Rocket Science

by Jay Lake

  Odus stood with me, shaking his head and laughing in his creaky old-man voice. “Those boys are idiots,” he said. “They ought to trot over to the lumberyard and borrow a forklift. It’s gonna take them all day to get that crate off. Plus he’s got that other load, too.”

  I hadn’t realized that both flat cars were for Floyd. Where had he gotten the money for the freight charges? “What else does he have?”

  “Come on,” Odus said. “Let’s have look.”

  Odus and I walked around the flat cars, staying out of the way of Floyd’s work party. Odus untied the lashing that held one corner of the tarp to the second flat car. We lifted the canvas and saw a massive rubber tire. I peered up. “It’s a truck.”

  “Really?” asked Odus. “I never would have guessed.”

  I eyed the four-foot drop off from the flat car to the rails below. “How are we going to get this onto the ground?”

  “Well, if they’d listed this correctly on the manifest, I would have had it off already,” said Odus sharply. “I’ve got a ramp we can drop at the end of the car. You just drive it off. Why don’t you pull the tarp off it while I go set it up?” He trotted away.

  I tugged and pulled to get the tarp off the truck. The tarp was huge, heavy and damp, and nearly smothered me when it finally slid off. That was when I discovered it wasn’t a truck. It was a halftrack. Definitely German — field gray with the big black cross on the doors. Floyd had shipped himself a German army vehicle complete with bumper numbers and swastika. But it was the weirdest halftrack I’d ever seen — nothing like those newsreels of troops riding in an armored box over muddy, cratered landscapes.

  The front looked just like any truck built in the last fifteen years — I didn’t recognize the make, of course, but it had to be German. The tracks in back looked a whole lot like an old Caterpillar 60 with extra wheels in the middle to extend the tread length. But the body on top was planed and angled like it was meant to fly away. There wasn’t a vertical surface anywhere on the back of the halftrack. I cocked my head, studied the thing. It really did look streamlined, or perhaps as if it had been meant to deflect explosion.

  “Oh, Floyd, what have you done?” I whispered to the halftrack.

  It started raining as soon as we left the depot and headed out of town, and it poured all the way back to the farm. I kept praying that the creaky old Mack would make it without sputtering to a halt. I didn’t look forward to dragging the truck and Floyd’s monstrous crate down muddy dirt roads with Mr. Bellamy’s ancient Farm-All. Lucky for me the spirits that moved the old truck smiled, and it kept turning over in spite of the dampness.

  Somehow we got the vehicles all the way to Floyd’s place without attracting attention from the Butler County Sheriff. We parked both Dad’s truck and the German halftrack in Mr. Bellamy’s ramshackle barn. All but a few of the cattle had been sold over the summer, because large animals had become too difficult for the Bellamys to manage. In addition to a whole gallery of rusted plows and spreaders, generations of rotting hay and Floyd’s recreational mattress, the barn now sheltered an inbred tribe of resentful cats, three blank-eyed heifers, a single goat, and some stray bantam hens with one nasty little rooster. That left plenty of space for us.

  Floyd got out of that weird halftrack and leaned on the fender, flashing his million-dollar grin. He patted the Nazi vehicle. “What do you think, Vernon? Hometown boy makes good.”

  “Smuggling back a Wehrmacht halftrack hardly counts as the crime of the century,” I snapped.

  “Hey,” Floyd said. “It’s not just a halftrack. It’s a Feuerleitpanzerfahrzeug auf Zugkraftwagen.” He rattled off the German tongue-twister like he’d been speaking the language all his life. “Adapted from the Jerries’ V2 control post.”

  That explained the shape. It really was a blast deflector.

  “Cheer up,” Floyd continued. “The f-panzer’s just a souvenir. What’s inside it, and inside the crate — those are the real prizes.” He paused, mock serious. “And they may well be the crime of the century.”

  “Really.” I couldn’t decide if he was crazy, stupid or pulling my leg in a very big way. Maybe all three. The war addled people.

  “Come on, take a look.” He walked to the back of the halftrack and stepped up onto the ladder that hung from the hatch at the rear of the strangely-angled cargo box. A huge stainless steel padlock secured it, with an eagle engraved on the lock body. The bird was so large I could see it from ten feet away. Floyd took a key ring from his pocket and fit one in.

