Stage Door Canteen (20 page)

Donna Marie said that if Gene decided to spend the night they would give him their bed and sleep in the kids’ room, and put the kids on a pallet on the floor.

God, that was worse; he didn’t want to spend the night with Donna Marie and Reece, either. He finally convinced them, standing in the moonlight, arguing through the open window of the car, until they gave up and drove off. He went into the trailer and turned on the light in the kitchen.

There were two beds, one in the back, and one up front overlooking the pickup when it was hitched up. They hadn’t been made up or the sheets changed since Gene had been there, although Morley had promised that he would get a girl to come in to clean. He started toward the back and the flooring suddenly started to come up at him, going up and down in waves just like he was on a rollercoaster. He swallowed hard and grabbed hold of the edge of the dinette table to steady himself. His stomach was on a rampage. He wondered if he should go outside and try to bring it all up, puke and get rid of it, but he couldn’t make up his mind. He had to get into bed, he told himself.

He sat down on the bed, which ran from side to side in the trailer’s picture window. The sheets on the bed in the front smelled sour. He took off his shoes. Then, knowing it was wrong, that he shouldn’t do it, that he would fall asleep in his uniform and mess it up, he lay back against the tangled, smelly bed in his father’s trailer and closed his eyes.

It was going to be bad this time

Christ, it was his own damned fault, he thought dizzily, because this didn’t happen unless he was drunker than hell. He had to watch it; he always passed-out, whatever you wanted to call it, and had nightmares. Always the same thing. Big heart-pounding bursts of terror.

What’s going on—speak up somebody! Please, for God’s sake—tell us what’s going on?

It was going to be damned, stinking, bad.

In gunnery school there was a joke: The first act of the waist gunners is to help the gunner out of the ball turret.

Well, he got out on his own.

He never had any problem, anyway, joke or no joke; he could exit the ball turret in ten or fifteen seconds, grab his parachute and head for the emergency door. He’d practiced it hundreds of times.

Now, with the screaming in his headphones, he set the machine guns to down position. It was usually a wrong thing to do, because the enemy could see you’d vacated the bomber’s belly turret, but in this case it didn’t matter: they were so close to the ocean no Zeros were going to try to attack from below.

Then, he did what he always did in his nightmares: he rotated the turret to ninety degrees and got ready to stand up and climb out. They were already in big trouble. About a dozen fighters from the Jap fleet swarmed over them. The Cincy Gal was limping along at less than a couple of hundred feet minus one engine and, it sounded like, about to lose another. The Zeros were giving the Cincy Gal hell.

He hadn’t seen the one coming on frontal approach, but he’d felt the explosions rock the airframe from the Zeros twenty millimeter cannon. Instantly, he’d yelled on the intercom for the waist gunners, who were right above him, Morales and Pete Dano. But all he could hear were screams. Then the voice of Joe van Dorndt, the pilot, in the headset: “We’ve been hit!”

The voices ran over each other. Markowitch, up in the top turret, “I’ve been hit, Jesus, my hand’s gone! It’s gone!”

In the tail, Wally Petit, “One o’clock, one o’clock! Look sharp, you gunners! Zeros coming in over the waist!”

The terrible screaming went on. He couldn’t tell who it was. Markowitch’s voice, in the top turret, faint, in trouble: “My hand’s blown off. I have to come down. I’m hurt bad, I need a tourniquet.”

It sounded like they’d taken cannon fire up front, too. At least they were still underway. God knows what was going on. That was the worst part, not knowing; his heart was already pounding like a trip hammer.

He positioned his turret so that the door faced up into the fuselage, and unplugged his headphones. As soon as the door matched the opening into the waist he scrambled out into the plane. Or tried to. His hands landed on hot cartridge casings from the machine guns that were all over the floor, and they slipped out from under him. Grabbing furiously, he went down, cracking his jaw on the turret edge, half in and half out. Dano and Morales had been busy: it looked like the whole inside of the Cincy Gal was filled with empty casings spewed out by the two waist guns.

