Rocket Science

by Jay Lake

  I looked speculatively at the Cadillac, remembering years of watching gangster movies like Public Enemy down at the Augusta Theatre. If I started the car and revved up the engine, I could drop her in gear, smash down the barn door and make for the road. Even wallowing through the mud, the Cadillac could outpace a running man. I could hunker down behind the dashboard if they started shooting. I knew the yard well enough to make it out safely with barely any view of where I was going.

  On the other hand, running down the barn door seemed like a bad idea on principle. The Mack, the f-panzer and my aircraft would be wide open. Even ignoring the Cub, the barn faced southeast, and could be seen from the track heading down toward Haverhill Road. I decided to wait in the Cadillac, my hand on the starter button, and see if my unwelcome visitors opened the door themselves. If they were Nazis, the false Captain Markowicz and his confederates, then I would just run them down.

  I amazed myself with my sheer cold-bloodedness. Breathing deep, I remembered Dad, dumped to die in the trunk of my Hudson. I thought about Mrs. Swenson, crying in her yard while her house flamed like an October bonfire. These damned Germans had no business here in Kansas. They’d already destroyed half of Europe, only to have Uncle Sam give them a sound drubbing for their trouble. Defeated, they should have just slunk off the stage of history, instead of bringing their war home to my Kansas.

  And of course the Nazi agents were here because of that voice singing “Amazing Grace” in my ear, chasing Floyd and his never-ending scams. I never knew the hymn had so many verses, either.

  “Will you shut up,” I hissed into the folded piece of smoldering carpet. I didn’t know it was possible for my aircraft to talk, but it did a great job of irritating me. Just like Floyd.

  “What is ‘shut up,’ my brother?”

  “It means be quiet. Now, shut up!”

  “Ja.”

  I heard footsteps outside the barn, rustling in the scattered straw. They certainly weren’t making any effort to sneak up on me. Of course, after arriving in a military aircraft, there probably wasn’t much sneaking left to be done. They couldn’t have announced themselves better with a doorbell.

  “Hello, the barn,” called a voice. I strained to hear if it had a German accent. Really, he sounded more New York. Either way, I wasn’t going to answer.

  “This is Captain Abraham Markowicz of United States Army Criminal Investigation Division. Can you hear me?”

  Markowicz. This was the German posing as a dead man from Kansas City. I kept my thumb on the starter button of the Cadillac.

  “We’d better just open the door, sir,” said a deeper voice.

  So he’d brought muscle with him. Well, at least I had the car, which was big and heavy.

  “Yeah, I know,” said the false Markowicz. “I’m worried about the paperwork. We’re on civilian rules right now.”

  “If there’s something in there, we close the door, and go get a warrant. Or you radio in for advice from jag.”

  Jag? I knew the word...Judge Advocate General. That and search warrants. They were scamming me hard. Easier than coming in shooting, I guessed.

  The door creaked as fingers pried around the edge to pull it open. I pressed the starter on the Cadillac, which turned right over like a champ, and gunned the engine. Screaming my best Indian war whoop, I slammed the big car into gear.

  As he stepped into the opening of the door, I could see that Markowicz was a thin, red-haired man wearing an Army uniform — the dressy one with the buff-colored coat and tie. His hazel eyes were wide with panic as the front of the Cadillac slammed into him. I swerved toward a small, dark man in fatigues with an M-1 rifle slung on his shoulder who was still tugging on the door. While Markowicz scrabbled on the hood, trying not to get dragged under the car, I managed to graze his bodyguard with the front right fender. Unfortunately, the fender also got caught on the barn door with a terrible groaning noise, before pulling it completely off its hinges in a shower of splinters and straw.

  Markowicz screamed as he slid across the hood of the car, both arms flailing when his grip came loose. My acceleration brought his face pressed up against the windshield for a moment before he finally fell off the left side. I swerved again, feeling a bump that hopefully meant I had run over him. Forgetting my plan to crouch down, I turned to look behind me while the car slammed across the rutted pasture below the barn.

  The small, dark man was down on one knee, aiming the rifle at me. I ducked as I heard the crack of the bullet. The windshield over my head shattered from the impact.

