
* * *
Frankie unhooked himself from the harness that held him over the map table. He rubbed his eyes and windmilled his arms. He had been at it for two hours. It was late, but there would be no missions the next day. Neither the officers in London nor the enlisted men at Moulsford Manor would miss him. At first—at Maxwell and Midlands—the other men had tried to get him to go drinking and dancing with them and gave him a hard time when he demurred. When they came back, stumble-drunk and bruised, drunk enough to piss their own beds, they teased and heckled him. They didn’t quite trust him. But at Molesworth, after the crew had completed ten missions without losing anyone, they stopped bothering him. Whatever they had formed, whatever set of skills or exercise of luck in the game of extinction they were playing, they wanted to preserve it. No one wanted to change a thing. So they were happy their bombardier stayed behind and studied maps and practiced with the map table and checked their plane and counted the pins in the bomb racks, and they made sure he had the bolts not only for his .50 but extra bolts for the rest.
Felix had been like that. Sunk in the seat of the Confederate, he’d listen to Emma start in with her Worries and Concerns: How many trees down over the winter? Was the river too high to get across? Had the dock been washed away? How bad was the fire danger, anyway? Had Felix made sure to scythe the brush and weeds around the Pines to reduce the danger? It would have been good if he had burned the grass while the snow was still deep among the trees. Could they expect a lot of bees? Had the tiger lilies come up, or had the frost gotten them finally? Frankie had despaired that, of all the things Emma could have brought with them from Chicago, she had chosen to bring herself. But Felix seemed immune to Emma’s worry. He’d been still, even calm, as he responded to Emma’s flurry. The dock had been fixed. He had lit the yard on fire in April, when it was still safe to do so, and the grass was coming up good. No bees yet. Billy had cleared all the mice and mouse droppings from the cabins. The girls were ready to come and do the laundry. Nothing perturbed him.
When Frankie was thirteen, he had been allowed to accompany Felix and Billy to the village to pick up supplies without Emma. He had sat next to Billy, facing Felix in the rowboat (they didn’t have the Chris-Craft yet) as Felix pulled on the oars—almost lazily, it seemed—except that with each stroke the rowboat surged ahead, as if shoved along by a giant hand. When they pulled ashore, Frankie and Billy followed Felix up the steep slope to the top of the bluff where they kept the Confederate. Back then there was no camp, just a clearing on level ground pocked by small cook pits and larger depressions near the trees for jigging rice. In the fall the Indians camped there by the dozens to be nearer the rice. And in the spring they came back when the fish were spawning in the river to net them and dry them on racks lashed together in the sun.
He had been rowed across the river many times before. And he had climbed the bank. And he had gone to the village in the Confederate. None of this was new. Yet it was, somehow. Because for the first time he did all this without Emma worrying at the very texture of the life around him.
Halfway to the village, a brush wolf sprinted out of the woods. It must have been chasing something but Frankie never saw what. It crossed the ditch and streaked across the highway in front of them. Felix always drove slowly, but the creature wasn’t fast enough. The pickup passed right over the top of it and Frankie could hear its body being tumbled along the undercarriage of the truck and spit out the back. He turned to look and Felix braked and stopped. The brush wolf stood woozily in the middle of the road behind them, staring at them. Frankie turned around in the seat and looked out the back windshield. He had never seen such an animal before. He was surprised at how big its ears were. Its fur was red, almost like that of a fox, along the outside of its legs and along the bridge of its nose, which was sharper and pointier than Frankie would have expected. It swayed back and forth as it looked at the truck. A trickle of blood escaped from its right ear.
“Is that a wolf?” he whispered.
“Yeah,” said Billy softly. “Yeah, it is.”
“Not a real wolf. Real wolf bigger,” said Felix. “You call it coyote. Wait here,” he said. Felix reached down and felt under the seat and came out with the length of dowel they used to prop open the hood of the truck. He opened the door and stepped out onto the highway and walked back toward the wolf. Frankie’s heart was in his throat.
“What’s he gonna do?” he asked Billy.
“Shhh.”
The wolf didn’t retreat, as Frankie thought it might. Felix approached slowly, with his hands at his sides, his feet padding from heel to toe in a narrow line. He got close, within three feet, and still the wolf didn’t move. Suddenl
y Felix’s right hand flashed out—faster than Frankie could have imagined, he had never seen Felix move fast—and he tapped the wolf on the back of the head with the stick, sharp and fast but not hard. The wolf collapsed as though its bones had been yanked out of its body. Felix dropped the stick and placed one palm on the side of the wolf’s head and the other on its hind legs, which he collected together in his hand. Then he gently slid one knee over on the wolf’s rib cage.