  “That lock looks like it’s worth a fortune all by itself,” I said.

  “Oh, probably.” Floyd shrugged. “Some kind of special SS lock. You want it?” He turned to face me, open lock in his hand.

  “Nah, keep it. It’s yours.” His words about wartime stay-at-homes like me taking all the good jobs still stung, in part because there was a measure of truth to them. I figured Floyd was going to need all the valuables he could get in life. Unless the truck was full of diamonds. Or something worse.

  Floyd pulled open the latch and swung the door wide. He stepped up inside, calling, “Get in here.”

  I stepped up the ladder to peer in. There was a profusion of radio and electronic gear in the truck, much of it obviously installed in haste. Loose wires trailed everywhere, and a box of stray vacuum tubes was jammed under an operator’s console. A hooded glass screen was bolted to one side of the van, while racks of gear lined the other. It looked like a radio operator’s idea of heaven.

  Or maybe hell. I wasn’t sure which.

  “What does it all do?” I finally asked. He’d mentioned the halftrack was an adapted V2 launch controller, but as far as I knew they were ballistic rockets — nothing that would require all this radioelectronics.

  “I got no idea,” said Floyd cheerfully. “That’s why you’re here.”

  “Floyd, I am a materials science engineer specializing in aeronautics. I know how to refine aluminum, how to machine wires and struts. I can find my way along the parts list of a B-29 in the dark. I don’t know anything about electronics, past winding a radio crystal.” I waved my hands around the van. “This might be a television studio for all I can tell.”

  Floyd didn’t seem perturbed. “Vern, you’ll do fine. The boffins I...well, got this from...they said the German word for this thing translated as ‘telescanner’ or ‘farseer.’”

  I knew about radar, from my work at Boeing, but it wasn’t common knowledge in the fall of 1945, so I didn’t say anything. But this truck certainly seemed as if it could have been used to control a German radar installation, perhaps out in the field.

  Floyd looked at me, waiting for me to answer. I just stared at the electronics and wondered how long we would both spend in the stockade at Fort Leavenworth for this. After a few moments, Floyd spoke again. “You haven’t seen the best part yet, old buddy. This f-panzer is just a sideshow. Let’s open my crate.”

  I followed Floyd back out of the control center, whatever it was. I carefully shut the door behind me. Floyd had removed the shiny German lock. I looked around for him, but he had disappeared, only to return a moment later with two long-handled crowbars and an axe.

  “We’ve got to tear this baby down,” he said, handing me one of the crowbars.

  “Uh, Floyd, let’s talk this over first.”

  “Sure, sure, Vernon. What’s on your mind?” Floyd was obviously feeling expansive. I might too, if I’d swiped a German secret weapon.

  “Look, I don’t know how to say this, but...I don’t want to look in that crate.”

  Floyd’s eyes crinkled as his mouth turned down. It was like he was acting out his emotions. “I thought you’d love this stuff.”

  “Oh, I could love it, believe me. Only, what’s in that telescanner truck of yours is enough to get us both put away for a long, long time. That’s a military secret Floyd. I don’t know where you got it, I don’t know how you got it, and I certainly have no idea how you got it all the way from Germany to Kansa
s, but it’s—”

  “Belgium, actually,” Floyd interrupted.

  “Gosh darn it,” I yelled. “I don’t care if you bought it in the camel market in Timbuktu! That thing is trouble, great big heaping buckets of trouble. Either you go and drop it in a quarry, or we call the authorities in Wichita and hand it over to someone in a position of responsibility. I don’t want to know anything more about it. Ever.” I turned my back on him.

  Floyd made me so furious, sometimes. For years, he had gotten everything he wanted on charm, good looks and athletic ability. But the war was over, we weren’t in high school any more, and Floyd’s thoughtlessness was really starting to show through. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how Floyd had thought stealing some Nazi secret weapon and shipping it back to Kansas would be a good idea. Not even he could be that dumb.