  I twisted around, head hunched down into the steering wheel. I had to navigate by the memory I had been so confident of earlier. Where was I in the yard? I pulled to the left, accelerating again, trying to miss the well pump that stood midway between the barn and the house. There was a buzzing whine as another bullet ricocheted off the dashboard of the Cadillac.

  The car hit something, stopping solidly and slamming my forehead hard into the steering wheel.

  “Jesus Christ!” I yelled.

  I peeked up. I had run into Mr. Bellamy’s derelict Ford coupe. I shoved the stick into reverse, and the Cadillac slid backwards up through the mud of the yard, wallowing out of control. Ahead of me, one of the rear quarter windows of the coupe shattered from another bullet.

  I popped the clutch, shifted back into first, and gunned the engine, pulling the Cadillac to the right. Yet another bullet smashed into the dash, this time shattering the radio. The bastard was shooting for me, not the car, I realized. Surely he could have blown one of my tires by now.

  Sweating and cursing under my breath, I got the car headed down the hill and out of the yard. The bullets stopped coming.

  As I rattled down the mud track toward Haverhill Road, I risked lifting my head and looking behind me. The man with the gun had indeed stopped shooting in order to drag the false Markowicz toward the Cub. They must be going for help. I had to get help, too. But who the heck could I ask?

  If I drove to El Dorado and talked to Hauptmann, the whole story would come out. He would know I had lied to him, and I figured that would be a very unpleasant moment between us. If I went to the Augusta police, they would just call Hauptmann. Either way, the condition of Doc Milliken’s Cadillac pretty much guaranteed I’d be taken in for questioning. No cop alive could ignore all those bullet holes. If I tried to contact the Army, maybe sending a telegram to Fort Riley or Fort Leavenworth, they would think I was a lunatic, or worse.

  Instead I kept driving, cautiously peering over the dash in case Markowicz’s pet gorilla happened to be a sniper, too.

  The Cub took off behind me. It banked overhead, dangerously low. If he were a civilian, the Civil Aeronautics Administration would have had his license just for that. The plane buzzed the road, flying low over me. The little dark guy with the rifle must be flying it. He waggled the wings as he passed over me, then gained altitude and headed out to the northeast, in the direction of El Dorado.

  Somehow I doubted the wing waggle was the traditional friendly greeting of a pilot passing overhead. I interpreted it as more of a threat. “I’ll be back,” they were telling me. After my performance with the car, I felt ready for them, but I knew perfectly well once I calmed down, it would be time to panic all over again.

  Those darned Nazi agents would come after me in force next time.

  With the Cub in the air and departed from the scene, once I got out onto Haverhill Road I pulled over into the weeds at the side of the road to inspect the damage to Doc Milliken’s car. The fighting thrill already receding, I realized with a desperate wince that I could never afford to repair this Cadillac. I walked around it and took inventory of the damage anyway, out of a sense of morbid curiosity. It would be nice to know how much extra trouble I was in, on top of everything else.

  The windshield was shattered, the radio was blown out and there was another bullet in the dashboard. I had smashed the right front fender rather badly against the barn door. Both headlights were broken and the gri
ll smashed inward. There were green and brown rags from Markowicz’s uniform caught on the hood ornament, and two bloody dents on the hood. Three of the hubcaps were missing.

  At least it still ran.

  Something bothered me about everything that had just happened, something more than the obvious. I couldn’t put my finger on it yet, but the back of my mind nagged. I studied the front of the Cadillac, wondering how I was ever going to make this up to Doc Milliken. I let the elusive thought find its own way out.

  Captain Markowicz. I rubbed my forehead. When I hit him, he had flailed both his arms.

  Markowicz didn’t have a broken arm.

  No cast, no sling. And he did tell the other fellow that he was worried about a warrant.

  The real Markowicz was dead in Kansas City, the Nazi imposter had a broken arm. This Markowicz was alive and well, with the use of both arms, at least before I had gotten through with him.

