Paper Doll (6 page)

The field looked as though it had been leveled in an afternoon. Half-crushed spider lilies with thick white stamens and stinging nettles grew and bloomed at oblique angles, and stagnant puddles filled the bulldozer tracks, giving off at dusk still more mosquitoes. Palmetto swamps bordered the asphalt runways. While they waited for their first Fortresses, they stayed out of the sun and flipped gravel at posing lizards and gazed at the groups of brown and ugly B-24's spread along the aprons like giant dragonflies in the waves of heat. They sweated through their shirts by seven each morning and talked with enthusiasm of their good fortune in drawing Fortresses. When the Fortresses finally appeared, they delighted in comparing the two heavy bombers: the Forts, like swept-back and low racers with their noses in the air, alongside the hopelessly boxy Liberators, each with all the military aplomb of an old flying boat. They liked to say that the Liberators were the crates the Fortresses had been shipped in. When the time came, they flew two unremarkable orientation flights in a tired old E variant, their first B-17.

Bryant had risen early the morning of that first flight and had gone over the plane nose to tail with the ground crew chief as the sole flight engineer for the first time, feeling fraudulent and redoing and botching checks, whispering to himself. He had waited, later, until Gabriel was seated in the cockpit and gazing at him pointedly before officially pronouncing the engines ready, in a voice so constricted with fear over the interphone that Snowberry had later compared it to Andy Devine's. The four old Wright Cyclone engines, decommissioned after fifty or so missions over God knew where in France and Holland, performed with efficiency, and by the end of the flight his checks had become routine. His confidence had grown. He had imagined his fellow crew members admiring his steady professionalism, and then had discovered that Gabriel had been having the crew chief double-check the important systems.

They had flown without warning from the Floridian heat to the Newfoundland cold. Fichtner had sat on the gray and cold rocks of Gander like a seabird. They'd flown from Florida to Texas to Iowa to Newfoundland and he was disoriented by the changes. The crew had treated him as they might have treated a strange dog in camp that was behaving erratically. They spent much of their time waiting for assignment to a bomb group, pulling chairs around the stove of their Nissen hut. The stove had thrown off heat so feebly they had nicknamed it “the Icebox” and had all urinated on it together the day their orders had come through.

Besides Fichtner, only Bryant and Snowberry spent any appreciable time outside. The sky was gray and roiling and close, and clouds moved aggressively offshore, flapping windsocks and causing splashed mud to spatter dismally and unpredictably. Gulls cried and sideslipped over Fichtner, who spent whole half days off by himself, perched above rocks washed black by the swells.

They had sat in small groups the night of their transatlantic flight, Bryant talking quietly with Snowberry. The water was black and vast over the rocks beyond the airstrip. Seabirds huddled near the leeward sides of the huts like pigeons, their feathers puffed against the cold. The support staffs had gone ahead by boat, and the aircrews would make the flights alone, under cover of darkness. They felt isolated and closer, not only as a squadron but as a crew. Reticent girls in blue Red Cross uniforms at a makeshift canteen served them a sad and metallic tea while they waited. All of their gear, stowed in huge green duffels, had been piled in the nose, and they were waiting for a cold front to pass. The wind was high and the sky low and opaque and they could hear the sea. Ice glazed
Paper Doll
's rubber tires like doughnuts. Hirsch and Gabriel and Cooper worked the charts and reckonings, and rechecked agreed-upon headings by flashlight, their murmurs reassuring.

On takeoff he remembered clearly the sensation of the plane gathering speed in the darkness in its rush down the runway, and the gentle shift in his stomach as the Fortress lifted into the air, banking around to the north. He climbed into his station in the top turret for the view and saw the lights of the field behind and below them, turning slowly away, and the red lights of the Fortresses ahead of them, lifting into the cloud cover. They climbed until they broke through the clouds like something emerging from the sea, and the half moon illuminated the entire world.

Far ahead they could see the other 17's. He stayed in the top turret, his weight back on the turret's padded sling. His goggles were up on his forehead and the elastic strap bunched the crown of his soft, sheepskin-lined headgear. Cooper and Gabriel threw shadows in the yellow glow of the cockpit before him, and the enormous wings extended out beyond him dark and reassuring on both sides.

