B for Buster (4 page)

“The what?”

“The motorized loft, sir.” He tugged the trolley forward, pushed it back, looking like an oversized boy with an oversized wagon. Bert was one of the biggest men I'd ever seen, with hands the size of boxing gloves. His barnyard smell made me sneeze.

“Bless you, sir,” he said.

I sighed. “You don't have to call me sir.” He was so much older that it made me feel ridiculous, as though we were playing a childish game.

“But you're an officer, aren't you, sir?” asked Bert.

“Just a WO.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “Well, it's one and the same to Percy, sir.”

I didn't understand.

“The pigeon, sir.” He pointed a thumb toward the bird on his shoulder. “Ol' Percy tipped me off, sir. 'E stands at attention whenever 'e sights an officer. Must 'ave seen your badges, sir.”

I touched the tiny thing on my sleeve. “In the dark?” I asked.

“Oh, darkness doesn't bother Percy, sir. 'E' as the eyes of a—” Bert leaned toward me and whispered, “Of a
cat,
sir.” Then he winked, and nodded, and a little spiral of white droppings fell from his wedge-shaped cap. He touched the pigeon's breast. “Best bird in the loft. That's Percy, sir.”

The little pigeon puffed itself up at the touch of Bert's finger. It opened its wings and cooed with a funny little muttering sound. Its pink feet twitched on the man's shoulder.

“Would you like to 'old 'im, sir?”

“No,” I snapped.

I could see I'd hurt Bert's feelings. I suddenly felt sorry for him as he stooped down to his trolley to fiddle with something that didn't need fiddling with. I knew how he felt to be dismissed like that. I said, “You see
B
for Buster
over there? That's my kite.”

“That so, sir?” he said a bit coldly.

“Have you seen anyone near it?” I asked. “I thought there was a guy inside.”

“Like a ghost, you mean?” said Bert.

It shocked me that he came so close to the truth so quickly. I stared at him, but he didn't look up.

“You must see a lot of them, sir,” he said, still down by his trolley. “There, but not really there. Faces that you knew.” The pigeon fluttered across his bent back, from his left shoulder to his right. “You see them at breakfast, don't you, sir? And at night? In the corners of your eyes. And when you look, they're not there?”

“No,” I said. “I don't.”

“'Ow many ops 'ave you flown, sir?”

“None,” I told him. “Not yet.”

“Oh, I see.” He stood up, his legs straightening like the struts on a landing gear. If Lofty stood on a step he wouldn't have been as tall as the pigeoneer. “Well, sir. Not to worry, sir, I'm sure.”

“I wasn't really
worried,
” I said.

“It's the night, sir,” said Bert. “And this place, sir, with its 'ills and its ruins and such. You'll get used to it, sir.”

I felt angry at him then. He was talking as though I knew nothing, as though I was the greenest of sprogs. Then I realized that he was mostly right, but I wouldn't admit it to him. “I've flown lots,” I said. “Hundreds of hours. I fly bombers, not
pigeons.
I know what I'm talking about.”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “You're quite right, sir.”

It angered me more that he would agree with me so easily, just because he had to. I wished he would move along, but I saw that he could never leave his precious trolley. So I stood there beside him so that he wouldn't think he'd driven me off. Then the bird made an odd little sound, and stiffened on his shoulder, and Bert said, “'Ere comes another one, sir.”

“Another what?” I asked.

“An officer, sir.”

Out of the darkness came Simon, the Australian, his shoes tapping as he stepped from the grass to the tarmac. “G'day!” he shouted. Everything he said was a shout. “What are you doing out here in the never-never, and all by your lonesome, too?”

It was as though Dirty Bert wasn't even there, and again I felt sorry for the miserable pigeoneer.

“Fetch the others,” said Simon. “Tell them the boys are coming back.”

He went off again, and old Bert just stood there with the pigeon on his shoulder. I said, “I'd better go.”

“Right you are, sir,” said Bert. “Good luck to you, sir.”

I didn't know why he wished me luck, but I didn't think about it then. I ran to the mess to get Ratty and Buzz, and Pop was there again. He looked at me with such a friendly smile that I was sure he hadn't tried to frighten me in
Buster.
“Where were you?” I asked.

