Rocket Science

by Jay Lake

  I knew exactly what he meant — Belgian girls and French wine. I don’t think Floyd ever saw a bullet in Europe. Not even with his Battle of the Bulge story. Floyd worked on bomber engines, and they park those nice, expensive airplanes a long way from the front lines. Nevertheless, he was over there while I was safe at home in Kansas.

  “Besides,” Floyd continued, “without you fellows home building tanks and planes, I’d still be hip deep in a trench somewhere in France, I’m just sure of it.”

  “I know. They also serve who stay home and listen to the radio.” I pushed my plate away. “Let’s clean up for your Mama. I’ll bet she’s got her hands full with Mr. Bellamy acting up.”

  “Now that’s the Vernon I know,” laughed Floyd. “Always ready to do someone else’s chores.” He followed me into the kitchen with an armload of plates.

  And yet, underneath the pain of his snippy words, I could still remember Floyd carrying me through summer fields, laughing at the crows and singing campfire songs.

  We went back into town late that afternoon, driving the Farm-All because we couldn’t bring Dad’s truck or the halftrack, and Floyd had left the Willys down at the station.

  “I can’t believe we’re riding fifteen miles on a tractor to go back and get your dad’s truck,” I said, shouting over the clatter of the engine. Mr. Bellamy needed to give this thing a valve job, really bad. A new muffler wouldn’t hurt, either.

  “It’s a longer walk,” Floyd yelled back. “Especially with your leg. I’ll bring the tractor back tonight. You come over tomorrow in Daddy’s truck.”

  By the time we got to the depot, my ears were ringing. Odus Milliken was just locking up for supper.

  “Boys,” he said as we shut off the tractor and got down to stretch. “Pretty strange shipment you got in today.”

  Floyd smiled at me like he’d been expecting the question — which made me wonder if he’d planned to leave the pickup here for this exact purpose.

  “Odus,” he said, taking the railway agent’s arm. “As one veteran to another, let me buy you a beer. The State Street Lounge good enough for you?”

  “Well, I was heading home for—”

  “Nope. Dinner’s on me, too.” Floyd cocked his head at me. “Come on, Vernon. We’ll let you sit in. But Dutch treat for you, mister stay-at-home.”

  I was glad for lengthening shadows. They hid my renewed blush as I limped after Floyd and Odus.

  The State Street Lounge was crowded with roughnecks from the Mobil refinery over on the southwest side of town. The war might be over, but America’s appetite for petroleum didn’t seem to be. The workers seeped in with their greasy overalls and their steel hardhats and took over the place. A lot of the guys were vets like Floyd — the women and kids and oldsters that had run the refinery during the war were dumped for men who needed the jobs as soon as those men had come home, despite Floyd’s fears about employment.

  We wound up in a booth at the back, me, Floyd and Odus, not too close to the radio speakers. Everything was dark red, almost the color of wine, except the plywood floor which was covered with peanut husks. The whole place reeked of stale cigarettes and old beer — that bar smell you probably find everywhere in the world. Floyd flagged down a waitress, who surprised me by laying a big, wet kiss on Floyd’s cheek. I wondered what Mary Ann would have thought about that.

  “Hey, Midge,” Floyd said. “You know Odus Milliken, from the station.” She winked at him. “And my buddy Vern, works over in Wichita.” I didn’t get a wink. “Beer all around.”

  You couldn’t get liquor by the glass in Augusta. A fellow had to drive to Wichita for that privilege.

  Even though Floyd was being free with my Dutch treat money, I wasn’t going to argue about the order — I’d just sip around the edges. It was Floyd’s show, and I wanted to see how he would manage Odus. My buddy could be a real artist when it came to handling people.

  “I thank you kindly, Corporal Bellamy,” said Odus, “but what’s the real story here? You’ve never stood an old man a drink before. Why start now?”

  Floyd leaned over the table with a look on his face like he was going to share the Secret of Life. “Business confidentiality, Mr. Milliken. Commerce in all its glory, bringing jobs and money to Augusta.”

