B for Buster

by Iain Lawrence

  I nodded.

  “I’ll see you when you’re ’ome.”

  I sat right at the tailgate of the truck as we rumbled across the runway. I lingered at the edge of the dispersal, nearly a wing-length away from the others. Lofty stood staring up at the engine that had failed over Germany, his pipe going in and out of his mouth. Both Sergeant Piper and Pop joined him for a while, pointing at the thing from the front and the back. Then Sergeant Piper held out the 700, but it seemed that Lofty didn’t want to sign it. They talked again and pointed some more before Lofty signed his name. He shoved the clipboard back at the erk, stalked to the door, then told us, “Come on, boys. Let’s go.”

  Buzz was still crawling around, looking for his clover. He had grazed over the same bit of grass again and again, like a sheep in a pen, and now he was worried. “Help me, Ratty,” he said.

  “Never mind that,” I told them. “It’s not the clover that helps us.”

  It was a dumb thing to say. No one had ever spoken aloud about Buzz’s clover or Ratty’s rabbit’s foot, or the others’ lucky charms—the photograph, the crucifix, the handkerchief. My ray gun was the only thing anyone had mocked, and that was no wonder, the thing had been so stupid.

  But I blundered on. “You don’t need it. You don’t need any of that junk,” I said. “Percy keeps us safe.”

  “Oh, shut up, Kak,” said Simon. His hand was in his back pocket, but he snatched it out.

  “It’s true,” I said. “He’s got the eye-sign.”

  “Shove off, Kid,” said Ratty.

  “Never mind him,” cried Buzz. “Just help me look.”

  Simon helped, and Will. Even the old guy got on his hands and knees. I pretended to look in the grass right beside me, but I really only searched for the little yellow shoots that Percy loved to gobble down. At Buster ’s door, Lofty called, “Hey, let’s go!”

  “No!” said Buzz. “Wait a minute.”

  He moved faster and faster, scuttling over the grass. Even Lofty poked his toe around, but it was Simon who found the lucky leaf. He held it out in his palm like a little green jewel. “There you go, Cobber,” he said.

  “Gee, thanks,” said Buzz. But he got Simon to put the clover down so that he could pick it up himself. “It’s best that way,” he said. “I think that’s the way I have to do it.”

  The tiny leaf fluttered down, and Buzz snatched it up again. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. Now we can go.”

  I laughed at him. I thought everyone would, but the only laugh was mine, and it seemed so loud that it echoed in my ears for ages. I could hear it as I stowed Percy’s basket, and even the engines didn’t drown it out when they started.

  We followed G for George along the perimeter and onto the runway. Engines boomed and droned. I felt us rock as George took off; I heard the spray of grit thrown back by its airscrews. “We’re next,” I told Percy. “Don’t be frightened.”

  “Testing magnetos,” said Lofty.

  It was a change in his routine. He had tested them already, as he always did. But now he wound the engines up and tested them again. Pop told him he wasn’t doing it properly, but Lofty said that he was the skipper, that he would do what he wanted. “These damn engines,” he said. “You can’t trust them.”

  I couldn’t really follow what was happening. Switches were being thrown back and forth, engine revolutions read out from the gauges. All I knew was that each engine had two magnetos, that Buster had eight altogether, and that Lofty seemed very worried. I sat in my compartment, in the darkness of the kite, and listened to the voices on the intercom, each sentence beginning and ending with the click of a mike.

  “I’m getting excessive mag drop,” said Lofty.

  “It’s not a problem,” said Pop.

  “Something’s wrong. Maybe the engine’s U/S.”

  “It’s not. Everything’s tiggety-boo.”

  Will, in the second dickey seat, said, “Seems all right to me, Skipper.”

  “What do you know?” snapped Lofty. “Look at the bloody gauges!”

  “But, Skipper,” said Pop.

  “It’s U/S, and that’s it. We’re not going anywhere tonight.”

  “But, Skipper.”

  “This old crate should be out in the boneyard. It’s a wreck; it’s a bloody disaster.”

  Pop sighed through his intercom. “You’re the boss,” he said.

  “That’s right,” said Lofty. “And we’re going back.” The engines quickened. We taxied down the runway, lumbering along with our great fat bottom dragging behind us. The intercom clicked. “There go the rockets,” said Will.

  I was on the wrong side of the kite to see those signals shooting up from the tower. But Will kept talking, and I imagined the fiery trails burning into the sky. Fletcher-Dodge must have been raging in the tower to order so many signals so quickly. They soared up one after another, until Will told us, “It looks like the Titanic going down.”

  Lofty pulled off onto the perimeter. The runway flares lined up in a row in my window, then fell away behind as we taxied our way back to dispersal. The engines seemed strong and loud to me, wheeling us along with our thousands of pounds of bombs in our belly. But I was glad that Lofty had tested them. “That was a lucky break,” I said.

  Buzz, in his turret, started asking his crossword questions; he knew them all by heart. But no one was interested, and his voice only bleated in the darkness.

  Sergeant Piper was astonished to see us back, and Fletcher-Dodge was furious. He came roaring out in a truck, demanding to know what was wrong. Lofty stormed through the door and stood in front of him, right below my window. I looked down at the top of Lofty’s cap, at the CO’s red face tilted up, shouting at Lofty. The swagger stick whistled through the air.

