Lions of the Sky

by Paco Chierici

  “Not one drop!” he exclaimed, holding it out for the crowd to admire. “I didn’t spill a damn drop!” Rogers toasted them all then chugged the contents of the mug to cheers from the onlookers.

  A woman next to him remarked, “That boy is a bonehead. They let him fly planes?”

  Slammer laughed. “Not exactly.” Then he looked at the woman, replaying her words and was struck with a moment of clarity. Striding forward, he grabbed Rogers, spun him around so they were both facing the crowd, and held Rogers’ arm aloft, like a referee signaling the winner of a fight. “Son,” he intoned with the solemnity of a preacher, “With the sound of thunder the Lord has spoken and he has chosen you to be his special messenger. From this day forward, you shall be known forevermore as HOB, short for Head of Bone. So let it be known, so let it be written!” He gave the newly minted HOB a gentle shove, sending him into the rowdy mass.

  Silvers and the gang rushed through the door to the back deck just in time to witness the christening. She threw her arms in the air with the rest of HOB’s classmates, whooping with delight as he sprinted through a baptismal shower of beer into their embrace. She grabbed him and pulled him through the doors back to their table. “HOB! That’s fucking perfect!”

  HOB wore his perpetual grin. “My mom’s going to be so proud.”

  One by one the rest of the boys—Pig, Moto, Dingle, and Busta—walked past to slap him on the shoulder as they took their seats.

  She was fast becoming one of the last to snare a call sign, for better or worse, a fact Busta brought up as he plopped down next to her holding six bottles of beer by the neck. “How’d you, of all people, manage to avoid a call sign in El Centro? I figured you were going to pick up Ace or Killer.”

  “Or Psycho Bitch,” Pig said, cracking himself up.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I swear I’m just trying to keep my head down. Stay off the horizon.”

  Pig laughed. “Well, whatever you’re doing, keep it up. Gives the rest of us something to hide behind.”

  Dingle leaned forward, pulling the swizzle straw he’d been chewing from a gap in his teeth. “What in the hell happened on that flight? I was in the second wave, so all I saw was the dust-up in the debrief. I couldn’t make heads or tails. What’d you do, Silvers?”

  She wasn’t really in the mood to rehash that day. She’d worked so hard trying to be a wallflower the last couple of weeks. She had been pretty sure there would be some repercussion for her impertinence during the debrief. Every time the phone rang in her room she’d jumped. Whenever Slammer walked into the Ready Room looking for a student, her heart skipped a beat and she willed herself to be invisible. “I leaned down to punch the Air-to-Ground switch and climbed a little. Right into their radar screens.”

  Moto jumped to her defense. “But you bagged two MiGs. Well done.”

  “Slammer only got one,” HOB added.

  “Yeah, but I screwed up and didn’t get to the target. You guys heard him.”

  “Big deal,” Busta said. “I was in the second wave with Freak. We missed the target by a mile. Like literally, a mile. We might’ve scared a rabbit or something.”

  “At least you got there.” She shrugged.

  “What about Dusty?” Pig joined in with a sly grin. “I hear she got some award or something.”

  “Yeah, she’s the smartest fighter pilot never to go in harm’s way.”

  She fought the impulse to laugh out loud at HOB’s spot-on assesment. “I’m pretty sure I don’t want to talk about it. Who’s ready for a shot?” She jumped to her feet and sliced through the crush of bodies to the bar before they could answer. Lori, the O Club fixture for more than thirty years, as much matriarch as bartender, appeared. “Lori, can I get six shots, please?” She slapped her money onto the bar top.

  Lori grabbed six glasses and quick-poured to the brim with dark, cheap whiskey. “Thanks. Keep the change.” She maneuvered back to the table, managing to keep most of the booze in the glasses then passed one to each of her classmates.

  Standing in front of them, she held her glass aloft. “Cheers, boys. Here’s to not peeing in your panties when the MiGs are at your six.”

  Pig shuffled to his feet, raising his glass with her. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “You quit wearing panties?” Moto asked, wobbling as he stood.

  “Nope, still do. Just never had a MiG at my six.” He slapped Moto on the back, sloshing some of the whiskey onto his flight suit.

