B for Buster

by Iain Lawrence

  Bert looked down at me. “You don’t want to know, sir,” he said very solemnly. “You don’t want to even think about that.”

  “You know someone who refused to fly,” I said.

  “Who told you so?”

  “What happened to him? Just tell me what happened,” I said.

  The pigeoneer turned his back. I shouted at him, “You tell me that!”

  “Well, sir,” he said, looking up at the sky. “’E wouldn’t get in the kite one day. This fellow, ’e just stood at the door and said ’e wouldn’t get in. The pilot told him, ‘Get in.’ ’E said, ‘No.’ The pilot fetched the CO. The CO said, ‘Get in.’ ’E said, ‘No, sir. Sorry, sir.’ The CO—”

  “But what happened?” I shouted. “What do they do to someone like that?”

  Bert turned to face me again. His hands went up to his throat, and his thick fingers fumbled with his buttons. He opened one, then the next and the next, all without a word. Then he pulled his filthy coveralls apart, and I saw his tunic underneath. He tugged the coveralls from his arms, and let them flop from his waist.

  I stared at him, amazed. There were patches on the blue where badges and ribbons had been. I could see the holes where thread had held them on. There had been a chevron on his arm, a wing at his breast, thick stripes around his cuffs. Bert had been an officer once. He had been an airman.

  “They ’umiliate you, sir,” he said.

  His eyes were blinking quickly. He was red with shame, as though he stood absolutely naked.

  “What happened?” I said.

  “I was a navigator, sir,” said Bert. “On the White Knight.”

  The White Knight. I remembered the wreck on the Yorkshire hill, the painted knight with his visor open. “You crashed,” I said.

  “No, sir.” He started pulling on his coveralls again.

  “I saw the target pictures, sir. At the briefing. They were ’ouses, sir. Not factories. Just rows and rows of ’ouses. I saw that picture, sir, and decided right then that I wouldn’t take us there to drop our bombs on ’ouses, sir.”

  He had his coveralls half on, and was shrugging them up to his shoulders. “The CO was furious, sir. If ’e’d had a gun, I think ’e would ’ave shot me on the spot.”

  “How many ops had you flown?” I asked.

  “Twenty-nine, sir,” he said.

  “You had only one more to make thirty.”

  He nodded. “After thirty I was going to become an instructor.”

  “Why didn’t you do it?” I asked. “Just one more op.”

  “Why, sir? To teach other boys ’ow to drop their bombs on ’ouses? Not me, sir.” He started on his buttons, his head turned down. “No, sir, I wouldn’t do that. So I didn’t go flying.”

  “But the White Knight,” I said. “It did crash.”

  “But I wasn’t on it,” said Bert. “They sent a sprog in my place, sir. I imagine ’e lost ’is way coming ’ome, and ’e was killed for that. They all were, sir. Even Captain Flint, and I didn’t know then what a good bird ’e was. I didn’t appreciate pigeons then, sir.”

  I should have thought about what was going through his mind, all the terrible memories I must have raised. If our positions had been reversed, that’s what he would have done. But I only cared about myself, just as Fletcher-Dodge had told me. I only worried about “my own sorry self.”

  I said, “What happened next?”

  “They made my life a misery, sir. They made it a living ’ell.”

  “But they made you a pigeoneer,” I said.

  “Only in the end, sir. And only Uncle Joe. ’E took pity on me, sir, because we’d flown together once.”

  I didn’t care how it had happened, or how long it had taken. I only saw that Bert was safe and happy. “I’ll do the same thing,” I told him. “I’ll refuse to fly. And then I can be like you, Bert.”

  He smiled, but little tears came into his eyes. He smiled and cried together. “Oh, no, sir,” he said. “You don’t want to be like me, sir. I won’t let you be like me.”

  “But I can’t go flying,” I told him. “I just can’t go tonight.”

  His lip was quivering, his eyes blinking. “I know what you need,” he said. “I’ve got just the ticket, sir.”

  CHAPTER 17

  HE GAVE ME PERCY, that bright little bird. He gave me his closest friend, and grinned as he did it.

  “But Percy’s a breeder,” I said. “You told me you can’t risk losing him.”