  Odus drummed his fingers on the table for a moment. “Floyd, it’s none of my business what people do or don’t bring in here from Kansas City or Chicago or Baltimore. Heck, London or Hong Kong don’t make me no never mind. But I saw you drive a Nazi war machine off that flat car Floyd Bellamy, me and half the town. That ain’t business, that’s plum weird. What the hell are you up to?”

  I was pretty interested in Floyd’s answer to the question.

  “Business, Odus, is about getting ahead of the other guy. Santa Fe Railroad’s going diesel, right? Tell me, why is that?”

  Odus shrugged. “Don’t know the details, ain’t my job, but it’s about cost I reckon. Steam locomotive’s expensive to operate and maintain. I hear one man can run two, three diesels together. Try that trick with steam, you’re like to wind up in the ditch with thirty tons of scrap metal parked on your forehead, right quick.”

  “Cost.” Floyd ticked his points off on his fingers. “Efficiency. Quality. Same reasons we won the war. We could do it better, faster and cheaper than anyone else.”

  He glanced around the room, made a show of checking for eavesdroppers. The conversation paused while Midge brought our suds. Floyd got another wink. She never even looked at me. “I’d never be one to give aid and comfort to an enemy, but Odus, you’ve got to know the Jerries had some great technology. German optics, chemicals, color dyes, fertilizers, machine tools — best in the world before the war. Heck, they’d still be the best at that kind of stuff today if those bombers Vern built hadn’t flattened them.”

  My B-29s only flew in the Pacific theater, which Floyd knew perfectly well, but this was his spiel.

  “Maybe you have that right,” Odus answered grudgingly, “but it feels darned weird to be talking up the enemy.”

  “They’re not the enemy any more,” Floyd whispered fiercely. “Those are our boys now. If General Patton had had his way, we’d be fighting side by side with the Jerries against the Red Menace already.” He sat back in his seat and took a long pull off his mug. “No reason in the world some hard-working American boys can’t make money off some of Jerry’s good ideas.”

  “I ain’t giving you no money,” said Odus automatically.

  Floyd waved his hands, as if pushing Odus away. “No, no, Odus, you misunderstand me. I don’t want your money. I just want to keep a lid on things for a while — maybe four, six months.”

  “Lid?” Odus sipped his drink. I toyed with mine, then shucked a couple of peanuts from the little ceramic bowl.

  Floyd gave Odus a narrow-eyed stare. “You see that halftrack I pulled off the train?”

  Odus chuckled. “Of course.”

  “It wasn’t no halftrack.”

  Odus’ chuckle turned into a laugh. “Floyd Bellamy, if you’re going to flim-flam me, you’re going to have to do a lot better than that.”

  “No, Odus, it had wheels and treads. That’s not what I mean. But that funny little housing on the back? It was a mobile fertilizer plant. High-yield fertilizer straight from bunker-grade crude. Nazis had to develop that stuff to survive near the end of the war when we had ’em cut off from overseas shipments and on the run.”

  Odus gave a low whistle. I was pretty impressed myself — Floyd must have worked on that routine for a while.

  “Anyway,” Floyd continued, “Vernon here’s an engineer. Me and him are going to break down that equipment, reproduce the process, and make Augusta, Kansas the fertilizer capital of the world. And we only need one thing to do it.”

  “What?” After that last bout of resistance, Odus was completely under Floyd’s spell. I figured Floyd could get money from him now if he had a mind to.

  Floyd reached across the table to touch Odus’ lips. “Your s
ilence,” he said.

  Odus sipped from his beer and thought that over. He glanced around the bar at the oil-stained roughnecks. I could almost see him thinking about all the wells in eastern Kansas, the business it would bring to the railroad, wondering where the plant would be built. I’ve got to give Odus credit — he held back.

  “I’ll make sure the boys keep their mouths shut,” Odus finally said. “I’ll put out the word it was European farm machinery.”

  Floyd clapped him on the shoulder. “Odus, we’ll all be famous someday, because of the wisdom of men like you.”

  If I had half Floyd’s gift of gab, I’d be a wealthy man. Somehow on the way out the door, he convinced me to keep the tractor and drive it back to the farm the next day.