The stars were brilliant and foreign and extended undiminished to the cloud line. Every so often Hirsch's head appeared in the glow of the smallish astrodome in front of the cockpit, taking a fix with the sextant. The plane tipped and rocked smoothly. His toes curled and flexed in the sheepskin linings. St. Elmo's fire shimmered and glowed furtively around the wingtips and propellers. Hirsch intruded on the interphone in a low voice to give new headings.

Still hours from first light or landfall in Ireland, Bryant had felt completely happy in a world all those back home could never know. Below, everyone but pilots and navigator slept, deep in sheepskin jackets with collars up, curled around parachutes and duffels. Above, Bobby Bryant rode high in the cold dark air in his glass bubble under the stars and watched
Paper Doll
all around him sweeping toward Ireland, across the darkness, skimming the fluid and onrushing ceiling below, the smoothed and ever-changing clouds a ghostly topography.

They woke him with a flashlight, the glare harsh in the darkness. Men were making startled and angry sounds and the orderly on wake-up duty was going from bed to bed uncovering faces and giving blanketed legs a hard shove. He called the briefing time, 0330, in a clear and tired voice, without malice. The lights flicked on and off. Men cursed and thrashed under bedding and someone down the line of steel bunks, dreaming or awake, called Sylvie, Sylvie, don't you go away now.

Bryant stretched, miserable. Bean lay as if stunned. Lewis sat on the side of his bunk with his feet on the floor and his hands on his face. Bryant could feel the shock of the cold on Lewis's soles. Metal lockers were slamming and johns flushing. Snowberry was calling, “Oh, Mama, can't we fight in the daytime?”

Piacenti went by with a towel over his head, fumbling with his kit. The far end of the hut remained dark and quiet, the other crew, not flying today, ordered and still, as if breathing or movement might give them away, children hoping the heavy snowfall has canceled school. The last time, too, this crew had not gone when they had, and Bryant remembered one of the guys off the hook guffawing like a loon in the dark.

They were angry and quiet at the latrine, annoying one another in the limited space around the sinks. They stood in their underwear and flying boots, warming their feet in the sheepskin lining and shuffling from mirror to can. Only Snowberry was somewhat cheery, remarking on the cold. Bean blinked repeatedly and tottered around like someone coming out of anesthetic.

Bryant dressed slowly, shivering, with razors still ringing faintly on the sinks in the uneven light. Beside him Bean was having trouble with the knot of his tie. When he finished, the knot was badly shaped and off-center and he pulled on a thick Army issue sweater, a dismal pea green in the electric light. Around his neck he crossed and recrossed a silk scarf—his lone Red Baron gesture—stitched from a salvaged parachute. He grinned.

An Order of Dressing had been stenciled on the wall near them:

1.
Underclothing.

2.
 
Uniform.

3.
 
Trousers (folded inside boots).

4.
 
Jacket (slightly open at top).

5.
 
Boots (outside trousers).

6.
 
Oxygen mask (lines clear).

7.
 
Hood (skirt inside jacket).

8.
 
Gloves.

A number of parodies were outlined beneath it. Snowberry's Order of Defecating was a general favorite, but Bryant did not resent any system of checks, however ridiculous. He patted the pockets of his overalls to reassure himself that what he had carefully packed the night before still remained, and joined the crowd shuffling outside to clamber onto the open backs of the trucks for the drive to the mess hall. They sat with legs hanging and swaying from the back, quieted by the hiss and spray of the mud from the trucks' tires. It was misting and the mud seemed more difficult than usual for the trucks and drivers. Someone closer to the cab mentioned the possibility of a scrub, and Lewis told him to shut the fuck up. At this point going and not going were both miserable prospects; a scrub meant the long emotional unwinding, all of this for nothing, and no progress toward the magic total of twenty-five missions which established a tour. And speaking about a scrub was sure to produce one.

