Paper Doll (3 page)

Lewis did seem to have it in for Bean, and no one knew why. It was an instinctual thing, it appeared; pure schoolyard.

“I'm Bean's personal bogie,” Lewis said. “His own bandit. In the cloud, out of the sun. Whenever he lets his guard down.”

“I should talk to Lieutenant Gabriel,” Bean said. “I don't see how we're supposed to work together.”

Lewis shouted and jumped on him. Bean shrieked and Lewis drove them both into the crockery pile. The others laughed and a cup skittered edgewise like a top across the hardstand. Lewis held a teacup to the crown of Bean's head like a tiny dunce cap, and Bryant laughed, grateful to have been spared the humiliation.

“Leave him alone, Lewis,” he said. As they shifted, the crockery made musical sounds beneath their weight. “Aren't we a little old for this?”

“Listen to George Arliss,” Lewis snorted. “A year out of high school under his belt. And Strawberry, not even old enough to
have
a fight.”

“I prefer other forms of contact, if that's what you mean,” Snowberry said.

“I'm trying to toughen this crew up,” Lewis said. “I know I'm doing the right thing. Bean knows that, even if you don't. Right?” He glared down at Bean.

“It's pretty clear to me,” Bean said. Lewis got off him.

“You're the oldest,” Bryant said. “You should set an example.”

“I am,” Lewis said. “I'm getting pretty tired of you guys not picking it up.” About them as a crew he often said, The third time is no charm, boy, stressing the endless ways they did not, as raw rookies, measure up to his first two crews. He particularly had loved his original pilot, a man named Sewell he described as an “ace tyro,” who flew their plane with a tender, sad care. “Some of these guys, they wrestle and fight the thing,” he liked to say. “Sewell, he understood what I call Lewis's Law of Falling Tons of Metal.” Sewell had been killed in a manner Lewis did not volunteer information on.

He pointed at Snowberry, whose mouth was slightly open in childish concentration, as if he were going to sneeze. “This is what I'm talking about,” he said. He twiddled a cup grimly. “We're going after the best air force in the world, on their own ground. They don't have tours—you stay on till you get killed. Makes for guys who are real good. And real unhappy. Which makes them mean. They go head to head with Gordon Snowberry, Jr., here.”

“God help them,” Snowberry said.

“
We're
the best Air Corps in the world,” Piacenti said. “Aren't we?”

“Yeah,” Lewis said. “Listen, you fire eaters. I'm not taking on Bean without help, next time. You and you are going to help me.” He pointed at Snowberry and Bryant.

“Come on, you guys,” Bean said.

Lewis tucked in his shirt. A cup handle hung from his belt loop. “My old football coach used to tell the defense, ‘Boys, I want you to show up in groups of two or more and arrive in a bad humor.'”

“You're not funny, Lewis,” Bean said. “I hope you know that.”

“I appreciate the thought,” Lewis said.

After he left, Bean stood amid the crockery uncertainly, as if it had been his fault. He was an affable and quiet boy who closed his eyes when chewing his food, and Bryant liked him generally.

“Don't worry, Bean,” he said. “He'll find someone else.” He joined the rest of the crew, though, in being more or less satisfied that the abuse was centered mostly on Bean.

Snowberry said, “The thing about Lewis that's hard to keep in mind is that he doesn't have any good points.”

“I know he's just kidding,” Bean said. He seemed to doubt it.

At mess Bryant suggested to Lewis he lay off.

Lewis opened his mouth and displayed some masticated food and then looked away. Bryant felt that he'd disappointed him.

“What're you going to tell me?” Lewis asked. “‘Dislike May Split a Crew'?” It sounded harsher than Bryant would have liked, and he turned away, embarrassed. That had been pretty much what he had been planning to say.

“You think that's stupid?” he eventually said, trying to sound assertive. Lewis was on his second tour and the rest of the crew regarded that amount of experience and the decision to reenlist with nearly equal awe.

“He's not any good,” Lewis said. “He's helpless as a gunner and as a radio op he couldn't pick up the BBC.”

“He'll be all right,” Bryant suggested.

“Look,” Lewis said. “I'm flying with him. I can't teach him his job. I can teach him he's not all he should be.”

“That's a nice thing to teach someone,” Bryant said.