  “Vernon.” Floyd spoke in his small voice. I was about to hear the I’m-so-sorry-it’s-all-my-fault-it-will-never-happen-again speech. I could recite that one from memory. “I’m not going to apologize for what I’ve done,” he said.

  He surprised me. Floyd really did. Maybe he was growing up after all. “What are you going to do?” I asked, turning to face him.

  “I’m going to ask you to do me one more favor. Then, if you don’t want any part of this, walk out of the barn and go home. Just forget the whole thing. I’ll never say another word, you’ll never be involved again. If there’s any trouble your name won’t come into it. Promise. Honest injun.”

  I knew from long experience what Floyd’s promises were worth. He was sincere — he was always sincere — but somehow things never quite worked out. Now he was taking a whole new approach to conning me into something he knew I didn’t want to do. That made me curious. The scam was obviously huge. Being an idiot, I took the bait. “Maybe. What’s the favor?”

  Floyd smiled again, flashing that million-dollar grin. He played lousy poker because you could always tell when he knew he had won. “Just take a look in the crate. One peek, I promise. After that, either you’ll be in or you’ll be out. And I guarantee you’ll know what you want the second we open that crate.”

  I shook my head, but I couldn’t stop from cracking a smile. “Floyd, I’ve got to hand it to you,” I said. “You could sell ice makers to Eskimos.”

  He handed me one of the crowbars. “Take that end of the crate,” he ordered, “and I’ll work the other. We can pull this face off all at once.”

  We dropped the wooden stakes off the right side of my Dad’s old Mack truck. With a strain on my gimpy right leg I got up on back of the bed where I pulled and tugged with the crow bar on my end of the crate. It had been nailed shut by an expert, that was for sure. The wood groaned and splintered before the first nails loosened. As I worked, I noticed that the crate had the words “Scrap Metal — Sharp Edges” stenciled on the side. I wondered if that was a sample of Floyd’s sense of humor.

  With a mighty grunt, Floyd heaved at his end of the crate. The wooden wall came swinging down. I jumped back out of the way, falling off the truck onto my butt on the littered floor of the old barn. That hurt like blazes, and it was a miracle I didn’t get punctured by some old nails or worse. There was a resounding crash as the wood hit the floor, sending loose straw and dust clouds flying and bringing outraged squawks from the bantam hens. It darn near nailed me, too.

  As the dust settled I stood up off the floor on my shaky legs and craned my neck to look into the crate. After a moment, I knew two things.

  First, even though I couldn’t properly see the oddly twisted and curved lines of the thing, I knew I was looking at the most gorgeous aircraft I had ever seen. It looked as if it had been milled out of solid titanium, so smooth I couldn’t even see the joins.

  Second, I was going to find a way to fly it or die trying.

  Chapter Two

  The Cuban War! There was a war!” Mr. Bellamy promptly fell into a coughing fit. He had become so ill so fast, it was strange.

  The Bellamys’ dining room was a claustrophobic landscape dominated by a claw-footed dark oak table with matching chairs upholstered in a faded blue floral print. An orphaned breakfront that wasn’t related to any of the rest of the furniture hulked along one wall, while the remaining open space was littered with strangely-carved end tables and stained glass floor lamps from back East somewhere. Doilies were scattered on every flat surface like white crows in a cornfield. Everything was sandwiched between carpets the color of my gums and a pressed-tin ceiling corroded to a splotchy black.

  Mrs. Bellamy patted Mr. Bellamy on the back. They were of a feather, those two, old as the hills and tough as nails, at least before Mr. Bellamy’s latest illness. Mrs. Bellamy looked like everyone’s grandmother, pale with curly white hair and thick around the waist. Mr. Bellamy was an old shoe — wrinkled, brown and tough.

  “Now Daddy, what have I told you about yelling?” Mrs. Bellamy turned to face me and Floyd, her pinched face flushed with anger. “What is the matter with you boys? You know not to excite him.”

  “I, we —” I started to say, then stopped at a look from Floyd. Mrs. Bellamy was already ignoring me again, patting Mr. Bellamy’s back as if he was a colicky baby.

  “Don’t bother,” whispered Floyd. “You’ll just cause a fight. He comes out of nowhere with this stuff, and Mama always blames me. At least you’re here as a diversion.”