  Early that morning — it was a Friday — I drove my Hudson the thirty mile round trip into Wichita and borrowed some tools from work, including a magnifying glass and a set of measuring calipers. I was extremely curious about the manufacturing history of the airplane we had hidden in Floyd’s barn. When I got back to Augusta, I parked down by the railroad depot and got on the Farm-All. My knees would be sore by the time I got to the Bellamy place, but Floyd could darn well give me a ride home in his dad’s pickup.

  When I came sputtering up their drive into the yard of the farmhouse, Floyd and Mrs. Bellamy were sitting on the front porch in the deep shade of the giant wisteria that grew on the front of their house. From the parlor, you couldn’t even see outside, just a dark jumble of sticks and leaves. I killed the Farm-All out by the oak tree and walked up to join them. I was covered with mud and sweat.

  “Vernon, you really should take more care of yourself,” Floyd’s mother said.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Bellamy.”

  “I’ll fetch you some apple cider.” She swished inside, under way with the same slow determination as a Mississippi barge.

  Floyd stretched his arms upward, rolling his neck to clear a crick. “Have a nice night?”

  “Went home, listened to the radio.”

  “I really appreciate you taking care of the tractor. I had to catch up with Mary Ann.”

  “Without your mattress in the truck?”

  “Vern,” Floyd hissed. “Mama’s right in the house.” He grinned. “Besides, there’s other places and ways.”

  And women, I thought, remembering the waitress laying that big old kiss on Floyd in the State Street Lounge. I’d never know, at least not until I was married. If.

  Mrs. Bellamy came back on to the porch, rescuing me from my thoughts. “Floyd tells me you boys have a special project going in the barn.”

  I glanced at Floyd. “I was wondering when he was going to let you in on our little efforts.”

  She handed me an apple cider, then sat on the glider. It hung on rusted chains from the wasp-blue porch ceiling, which was why I had taken one of the shell-back metal chairs. I was too much the engineer to trust those old chains and their hidden mounting.

  “I don’t hold with airplanes, Vernon Dunham,” she said. “I know its what you do for a living and all, but they are the work of Satan.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, ma’am.” I’d gotten this lecture when she found out what I was studying in college, and gotten it again when I went to work at Boeing. I’d never had the heart to tell Mrs. Bellamy that I was a licensed pilot.

  “If God had meant man to fly,” she went on, “he’d have given us brains like the birds.”

  “Uh, yes, ma’am.” I couldn’t work out if that meant only the stupid should fly, or the fearless, or the natural aviators. It didn’t matter — the general tone of her opinions was quite clear.

  She shook a finger at me. “Rest assured, Vernon Dunham, Daddy and I will stay out of that barn. But you know what that means?”

  I shook my head, eyes wide. I glanced at Floyd for a signal. He just covered his mouth and laughed with his eyes. “No, ma’am, what does that mean?”

  “You have to help Floyd with his chores.”

  Of course.

  In the barn, we set about stripping the rest of the crate off the aircraft. That took some doing to accomplish safely — Floyd had to rig a block and tackle in the rafters so we didn’t have any more incidents like yesterday’s near-accident with the first panel. I spent the whole time focusing on the wood, cursing and picking splinters out of my fingernails. Every time I looked at that damned airplane I’d stop working and just stare, until Floyd yelled at me to get back to work.

  Several hours’ work with the crowbars and the ropes exposed the airplane, sitting on aluminum landing skids on the crate base, still on the bed of Dad’s truck. I didn’t want to move it off the truck until I knew what I was doing — we didn’t know the simplest things, like the attachment points for a safe lift. Besides, Dad wouldn’t miss his equipment for weeks, even if he somehow managed to sober up in the mean time. Nobody else would even care where the truck had gotten to.

  “That is just about the smallest airplane I’ve ever seen,” I told Floyd. We were on a break, sitting on the stacked crate panels and drinking root beer from bottles Floyd had brought in a little bucket of cold water from the spring house.

  “Not as small as it looks.” Floyd took a deep swig of his beer. “It sort of folds in on itself.”