Breathless, he rolled out onto the floor on his stomach and got to his knees. He slipped in the rolling casings and fell again. The B-17 was yawing wildly. He wondered what the hell had happened up in the cockpit, if van Dorndt was wounded. If anybody had control of the plane. He saw the waist guns standing empty. Then someone in a leather flight suit lying on the floor by a waist gun. It looked like Morales.

“Carlos?” He had to scream to be heard. “Dano? Where the hell are you?”

Nobody answered. They’re dead, he thought. He tried to make himnself believe it.

The noise in the waist was deafening with the roar of the piston engines and now the wind howling through the big hole in the fuselage. Everything shook, rattled. The plane skidded, then sideslipped. He could only stay on his feet by grabbing the handles of the port machine gun. He found himself suddenly staring out the gap in the Cincy Gal’s side at half a dozen black specks against white clouds and blue sky. Jap Zeros, twisting and looping like flies around something already dead. The wind that blew in through the hole in the side of the fuselage was warm and moist. They were roaring along just above the sea. And he was wearing sheepskin-lined high altitude flight clothes made for freezing temperatures.

He tried again, shouting their names. Pete! Carlos! The body he thought was Carlos Morales didn’t stir. He couldn’t see Pete Dano at all. The waist had taken exploding shells from the attacking Zeros. It had to be that, to do so much damage. He had a wild idea Dano might have fallen into one of the holes and out of the plane.

His hands were shaking, adrenalin pumping. He fumbled to locate the jack at the waist gun, then plugged in his headset. There was sticky stuff all over everything, even the gun. The gun mount, the handles, the ammo belt, the sights, even the twin barrels had small pieces of something that had blown apart, leaving dangling bits like so many moving little caterpillars on everything. Even, he saw, fleshy scraps stuck on the wall. Up the sides.

A voice, high and shrill, Wally, the tail gunner: “Zeros at nine o’clock! Waist gunners, Pete and Carlos! What’s going on?’

The pilot, Joe Van Dorndt: “Hang on, we’re on our way back to Midway.”

Joe sounded like hell, he could barely speak. The noise in the waist was mind-numbing; Gene was used to being shut up, down under in the turret. He yelled, “Lieutenant, this is Struhbeck, I’m up in the waist. We took a shell back here, a lot of damage, big holes in the sides. I can see Morales, I don’t know where Dano is.”

On the intercom Weathersley said he’d taken over the top turret gun from Markowitch. A burst of fire from two Zeros off the tail kept Wally the tail gunner cursing: “Lieutenant, they’re on our ass! You gonna be able to keep this thing in the air?”

Three Zeros were coming in on the port side. There were yells of “One o’clock , one o’clock!” He dove for the waist gun. In the belly turret the twin fifty caliber guns were sighted with a computing sight, plus there was the advantage of nearly all attacks breaking away under the bomber. But the guns in the waist were sighted like a shotgun: if you took time to sight the target the attacker would in all probability be past you before you drew a bead.

To hell with it, he told himself. There wasn’t much choice.

He leaned into the Browning, bracing himself against the plane’s erratic bouncing. The Cincy Gal slid into a steep dive. Then, engines roaring, it managed to pull out. He pressed the firing button. A burst from the machine gun and two Zeros climbed away. There were two more right behind them.

“Zero down, zero down!” Wally Pettit again. “You got him!”

He was streaming sweat in the fleece-lined flight suit. Water ran down into his eyes. He stopped every few rounds to wipe away the mess on the gun with his bare hands, then wipe them on his front, not even realizing what he was doing. He heard himself yelling. It didn’t matter. Still the Zeros came on. He’d swear there were more than when they’d first started near the Jap fleet.

“Eugene, watch it!” Wally, in the tail. “Other side!”

He let go of the port gun and stumbled across the slippery floor, over the casings. His hands were sticking to everything. He tried to rub them on the wall and they stuck to that, too. There were little bits of stuff everywhere. He had pulled off his sheepskin-lined gloves; his bare palms and fingers were bright red, like paint.

There was blood everywhere, he realized. Blood all over the machine gun and the floor, dark red blood that glued the insides of his fingers together. There were clumps of blood all over the front of his flight jacket and leather pants. He didn’t know where all the blood had come from; he was pretty sure he wasn’t wounded. He fired short bursts at a lone Jap fighter coming over the top of the Cincy Gal, close enough to see shooting plumes of blue light from the gun outlets. And he suddenly knew why the waist was filled with blood and scraps of flesh. He suddenly knew why he couldn’t find Dano.

