Flight or Fright Read online

  Stackpole was whistling “The Way You Look Tonight.”

  And Shady Lady abruptly loomed up before them, filling their world. Dull green, bitch mother, sky lover, their womb, their fate.

  The 44th Bomb Group was known as the Flying Eight-Balls, the first Liberator unit in the AAF, though not the first to Europe, which distinction went to the Ninth Air Force’s Pyramiders. The Eight-Balls flew their first sortie in support of Flying Forts in November of ’42, and as the other groups converted to night missions, the Eight-Balls were left in the unenviable position of being the sole Liberator group assigned to daylight bombing raids. There was a lot of talk about one Lib, Boomerang by name, part of the 93rd Bomb Group’s October 9th raid on Lille. She came back wearing thousands of holes, destined for scrap, but her pilot and crew chief fought for her, patched up her bullet punctures with aluminum, and she became the first B-24 in the Eighth to complete her fifty missions. Her men defended her honor, and she repaid them with their lives. Not to put too fine a point on it, snickers aside, the Lille mission was also the breaking point for command, which was compelled to incontrovertibly report that the B-24 was a better bombardment craft, hands down, than the much sexier “glamour girl” B-17—the Libs were faster, longer-range, capable of ferrying heavier bomb loads with superior armament. In essence, the history of the Eight-Balls was the saga of the Liberator in wartime; aerial conflict had birthed her, and she would be practically obsolete by VJ Day. Many of the 24s at Shipdham had arrived with the newer armor, self-sealing tanks, turbo-superchargers, and the retractable Sperry ball turret.

  Which is where Wheatrow was headed this morning.

  “Big pot-bellied bitch,” said Mars, echoing the words of a skipper named Keith Schuyler.

  “I like big women,” said Tewks. “More to grab on to.”

  “She moves fast for a big’un,” said Coggins. He might have been talking about his wife back in the States, or his aircraft, thought Jorgensen. Like the difference mattered. Maybe his old lady’s wingspan was longer than her fuselage.

  The flight crew had completed hoisting 500-pounders into the Lady’s bomb bay, and the ten Fifties aboard were glutted with eleven thousand rounds of ammo in disintegrating link belts. Coggins’ men began levering themselves into the underside of the plane. There they’d spend the next twelve hours in almost unbearable cramp, pissing through relief tubes, sucking artificial air, fighting not to die. God help you if you were struck with the trots in mid-mission.

  Mars clambered into the co-pilot bucket to Coggins’ right, noting that the skipper, as usual, had locked his seat full-forward. You’d think shorter men would be ideal for bombers, but the jokers back in San Diego or Fort Worth always liked to rack the pedals just out of reach for an average human being.

  “Could be a milk run,” Mars said, snugging in.

  “Could be a nightmare, if fighters pick our group to plaster,” said Coggins, not looking at him. He mashed down his (now-wireless) cap to accommodate his headphones.

  They ran through the preflight check with the flight engineer. Mars stowed the control latch overhead (so it would not slap him in the face later) and popped out the hatch to check movement on the ailerons, elevators and rudder. They were starting up from a battery cart, so he killed the ignition switches. The engineer pulled the props through by hand, six turns or “blades” each, starting with #3, inboard to outboard. The process was dull, administrative, and by rote, but even a misstep at this stage could cause an explosion, from a closed intercooler or an overlooked supercharger switch. The flight engineer placed the wheel chocks and stood by with a portable extinguisher for the actual engine startup, #3 first, to drive the hydraulics. At 1000 rpm, the dials read properly:

  45-50 pounds for the oil pressure, 4-1/2 inches for the vacuum pumps, about 975 pounds pressure in the accumulators, for braking power. Coggins throttled to one-third power while Mars amplified the fuel mix to auto-lean. After taxiing out, Mars would rev all four powerhouses to “exercise” the props.

  Coggins went on the air: “Checking interphone.”

  “Christ, I can’t even see past the nose of the plane,” Mars returned as the crew began to check in from their positions. As usual, the fog would lift only when they broke above it.

  Stackpole’s voice: “Bombardier, roger.” He was down by their feet, near Jones, at the radio station, who said, “Radioman, check.”

  Behind Smith always came Jones: “Roger, left waist.”

