Rocket Science

by Jay Lake

  She was tied to it.

  I worked the board over, looking down at the top of her poor head, and the hank of rope that kept her hands pulled upward, tied off to a fresh nail in the bottom of the seat board.

  It only took a moment to work that free, then I leaned down, gagging, to untie her hands. The reek drew tears to my eyes, and I kept trying to sneeze and choke at same time, without managing either one.

  When I worked her gag free, Mrs. Bellamy drew a huge breath, like she was going to scream.

  “Quiet!” I hissed. “They’re on the roof, watching. Listening.”

  “I am going to cut them boys apart like last year’s venison,” she said, her voice hard and bitter.

  “Uh...ma’am...”

  “Get me out of here.”

  “I’m trying.”

  It was an outhouse, it wasn’t supposed to be big. I braced myself as best I could, leaned down, and tried to pull her free. She had nothing to grip on but the edge of the seat bench, and my hands. Mrs. Bellamy was a woman of generous proportions, and I wasn’t strong enough to haul her up.

  “I got to think,” I said. “Can you stand it down there a little longer?”

  “I’m not getting any dirtier, Vernon Dunham,” she said tartly. Her voice softened. “But think fast. Please.”

  Not only did I have to get her out of the pit, I had to get the two of us off the Bellamys’ farm. I’d already been in the outhouse too long. One of those old men in Mr. Bellamy’s gang was bound to notice. I imagined the sniper on the roof with his rifle pointed at the outhouse door. What the heck could I do to keep us alive?

  For one thing, I couldn’t do the obvious and just walk around front and borrow the Willys pickup. A rope on the bumper would help me get Mrs. Bellamy out of the pit. But Mr. Garrett and the man on the roof doubtless had orders to stop me from leaving, orders that almost certainly included using their guns. The Cadillac was hidden up in the peach orchard, but I had already made a terrible mess of that car. Floyd had said that he needed the tractor to get it there. I didn’t think I could manage to drive it out, even if I somehow got to the car unobserved.

  There was always the barn. Dad’s truck would run — it hadn’t rained much in the last day or two, plus the old Mack had been indoors. There was even the f-panzer, which had the advantage of being armored. If I could get it started, and if there was no special trick to driving it — Floyd had driven the f-panzer back from the railroad depot, while I had never even climbed inside the cab — it would be a perfect getaway car.

  Plenty of rope and chains there, too. If I could get up there, I could drive back down in the armored vehicle, park it between the outhouse and the snipers, and get her out. Though Lord only knew how lame me and old Mrs. Bellamy could move fast enough for it to matter.

  Would I have to go for help, bring the police or the Army back to rescue her?

  I had trouble imagining leaving someone standing waist-deep in cess, but I was having more trouble imagining how to safely get her out of there.

  If going for help was my plan, there was always the computational rocket. It was still on top of the Mack, and there was no way to taxi it out for a takeoff roll. Of course, it wasn’t a normal airplane. Maybe it didn’t need a takeoff roll. While that was probably wishful thinking, I knew that the Army was working on a machine, back East somewhere — Connecticut? — that flew vertically. Sort of a fully-powered autogyro. Maybe my aircraft could do the same thing.

  “Hang on,” I told her. “I have an idea.”

  “Soon, Vernon.” Her voice was heavy, sad. “Please.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The handset hung heavy in the pocket of my bathrobe. “Hey,” I whispered, touching it for luck. “Computational rocket. Can you hear me?”

  “What?” asked Mrs. Bellamy.

  “Yes,” said the voice in my ear.

  Not again. “Mrs. B, I’m using a radio,” I said. “I need to talk.” I paused, took a deep breath, which turned out to be a mistake with the bench off the cesspit. “Okay,” I told the empty air. “I’m in big trouble here.”

  “I warned you,” said the voice.

  “Forget the editorial. Can you fly? Without the hundred of liters of oil?”

  “I can. In technical terms, I am currently capable of limited subsonic atmospheric operations.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “Correct,” said the machine.

  And for a moment, I was silent, marveling at the thought that I was talking to a giant calculator, the ultimate Babbage engine.