  “We won’t lose ’im,” said Bert. “Not if you’re with ’im, sir. You look after Percy, and ’e’ll look after you.”

  Bert knelt on the floor as I held the pigeon. “Remember, sir, ’e’s got the eye-sign. No matter what ’appens, ’e’ll always get back. Just put your trust in Percy, sir.”

  It amazed me that he would give me the best bird in the loft, his favorite of the bunch, and that he would do it with a smile. But maybe the most amazing thing of all was that I believed that Percy would save me.

  I looked into the bird’s dark eyes, at the halo of sparkling stars, and I did believe it. There was a strength inside him that seemed to pulse through my hands. I felt his heart beating, his little breast heaving, and something passed from him to me. I knew what the Green Lantern had felt the first time he had touched his ring to the magical lantern. I just knew that I was safe, that I was suddenly strong and unbeatable.

  Bert closed his hands around mine. His fingers encased them, and wrapped Percy double. “Now you’ll ’ave to remember,” he said, “that it will all be new to ’im, sir. Percy’s never ’eard the flak, ’e’s never even flown in a bomber. So you’ll ’ave to watch out for ’im, sir, and ’elp ’im through it, the first time or two.”

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll try.”

  “If you get frightened, don’t let ’im see it, or ’e’ll get frightened, too.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “And never fear, sir, never fear; Percy will keep you safe.” I closed my eyes and tightened my hands. The heat from Percy’s belly warmed my fingers. His pulse sent fire through me.

  Bert put a message cylinder onto Percy’s leg, fastening it to the metal ring. He got one of the metal boxes ready, and padded it with straw. And last, he took the pigeon, to put him in the box. He held Percy up to his face for a moment, the pigeon’s head against his lips. He whispered something as he stroked the stripes across a wing.

  Maybe I was only desperate, clinging to the very end of my tether. But I believed what Bert told me, and I put all my trust in Percy. He didn’t let me down.

  Across the North Sea and all the way to Germany, I tossed Window through the chute. I kept the pigeon box beside me, and after every toss I put my hand inside to make sure that Percy’s little heart was beating. I counted the faint flutters that trembled through his feathers.

  When we reached the coast I went back to my wireless, carting the box along as though I was some sort of refugee wandering through the kite with all my belongings. I strapped it down and looked inside.

  For once I worried more about another than I did about myself. When I found Percy twitching in his box I worried that he was dreaming terrible things, whatever nightmares a bird might have. When I found him asleep I worried that the thin air had knocked him out, and that he would never wake up again. Whenever I started to quiver or sweat I thought of Percy and forced a calmness into myself. I shoved my fears away, and whispered to him, “Don’t be scared. We’re going to be all right.”

  We crossed the target at eighteen thousand feet, with the night fighters above us and the flak all around. We rolled and pitched, and the air filled with the smells of gunpowder and smoke. And I did get frightened; I couldn’t help it.

  Percy stirred in the box. Maybe it was the sound of the battle, or maybe my fear, but something upset him. He bashed himself against the corners. His beak opened, and fluttered, and I was glad that the thunder of our engines hid the sounds he made.

  I opened the door and took him out. I snatch
ed him out, and held him as we pitched along through the flak and the boiling air. He nestled into my hands, soothed as I squeezed him. I wedged myself into my place as the bomber banked and turned. I held the little bird as tightly as I dared, knowing that if I could keep him safe, he would save me.

  Will took over in the nose. Beside the twinkling lights of his Mickey Mouse display, he guided us along as searchlights splashed across us. The flak and flaming onions came up in a storm. A night fighter shrieked past our tail, and our guns opened up with their startling chatter.

  But Percy stayed quiet. His little heart thudding, his feet gripping my fingers, he lay in the darkness.

  “Left, left,” said Will. “Steaaady.” Then he cried, “Bombs gone!” and old Buster leapt in the sky.

  I kept Percy in my jacket as I dropped the photoflash, as I came back to send my signal off, as we wheeled around and turned for home. When Hamburg was far behind us, I lifted him to my shoulder. I let him ride there as we droned north across Germany, across the sea, and over England. I leaned against the fuselage to let him look out the window. It was pitch-black out there, but I imagined that he could see everything in a strange world of black and white, and that he was thinking how great it was to fly at a hundred and fifty miles an hour without even flapping his wings.