  I picked at my baked chicken. One of the yard hens had met an untimely demise to give us a fresh, farm-cooked dinner. The feral bantams in the barn were too small to bother with.

  “Now Archie, there was a hero,” announced Mr. Bellamy as he got his breath back. He resumed his oration as if he had never been interrupted. I was fascinated by the way he blindly waved his carving knife to punctuate his monologue. “Archie rode up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt, you know.”

  He stabbed the knife at me. “Did you serve in the Spanish-American War, Veldon?”

  “Ah, no sir.” I wasn’t even born during that war. I was certain that the question was rhetorical anyway. Mr. Bellamy wasn’t interested in my biography.

  “He was a hell raiser, that Archie,” said Mr. Bellamy with the great sigh of old man who’d wrested satisfaction from his life.

  “Alonzo, don’t you use those words in my house,” warned Mrs. Bellamy. “Besides, poor Archie died of the influenza down there in Florida along with all them other boys.”

  “He was serving his country,” grumbled Mr. Bellamy. He set down his knife and glared at me. “Which is more than I could say for some people at this table. Your parents never did have a candle in their window for you, did they Varney?”

  I flushed a deep, hot red. My brother Ricky may have died in the Philippines, but all the bombers built in America would never make up for the fact that I wasn’t allowed to serve. Not to people like Mr. Bellamy. Never mind that Mom was gone too.

  Mrs. Bellamy came to my rescue. “Alonzo Hartwig Bellamy, you apologize to poor Vernon right now. He did his best for our boys in the war, with his bad leg and all, which is more than you did when poor Archie went off to die, or during the Great War, either.”

  “I served my country!” bellowed Mr. Bellamy, picking up his carving knife. He started off into another coughing fit and collapsed into the tureen of gravy next to his plate.

  “Vernon, I’m so sorry,” fluttered Mrs. Bellamy as she helped her husband up, dabbing at him with a napkin.

  He seemed disoriented as they walked slowly out of the dining room. I could hear him muttering, “Never know what Floyd sees in that Volney boy anyway...”

  Floyd shrugged and smiled at me. “Hey, Vern, I’m sorry, too. I guess I shouldn’t have asked you to stay for dinner, but I was excited.”

  I felt distant, sad. I understood how hard it was to be Floyd, beneath the bluster and the charm. “Is he always like this now?”

  This wasn’t the Mr. Bellamy I remembered from my childhood, who taught me how to drive when Dad was busy and Mom wouldn’t get in the car with me. I realized how out-of-
touch I’d been with Floyd’s folks while he was fighting overseas. I was preoccupied with Mom’s death and Dad’s drinking, but that was no excuse.

  “Yeah.” Floyd toyed with his chicken, using his fork to shove it around. “Uncle Archie died of the flu in a camp in Florida. Daddy never got over it, I guess.”

  “Archie was your Daddy’s brother?”

  “Yeah,” said Floyd. “They were twins. There’s a picture of the two of them at the 1896 Kansas State Fair in the upstairs hall.”

  “I always wondered who those boys were.”

  “Hey,” said Floyd. “He didn’t mean that stuff — about not being in the service and no candle in the window. Mama knows about your brother and everything. And Daddy’s just old and confused. Some days he’s fine, some days he thinks he’s Woodrow Wilson.”

  “I know. I’m used to it, Floyd. The worst thing that could happen to a fellow in the war was to get killed. Back home, we just went on living and living, and the young guys like me that couldn’t go...well, it wasn’t much of a life.”

  He laughed. “You’re crazy. You had the jalopies, the jills, the jobs. Heck, I’ll bet you got three squares a day all through the war. You should see what we ate over there.”

  “Yeah, maybe I had a job, but half the town thought I was a coward and the other half thought I was a fool.” I slammed a fist into the table, setting the plates to rattle. “I can’t even walk straight up a flight of stairs. There’s people said I should have lied about the polio. Like I could have hid my game leg from an Army doc? And none of the girls wanted anything but a soldier to date. No action here.”

  Floyd smirked. “Not like the action we saw in Europe, that’s for sure.”