Cassada (15 page)

“We're leaving.”

“I mean, what is this?”

“What is it? What do you think?”

“No, no. I was here.
I
met you, didn't I?” he said to the girl. She gave a slight laugh.

“I'll see you, Robert,” Isbell said.

“Hey, Captain. This is not on duty.”

“Duty?”

“You can't pull rank.”

“I don't have to.”

“Let
her
choose.”

“You're out past where you should be,” Isbell said calmly.

“No, no. Oh, no.”

“Let's go,” Isbell said calmly to the girl. “See you later,” he said to Cassada.

Cassada stood there. The one woman in Munich, he thought, the one woman in all that time. He felt sick. He could not believe it. He went out to the street after them, almost trembling, but too late, they were gone, the red taillights leaving him behind.

A lieutenant named Myers had been killed near Toul. The paper didn't give his name, just his group, but someone had learned it. It was the second accident of the week. There'd been a bailout over Kaiserslautern a few days before.

“Myers,” Godchaux said. “I knew him. He was in my class in flying school. Good pilot.”

Harlan was reading the paper.

“They all are,” he said from in back of the pages.

“All are what?”

“Good pilots. Whatever happens to the lousy ones? That's what I wonder.”

It was one of the reasons to read the
Stars and Stripes,
starting in with a kind of sweepstakes excitement, wondering if there'd be one and if it would be anyone they knew. Harlan wasn't that far off—it was sometimes the best ones. The best or the worst.

There was a wind blowing, a strong wind keening under the eaves and making a sound like a prayer call. Isbell stood by himself
at the window. He could see the wind in the clear air and the shifting tone of the grass. Six planes were up and he was waiting for them to enter traffic. Not far from him Abrams sat squinting at the tape in the adding machine, printed with hour upon hour of flying time rich with error.

It was not that he was indifferent. He worked diligently, even after hours, round face shining with effort. Isbell had made up his mind more than once to get rid of him. It was hard to do. Some kind of lazy loyalty had crept in.

In the hangar birds nested in the rafters, skimming in and out the wide doorways. Isbell met Dunning there.

“Swallows,” Dunning said.

“Is that what they are?”

“That's what they are, all right.”

They were curving out into the brilliant day, swift, barely missing.

“They'll be crapping all over the windshields,” Dunning commented.

There were a few planes there that maintenance was at work on. Dunning stood peering up into the shadows.

“I'll have to get down here with a shotgun,” he said.

“Wickenden could probably do it.”

“I don't want anybody blowing holes in the roof. I'll do it myself,” Dunning said. “Well, they're after us again. We have to send two pilots down to Tripoli. It's part of a meet to decide which team from Europe will go to the States.”

“To Vegas?”

“Yeah.”

“We haven't practiced.”

“We're not even in it,” Dunning said. “It's a two-group shoot-off.”

“Which ones? How'd they pick them?”

Dunning was patting his pockets, looking for something.

“They did it from the gunnery scores,” he said.

“And we're not in it?”

“Yeah, I'd like to see the scores.”

“I can't believe it. They were probably punching holes in the targets with a screwdriver. I've seen that.”

“Maybe we should have thought of that ourselves.”

His pockets, as he fished in them, seemed too small. He felt around his thighs.

“I've got the orders here somewhere. Here we are. A flight leader to be one of the judges and one tow pilot.”

“For how long?”

“Well, they don't say. About a week or more, I'd guess.”

Isbell saw them returning, climbing down sun-browned from the cockpit.

“For the flight leader . . .” he said, considering.

“Reeves.”

“He'd be all right.”

“Who else do you think?”

“Me.”

Dunning gave a slow, knowing smile. He inserted the meditative tip of his little finger in his ear and moved it around, looking at the floor and then at Isbell.

“It's only for a week,” Isbell said. “Things are winding down here. We're going to be relieved on Saturday. Wick can run things.”

“I suppose so.”

Isbell waited.

“Who do you want to take with you?” Dunning asked. “It ought to be someone who'd get something out of going. A good gunner.”

“Good or with good potential.”

“There's Godchaux, of course. Dumfries didn't do so bad last time we were down.”

“Not Dumfries,” Isbell said. Dunning seldom agreed to two things in a row. It was necessary to edge around like a crab, come in from the side. “Let me think about it.”

“All right. We have to send the names in today.”

“Give me an hour or so.”

It was cold in the hangar. The noon wind was cutting along the roof and making a strange, blue sound. The note rose and then faded, as if there were an empty bottle and the wind blowing across it.

“Roast chicken for lunch,” Dunning said. “Have you been over?”

“Not yet.”

“Better get there while there's some left.”

“I'll be along.”

Later, where the road passed the end of the runway Isbell stopped and waited at the red light while two of his planes landed, a little unsteady in the powerful wind. The Volksbus quivered, too, its flatness catching the wind. He saw the planes touch down and slow almost immediately. Finally, looking as if they'd stopped completely, they showed their sides as they turned off the runway halfway down. He heard a horn blow. Someone behind him accelerated impatiently past.

In the barracks the next day, Dumfries sat watching as Cassada packed, tossing clothes on top of the dresser like someone expelled from school.

“I hear you're going to Tripoli.”

“That's right.”

“How'd that happen?”

Cassada gave a shrug. “Captain Isbell told me I was going, that's all.”