  “Rodger-dodger, you old codger.” That was Tewks, across from Smith at the right waist gun.

  “Top turret, Jorgensen here.” If Mars or Coggins turned around, they’d see Jorgensen’s boots on the turret footbar.

  “Wheatrow. Ball turret is okay.” The poor lad had to be dogged in and lowered away, without a chute. No room for a chute. To use one, he’d have to clamber out—with help—and strap one on, theoretically while the aircraft was plummeting earthward in a fireball. Easy peasy.

  Lt. Gentry jack-in-the-boxed out from his station to give a thumbs up. Per procedure, he had to be heard, so he was.

  “Heads up, Jimmy,” said Coggins.

  “The tail is ready, Skipper,” said Beck from what Jorgensen had called the “back of the bus.”

  In that moment, Coggins seemed to compress from the weight he imagined on his yoke. Mars’ eyebrows went up. Coggins finally cracked a half-smile and said, “This goddamned seat’s too short.”

  Despite their bulky gear, armament, and sleepless disposition, when the Lady lofted skyward, it felt like riding in a limousine. They finally got to see some daylight and blue sky. Every little taste of reward was deeply important.

  At 3000 feet, they all lit up cigarettes, because at 10,000 feet, they’d have to go on ship oxygen. Then sheer ball-sweat would have to carry them until they turned around, empty, and showed the Continent their tail.

  “WE got swamped by Focke-Wulfs,” said Jorgensen. “One-nineties everywhere. After flak always comes fighters. And the next thing I know, Mars is screaming into his intercom that Vargas Doll was on fire, just off our left wing. I couldn’t not see it from my turret. Flak hit an oxygen bottle near ole Jonesy’s head and blew his radio apart. Wheatrow’s electrical suit shorted out and burned him. Everybody’s yelling, the guns are all blazing, Focke-Wulfs zipping past close enough to spit on. Tewks snapped his gun tether and accidentally shot up our right stabilizer trying to nail one of the sonsabitches, and we started to shake like a drunk old whore. And that’s when I saw it, first time.”

  “The Warbird,” I said. Katie had dutifully refreshed our coffee. Jorgensen’s older sister was also in her eighties. The last Mrs. Jorgensen had died a decade ago.

  “At first, I thought it was one of them Stukas,” said Jorgensen. “When they dived, they made this weird whine. Then I saw its wings flap and I thought, This ain’t no airplane. It was nearly as big as a fighter. Wings like a bat, snout like one of them needle-bills. Eyes like onyx and pewter.” He cleared his throat. “About now you’re thinking to yourself, gee, this old coot has lost his marbles, right?” His feathery brows arched, to indict me.

  “Actually, no sir. I could never get my father to talk about the war, but some of the Shady Lady’s other crew had a few tales to tell, over the years it took me to find them. I’ve heard weirder.”

  He seemed to arrive at some momentous inner decision. “Well, okay, then, as long as Katie’s in the kitchen or watching soaps or whatever it is she does with her free time.” No protest came from the back of the house, so Jorgensen was satisfied we were in confidence, here.

  “I thought the same thing you just probably thought,” he went on. “That it was a hallucination. I don’t think so. I just saw this big, impossible thing coming straight for me, claws out. Next thing I know, all my plexi is gone and I’m laid out on the deck with my head tore open. Still got the scar.” He smoothed his hair back to favor a white line that zigged from his left eyebrow up into his scalp. It resembled a knife wound. “Damned near lost
my eye. By the time we were back to base, I was in shock from loss of blood. I barely remember the haul back home. They told me later that the belly turret was gone when we landed, and so was Wheatrow, the new guy.”

  “The whole turret was just gone from the plane?”

  “Yeah—pretty tough to do with just cannon fire or machine guns. And all of us would have felt a direct flak hit. Jerry was using 128-millimeter guns for flak, so if Wheatrow had been blown out of the ball by a burst, we would have known about it because half the plane would have been on fire. We had seven thousand pounds of incendiaries and our wings were full of high-test gasoline.”

  “You think that—”

  He overrode me. “I don’t think. I suspect. Some things I know. Now, I suspect what happened to poor ole Wheatrow, but I’ll tell you what I think: I think that a war that big doesn’t just go away because you shake hands and sign some paper.”