  Maybe it was me that had gone over the edge. I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. That line of reasoning was pointless. Even if it was true, I had to do the best I could. I certainly hadn’t imagined all the gunplay, the house fire, the attack on my dad. Mrs. Bellamy standing below, breathing like a cow in winter. “How will you take off? You’re parked on top of a truck.” Here was the critical question. “Can you get airborne without a rollout?”

  “I will be forced to destroy this enclosure, after which I can take off vertically.”

  “You’re going to blow up Mr. Bellamy’s barn?” I hadn’t realized the aircraft was that powerful.

  “I do not wish to commit such vandalism, but that is what I shall be forced to do to fly from here.”

  “Vernon...” said Mrs. Bellamy, in a voice which made it clear she was more worried about me than about herself.

  “Wait,” I told her. “Please.” I reached in and squeezed her hand, then turned my face away from the stench. “Look, um...” I realized I had no name for the thing. “What can I call you? I feel pretty silly saying ‘computational rocket.’”

  “I have recently been referred to as ‘Otto.’”

  “I am not calling you Otto,” I hissed. It flew, it talked, it knew more than I did, and it came from some ancient, unimaginable place and time. Atlantis? Mars? Lord only knew, and He wasn’t telling me. A name popped into my head. “How about Pegasus?”

  It was the best I could do. I was thinking of the sign at the gate of the Mobil refinery west of downtown Augusta.

  “Pegasus? What does that mean?”

  Dim memories of college classics courses bobbed to the surface. “Pegasus was a flying horse in Greek myth, borne of sea foam and blood.” I was amazed I could remember that. That the blood should be Dad’s was something I would regret for the rest of my life, but the name fit. Another bit of myth popped into my head. “Bellerophon rode her to places he could not have gone by any other means.”

  “That would be you, Vernon Dunham,” said Pegasus.

  “Right, me. I’ll soar to heaven and take my place among the stars with you. Unfortunately, at the moment I’m in this outhouse with Mrs. Bellamy, who is well and truly stuck. I need to get away from here, and bring her help. If I manage to sneak down to the barn, how long will it take you to prep for takeoff?”

  “Vernon!” she said.

  “I can accomplish my atmospheric preflight sequencing in approximately two minutes.”

  For someone who got their English from the gospel radio, Pegasus sure could talk like an operations manual. That made it easier for me to accept it as a machine.

  “All right, Pegasus. I’ll get over there as fast as I can. You seem to know where I am all the time. As soon as you sense me coming, start your preflight.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Pegasus?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Don’t call me sir.”

  “Yes.”

  I bent down over the pool again. “I’m going for help,” I told Mrs. Bellamy. “We can’t get you out, just the two of us, and your...husband’s...friends are out there. With guns.”

  “Vernon Dunham, I know that. They had me locked up since yesterday in the root cellar, moved me out here when that policeman came.”

  “Why?”

  Her face set, impassive. “There’s some things you might be better not knowing, boy. I’m sorry. Just...get me help. Please?”

  Sq
ueezing her hand again, I turned to press my face against the outhouse door, down around knee-height, hopefully below where that old man on the roof would be likely to try shooting through the wood, and peeked out through the cracks. I couldn’t see anything in the darkness. I would just have to brave it out. I figured I’d have to do it the ordinary way — open the door, walk out into the yard, and head for the barn. If Floyd or any of Mr. Bellamy’s gang stopped me, I would say that I was checking up on Floyd’s secret project.

  The door creaked like an old leaf spring when I pushed it open. I stepped out into the dark yard, where there was just enough starlight to the bulk of the house, a few windows glowing from lanterns inside. I could see Floyd, too, standing right in front of me with one hand behind his back. He had a tense grin.

  “Hey, Vernon.”

  Had it been him that tied her up? Or one of those crazy old men with guns? “Uh, hello, Floyd.” I wished I were a better liar. Then maybe my voice wouldn’t have quavered so much.

  “Spent a lot of time in the outhouse, I see. Thought I told you to use the chamber pot next time.”

  I noticed the man on the roof had his rifle pointed at us.

  “Not feeling too good,” I said, patting my stomach through the flannel bathrobe.

  Floyd studied me, looking up and down, his eyes resting on my stained sleeve. “I see you’ve lost your candle. That’s a shame. Daddy told me to come apologize. We meant to dig a new trench and move the outhouse this morning, but what with the fire in town and your getting shot up, it just got away from us.”