  Busta, Dingle and HOB stood and they all tipped their glasses back, draining the burning liquid with a shudder.

  She leaned an arm fraternally on Moto’s shoulder and felt the tension from the last couple weeks melt away, like snow in a hot tub. She loved flying more than anything she could imagine, but it was nice to get a break. To hang with the boys and cut loose a little. She had duct-taped her wild side into a box after the now infamous debrief debacle, but she felt it peeking out as the whiskey and bonhomie eroded her defenses.

  She scanned the bar again, looking for something but not sure what. Groups of aviators moved among each other in small packs, like schools of fish from slightly different species, each sporting the bright regalia of their particular squadron’s patches, stitched with skull-and-crossbones or rearing lions. Her gaze settled on Slammer, sitting with JT and the rest of his sycophants. They all looked so comfortable and smug. She watched, with a growing irritation, as the other instructors hung on every word Slammer uttered. He raised his head, as if sensing her disapproving glare and their eyes locked a second time. She felt a shiver and turned away immediately, not willing to play that game again.

  “How about some Crud?” Pig growled, watching her with a look she didn’t appreciate. “Nothing like a good beating to make you feel better.” She didn’t like the way he sounded, either. What did he think he knew?

  She felt her wild side and the irritation combine and before she knew what she was saying the words catapulted from her mouth. “Yes! Let’s challenge the instructors. They need a good thrashing.”

  Dingle sputtered his beer. “You crazy?” In response to his classmates’ disapproving looks, he added, “I’ve only played a couple’a times.”

  “So? What’ve you got to lose?” Silvers challenged him.

  Dingle shrugged. “A tooth?”

  Busta nudged him with his elbow, knocking him off balance. “What are you, Slammer’s lap dog? Quit being a pussy.”

  HOB stood, always ready to go. She could tell he thought they had a snowball’s chance in hell, but that irrepressible twinkle was in his eye. “Plus, we’ve got Silvers on our side,” he said. “If she’s half as good at Crud as she is at shooting MiGs, we can’t lose.”

  Moto shook his head slowly, ever the disappointed father figure. He climbed reluctantly to his feet and looked at her, both hands wringing his beer bottle. “You sure you got enough lives left over?”

  She nodded at him and beamed. “That’s it men. Tighten up your girdles and let’s have some fun.”

  Slammer had a couple of drinks in his belly and he was settling into a mellow glow. Then something caught his eye at the periphery of the bar. He turned to watch, with growing curiosity, as Silvers cut through the crowd toward his table like an icebreaker, her face a mask of intention he couldn’t quite decipher. His muscles tensed as it became clear she was headed straight for him. She came to a stop, surveying him and his friends with a look of mild disdain that couldn’t quite conceal the mischief in her eyes.

  He shot an inquiring glance at Pig, who’d sauntered up behind her, but Pig just shrugged innocently. Slammer was about to stand, to rescue her from something she would regret later, when she blew right past saving.

  Reaching out a hand to the obliging Pig, she stepped on the corner of Slammer’s chair on her way to the top of the table. With the tip of her steel-toed boot, she cleared a small space among the bottles and stood, hands on her hips and a smirk on her face. It was such a shocking and deliberate act that not one of the instructor
s was able to protest.

  He knew he was going to love whatever came next.

  For the second time that day, one of the students in his fucking NKR class managed to silence all conversation in a bar renowned for outlandish behavior. Heads turned and conversations paused as Silvers took a preparatory breath. “We students do challenge the all-knowing, all-powerful instructors, to a duel in the age-old game of Crud.” Then she tilted her head toward him with a smile that ignited his blood. “If they dare.”

  It was, without a doubt, the most outrageously audacious act this club had seen in months. After a millisecond of stunned silence, the crowd exploded in a wave of cheers and excited babble. A herd of bodies, like migrating wildebeest, stampeded from the bar toward the Crud room in the back looking to secure prime viewing spots.

  Slammer shook off his stunned silence and watched Silvers leap from the table into the arms of her classmates, a few of whom looked anxious and downright scared.