“Writing letters,” he said with a shrug. “Why?”

“They're coming back.”

Ratty and Buzz leapt up from their chairs. Pop grinned and slapped my shoulder. Then we all ran out to watch Lofty coming home.

The airfield was suddenly alive. Trucks and tractors bustled through the darkness. Erks headed off to their dispersals, the Chair Force to the tower again. The flares were lit along the runway.

We gathered below the tower, a crew without a pilot. We listened to a distant drone that grew steadily louder and closer. Then the first Halifax thundered past above us, flashing its recognition signal. Someone asked, “Is that Lofty?”

I was pleased that I could read the Morse better than the others. I rattled off the signals as each black machine passed overhead and banked to the right. Buzz was counting: “Seven, eight, nine.”

The bombers started landing, one by one. They dropped from the sky with their airscrews set at fine pitch, their engines throttled back. Tires shrieked as they touched the ground, exhausts spluttered and growled. Each bomber rolled away, to merge again into the darkness, and the next one came, and the next.

“Thirteen, fourteen,” counted Buzz.

“There's Lofty!” I said.

His machine didn't join the circuit with the rest, but came straight in, wobbling above the field. It sounded kind of ragged in a way.

“He's got an engine out,” said Pop.

The Halifax flew along the runway, its wheels six feet above the tarmac, as though Uncle Joe had to force it from the air. Then it touched in a shower of sparks, in a rending of metal. Something banged and clattered along the ground as sparks flew up like balls of fire. The broken bits fell away, and the bomber rumbled on along the runway.

There was a gap then, in the landings. A truck went out, and men with torches, and the bombers circled round and round. Then a twisted chunk of metal was carried from the runway, and Buzz started counting again as the rest of the squadron came in. Or most of the rest; one never returned.

The ambulances went out with their bells ringing. Canvas-covered trucks brought the airmen from their bombers, and Lofty hopped down from the back of the first one.

He seemed the same as ever, strutting in his gangly walk, smiling his old grin. In most ways he
was
the same old Lofty, but his eyes were somehow different. They didn't sparkle anymore.

That same morning Lofty bought a pipe, and he smoked it once. His face turned green and he coughed his guts out, and we never saw him light it a second time. But he kept it in his mouth, puffing and whistling through the stem. Once in a while he even took it out to tap it on a chair or something, as though to tamp his tobacco down.

He never talked about that first op. We gathered from the others that it had been the usual sort of business, with searchlights and flak, and fighters here and there. Nothing outstanding; nothing alarming. But Lofty had changed. He had become more serious. He reminded me of Donny.

CHAPTER 4

OPS WERE CANCELED FOR a while, as the weather darkened over Britain. Behind blankets of cloud, the moon shrank to a sliver, then grew again. We cursed the clouds and the weather over Europe. Black nights were perfect for flying, but we were socked in, and stood down.

We toured round the countryside on clattery old bicycles, played baseball with the erks, and partied in the mess at night, when all the games were rough and wild. We joined in the songs about searchlights and flak, as though we'd already flown twenty ops. We grumbled all the time. We had come to fly, but were bored to tears.

The wireless news didn't help at all. We were pleased when the Japs fled from Attu, when a U-boat was sunk in the Atlantic. But we really perked up our ears when we heard that the crew of the
Memphis Belle,
the first of the big American Flying Fortresses to finish a tour of duty, were given their tickets home.

Ratty listened to that last bit of news without a single joke or even a hint of a smile. He looked almost angry, and I could tell what he was thinking, that he might have been a part of that crew—a hero already—if he hadn't hurried up to Canada in the months before Pearl Harbor. Poor Buzz looked as worried as a dog. He always dreaded that Ratty would go away one day to fight with the Mighty Eighth, lured by the huge Forts and the glamour of flying in the sunlight. The Americans bombed Germany in the daylight, in bombers that bristled with guns.

In cloud-covered Yorkshire, the only one flying was Donny Lee. And he did it on the ground; Donny was the only pilot who owned a car. It was a Morris, a tiny thing with seats for two but room for seven standing. He raced around the Yorkshire hills, with his navigator balanced on the fender, his rear gunner on the bumper, facing backward. He drove that black heap to Inverness and all the way to London.