“I like to do it,” Lewis said. “My pleasure.”

Bryant felt chilled. He saw himself as no more competent than Bean was.

“Remember the kid from Idaho?” Lewis said. “Navigator? They figure now he thought he had the plane over the North Sea, by his figuring. Told the pilot to get down under the cloud, if he could, to look around. Only they were over Wales. Mountains.”

“He got mixed up,” Bryant said.

“Yes he did,” Lewis said. “Anatomically.”

Bryant ate, intimidated.

“Let me tell you something,” Lewis said. “We don't have mistakes on
Paper Doll.
I don't allow them. I personally don't allow them. If Gabriel won't make a thing about this, I will. You make a mistake, it's your ass on a stick, and I'll put it there. And you look like you make plenty of mistakes.” He turned his head, and Bryant after a pause stuck out his tongue. “We make a mistake, we're dead. You make a mistake, we're dead. Bean makes a mistake, we're dead. Ten people. You figure it out. Keep that in mind. There are no excuses. Some Nazi flies up our ass because I'm daydreaming in the tail, I'm going to get on the interphone and go, ‘My goof'?”

Bryant had a headache, around the eyes. It seemed his training every step of the way, from high school all the way to England, had been inept and incomplete. His number one goal in high school had been to avoid humiliation—not excel, not learn, not stand out, simply avoid humiliation—and he was distressed to have learned that things hadn't changed in the Army. He was more frightened of Lewis than of the Germans, and Lewis knew it and used it. Bryant knew nothing. In high school history his senior year they had spent a week coloring in the countries of Europe—blue for France, black for Germany, cross-hatching for the conquered areas—and his Germany Proper had stretched from Normandy to Leningrad. His teacher had held the paper up to ridicule in front of the class. His high school English teacher had shown three weeks of sketches she'd done of the Acropolis and then had tested them on Greek tragedy, and he'd gotten a 17 as a score, on a scale of 1-100. At the bottom of the test he'd written, “Nice sketches,” and she on the report card that went home that fall wrote, “Non-constructive and childish attitude.” He'd seen her on the street a week before he left and she'd congratulated him on becoming an American Eagle, and he'd said, “Why don't you shut up?”, wishing he'd had a wittier rejoinder.

Lewis took Bryant's roll and smoothed whitish margarine onto it with a finger. “Ah, we were as bad as you are,” he said. “Worse. We were cockier. We used to shout, ‘You'll be sor-ry!', at incoming crews. You get over that fast.”

“Not funny,” Bryant said.

Lewis leaned dangerously far back in his chair. “I'm in love with Gene Tierney,” he said. “I've got it bad, and that ain't good. We've got this afternoon to kill. Any ideas?”

Bryant shook his head, and Lewis pulled a small assemblage of leather straps out of his pocket, and unfolded it. It looked like a small and complex muzzle.

After a moment of silence Lewis said, “It's a cat harness.”

Bryant went on looking to indicate he needed more information.

“I'm thinking about organizing a cat throw,” Lewis said. “You interested?”

Bobby Bryant shook his head. “I'm disgusted, is what I am,” he said. “Really and truly.”

“It's absolutely safe,” Lewis said. “This design is based on our parachute design. Distributes the stress.”

Bryant finished his milk. “Who says our parachutes distribute the stress?”

“You got me there,” Lewis admitted.

“Why don't you do something normal?” Bryant asked. “Like read a magazine?”

“Or smell the flowers,” Lewis said. “Or both at the same time.”

“Well, don't tell Bean, whatever you do,” Bryant said. Bean loved cats. It dawned on Bryant that that was the point.

Lewis said, “You just go read a book, Commander. Maybe this isn't your event.”

They sat together under a huge hangar door and looked out at the steady drizzle. Ground school had been canceled and no one was forthcoming with any reasons why. The day had clouded up badly, as expected, and the sky was a depressing color. On nearby concrete engine block supports, water marks from the rain drooped like icing. Piacenti, Bean, Snowberry, and Bryant were rolling dice.

“This is what they call ‘bright intervals,'” Piacenti complained.

Snowberry was picking at his scalp. “Now usually I hate bedbugs in my hair,” he said. “But this one had that Certain Something.”

