B for Buster (9 page)

CHAPTER 10

THAT MORNING I DREAMED that I was falling. I went spinning through the sky, and a fiery earth went round and round below me. It looked exactly as the ground had looked from
Buster'
s window, but in my dream I fell alone, without the kite around me. I spun through empty air, through darkness, feeling that I was floating instead of falling. I tried to run, and woke up kicking at my blankets, clutching my pillow to my chest like a parachute. I was thumping at it desperately, trying to tear it open.

It all seemed so real that it took me a minute or more to shake the dream away. I had to make myself remember that
Buster
hadn't really broken up over Bochum, that we had come safely home before dawn. I remembered the surge of the engines as we floated over the hedge, the little shriek of the tires touching the runway.

I even heard Ratty's voice, his laugh. “That's two. Just twenty-eight to go.”

I stayed in my bed, in the gloom of the hut, thinking of Donny Lee. I tried to picture the boy I'd known in Kakabeka, but all I could see were searchlights sweeping, and the gleam of his bomber in the sky.

We had seen it happen, on the homeward trip. The searchlights had coned him over Gelsenkirchen. There had been bursts of flak all around him, but they didn't seem to hit his Halifax. It rolled on its side and went corkscrewing down, and the searchlights flailed as they tried to find it. But the whole black sky was empty.

I lay trembling in my bed. Lofty patted my shoulder on his way from the hut. So did Pop a few minutes later, and Buzz and Ratty after him. They just touched me and kept on going, and I squeezed my pillow and closed my eyes.

When the room was empty, I got up. Three of the beds were utterly bare, stripped of blankets, pillows, and sheets. The boys who had slept there would never be back. Everything they had owned had been packed into boxes, and even the boxes themselves had been packed away.

I didn't know what had happened to those boxes. Maybe there was a room somewhere, maybe off in Hangar D, where all the boxes went—seven that night, seven the night before—filled and folded shut. I could imagine them piling up in some secret, hidden place. And I could imagine another stack of boxes still unfilled. There were two dozen bombers; there must have been scores and scores of boxes waiting somewhere.

I went to breakfast, dreading the moment when the speaker would crackle. But the others just sat and stared at nothing, and I wished that I could be so calm.

At last the WAAF came on. I wondered where she sat and what she looked like, if she was smiling or if her eyes were filled with tears. “Good morning, gentlemen,” she said.

Lofty took out his pipe. Ratty's eyes nearly closed; his hands tightened into fists.

I found that I didn't really care what she would tell us. If we didn't go flying that night we'd go the next, or the one after.
Just get it over with,
I thought.

“You are stood down for tonight,” said the WAAF.

The sound from the airmen was like one huge breath let out. Someone laughed. A bit of toast went soaring across the room. The joy I felt surprised me. I felt incredibly free, as though tons of weight had been lifted from my back.

Lofty leaned forward. “I think we should raid the Merry Men,” he said. “You up for an op, Ratty?”

The Merry Men was the local, down in the village five miles away. None of us had seen it, but we'd heard the talk of what a wonderful place it was. “Sure,” said Ratty. “I want to get blotto.”

Buzz and Pop both wanted to go. Lofty said he'd tell Simon and Will. He tapped his pipe on the table, put it back in his pocket. “We'll take off at eighteen hundred,” he said. “You coming, Kid?”

I had gone to a bar only once, and gotten so sick that I'd sworn I would never drink again. If I went and sat there, not drinking or smoking, they might see how young I was. If I stayed behind, they might
know.

“Kid?” asked Lofty.

“Well, I'll try,” I said.

“Try?” Buzz almost leered. “What's the matter with you, Kid?”

I could see my whole world of little lies about to collapse. But Pop stepped in and saved me. “He's probably got something better to do,” he said. “We'll hope to see you there, if you make it.”

They went off in a group, each of them feeling through his pockets to count his money. I went the other way, down toward the pigeon loft, and old Bert seemed overjoyed to see me. He called out when I was still yards away, “Well, 'allo, sir! I wasn't expecting you so early, sir.”