“Come,” he said over his shoulder. “Come, boys. It’s safe now.”
The wolf was not yet dead, only stunned. It tried to lift its head but could not. It tried to lift and turn its hind legs but could not.
“Is it going to die?” asked Frankie.
“Yes. I am killing it. I am making it die.” Felix’s knee pressed down on the wolf’s rib cage and it couldn’t draw breath, couldn’t expand its ribs. There was no way for it to move or escape. “You can touch,” said Felix. “Touch in the middle.”
Frankie knelt down and placed his hand on the wolf’s fur, where the rib cage met the breastbone. He jerked his hand back: the wolf’s body was very hot. Felix nodded at him reassuringly and he placed his hand back on the wolf’s sternum.
He could feel its heart beating very quickly. As quickly as his. Then faster. Frankie looked at the wolf and then at Billy. Billy’s hair fell across his eyes and there was a light film of sweat on his nose that Frankie liked.
“You wanna?” he asked Billy.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay, I will.”
Frankie removed his hand and Billy put his where Frankie’s had been. Felix adjusted his grip and leaned even more weight on the wolf. Felix’s expression didn’t change. Then the wolf’s heart slowed. The beats came in clusters. It slowed some more. The heart beat once every few seconds. Its eyes were deep amber. They didn’t move or look at anything. As the heart slowed, the eyes got narrower and narrower, until they closed completely. As they did, the coyote’s mouth grew slack and its lips, very black, almost inky, spread away from its teeth, which were very sharp and very white. After another minute Felix slowly removed his knee. Then he released the hind legs. Satisfied, he removed his hand from the side of the wolf’s head and stood up. “Okay. Very safe now.” The wolf was dead. Felix stooped and gathered its front legs in one hand and its hind legs in the other and carried it, its head lolling, its tongue escaping from between its teeth, and put it in the back of the truck. They both got in and Felix started up the truck and continued driving toward the village.
Frankie looked out the window. Everything seemed very new.
“Felix. You were in the war?”
“Yes.”
Billy was quiet.
“Did you kill anyone in the war?”
“Yes.”
Frankie grew bolder. “How many? Do you know how many men you killed?” He didn’t look at Felix when he asked his question.
Felix didn’t answer right away. Frankie was worried. He shouldn’t have asked. He had asked his father that question, and Jonathan had spoken at great length without really answering it.
“I killed seventeen. Seventeen men I killed.”
Frankie thought about this a moment.
“Did you use your gun? Did you shoot them?”
Again Felix paused.
“Some I shoot. Some I not shoot.”
“How—”
“We are at village, Mr. Frankie.”
They were. It was the only time Frankie could remember Felix interrupting him. They got their supplies at the general store and some of the men gathered there came outside with Felix to look at the coyote. They weren’t as impressed as Frankie and Billy were. After they got the supplies, they stopped in at the Wigwam. Felix spoke to Harris for a few minutes in Indian, and then Harris came out with them to look at the wolf. They spoke some more, then Felix carried the wolf into the icehouse, and they all went back in the bar. Harris opened the till and gave Felix a dollar, which he folded carefully and tucked into his shirt pocket. Harris looked at Frankie and Billy and said, “I got Bernick’s. Howdy Orange or Eskimo Pop?” Frankie, unsure, looked up at Felix. “You choose,” Felix said. “Orange, please,” said Frankie. “Orange, too,” said Billy. “Orange it is,” said Harris. He disappeared under the bar and emerged with three bottles. He pried off the tops and handed them to Felix.
They looked like toys, like baby bottles, in Felix’s hands. He gave one to Frankie and one to Billy and kept the other, and they walked out into the sun and sat on the bench in front of the bar and drank their sodas. Afterward they drove back to the Pines.
Later he and Billy had snuck out to one of the cabins. They kissed. And then grew bolder. Finally he reached inside Billy’s underwear and drew him out. He stroked hard and Billy’s cock jumped and danced in his hand. “Slower,” said Billy. “Do it slower. Softer, maybe.” Frankie did as he was told. Billy closed his eyes and said, “Oh,” and Frankie felt Billy beating in his hand like a live heart, slowing, slower, until he grew soft.