“What's it for?”

“A gunnery meet.”

“Are you going to shoot?”

“I don't know. I hope so.”

Dumfries sat flicking at a set of car keys on the table with his finger.

“I just wonder how they made the choice,” he said.

“Captain Wickenden put me up for it.”

“No, really.”

“I'm serious.”

“He wouldn't do that. I don't think he'd do that.”

“He decided to reform.”

Dumfries continued flicking the keys, his brow puzzled.

“Tell me the truth,” he said.

IV

H
ARLAN
TURNS TO THEM, SUDDENLY POINTING
. . .

Harlan turns to them, suddenly pointing.

“What?”

“Look out there, Major.”

Dunning sees nothing.

“Where?” he says.

Harlan waves a finger back and forth, pointing all over. Godchaux looks, then raises a hand, palm up. On the window glass points of water are appearing. Suddenly Dunning sees them and understands. It almost seems a sign. He would give the world for just one thing, to have them both on the ground. The rain is the answer. The trees are darker now. The clouds are heavier, the daylight gone from them.

They don't have Isbell yet. They think he might be orbiting the beacon. Dunning turns that over in his mind. Would Isbell be doing that, circling up there, waiting for nothing while his last fuel goes? No, Dunning thinks, but what else might he do? He can't decide. If only Cadin weren't there.

“It's just coming down light, Major,” Godchaux says from the doorway. “It isn't bad.”

“No.”

“It might even stop.”

Dunning doesn't reply. Things that will never matter. White Lead is waiting for an answer, he wants to know if they have White Two yet. He wants to be steered to him.

“Listen, never mind about White Two,” Dunning directs. “What's your fuel?”

“Say again, GCA.”

“This is mobile. What's your fuel?”

After a moment,

“Seven hundred pounds.”

Seven hundred pounds. Dunning imagines they can hear that all over the base, in the other squadrons, the headquarters, the housing area. The tape is running. Up in the tower it's all being recorded, static, squeals, voices. Everything that would be rerun again and again. Seven hundred pounds—the board would be writing it on their yellow tables, seven and two zeroes.

“Never mind about him, White,” Dunning calls. “You'll never find him in the weather.”

No answer.

“White Lead?”

There is nothing.

“Do you read mobile, White?”

“Roger.”

“Make another approach. It's looking better down here. It's breaking up a little.”

Cadin takes the mike.

“White Lead, this is Colonel Cadin. Stay cool. Never mind the weather, you can make it in.”

“You were blocked. I couldn't read.”

Cadin repeats his instruction and as he finishes they hear the end of something White is saying, “. . . clear on top.”

“Where are you, White?” he asks.

“I'm climbing.”

“You're not on top?”

“Tops are about nine thousand.”

Dunning stands silent, trying to think. Things are running through his mind like a stream. They're both going to bail out. He has to get them down somehow, at least one of them. Godchaux shakes his head a little, looking at the ground. Harlan is watching the rain. It's not coming down harder, but neither is it letting up. The water shines on the roof of the Volksbus and around the runway lights. The runway will be slick. That's the least of it. No one's going to be using the runway, Harlan thinks. They could be parked right in the middle of it, as far as that goes. Dunning takes back the mike.

“White,” he calls abruptly, “don't climb any higher. That's an order. Make another approach.”

“I'm at forty-five hundred now,” Cassada reports.

“Don't climb! Do you understand? Shoot another approach.”

“I'm at five thousand, Major.”

He is doing the unthinkable. His heart skidding wildly in his chest, he is spending the last of his fuel, like diving, though this is the opposite, with lungs bursting and no breath left, almost none, into the rolling dark water where he must try and find someone drowned. He is casting his own chances away, from either some fierce sense of duty or the confused desire to do what Isbell would have done, or perhaps be with him in disaster, the two of them at the last.

For a moment they are all persuaded. It's a slim chance but
somewhere up there Isbell is flying in silence. There's at least the chance of them seeing each other, joining and trying it together one last time.

“He don't have the fuel,” Harlan says quietly.

They don't hear him or don't want to. There's always the last minute. You come to fields you've given up on, you knew you would never be able to find. At the last moment they appear magically as if summoned out of nothing. It could be like that.

“He don't have it to spare,” Harlan warns.

Godchaux stands in the doorway hugging himself and looking outside. The beige felt shows under the turned-up collar of his blouse. He blows into the end of his fist to warm his fingers. He shakes his head again. His expression is calm but all this is amazing to him, unbelievable. It's already part of lore.

Dunning leans on the counter, staring out. The seat of his trousers is wrinkled from sitting all day, and the back of his jacket. One chance in a hundred is all, but still a chance. He brings the microphone to his mouth, ready to speak. His thumb fiddles with the button. Finally, unable to stay silent, he says,

“Are you on top yet, White?” He presses the button in and out to make sure he's transmitting. “White from mobile, are you on top yet?”

Harlan says nothing. He would like to say, what's the point of his going up? He's headed the wrong way. You don't get down by going up. You don't have to go to college to figure that out. The thing that's really too bad is they can't talk to each other. That would be nice, to hear them, Cassada and the captain, especially the next five minutes. Old Wickenden was right for once. They should of listened to him. Sometimes these regulars know what they're talking about. It's the law of averages.