  “Or nuke a couple of cities into Japanese-flavored vapor.” I didn’t mean it to sound that flip, but Jorgensen stayed on track, either ignoring it or being polite.

  “Think of it: the whole world at war. Years of war. Every birthday, every Christmas, the war is still there. Then we suddenly get all civilized and agree to pretend there ain’t no war. Sometimes I think … sometimes …” He petered out. Why bother? He barely knew me, and I was just the callow spawn of one of his old crewmates, Jimmy Beck, who’d died five years ago and never sent a holiday card, ever.

  “It ain’t about heroics or glory,” he said, starting up a different avenue of attack. “Where you’re up there in the air, shooting all around, guys bleeding and guys hollering, explosions, it’s about keeping your skin on. Sheer survival. If you believe in God, you pray constantly to yourself, silently: God, please don’t let me die on this mission. If you believe in good luck charms, you tote ’em. Stackpole had a little Kilroy sock doll his wife made for him, and you better believe we all treated Kilroy like one of our crew, made sure he was accounted for on every mission. Gentry had a St. Christopher’s medal. Wheatrow came with his rabbit’s foot, even though that wasn’t very lucky for him or the rabbit. And your Daddy had this ritual. Before he checked his guns, he’d pull the first slug out of the chain belt and write the date on it and put it in his pocket next to his heart.”

  A fifty-caliber round was nearly six inches long and weighed more than a roll of quarters. My father had flown at least eight successful missions over enemy territory. I wondered what had become of the bullet collection.

  “Everybody does stuff like that,” I said, although my father’s quirk was news to me. “You don’t need combat to believe in little rituals, patterns. Who does it harm?”

  “You’re missing the point.” He waved his hand dismissively.

  I seemed to be part of a larger picture, one that was right behind me, part of a vista that Jorgensen could perceive, but I could not. He was seeing it right now.

  “That feeling, that battle feeling, it’s come back,” he said. “Every day. Just little bits at first. More every time. Not flashbacks, not jitters. I’m not senile, goddammit. It’s as real as the part in your hair. Now I’m gonna tell you what I believe, and I’ll call you a liar if you tell anyone else, but I’m saying this out of respect for your dad.”

  He was passing something on to me, a weight more massive than I expected, and it was everything I could manage to not interrupt him with all my wise modernity.

  “I think we woke something up back then, with all that conflict. All that hate. All those lives, feeding the war. Something that big doesn’t just stop, there one day and gone the next. I think maybe it got gorged and fat, and it went to sleep for a while. We had other wars, here and there, but they weren’t the same. This war had a child. It birthed up something bad. Something that awoke from its nap and realized, why, it was hungry again, and it hadn’t yanked all of us out of the air, where it feeds.”

  “The Warbird. But why you? Why now, after all this time?”

  “You want logic from me? I don’t have it. All I have is the thought that maybe some of us were supposed to die back then and didn’t. And it knows who were are, and it’s got a little checklist, like a menu. And we’re easy pickings, because it waited, and now we aren’t full of sperm and vinegar anymore. We can’t run away, and we can’t shoot back. The Warbird is on the wing again, eating leftovers, and none of this matters, because who in hell is going to believe a crusty old fart like me?”

  “Mr. Jorgensen, my father died of a heart attack. A thrombosis. He technically died four times before he died for real and stayed that way. He had a quadruple bypass. An angioplasty. He had two pacemakers in his chest when he finally went down. Nobody was more stubborn than him when it came to dying. And he did not die in fear or pain. He accepted it. He didn’t act like he was …” I hated that I had to grope for an appropriate word, “… haunted.”

  “Yeah,” Jorgensen said. There was a hint of gotcha in his eyes, past the tears he was manfully damming back. Men of his generation were not supposed to cry, ever. “But you just said he never talked to you about the war, did he?”

  “Yet you talked to me about the Warbird.” He was not funnin’ me in the way of a wacky grampaw. He was dead serious, and the admission had cost him in emotional viscera, reeled out and inelegantly splayed for inspection. Whether I was trustworthy or not, I had fallen into that bizarre gap that permits people to confide to strangers intimacies they would never reveal to their closest loved ones. I had gotten an explanation. It seemed unfair to retroactively impose preconditions now.