  We flew one circuit round the airfield, then went in for our landing. Will, in the second dickey seat, pulled the throttles back.

  “Flaps down thirty,” said Lofty.

  “Flaps thirty, okay,” answered Will.

  Buster trembled as the hydraulics hummed.

  “Hello, Skipper,” said Pop. “Port tank two—sixty gallons; starboard tank two—sixty-three.”

  “Roger,” said Lofty. “Landing gear down.”

  “Landing gear down, okay,” said Will.

  They talked in low, comforting voices, as though they hadn’t been shrieking and shouting at each other only an hour or two before. I imagined doctors talked like that around an operating table.

  Percy watched the fields go by. His feet shifted on my shoulder, the tiny claws plucking at my jacket.

  “Seven hundred feet. Speed one-three-five,” said Will.

  “Propeller speed twenty-four hundred.”

  “Okay.” The engines slowed. “Two hundred feet, Skipper. Speed one-two-five.”

  “Full flaps.”

  “Flaps down, okay.”

  We touched the ground and hurtled down the runway with the brakes squealing underneath me. Percy stiffened to attention as we passed the tower and the huts. Then we wheeled off to the right, taxiing along, and I told him, “You did it! Your first op.”

  I carried him from my kite on my shoulder. I didn’t care how the others joked, each calling me Captain Kid or Captain Kak, thinking he was so clever. Even Sergeant Piper got in on the act. “Arrr, must have been a rough crossing, Cap’n!” he cried as I stepped down. “Your parrot’s gone gray as a ghost.”

  I didn’t let Percy fly back to the loft. It wasn’t yet daylight, but I worried about hawks. So he rode in the truck, like part of the crew, and I carried him down to see Bert. He got the sort of welcome from the pigeoneer that I imagined most boys got from their fathers after a long adventure. I didn’t really know, as the best I’d ever gotten was a cold stare and a drunken mumble, but it seemed right when Bert nearly cried to see Percy come home.

  He kissed the bird. “Oh, ’e’s fit as a fiddle,” he said. “You’ve done well for ’im, sir.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  We returned to Happy Valley the next night, and it seemed almost easy after Hamburg. Only A for Apple didn’t come home. They copped it over Remscheid, and the mid-upper gunner was erased from the Morris list. Only two names remained on the blackboard. If the pilot of G for George bought the farm, Lofty would get the bus. But the thought that we were so close to having the Morris didn’t terrify me anymore. I believed that Percy would protect us even from a chop list.

  CHAPTER 18

  ON THE SECOND OF August, when the moon was new, the bowser king went out at first light and fueled the bombers. The smell of petrol wafted across the field, and the gurgle of the pump set my nerves on edge.

  The target that night was Hamburg. But the worst news, for me, came when Drippy stood up.

  His weather map was covered with circles and lines. He smiled at us and said, “Thunder, boys. Expect thunder and lightning all the way.”

  Bert shouted at his man upstairs when I told him that. “Poor birds,” he said. “It’s going to be ’ard on them, sir. ’Ard as nails.” He worried about Percy, who had never seen a thunderstorm from the air. “You’ll ’ave to ’elp ’im through it, sir.”

  I did the best I could. The moment we took off, I lifted Percy from his box. I opened my jacket and slipped him down into a sheepskin nest, where he settled against my heart. We climbed through churning clouds and heavy rain that dashed against Buster like shotgun pellets. At five thousand feet the lightning started, and the rolls of thunder that followed them were louder than the engines.

  Percy lifted his head, and I could feel him quivering. In each bolt of lightning I saw his eye-sign glow, the little stars twinkling round his pupil. I pressed my hand against my jacket, pressed the bird against my breast. But he didn’t try to struggle free; he lay in there and twitched with each lightning bolt and every peal of thunder.

  Ratty told feeble jokes from the rear turret. He called the lightning by its German name. “Blitzen,” he said in a terrible German accent. “It’s’n blitzen everywhere.” It dawned on me that he didn’t care for the lightning, and that he was genuinely frightened in his lonely dustbin far behind us all. None of us really knew what would happen if the lightning hit old Buster.