In the second week of June, the weather cleared. On the ninth, a Wednesday, Donny kicked me from my bed early in the morning. “Get dressed,” he told me. “I'll take you for a spin.”

I could hardly believe my luck. No one but his own crew ever went flying in the Morris. But he and I went rocketing out through the gate and down the road in a plume of dust. Donny drove east through that land of grass and sheep and scattered villages. He threw the black Morris round the curves, and wound it up when the road ran straight. The air gusted round the windshield, the engine howled, and the leather seats baked hot as pitch. With every shimmy and every pothole I heard bottles jingle in the boot.

We crossed the River Swale, shot through Busby Stoop and Thirsk, then climbed into the Hambleton Hills.

They were really nothing but hummocks; only Englishmen would have thought of them as hills. I had seen
buildings
higher than the Hambletons. But to the locals, they were the Himalayas of hills.

In a moment we were parked at the summit. Donny fetched a couple of bottles out of the boot and offered me one. I shook my head; I didn't like beer when it was
cold,
and this was hot and shaken. When he rapped the bottle on the fender, the cap flew off like a bullet, and a geyser of foam spewed out. He slurped it up as it spilled along his fingers.

We sat side by side on the running board, on the shady side of the Morris. Donny scuffed his heels in the grass. He looked up at the sky. “How's Kakabeka?” he asked.

“I'm fine,” I said.

“Not you.” He laughed. “You twit. The town, I mean.”

“Probably the same,” I said.

“You miss it?”

“No.”

He took a mouthful of beer and gargled with it. Then he swallowed and spat. He just stared off across the hills with a strange, sad look on his face.

“What happened to
Buster
?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“
B for Buster.
I heard that—”

“Oh, yeah,” said Donny. “Seven went out, two came back, and both of them were dead. It was crazy.”

“Why wasn't the pilot there?”

Donny shrugged. “He bailed out, I guess. Maybe he thought he was the last one left. Maybe he panicked. We'll never know, Kid.”

“Who was the wireless operator?”

“You got me.” Donny shook his head. “No, I don't remember.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Hey, there's twenty-four kites, Kid. Seven guys to a kite.” His voice rose, and there was real anger in his eyes. “I just don't remember all the guys who got the chop, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

“They were sprogs.”

“Jeez, Donny.”

He popped his finger in and out of the bottle. He finished the beer in one long gulp.

“If you don't want to fly, you don't have to,” he said.

“What?”

“You don't
have
to fly,” he said.

“But I want to,” I told him. “Whatever happened to
Buster,
it—”

“Takes guts, though,” said Donny. “Takes more guts to stay on the ground than it does to get into the crate. But guys have done it. They've refused to go.”

“But I
want
to fly,” I told him again.

“It's not like they shoot you for it,” said Donny. “Some guys say they do, but they don't.”

I didn't understand why he'd brought me so far to talk about this, and then to ignore everything that I said. It was as though he was talking only to himself. He opened the other bottle and shoved it to his lips as the foam came out. His cheeks swelled as fat as a chipmunk's. Then he swallowed, and grimaced. He said, “Who cares if they call you a coward?”

I didn't know what to say to him. So I only stared back, and I saw again how old he looked. In the morning, in the sun, he seemed worse than ever. His eyes were shot with red, his skin all pale and waxy.

“Uncle Joe would understand,” he said. “You could always go to Uncle Joe and tell him you're afraid to fly.”

“I'm
not
afraid,” I said.

“Uncle Joe would understand.”

A wasp came and buzzed around the bottle. It landed on the neck, crawled up to the top, and went round and round in a slanted walk. Donny didn't even shoo it away. He just lifted the bottle. The wasp took off, did circuits round Donny's head, then settled back on the bottle as he lowered it again.

“I dream,” he said. “Awful dreams.”

“Like what, Donny?”

“Kid, you don't want to know.”

Then why did you tell me?
I thought.

He handed me the bottle. I didn't want the beer, but I took it, wasp and all. I set it down on the grass, on its side, and let the beer dribble out in a dark brown stream.