He was plucking weeds from a small garden. On his shoulder stood Percy, stiff-necked, wings at his side. “Stand easy, now,” said Bert. He gave the pigeon a shoot from the garden. “I grow their greens 'ere, sir,” he said. “They like their greens.”

He took me into the loft, and I was sorry that I had waited so long to see it. Warm and bright, it thrummed with a sound that took me straight home in my mind. The cooing and the clucking of his birds made me think of the great flock of pigeons that roosted under the railway bridge at Kakabeka. Then, they were pests, only targets for stones. I had never killed one, but I had sure tried hard enough.

The pigeons swarmed around my feet, nudging like cats at my trouser cuffs. It was kind of creepy, but I liked it.

“Don't squash them, sir,” said Bert. “Mind where you walk, now.”

The loft wasn't as dirty as I'd thought it would be. Buckets and bags were stacked in one corner, along with bales of straw. Clipboards bulging with papers hung from a row of nails. There were troughs of water on the floor, roosts and nesting boxes everywhere. I waded through the pigeons, laughing as they scurried away in a mass of feathered backs. Only one bird was still on the perches, standing right below the wire mesh that made the roof.

“What's that one doing?” I asked.

Bert sighed. “She 'asn't moved a muscle all this day,” he said. “She 'asn't moved since lights-out yesterday.”

“Is she sick?” I asked.

“She's sad,” said Bert. “She misses old Ollie something terrible, I think.”

“Where's old Ollie?”

“From L for London, sir.”

That was Donny's kite. “My friend was the pilot,” I said.

“Then I'm sorry, sir,” said Bert. “I'm sorry as can be.”

He looked it, too. He looked suddenly miserable, and tears nearly came to my eyes. Just looking at him made me want to cry myself.

“There's not a 'ope in 'eaven, sir,” he said. “Ollie could 'ave flown from Berlin by now. I fear the worst.”

“I think the flak got them,” I said.

“The flak?” Bert looked shocked as well as sad. He raised his head to the wire roof, and all the veins in his neck stood out. But instead of shouting at his man upstairs, he nearly whispered. “Damn you all to 'ell.” He didn't want to frighten the pigeons, I saw, as he gazed down at their backs. “They always know, sir. See how Ollie's mate is pining away? Why, she's even letting the babies starve.”

He made me kneel among the birds and look into one of the nesting boxes. Percy leaned forward from his shoulder, peering in along with Bert. There were two babies inside, purplish blobs with oversized heads and enormous eyes. “The one on the left,” said Bert, “ 'e looks just like Ollie, sir.”

Poor Ollie,
I thought. The baby was clumsy and ugly, too awkward to stand. It just sat there, trembling all over.

“They're goners, those babies,” he said. “If she doesn't pull out of it.”

“Can't you feed them?” I asked.

“Not all day and all night, sir,” he said. “I 'ave to keep up with the work. I 'ave to sleep.”

“No one's flying tonight,” I said. “I could come and feed them.”

“Bless you, sir,” said Bert. “That would 'elp a lot.” He showed me how to do it. He got a medicine dropper and a can of milk, and let me hold the babies as he dribbled trickles down their throats. Their eyes swiveled, their throats pulsed, and they seemed to bloat with the milk they drank. Then they flopped down in the straw and went to sleep.

I had thought we would fly the birds in the sunshine, but Bert said we would have to wait until twilight. “They're night flyers, sir,” he told me. “You don't train 'oming pigeons to fly at night, then turn around and fly them in the day. Not that you'd know, sir.”

We fed and bathed the pigeons, did the paperwork in triplicate, then tinkered with the motorized loft that was parked behind the building. Like a hillbilly's shack stuck on the frame of an old truck, it had cages on the sides and space below them for the boxes. The bonnet was open, and an old sack of rusted tools was set down by the fender.

The wrenches were so rusted and the motor so old that we worked for hours to loosen one bolt. Bert's hands got bruised and cut, but he didn't complain. He just went doggedly on, whistling “Roll Out the Barrel” between his quiet cries of “Ouch, sir!” and “Ooh, sir!” as the wrenches kept slipping.