  I stood up and walked around the back of the truck, inspecting the aircraft from various angles. “It is sort of...folded,” I told him. “You’re right. Crumpled, almost...but not like a wreck.” God knew I’d seen plenty of those along the way.

  “What are those planes they flew on aircraft carriers?” Floyd asked.

  “You mean the F-4U?” The Chance-Vought fighter had folding wings so it could be stored efficiently in the below-deck hangars. “It does look folded. But why bother? This wasn’t carrier-based, was it?”

  “Arctic duty,” Floyd said, “but I don’t get all the details. That’s why you’re here.”

  I shot him a look. “I understand you were spinning a line with Odus about the fertilizer. Hell, it was a great grift you did on him. What’s your line with me? Where is this thing going when we crack it open and work it out?”

  Floyd smiled. “Blue sky, Vernon. You and me and that thing heading for the open air.”

  I snorted. “You never did anything just for pleasure.”

  “Well,” Floyd said, glancing at the mattress in the corner behind a rotary plow, “a few things.”

  “Cripes,” I muttered. He never would change, my buddy Floyd. In a way, I had to admire that. I struggled back onto the bed of the truck and pulled out the magnifying glass and the calipers.

  Up close, it still looked seamless, like a milled block of metal. I decided it wasn’t titanium, but I was hard pressed to put a name to it. I resolved to take some shavings into work for analysis — I’d be going back next week to my regular schedule. Regardless, this aircraft was easily the most finely machined piece of equipment I had ever seen in my life.

  It took me almost ten minutes to identify an actual joint in the body segments. The folds and crumples in the airframe that were visible from a distance seemed to vanish into smooth convolutions up close. Sort of like looking at the ground from a thousand feet up — the abrupt lines of the watersheds so obvious from the air are impossible to find on foot.

  Using the magnifying glass and the calipers, I tried to measure the manufacturing tolerance in the joint. The metalwork was too finely machined for the scale my calipers could manage. “Damnation,” I hissed.

  “What?” Floyd had been watching me without comment from a perch on the corner of the truck bed.

  “I’m going to have to find a micrometer to measure this join.”

  “Why do you care?”

  I sighed. “It’s not obvious to me what this is made of. Or how it was built. Most aircraft are lightweight deathtraps — wood or aluminum bolted to a skeleton, cables and wires running through. There’s a hundred ways to cut into one, a thousand ways to shoot one down. This thing...the Germans have a great reputation for quality me
talwork, and some of the best machine tools in the world. But this, it’s way beyond anything I thought possible.” I tore my eyes from the rounded edge I was fondling to glance at Floyd again. “Which of their aircraft designers did this? Do you have any idea how?”

  “No. Like I said, why do you care? Here it is.”

  “I don’t mean to sound goofy, but it makes things a lot easier if I know what it was for, who built it, why. Floyd, it doesn’t even look like an airplane. It’s obviously meant to fly — I’m guessing that when all the folds straighten out into their proper positions it’ll be a lot bigger than it is now. It’s basically just a great big wing. That’s damned hard to do.”

  Floyd shrugged. “It was a secret project. They wanted to use this thing to challenge our air superiority late in the war. I don’t know a whole lot more — most of the documentation was destroyed.”

  I didn’t want to ask why the Army hadn’t taken this thing to Wright Field. I knew perfectly well Floyd had somehow stolen an entire airplane and its ground support. I was a willing accessory after-the-fact to his crime just for the privilege of being around such a glorious machine. But I really wanted to know where it came from. I really wanted to be in the mind of whoever built it.

  I turned around to ask Floyd the question again, but he was gone. Fine. I would study my airplane, understand it, and be very careful of whatever scam Floyd was running on me. He might be my best friend, but I knew him too well to trust him completely — with my life, yes, but not with my honor.

  He wasn’t going to tell me everything he knew, I didn’t have to tell him everything I discovered.

  Chapter Three

  After lunch, we were back in the barn. I wanted to make the most of my last few days before getting back to work. “You know what I really hate?” I said to Floyd.

  “What?” Floyd was measuring distances to rig a block-and-tackle to get the airplane off the flatbed.