  “I didn’t notice anything unusual in there,” I said. Stupid, I told myself. I realized my breathing was faster, ragged, echoing like a drum between me and Floyd.

  Floyd shook his head, sorrow and denial and indifference all together on his face as his smile quirked down to a little set of the lips. An expression I’d seen on Mr. Bellamy’s face. “Vern,” he said, “you never could lie worth a damn.” His eyes shone in the starlit darkness, tears or fear I couldn’t tell. He pulled his hand out from his back to show me a butcher knife, ten inches of sharp steel.

  So he was in on it. Whatever ‘it’ was. He might as well have shoved his mother down that cesspit. For a moment, my eyes focused on the little hole at the upper corner of the blade. I shook my ahead, trying to clear the spell of the knife, and glanced up at the roof of the farmhouse. What would happen if I attacked Floyd and ran for the barn? The man on the roof was still watching us.

  I looked back at Floyd, then glanced down at the ground. I didn’t want to meet my best friend’s eyes. Not now, not ever again. He laughed, a nervous chuckle that sounded forced. I felt a dim glimmer of hope at the fact that he felt the need to force it. Who was listening? Was Floyd laughing for his father? For Mr. Neville?

  He whispered, “She was going to the Sheriff, Daddy said we had to stop her. We tied her up in the root cellar, but when Ollie come out here, we had to hide her better. Mr. Neville wanted to shoot her right then, but I couldn’t let him do that. Not my Mama!” Floyd was almost crying. “It was the best I could do, to save her. I had to leave her out there, to keep her away from Mr. Neville. What am I gonna do, Vern?” Then, more loudly, as he caught his breath. “I think you’d better come inside and have a little talk with Daddy.” Floyd waved me toward the kitchen door with the butcher knife.

  Chapter Eleven

  Well, Vernon,” said Mr. Bellamy, slapping one hand against the pump of his shotgun. Mr. Neville sat next to him, in the same chair he’d had all evening, polishing the barrel of his pistol with one Mrs. Bellamy’s good napkins. Not that she had anything to say about it at this point.

  I was flat terrified. Floyd was caught under their guns, just like me and Mrs. Bellamy, but he was trying to stay on their good side. Would he push me in the cess pit, too, to save me? Or worse? And the fact that Mr. Bellamy had finally gotten my name right after all this time was somehow all the more terrifying.

  Mr. Bellamy leaned forward across the dining table. “What are we going to do with you?”

  I could hear Floyd pace behind me. He still had that butcher knife. I just looked at Mr. Bellamy and shook my head.

  “Is that ‘no?’” Mr. Bellamy looked at me like a roach he’d found in the flour tin. “Would that be, ‘I don’t know?’ Or maybe you’re saying ‘please don’t do anything at all to me, sir?’”

  “I don’t know,” I whispered. My throat was closing up, and it was hard to talk. The headache I’d woken up with earlier was back with a vengeance. I wondered how much it would hurt when they killed me. I prayed it would be a bullet in the head, while I wasn’t looking. I didn’t want to know.

  “I see,” said Mr. Bellamy. “Well, Vernon, I got some bad news and some good news for you.”

  My voice had gone to empty air. I had nothing to say anyway, so I just nodded. It felt as if I was on a string.

  “The bad news is, we’re gonna have to kill you.” He smiled at me, a narrow-lipped ancestral echo of Floyd’s million-dollar grin. Mr. Bellamy must have been handsome once, back before the Spanish-American War. “The good news is, we can’t kill you quite yet. You still have to figure out how to fly our airplane.”

  Pegasus. Mr. Bellamy had always known about Pegasus and Floyd’s little adventures in Belgium. It made me wonder how deep their planning had gone.

  “It’s too bad you didn’t serve, Vern,” said Floyd from behind me. He sounded tense. Mr. Neville glanced up at him, glaring over my head. “A quick-witted fellow can get in on all kinds of money-making deals in Europe right now. There’s desperate people over there, angry, desperate people with a lot of cash money to throw around.”