Donny leaned sideways, against the curve of the fender. Painted on the door beside him were rows and columns of little white animals—shrews and moles and cats—that he had mowed down in his mad driving and recorded there like the bombs on a Halifax. He stretched along the fender, his red hair resting on the metal, and closed his eyes. “The bank's on the corner, right?”

“Huh?” I said. I thought he'd gone nuts.

“In Kakabeka. The bank's on the corner, and the bakery's beside it.”

“Yes,” I said.

“It always smells of bread there. They put cakes in the window. And those strips of flypaper that look like raisin bread. The window's gooey down here.” He waved his hand back and forth at the height of his knee. “'Cause the kids get fingerprints all over it. And snot.”

I smiled. “That's true,” I said.

“Then the drugstore, eh?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Taylor keeps the door so clean you can never tell if it's open or not. You have to feel for it, or you crack your head on the glass.” Donny stretched his hand out, groping like a blind man. “Then you go inside, and it always smells of bug dope.”

“Floor polish,” I said.

“No kidding? I always thought it was bug dope.” He walked us right through Kakabeka, in and out of every store. He seemed to come awake—or alive— shaking off whatever it was that was wrong with him, and he rambled on about things I'd forgotten, and things I'd never known. But he grew terribly sad as he talked.

“I miss it like crazy sometimes,” he said. “I hated living there—I couldn't wait to get out—but I'd sure like to see it again.”

“You will,” I said.

“I don't think so, Kid. I don't think I'll ever see Kakabeka again.”

“Why not?”

He smiled to himself, hardly a smile at all. He turned his head on the fender, squashing his big flap of an ear. “You're such a kid,” he said.

“And
you're
such an old man, Donny.”

I didn't mean to hurt him with that, and I would have taken it back if I could. He
was
an old man, and I saw in his eyes that he knew it. And then, angry, he talked to me as only an adult would. “Kid,” he said, “I should have told them. That first day. I should have marched you right off to see Uncle Joe and told him you were only sixteen.”

“Yeah?” I said. “You and whose army?”

Then he laughed, because that was such a stupid thing to say. Donny Lee could have picked me up and
carried
me to the CO. He could have
tossed
me half the distance. He laughed, then kicked out his leg, knocking my feet from the grass. I fell against him, and a moment later we were rolling on the summit of the Hambletons, over and over, back and forth, pummeling and laughing.

But the game lasted no longer than a moment. Donny pushed me away, and stood up. He wasn't a boy anymore.

We drove down the east face of the hills, then circled back through a string of tiny villages until we reached the Swale. Donny stopped the car, and again he opened the boot. He took out a roll of canvas and rubber. He set it on the grass at the river's edge, pulled a string, and the bundle exploded and became a boat.

I was horrified. It was a life raft from a Halifax.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Don't you want to go fishing?” he said.

We launched the boat in a shady pool. Donny tossed in a couple of bottles, a chocolate bar, and oranges. We fished for trout with the hooks and line that were packed in the raft's little kit. We didn't catch any, but I didn't mind. We just drifted down the river, past muskrat dens, under dangling willows. He called me Huckleberry Finn (“Pass me that orange there, Huck”), and I called him Tom Sawyer.

We let the current take us down to Topcliffe; then Donny paddled with his hands to nudge us up against the bank. He took his car keys from his pocket. “Go fetch the bus,” he told me.

I was stunned. No one but Donny
ever
drove the Morris. “Go on,” he said, jangling the keys.

“I can't,” I told him. “I don't know how to drive.”

“Now's your chance to learn,” he said.

“I'm too young.”

“Jeez, Kid. Who cares?”

But I had never been as daring as Donny. So I guarded the raft as he went hiking back along the river. I lay on my back on the warm rubber, holding on to a willow branch as I felt the tug of the stream.

I never figured out why Donny took me fishing. Maybe he meant to prove that he wasn't entirely a grown-up, that he still had a bit of the boyish wickedness that had let him stand at the very edge of Kakabeka Falls, closer to the brink than any kid ever stood. But it was his last day as a boy, and nearly his last altogether.