* * *
The base was dark, blacked out. It was raining again. The paths between the barracks were lined with white-painted rocks, and Frankie used these to guide himself back to his bunk.
How many people had he killed so far? There was no way to know. He knew of only one. He would never know how many in total, although he knew that he killed more with one bomb on one run than Felix had killed during the entire four years he spent in France. Multiply that one bomb by eight per payload, and multiply that by ten missions. Or maybe his bombs never killed anyone. Theirs was a strategic bombing campaign conducted in daylight, and their objectives were rail yards, manufacturing plants, bridges, dams, supply dumps. But surely he had missed. It turned out the Norden sights weren’t nearly as accurate in combat as they were in practice, or as all the secrecy and oath taking suggested. They missed their targets more often than they hit them.
He entered the barracks. It was the same, always the same. Their four beds and footlockers. The white-painted desk shoved against the narrow half-moon of the far wall. He put his hand on the stove. Cold. They received only enough coal to run the stove four nights out of the week. It could be worse. The enlisted men got the same ration for a space twice as big. He considered lighting it but he didn’t want to hear about it from the others when they came back from London.
Instead, he retrieved the letter he had been working on from his footlocker. He got in bed fully dressed and pulled the wool blanket up over his lap. He took the pilot’s training manual off the ammo crate he used as a nightstand and put the paper on it and uncapped his fountain pen. He read over what he had written so far.
Dearest,
I’ve been in Europe for four months. Some of the other guys have been here just as long but they already got their twenty-five missions and so they are going home. I’ve only had ten. I spoke to the chief intelligence officer a few times and asked him to put me on the roster more often. To give me more opportunities. Even if I’m not with my own crew, I told him. It’s fine with me. There’s lots of switching around, as it turns out. You don’t always fly with the same crew on every mission, or even the same plane, the one you think of as yours. I’ll keep trying. I like it, if you can believe that. But I want to come home. There were so many things left unfinished when I left. I did the best I could, I suppose. I hope this letter finds you and finds you well. I’ve tried to write many times. Really I have. But I never knew what to say or how to say it.
You must be wondering what it’s like over here, and so I’ll do my best to try and explain it. We fly at least once a week, usually twice a week. The math is pretty easy. At that rate I should have been home by now. Two missions a week means I should have been here about three months. The ground crews have it worse. They are regular Army, so they have to stay for the duration of the war, plus six months. It doesn’t matter how many missions we fly, they are stuck here no matter what. Anyway, yo
u only get credit for a mission if you drop your bombs on either the main target, the secondary target, or a “target of opportunity,” but often you get blasted out of formation, or all the targets are socked in. Sometimes you can’t get in formation because the clouds are too heavy over here and you have to return to base. Other times something happens with the engines, one or two give out. (That’s not as dangerous as it sounds, because all it means is you lose altitude and you have to return before bombing. Since there are no mountains between here and Berlin we’re not in danger of running into them—though if you lose altitude over the mainland, then it makes you more vulnerable to flak and to enemy fighters.) And so, even though we fly twice a week, we don’t get credit if we don’t drop our bombs on something. Sometimes we have to drop them in the ocean, and some crews try and fudge it and say they bombed a secondary target or a target of opportunity but it always comes out during the post-mission debrief. These meetings are a lot longer than the briefings before the missions, which is kind of funny, depending on how you look at it. They want to know exactly what happened—where we dropped, how many, in what order, what happened next, how many fighters intercepted us, that kind of thing. And if you lie, they usually catch you. They always find out. It’s no secret where the bombs fall or where we want them to fall. The Germans know and the civilians know. Everyone knows what we are after: railroads, refineries, factories. We are responsible for trying to kill the German war machine, not the Germans themselves. Hopefully what we do makes things easier for the boys on the ground.
When we’re not flying, we sit around and play cards. A lot of the guys try to get the girls around here interested in them. Usually it doesn’t work. They try anyway. Since we don’t have any way to get anywhere, they have to walk or bicycle. It’s kind of funny that we fly hundreds and hundreds of miles every week over France and Belgium and Holland and Germany and yet we can’t get to the next town over except by walking or pedaling. Some of the towns have funny names. Willingham, Cottingham, Bozeat, Kings Cliffe, Mepal. There’s even a town called Warboys, which sounds pretty funny to my ears. We should be based there. But the girls aren’t much interested. Here today and gone tomorrow. That’s us.