  And I knew what little I did about Markowicz because Doc Milliken and Sheriff Hauptmann had explained to me how everything worked. Someone was lying, about his identity, about the situation, about who was who. I couldn’t figure why it would be Milliken and Hauptmann. They said there was a dead man in Kansas City. Doc Milliken had set someone’s broken arm. Was the dead man the Nazi, and this Markowicz real? Maybe this Markowicz was dead now, too. I’d run him over with an automobile. How tough could one man be?

  Milliken and Hauptmann had lied, somewhere in the chain of events. Nothing lined up, not now that I had seen a Captain Markowicz, in uniform, with two good arms.

  Maybe the Sheriff and the doctor were in cahoots with the Nazis. They could have been lying to me all along. That would explain Hauptmann’s interest in my engineering notebook. Looking for clues about what I knew.

  That would mean that Dad hadn’t wandered off or been kidnapped at all. Hauptmann had covered for Truefield when I blew my stack. Maybe Deputy Truefield had finished the job someone had botched earlier.

  I sat down on the crumpled bumper of the Cadillac and shook my head, trying to clear it. The pieces didn’t line up no matter how I laid them out. I didn’t have a clue who was telling the truth and who was lying. The one person I could trust was Floyd, and that was a sad comment indeed. I knew him too well.

  If the Markowicz I had just run down really was CID, I was in big trouble with the Army. Nazis were after me. I couldn’t trust the Sheriff’s Department or the Augusta Police. Ollie Wannamaker’s suggestion of a business trip to Kansas City was sounding awfully good right now. The only hope I had was that the two from the airplane hadn’t gotten a good look at me.

  At least I hadn’t been driving the Hudson. They could hunt Doc Milliken all they wanted.

  “What is happening, my brother?” It was the voice of the aircraft again, quietly in my ear once more now that it didn’t have the Cadillac’s radio to talk through.

  “We’re in trouble,” I said glumly as I glanced over at the carpet square back on the front seat. Somehow it had survived the bouncing and the bullets with flying out of the car. The smoldering seemed to have stopped, too, which I took to be good news.

  “Perhaps I can help.”

  The scary part was, at this point it seemed reasonable to be having a conversation with a scorched piece of carpet. It was easier to think of it as talking to the floor mat than it was to work through the catalog of impossibilities involved in accepting that I was speaking to an airplane. A talking floor mat was just fairy tale magic. A talking aircraft was a truly frightening piece of engineering.

  I explained what was going on as best I could, laying everything out from the day the shipment came in at the train depot. Was that really only three days ago? The very thought made me groan, interrupting my story for a moment of self-pity.

  If there was a Nazi agent listening in, too bad. I couldn’t imagine how things could get much worse.

  About twenty minutes later, as I was finishing explaining my troubles to the carpet and the radio receiver hidden beneath it, Reverend Little’s Chevy flatbed came puttering up Haverhill Road, the back loaded with tired volunteer fire fighters. His brakes squealed and creaked as he stopped next to where I sat on the bumper of the Cadillac. The Reverend leaned out of the cab window. I stepped over to talk to him.

  “You all right, Vernon?” He nodded at Doc Milliken’s Cadillac. “Seem to be having some car trouble there.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Trying to see it through Reverend Little’s eyes, I realized what a disaster the car was. I smiled. “She still runs, Reverend. I’ll make it home.”

  Reverend Little nodded sagely, although I could see that he was bursting with questions. The Bellamys’ battered Willys pickup rattled up behind the Reverend, then pulled over. Floyd and Mr. Bellamy jumped out and walked toward me.

  “We’ll make sure young Ventnor here gets home okay, Tom,” called Mr. Bellamy to Reverend Little. His voice was raspy, but he sounded healthier than he had all year.

  “Right,” said Reverend Little, grinding the gears of the Chevy. He smiled broadly at me. “See you later, Ventnor. You might want to wash and wax that Cadillac before you give it back to Doc Milliken. I expect he’d appreciate the effort.” The Chevy trundled off along the muddy road, trailing the laughter of tired men.

  Floyd and his dad just stared at me for a moment, Mr. Bellamy with an axe on his shoulder. Floyd shook his head while Mr. Bellamy took a walk around the Cadillac, making tsk-tsk noises with his tongue.