  It was too bad that Floyd didn’t get himself killed in the Battle of the Bulge, I thought. My decent, hard-working brother Ricky had to go die on some jungle trail in the Pacific while a cockroach like Floyd came back in one piece, loaded with cash. I couldn’t believe I’d ever cared for the little weasel, let alone spent most of my childhood with him.

  “I’ll make a deal with you,” said Mr. Bellamy. “Think of it as a motivational opportunity. You do your part fast, see, figure out how to fly that airplane. Then teach Floyd what he needs to know, we’ll kill you quick. Heck,” he said expansively, “I’ll let you pick how. Shotgun to the head, whatever. We’ve even got some rat poison.”

  Mr. Bellamy smiled at me, little yellowed teeth peeking out from behind pale lips like fat caterpillars crawling across his face.

  “On the other hand,” he continued, “you do your part slow, stall for time, guess what happens? We kill you slow and bad, then go find ourselves another aeronautical engineer. What do you think, Floyd? How could we do it? Give young Vernon here some ideas to think about.”

  He was so close behind me I could feel his breath on top of my head. I imagined that butcher knife in his hand, twitching toward the back of my neck, aching to cut into my spine, slicing my throat the hard way — back-to-front.

  “I don’t know, Daddy,” Floyd said. His voice was strong again, back under control in the presence of his father and Mr. Neville. But what he’d said in the outhouse...he didn’t believe in this...craziness. Floyd, who’d carried me when I couldn’t walk as a kid. “I don’t reckon Vern will be any kind of problem.” His fingers settled firm upon my shoulder. Was this my oldest friend talking? Or the surprising lunatic who’d come back from Europe? “He knows what’s good for him.”

  Mr. Neville set down the napkin. “Kneecaps are good. While’s he’s sitting down, a bullet right from above. Blows the calf away. Cuff his hands, dump him in the slit trench before you fill it in, let him decide whether to drown in shit, suffocate under the dirt or just bleed out.”

  “Uh,” gasped Floyd behind me, like he’d been sucker punched. His mother was out in that trench. But he was behind me, with a knife, instead of helping somehow.

  I couldn’t do much about Mr. Bellamy or Mr. Neville — justice for them would come from somewhere else. But right then I decided I would kill Floyd if I ha
d to tear his liver out with my bare hands. If Floyd lived out a long life in Kansas while me and Dad and my brother Ricky and who knows how many others rotted in the fertile ground, then there was no goodness in the world at all.

  My hate must have showed in my eyes like a harvest burn-off because Mr. Bellamy stirred in his chair, his hand stroking the pump of the shotgun. “Floyd, I do believe Vernon’s showing some signs of commitment here.”

  That irritated me. I hawked and spat on the table, then bit my lip. I might as well try to understand it all, if I was going to die for it. Start at the top, with what was most important. “What did you do to my dad? Why?”

  Mr. Bellamy looked surprised. “Nothing. I know there was trouble, but that wasn’t our doing.”

  “Aren’t you Nazis?”

  Mr. Bellamy laughed, exchanging grins with Mr. Neville. “Us? Nazis? Boy, you’re crazy. I’ve been a Republican for sixty-eight years. Why in blazing hell would I want to be a Nazi?”

  “Nah,” said Floyd behind me, his voice solid again, “there’s Nazis out there, all right. That’s why Mr. Neville is here, and the boys on the roof. But we ain’t the Nazis.”

  “Who is?” I asked.

  “Oh, take your pick. I don’t rightly know for certain,” said Mr. Bellamy conversationally. He shouldered his shotgun, sighting along the barrel toward my face. “Probably Sheriff Hauptmann. He always was a fascist sympathizer, ever since he came home from Russia. Definitely one of those Captain Markowicz fellows is a Nazi. Heck, maybe both of them are. Doesn’t matter much. Their day is done, but the corpse ain’t quit kicking yet.”

  “And I’ll bet there’s one in the public library,” I said bitterly, thinking of Mrs. Sigurdsen.

  “I expect you’d be surprised,” said Floyd behind me. “About who’s who in Butler County, I mean.”

  “Yep,” said Mr. Bellamy. “Know what your dad did in the Great War?”

  “Yes.” I’d heard the stories, in and out of drink. They changed from time to time, but the substance was always the same. “He fought in the trenches with Pershing in France.”