  The flashes lit up clouds that looked like fists and gremlin heads that were torn and twisted by strong, high winds. Simon shouted like an old sea captain, “It’s howling a fury up here.” In stranger Australian than ever, he added, “It’s London to a brick that we’ll be blown to the never-never.” He couldn’t account for the winds that shifted with our altitude, blowing first against us and then behind us.

  Will’s maps were useless; he couldn’t see the ground. I started taking navigational bearings, tuning the loop antenna onto Berlin, onto London, onto anything I could find. I wrote the bearings on bits of paper and passed them to Simon as the rain blasted against us. It dribbled through the bubbles and the canopies, until Lofty sat in a little waterfall, soaked from his shoulders down. Then the rain turned to ice as we climbed. It froze along the wings and on the edges of the tail fins. It froze to the whirling blades of the airscrews, then flew off in chunks that banged against the fuselage. The kite got heavy and clumsy; the engines ran faster.

  I rocked Percy in my jacket. “It’s okay. Don’t worry,” I told him.

  Then a weird blue glow filled the Halifax. It shimmered on my wireless, on the struts beside me, on the frame around my window. It was a pulsing jelly, like strands of bluish fire. I switched over from the wireless to the intercom just as Lofty shouted, “Pop! What is it?” Buzz said, “My goddamn guns are blue.” And Ratty yelled over top of them both. “It’s lightning! We’re gonna get hit.”

  “Shut up!” cried Will, in the nose. “Saint Elmo’s fire. It’s just Saint Elmo’s fire.”

  I looked up, round the curtain and past the bulkhead. Lofty sat in a flaming seat, his hands on a fiery column. The glow shimmered all around him, on the framework of the canopy, on all his levers and controls. It even pulsed on the end of his pipe.

  It was an eerie thing to see at eleven thousand feet—a cold blue fire consuming the kite. It terrified me at first, until I thought of the Green Lantern and the glowing metal that gave him his power. I reached toward the window frame, hoping to touch the flames, to capture their power. “Shazam,” I said to myself as my fingers trembled. But the glow suddenly vanished, fading away like a ghostly fire, to leave us in darkness again. Buster went roaring up through the clouds, tossed by the wind as she clim
bed.

  Will spoke in his deep Shakespeare voice. “There appeared a chariot of fire. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind.”

  I had never learned the Bible stories. I didn’t know what he was blathering about.

  We flew on through rain and ice, through lightning, clouds, and stars. The wireless filled with static, and Simon tried all his little tricks. Twice we dropped flares and let Ratty measure the angle of our drift by lining them up on his guns. But we never found the target. We blundered over Germany, in and out of flak and searchlights. We didn’t even know where we dropped our bombs; we just let them fall, and turned for home.

  The lightning chased us, and little Percy shivered in my jacket. He fell asleep over the North Sea and dreamed some sort of dream that had him twitching all over. I tried to calm him, but he twisted round and nipped me through my pullover.

  I felt awful for him, to see him dream. It was as though my own nightmares had been passed to him, for I hadn’t had my spinning dream for days, not since I’d taken Percy flying. For three mornings in a row I had woken full of peace, feeling rested and content.

  That night was the same. I ate my fresh egg and sat through debriefing, then fell asleep as soon as I crawled into bed. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and I thought of Percy dreaming, but no fiery world went twirling around me.

  I woke to the patter of rain on the hut’s tin roof, a sound I’d come to love. If it drummed like that, there would be no flying, and it drummed like that all week. Yet I found my stomach churning as much as ever as I sat at the breakfast table waiting for the WAAF. Through all the week of rotten weather it churned away each morning. But on the third day I noticed that Buzz and Pop and Ratty were worse—much worse—than me. Their breakfasts sat unfinished as their fingers shook and fluttered. Buzz had a twitch in his left eye, so that he looked a bit like the American gunner we’d met. Pop kept tapping his foot on the floor, his whole leg moving, his knee going up and down like a grasshopper’s. Only Lofty didn’t seem to mind the waiting; he took turns chewing his sprouts and chewing his pipe. Sometimes he chewed the two together.