  “Now, son,” said Mr. Bellamy, “I am afraid to ask what you have been doing with this here automobile.”

  Floyd laughed.

  Oh, crud, I thought. His barn was messed up too, not to mention the old Ford. “I was attacked by some gentlemen with guns. Doc Milliken’s car was all I had to fight back with.”

  Mr. Bellamy leaned over and poked his finger at the ragged glass shards lining the windshield frame. “I see. Where did this shootout at the OK Corral take place?”

  “Your barn,” I said miserably. I knew where this conversation was headed.

  “My barn.” Mr. Bellamy turned to his son. “Floyd, are there bandits hiding in my barn?”

  “No, sir.” Floyd continued to smirk.

  “They landed in your lower pasture in an airplane.”

  “Son,” asked Mr. Bellamy gently, “what have you been doing that would make someone want to shoot at you?”

  The voice in my ear said, “Don’t tell him.”

  “What?” I asked.

  Mr. Bellamy shook his head. “There’s nothing wrong with your hearing. Why are people shooting at you?”

  “Do not tell him,” the aircraft said. “You are in danger.”

  “No kidding,” I said.

  Mr. Bellamy looked at Floyd. “Let’s get him back to the house. He’s been hit on the head, or worse.”

  I rubbed the back of my neck, where Mr. Bellamy’s buckshot had cut me. I had started out the morning with a bandage there, but I’d lost it somewhere along the way.

  “Do not send the others into danger in your place,” said the voice. “I have given great thought to your situation. You and your associate Flood must set things to right, then flee from what will certainly be unjust retribution.”

  “Floyd,” I said. “His name is Floyd.”

  Floyd took my arm. “I know who I am, Vern.” He walked me over to the Cadillac, talking over his shoulder to Mr. Bellamy. “He must be really shell-shocked, Daddy.”

  “Floyd, yes,” said the voice. “Is that a Kymric name?”

  “What’s Kymric?” I asked. I was feeling increasingly dazed.

  “Kymric means Welsh,” boomed Mr. Bellamy’s voice. I wondered why he was talking to me from inside a tunnel.

  “Welsh. Waliser. Yes, that is Kymric,” said the voice of my aircraft.

  “I’m glad,” I mumbled. I had trouble seeing anything.

  “I’m glad you’re glad,” said Floyd from somewhere else. “Vern, when was the last time you ate?”

  Somehow I sat d
own on a very warm seat. Now Floyd’s voice echoed above me. “Daddy, he’s real sick.”

  “Not Doctor Milliken,” said the voice.

  “Not Doctor Milliken,” I said. It did seem like a bad idea. I remembered that my dad had some kind of problem with Doc Milliken. “Dad, what did Doc Milliken do to you?” I asked.

  “What?” I couldn’t tell if Dad had answered, or if it was someone else using his voice. I took a ragged breath and found tears hiding in my eyes, straining to escape.

  “It will be all right,” said three voices almost at once.

  Chapter Nine

  I was warm and comfortable, except for a whopping headache. The glow I could see even through my closed eyes must be the sun. I moved my hands to discover that I was under a quilt, in a bed. I had been asleep. Opening my eyes, I studied the room around me.

  I was in Floyd’s room, at his parent’s house.

  He’d had the same printed wallpaper of jumping trout as long as I’d known him — since we were both small boys. The fish were almost lost under the sloppy-built pine shelves that crowded the room. Sloppy, not because Floyd didn’t have the skills, but because he didn’t bother to take the time to do more than was absolutely necessary. When I built furniture, it was going to last.

  We were different like that, he and I.

  The room pointed up some of our other differences as well. Football trophies, a cracked bat from the regional playoffs our junior year, a nice rod-and-reel rig he’d won in drawing at a sporting goods store in Wichita. Just a few books, lurid pulps with bug-eyed monsters on the cover, amid piles of comics. Some of the comics looked fresh. Floyd had never been serious before, no reason to think he’d start now.

  And I could swear I saw a brassiere peeking out from behind a model sailing ship. That reminded me of Midge, which made me blush all over again.