It took a moment for it to make sense. When it did, it drove him crazy. He clamped his jaw and mouth shut against the scream. Dano and Morales were dead. In fact, there wasn’t much hope for any of them; the Cincy Gal was probably going to have to ditch. They were all going to die. And all he wanted to do before he died was shoot down Japs. Kill them dead, like they’d killed Dano and Morales.

In his earphones, voices: Nine o’clock! Struhbeck, here they come!

He dove for the port gun, fired a series of bursts next to the big hole in the fuselage, then slid back to the other. He put another ammo belt into the fifty millimeter. When he fired, a Zero coming straight at them seemed to break into small black pieces and fall, circling down, into the ocean.

He didn’t bother to see how it ended; he threw himself across the waist. He kept scrambling back and forth, covering both guns, yelling like a lunatic, gasping for breath, trying not to think. It went on and on. It was probably minutes, but it seemed like hours.

Then, abruptly, the enemy broke off the attack and just faded away. The Zero fighters, at fuel limits, pulled out to go back to their carriers.

Then there was nothing. Only the racket that never let up, the big bomber laboring along close to the water. He was dripping sweat. He leaned against the starboard gun, and couldn’t bring himself to make the effort to get out of the sheepskin-lined flight suit. Or even get his parachute in the corner by the radio room and put it on. He was so suddenly tired he could hardly lift his arms.

The intercom was chattering. The crew checking in. He couldn’t answer. He unplugged his headset and hobbled over stiffly, like an old man, and knelt down beside Carlos Morales. He didn’t turn Morales over; he didn’t want to see his face because a large part of the back of Morales’ head was missing. He wondered if Morales was the one who’d done all the screaming.

He must have been, because what was left of the other waist gunner, Pete Dano, was scattered all over the inside of the plane. Dano must have just blown apart. Except for his leg, which was by the ammunition boxes at the starboard gun. What had hit Pete had sucked off his flight boot, leaving a white foot bare. There didn’t seem to be any more big pieces of Dano like that. Not another arm or leg, anyway.

He took Morales’ hand in his, and it was still warm. It made him feel sick to think that Morales’ body was still warm. He was such a nice young guy, only nineteen and just married. His wife had come to San Fancisco to be with him for a couple of days before they’d shipped out. Between his blood-sticky fingers Morales’ hand felt soft and spiritless.

Somebody back on Midway, if they even got back to Midway, was going to have to go around with a bag the Air Force kept for those purposes, and collect all of Pete Dano and put him in it, including all those little bits that were on the inside of the plane. The quivering fragments that he had scraped off the handles of the guns. And the unidentifiable stuff on the floor that was mixed in with the spent cartridge casings. There were some bigger lumps there. And the blood stuck to you like syrup and was about as thick. Nothing would make the damned blood go away.

Suddenly, holding Morales’ warm, dead, hand, he began to cry. Deep, racking sobs that all came at once. He was shocked at how bad his crying sounded. It seemed like he couldn’t stop, even when Weathersley and Wally Pettit came to get him. They didn’t look too good themselves. They said Bridges, the co-pilot was dead. That Van Dorndt had brought the Cincy Gal back even though he was hurt, and Markowitch had his hand blown off; they were both being loaded into the ambulance.

They lifted him up and carried him out of the plane to make sure he got out, and told him, Gene take it easy. They said he’d got four Jap Zeros, confirmed, the Air Force would give him a medal for sure. What he needed was to clean up first, and then they’d all go over to the club and get a drink. Lots of drinks.

More drinks weren’t any good, though; Gene had learned that since Midway.

When he got drunk, he had the nightmare and had to live it all over again. Every damned thing: the foggy day of June Fourth when the Japanese fleet was truly lost and nobody could find them, the trouble locating the right enemy targets and what happened when they did. Then the trip back, attacked by Jap fighters, with the Cincy Gal’s nearly fatal engine trouble. The deaths of Leon Bridges, and Peter Dano, and Carlos Morales.