  “I did, didn’t I?” he said, coming back into himself. “That was stupid of me. I’m sorry, young man. I’m sorry for your dad, and I’m sorry for dumping this on you. You seem like a stand-up fella. I’d’a been proud to serve with you. But please don’t let this foolishness hector you none. I’m past it. I’m at the end of my rope and I’m hearing things every once in a while, and the joke is, I don’t even hear so good. Senescence can be liberating. Bet you didn’t think I knew a word like senescence, now didja? I looked it up.”

  Sometime later that evening, Brett Jorgensen put the muzzle of a vintage Luger beneath his chin and blew the back of his head apart with a nine-millimeter hollow point.

  I had left him alone to do that. Made my excuses, said my good-byes, and sincerely promised to keep in touch. I had, I realized, abandoned him.

  From what I could piece together later, he’d had the pistol for over half a century.

  Brett Jorgensen, the man I had just spoken with, had been the son of immigrant parents from Oslo, Norway. His middle name was Eric. After the war, he had graduated with a degree in political science from the University of Missouri, courtesy of the GI Bill. Two marriages, three children. His obituary would be cursory. He had done time at a brokerage firm and retired with a decent nut. His down-home manner of speech was mostly a put-on. Nobody much cared that he had once risked his life daily to drop fire on the Axis war machine. Since 1939, he had smoked two packs of Luckies a day and never caught a smidge of cancer.

  Apparently, he had made several attempts at a suicide note and burned them all in a punchbowl-sized ashtray as self-pitying drivel. Near the ashtray and butted smokes was a pewter frame with a photograph of Teresa, his first wife, his big wartime love, his girl back home. He had buried her in 1981 after pathologists dug out a tumor the size of a deflated volleyball from her insides. Against popular odds, he had fallen in love again and ultimately buried his second wife, Millicent, in the same cemetery in New Jersey.

  The Luger had not come from enemy spoils. Jorgensen had fought Germany in the abstract but never glimpsed a Nazi, except maybe for one time when he swore he could make out a face, grimacing behind goggles and a leather flight helmet, firing salvos of twenty-mil cannonfire right at his noggin, ten thousand feet up, lost in foreign clouds. That had been mission number six, railyards at Bremen. Or perhaps that cruise had been Hamburg, a munitions factory. Or another kind of factory, something like that.

 
He never thought he would live to grow old. Yet it was all they ever talked about, stranded in Shipdham, flying missions: Marry that girl back home. Raise that family. Carve out that piece of the red, white and blue pie. Survive to accomplish it all.

  He hadn’t trusted a politician since Kennedy. He remembered the outrage of the world focusing on that single assassination, and recalled where he was and what he was doing when he heard the news. Today, all people knew was that Kennedy had been some kind of randy, dirty joke. Sordid exposés; muck-raking. John F. Kennedy had been a war hero, dammit all to hell. If the revisionism was true, then what had Jorgensen been fighting to preserve, way back when? He had seen that cartoon, the one captioned We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us, and thought, I wish I could tell when that meeting took place, because I missed it. His country’s flag was still the same, but he had seen too many men and women, hypocrites all, standing before that flag and lying. Even his political science degree seemed a cruel trick, permitting him to perceive too much, and he stopped entertaining notions about fighting for a country in which he no longer seemed to have any rightful place.

  He had loaded the pistol at half-past three a.m., alone in his den, fifteen feet away from where we had shared coffee. He knew the sounds of fighter planes in the air, ours and theirs. What he was hearing then was not a police helicopter or semis crawling up the interstate. To make sure, he pulled out his hearing aid and all that remained was a screeching noise that came from no kind of aircraft, not even a Stuka bomber.

  This is guesswork, I know, but now I can see it, clear as expensive stemware: An old man rips out his hearing aid and the world falls silent. The mantel clock stops ticking, the outside world goes away, the creaks and settling lumber of his home cease their punctuation of the night, and he is left alone with the sound of the Warbird. He finishes his bourbon, snubs his Lucky, and pulls the trigger with closed and tearless eyes, hoping his sister will understand and forgive him. There is a loud noise, and the war comes pouring out of his head.