  He stood slowly and deliberately, keeping his eye on her as much for safety as appraisal. He glanced at Truck, who nodded with a menacing grin, and at Chewie, who was bouncing on his feet in anticipation, and at JT, who was sporting a supremely confident look. Then he turned to Silvers, now standing in front of her skittish group with her arms crossed and a smile on her face, brash and brazen, like the leader of some suburban street gang. How could she do this to him every time; piss him off yet thrill him to his core?

  Hundreds in the room were poised waiting for his response to the affront. He clenched his jaw to keep from laughing with joy. “Alright,” he said, managing a passable Clint Eastwoodesque delivery. “But we’re not going to put your diapers back on when we’re done with the spanking.”

  The crowd frothed to a fevered pitch as the flow of bodies toward the Crud room accelerated. He gestured to Silvers, bowing and waving her forward with exaggerated grace. “After you.” She curtsied mockingly then led her troops through the mayhem to the Crud room. He and his boys followed close behind.

  In the back of the Club was a special room for this peculiar game. If you could shove the fifty or sixty bloodthirsty spectators out, you’d see a plain space about the size of a racquetball court. The room was unfurnished but for a pool table on a linoleum tile floor and a blackboard affixed to the otherwise bare white walls. On the surface of the pool table only two balls rested, the white cue ball and the black 8 ball. There were no sticks to be seen; much safer that way. The sides of the table were bolstered by a layer of heavy padding, which always reminded Slammer of the loose bulky plates of an old rhinoceros. Empty like this, the Crud room was cold and unimpressive. Now reinsert the boisterous crowd and suddenly the room took on the charged atmosphere of a cockfight or a backroom bare-knuckle brawl. The spectators jockeyed for position, leaving a small clearing around the perimeter of the table with just enough space for the two teams to maneuver. Slammer felt the temperature in the packed space spike.

  He tapped JT and pointed to the blackboard. The WSO elbowed over and began scrawling the names of the players on both teams from top to bottom. Next to each name JT drew three circles. Three lives.

  He nudged Eagle, an instructor WSO standing near him. “Hey, we need a fifth. You in?”

  Eagle wore his sandy blond hair buzzed no-nonsense close. The haircut combined with his broad chest and button nose gave him the clean-cut look of a linebacker from a 50’s college squad. Eagle flashed a big toothy grin in anticipation. “Hell, yes.”

  JT added the name at the bottom of the instructor list.

  He then grabbed a chubby, red-faced WSO at the edge of the spectators. “Beet, you’re the ref,” he stated matter-of-factly. It wasn’t quite a command, but he didn’t leave much room for negotiations.

  Beet pushed forward, positioning himself on the long side of the pool table just in front of the pocket. Someone from the crowd tossed him a bar towel, which he flopped over his shoulder to use as the penalty flag. He spread his arms wide and a restless quiet spread over the packed room. “Standard house rules. No biting, kicking, or scratching.”

  Slammer laughed along with everyone else except, he noted, Dingle.

  The origins of the game are murky. Some legend about Royal Canadian fighter pilots during World War II, bored and under the influence, and stranded at a remote base in Nova Scotia. Whatever the genesis, those founding fathers got it right. They managed to condense all of the essential elements of the ephemeral thing known as fighter spirit into an eight-foot by five-foot arena. They conceived a violent amalgam of rugby and pool, fueled by alcohol and adrenaline. Much like the dogfights taking place in the sky, theirs was an extremely physical game that balanced aggressiveness and brute strength against speed, precision, and guile. And luck—always lady luck.

  The goal was to sink the 8 ball by striking it with the cue ball. Ideally, the shooter—by tossing the cue ball—managed to sink the 8 ball straight off, and if he did so, the defender lost a life. If the 8 ball did not drop into a pocket, then the shooter rotated to the back of his team’s lineup, and the person on the other team who had been the defender instantly became his team’s shooter. The combatants were required to enter play in proper sequence, or lose a life, yet at any moment only one member from each team was engaged in the action. And thus it rotated at breakneck pace, bodies rushing forward, scrambling to keep the proper order, at first defending, and then shooting, one after the other, after the other, until someone lost a life. And then they all took a breath, and a drink, and started up again.