They hadn't formulated a game and were simply noting who rolled higher numbers. It was not an interesting way of passing the time. Bean and Piacenti sat with their backs to the hardstand and behind them in the distance a small knot of men had formed around Lewis. Bean glanced over his shoulder and returned to the dice.

“What're they doing over there?” Piacenti asked.

Snowberry shrugged. A small flailing object was tossed upward, a thin cord twisting behind.

“Lewis is having a cat throw,” Bryant said. He had decided he owed it to the cat.

Bean stood, without turning. “Was that a cat?” he asked.

The cat gained speed behind them, swinging now in a distant ellipsis around Lewis's head.

“He wants you to go over there,” Snowberry said. “That's why he's doing it.”

“Someone should do something,” Bean said.”

“Did you hear what I said?” Snowberry asked. “It's a trap.”

“That's wrong. It's horrible,” Bean said. He turned from them and took two steps out into the drizzle.

“Concentrate on what I'm saying,” Snowberry said. “T-R-A-P.”

Bean strode off.

Snowberry rolled the dice. “No hope,” he said.

Bryant and Piacenti stood up, as well, and Snowberry looked up at them in surprise. He said, “All right, all right,” and got to his feet. He added, “He showed me the harness. It
was
well designed.”

They walked through the light rain in an echelon, like gunfighters. Bryant felt self-conscious and faintly silly.

Snowberry squinted ahead at Lewis. “Imagine,” he said, “if he'd turned his genius to good, instead of evil.”

The men were cheering in the chilly drizzle. Ahead, Lewis had given the cord a few sharp wristy turns and let fly, sailing the cat out over the tarmac. It flew with legs outspread, like extended landing gear. It landed with some force and scrabbled up, stunned. Lewis and the men made a show of calling off the distance, footstep by footstep, and Bean reached the cat first, bending over it with a tenderness evident even at Bryant's distance. Bean looked over at Lewis and the men with hostility and Bryant could see the cat's tail curling slowly and alertly behind his protective back.

As they closed in on the group, Lewis asked for the cat and Bean refused to give it. Lewis hit him in the face and he fell onto his back. The cat sprinted free and crouched nearby, indecisive with fright.

Snowberry and Piacenti tried to break it up, and someone from
Boom Town
jumped on Bryant's back. Bryant recognized him as a tech sergeant named Hallet and abruptly found himself twisting on the wet tarmac on his side, trying to free himself from an armlock. Hallet tore at his hair.

“Hey, you guys, an officer,” someone said.

Gabriel broke it up with the shaky authority of a more or less new first lieutenant. Bryant pulled himself clear with a hot ear and a painful scalp and slapped Hallet's hand away. “What's the matter with you?” he said. “Are you crazy?”

He trooped them into the hangar, out of the rain. Bean's mouth was bloody and the blood bubbled onto his chin. Lewis rubbed a toothmark out of his knuckle. Bryant's ear was burning and he wondered what Hallet had done to it.

Gabriel confronted them with his hands on his hips. “So,” he said. “Let me ask you: have any of you come across, in your experience, the phrase ‘Dislike May Split a Crew'?”

Bryant gazed straight ahead. He could not look at Lewis.

Gabriel proceeded to dress them down. He was only a first lieutenant and not a very impressive one, though he meant well. Bryant thought about bacon.

He asked them if they thought he liked having to do this. “Is it that you don't have enough to do?” he said. “Do we have to fill up every minute to keep you out of trouble?” Boredom was getting to be the explanation accepted for any of the aircrews' actions that seemed unusually peculiar or pointless.

Bean and Lewis and Bryant spent the night guarding the fuel bowsers—huge, hulking, and filthy trucks that fueled the Fortresses before missions. The bowsers did not need to be guarded. The rain was a good deal more insistent. They stamped their feet endlessly in enormous shallow puddles and Bean hunched as though that would save some part of him from the wet, and touched his mouth tenderly with the tips of his fingers. He grumbled once that he got into trouble every time he associated with them, but otherwise the three of them remained silent, with the rain a steady rushing sound around them, and the chilled water sweeping down Bryant's back under his rain gear like a sluice.

Ground school was back on the next morning. The weather was awful and there'd be no flying for the third day in a row. No one was complaining.