At the extended breakfast tables they were served coffee which tasted faintly alkaline in warm, thick mugs. And toast and powdered GI eggs cut into squares and topped with a small floweret of grated cheese. The color and texture were unappetizing. Bryant ate without speaking. Bean looked ill and rubbed his neck tenderly. Piacenti ate all of his food and drank all of his coffee and sat quietly with his hands on both sides of his plate.

It was still dark when they filed into the briefing room, an oversized Nissen hut. They sat on narrow wooden folding chairs, feeling gradually more frightened and more excited. There was a low platform before them facing the rows of chairs, lit by theatrical spotlights hung from a steel beam overhead. Near the front it was very hot and near the rear it was cold. The middle seats were in demand. A staff sergeant from
Plum Seed
held a brown and white puppy slack in his arms, the puppy's ears curled back in apprehension. Bryant thought briefly of Audie, who'd taken to sleeping in the backs of jeeps in the motor pool. Once she'd been discovered by two captains only after they'd reached London, when they'd tried to pile their dates into the back. Some of the guys called her Stowaway Canine.

The CO spoke briefly of the dangers of collision after takeoff and during assembly in such weather, and reported that the chances of mid-air collision had been assessed as two planes in a thousand. Someone from the back excused himself and wondered aloud if the CO had any idea which two.

They crowded before their lockers and tumbled the final layers of outerwear—lined leather jackets and pants—into piles that shifted together at their feet. Oxygen hoses coiled into sleeves and interphone cords snagged on gloves. They sorted hurriedly through their equipment as though
Paper Doll
were priming to leave without them, and wore and carried everything to more waiting jeeps. They overloaded the jeeps until they looked, in the gloom, to be a convoy of college pranksters, and rode to the revetments and
Paper Doll
in the dark, Lewis swinging way out on a running board, bouncing with each jolt in the darkness. They called out as they passed their plane and the driver executed a flamboyant turn and jerked to a stop. They piled out, dumping their equipment into heaps, and the truck shifted gears and roared off, its light jouncing through the mist toward the other 17's farther down the line.

Tuliese was poking carefully around beneath the number two engine. The sky was paling to the east and it was beginning to feel like morning. They gathered around Hirsch expectantly, and he went over in subdued detail the navigational data, just when and how they would end up where. Bryant ran through his series of checks with Gabriel and Cooper, gazing at his own panel and over their shoulders into the cockpit at the rows of lit-up information. Beyond the cockpit the nearby windsocks emerged like ghosts and flapped energetically, and water tracked and veined the Plexiglas. They were going to scrub, Gabriel theorized disconsolately. They were so socked in they couldn't even see the tower. Bryant climbed to his perch in the dorsal turret and looked around. He could make out only the dull glow and occasional flashes from
I Should Care
, less than a plane length away. “If they send the flares up, we won't see them anyway,” he murmured to himself.

Another jeep swung by and stopped and a voice from it called out a fifteen-minute delay. “Do you register, pilot?” the voice said.

“Chew my thing, Sergeant,” Gabriel called from the cockpit.

“Thank you, sir,” the voice said. “We don't chew things.”

With the extra time Bryant ran through additional power plant checks with Tuliese, who seemed unusually defensive and unhappy, and with nothing further to do left the plane and crouched next to Snowberry, who had long since made himself comfortable on a small pile of parachutes. He was surprised to feel how tired he was already.

Stormy, the weather officer, came by on foot, with extra boxes of candy in his new unofficial role as morale officer. He was an earnest and gently funny man, who took his inability to predict the weather with any accuracy seriously, and they liked him. He seemed to genuinely wish he could fly with them, and to genuinely worry about them. He had instituted the tradition of the Living Safety Deposit Box with their crew and the crew of
I Should Care
, holding on to their valuables during a mission. Valuables turned out to the aircrews to mean only watches and letters, and Stormy had just come from
I Should Care
and had eight watches on his arm. The pilot and the navigator kept theirs. Bryant peeled his from his wrist, and handed it over. Snowberry did the same. They declined the Baby Ruths with thanks.

They could hear other jeeps, and headlights illuminated parts of
Seraphim
and
I Should Care
and swept toward them. One of the jeeps hit a bump and the beams jerked upward and down, as though fencing with the darkness.