  “Five man—ah, person—teams,” Beet continued, glancing at Silvers. “Three lives each.” Slammer shuffled his team into the proper sequence as Beet leaned over the table, picked up the cue and 8 balls, and placed them centered at opposite ends about a foot from the bumpers. “Naturally, the ref gets all the beer he can handle and the losers buy for the winners.”

  Silvers grabbed a pitcher from a bystander and hurried to fill Beet’s mug.

  When shooting, the goal was to sink the 8 ball, or if you couldn’t sink it, to at least strike it to keep it in motion. The defender’s job was to disrupt the shooter so he was unable to hit the 8 ball. The defender could do this through distraction, by waving his hands in front of the ball or the shooter’s eyes, or by physically boxing out the shooter. Almost anything went, short of actual tackling. And if the blocker succeeded and the 8 ball came to a complete stop, the shooter would then lose a life.

  Slammer rubbed JT’s shoulders like a trainer prepping a boxer for the first round as Beet finished up. “For you newbies, only shoot or block on the ends. And if you spill my beer, that’s a life.” Beet paused for a sip. “Questions?”

  Slammer knew there would be no queries; this wasn’t the time nor place for a raised hand. Ignorance was weakness and weakness was like chum.

  “Okay then. Players take your positions. Fight’s on!” Beet dropped his arms theatrically and the noise from the onlookers swelled.

  Slammer approached the table from the opposite side as the first defender. He looked across the expanse of green felt at Silvers and gave her a little smirk, shaking his head at her cheekiness. She shrugged a “what can you do?” back at him. No matter what, the girl had guts. He looked left and spotted Truck, the next in line, poised and attentive, on the balls of his feet, ready for action. Over to his right, Pig was next on the student side; as usual Pig looked as if he had just woken from a nap.

  He played forward the imminent sequence of events. Silvers would whip the cue and it would smack the 8 ball just in front of him. He would snatch the ricocheting cue ball before it bounded out of reach, then he’d brace himself against Pig’s blocking assault, anchoring his left hand onto the bumper, as he waited for the 8 ball to roll obligingly in front of a pocket. Then he would aim, toss, and score; one life down on the student side. If there was one thing he was sure of, they were going to pound these kids into oblivion.

  At the other end, eight feet away, he watched Silvers pick up the cue ball and brush it back and fo
rth on the table a couple of times, like she was revving it up. He leaned over and placed his hands in front of the 8 ball, shielding the target from her view. With each feint from Silvers he snatched his hands away so as not to impede the cue’s path. The worst that could happen, he thought, was for her to get lucky on the first shot and sink it.

  He tracked her hand intently as it moved back and forth with the cue ball. Back and forth. Back and forth. Then her hand froze. He chanced a look to her face and she tilted her head, looking him directly in the eyes. Her pretty face broke into a big smile and she winked at him. Just for him. Not the room full of louts whose cheers he couldn’t really hear right now. What the hell was that about? And as he looked into her eyes, pondering the wink, he could just make out the white streak of the cue ball rocketing across the table. Before he could react the ball cracked him hard on the knuckle. “Shit!”

  He yanked his hand away as if it had been bitten by a snake, rubbing the sore spot. He heard the crowd go nuts and Beet yell, a little too enthusiastically for his taste, “Interference! Life on Slammer.”

  He couldn’t help but grin as he watched Silvers spin in a victory dance while someone crossed out his first life on the blackboard. He caught her eye as she came back to firing position. “We got a long way to go, little girl. They don’t call me Slammer for nothing.”

  “And why do they call you Slammer…sir?” she shot back.

  He leaned over again and motioned with his hands to bring it on.

  This time Silvers struck the 8 ball, sending it careening, but not sinking it. He grabbed the ricocheting cue ball and fired off a quick shot as Pig threw himself hard into him. But for the fact he was already down a life, it happened just the way he’d foreseen. The 8 ball rattled briefly in the corner pocket before sinking with a clunk. Life on Pig. He pumped his fist and the crowd cheered with him.

  The game intensified as it progressed. Blocker, then shooter, then back of the rotation. And as the action evolved it quickly became apparent the students were managing to hold their own. What they lacked in size and experience they made up for in speed and wits. Time after time they would neutralize the size advantage of the instructors by dashing around to the opposite end of the table and shooting just before the 8 ball lost momentum.