We gave it up when the sun was close to the hills. Bert said we'd use the trolley instead. So we snatched up pigeons and stuffed them into boxes, and when the trolley was full, we each took a side of the handle. But it was Bert who did all the pulling. He grunted once, then put his weight on the handle and got that heavy cart rolling so quickly that I had to trot beside him just to keep up. We trundled down a path that became a lane that wound its way between the hills.

Five miles from home, when the sun and moon went down nearly together, we stopped to let the pigeons loose. Bert took them from their boxes one at a time, held them just so, and tossed them into the air. Each rose in a spiral, its wing feathers whistling, until it found its direction and flew off toward home.

Bert paced them slowly so that they couldn't follow each other, and I lay on the grass looking up at the stars coming out.

“Do you like to fly?” he asked suddenly.

I wasn't sure what to tell him; I didn't really know Bert very well. But right then, all alone with him in an empty land, I thought that I could tell him most anything I wanted.

“I like the
flying,
” I said. “I love to fly.”

“But you don't like dropping bombs? Is that what you mean, sir?”

“Oh, I don't mind that,” I said. I'd hardly even thought about it. “I don't care what happens to the bombs. It's all the rest. The searchlights, the flak. The fighters. I don't like people shooting at me.”

Bert laughed softly. He launched his pigeon and went to get another. “Would you like to toss one, sir?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

He showed me how to take it from the box, and how to keep it still between my hands. I could feel the nothingness of its feathers, and the metal band around its leg. Then Bert held my wrists and pushed them up and pulled them out. And the bird came loose. The wings swept up; the feathers splayed. They whistled down, then up and down. The tail shifted once for balance. The legs drew in like aircraft struts, the feet swinging forward.

“Fly home!” shouted Bert.

We each brought out another pigeon. We sent them off with that boost they didn't really need. We shouted, “Fly 'ome!” and watched them spiral high above us, into a bright and glittering sea of stars. We fetched two more.

“I get scared,” I told Bert. “I think of flying, and I get scared.”

“Everyone gets scared, sir,” said Bert.

“They don't get
terrified,
” I told him.

“Oh, I think they do, sir,” he said. “I think you just don't see it.”

It annoyed me that he would say a thing like that. “How would you know?” I asked. “You don't understand. You don't know what it's like in the air.”

“Quite right, sir,” he said. “I'm sorry, sir.”

I felt awful then. Bert huddled over his pigeon, stroking it with his thumbs, as though I'd given him a whipping. I hated that a grown man had to agree with everything I said just because I said it.

“Fly home!” he cried halfheartedly, tossing up the pigeon. He was such a huge man that he looked clumsy no matter what he did. He almost hopped from the ground, and I felt the sod tremble when he landed. But Percy didn't move from his shoulder. Then up went my own pigeon, and I took another from its box.

“You see, sir,” said Bert without looking at me, “it's like the birds. If it was thundering and lightening now, they would still fly 'ome. But some wouldn't like it very much. They're scared to death of lightning, sir.”

“But all of them would go,” I said. “That's what you mean?”

“Yes, sir,” said Bert. “It's what they're trained to do. Like Ollie, bless 'is little soul. Fifty miles an hour, through sun or storm, 'e was never bothered by the weather, sir.” Bert blinked, then scowled at the air. “Damn you!” he shouted at the man upstairs. And suddenly he was calm again. “But in the loft, in the lightning, Ollie was a shaky little jelly.”

I stared at the pigeoneer. “But what if lightning scared him so much that he
couldn't
fly home?”

“Wouldn't 'appen, sir. Not to good birds like 'im and Percy. They want to get 'ome so badly that they keep on going, scared or not. That's courage, sir.”

“No,” I said. “Real courage is not being scared.”

“Oh, no, sir. Pardon me.” He tipped his head, as though saluting. “
Real
courage is carrying on though you're scared to bits. It's doing what you 'ave to do. Birds are scared of lightning; men are scared of dying. Anything else wouldn't be proper, sir. But we all 'ave to carry on. Every living thing. Men and birds and fish and worms, we all just carry on.”

“Except for me,” I said. “I can't.”

“You can, sir. You 'ave to.”

“No, I don't,” I told him. “I could go to the CO tonight and say I won't go flying anymore.”