  Fletcher-Dodge didn’t give us a ride to the huts. Percy flew back, weightless and free, while the rest of us had to hoof it with all our clobber, lugging our chutes like schoolboys with satchels.

  There was a feeling that hung around us, a sense of being beaten, as though we had lost a battle we didn’t know we were fighting. I felt sorry for Lofty, who tried to struggle ahead with his buckles jangling. It was almost as though he had refused to fly, or that was how it felt in a way. No one said that he should have flown, but no one backed him up. I was only glad that I had a pilot brave enough to refuse to fly if he thought he had to. What would have happened, I wondered, if we had been halfway across Germany when the magnetos gave out? Could we ever have gotten home again? I wondered about it, then had to know.

  “Hey, Lofty,” I said, calling ahead to him. “If we had kept going, what would have happened?”

  “Oh, shut up, Kak,” he said. “No one wants to hear from you.”

  I had heard the same sort of thing a thousand times from my old man, but it really hurt, coming from Lofty. “Gee,” I said. “I only asked.”

  “Well, don’t,” he snapped, without even slowing.

  I felt terribly sad. I let the others move past me, and followed along behind them all, the tail-end Charlie now for sure. But Pop glanced back, then fell in beside me, puffing from the weight of his chute and his black bag of gear. “He’s not angry at you, Kid,” he said, quietly enough that no one else would hear. “Not really. He’s more angry at himself.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “Well, Kid, you should know.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. “ I don’t understand magnetos.”

  “I thought you were smarter than that.”

  The old guy surprised me sometimes. He knew things that other people didn’t. But now I thought the duffer just didn’t make sense.

  “Lofty’s playing it safe,” I said.

  “Sure he is,” said Pop.

  CHAPTER 20

  I WENT DOWN TO the pigeon loft. Bert was sitting with the birds all around him, as though he’d been telling them stories. Percy stood on top of his head, and Bert was smiling.

  “Well, ’allo, ’allo, sir,” he cried as I came through the
door. “You scrubbed it, did you?”

  “One of our magnetos was busted, or something,” I said.

  Bert laughed. “That old dodge? That won’t work twice with the new CO.”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  Bert stretched out his legs. The pigeons moved off in ripples around him, and Percy rose from his head to flutter over to me. “Let’s say you don’t want to fly. Well, you foul the plugs, and Bob’s your uncle, sir. You get too much magneto drop.”

  “On purpose?” I asked.

  “It’s easy to do, sir,” he told me. “Magnetos seem to ’ave a ’abit, sir, of causing problems before a difficult op.”

  “But Lofty wouldn’t do that,” I said. “He’s not afraid to fly.”

  “No, sir. You’re quite right, sir.”

  I hated that maddening way of his. Every time the pigeoneer agreed with me, I felt that I was wrong. But I would never lose faith in Lofty. “He might get the jitters,” I said. “I guess he might, but that’s all. He doesn’t really get scared.”

  Bert wouldn’t talk about it anymore. He got up and went to work with a bucket and a rag, washing down the walls of the nesting boxes. The birds hopped up to the rim of his bucket, two or three at once, and he splashed them with water. They shook the drops away and giggled little pigeon laughs. Others squeezed between them to get a turn at the bath.

  Bert patted their heads and talked to them. He told them he had to work, that he couldn’t sit and play all through the night. But each time he tried to move away, the pigeons squawked and shouted, and back he went to the bucket. “Oh, all right,” he told them. “Just for another minute.”

  I watched him play and laugh with the birds, his coveralls filthy, wrinkled and torn. I asked him, “What will you do when the Lancasters come?” Right away I wished I hadn’t.

  He stood up, his little game at an end. He looked down at the pigeons and all around the loft. “I don’t know, sir,” he said. “I don’t know what will become of us.”

  “Fletcher-Dodge,” I said. “Will he really . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “I don’t know that either, sir,” said Bert. “But I ’ope not.” He stood in a slouch, his shoulders bent, the rag dripping water round his boots. “But what can I do, sir? If ’e wants to slaughter them, ’ow can I stop it?”

  I didn’t have an answer. I shook my head, and Bert’s shoulders slumped even more.

  “I’m scared of that Fletcher-Dodge,” he said. “If I take one step out of line, ’e’ll pull out ’is files and whatnot. Soon as ’e does, ’e’ll see who I am and what I’ve done, and then there’ll be ’ell to pay.” He looked down at the rag, as though surprised to see it in his fist. “When Uncle Joe made me a pigeoneer, I thought I’d gone as low as I could go. I didn’t know what a kindness ’e was doing for me. I love the birds, sir; I love the loft. I love them with all my ’eart. But if I don’t do what I’m told, sir, I don’t like to think what might ’appen to me.”

  “But you’re not breeding them,” I said. “You were told to do that, and you didn’t.”

  “It’s different, sir,” said Bert. “I thought I could get away with that.” He started washing the boxes down. “I ’ave these mad ideas, sir.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “I thought I could put them all in the motorized loft. Every blessed bird.” His hand rubbed up and down over the same bit of wood. “I thought I could make a run for it, sir. Up to Scotland maybe. Up to the ’ighlands, sir. I could maybe ’ide myself among the ’ills.”

  “Hide yourself?” I laughed. “That loft and fifty birds?”

  “That’s the catch, sir, isn’t it?” said Bert.

  “What will happen when they find you?”

  “The birds will be safe enough. They’ll be ’alf wild by then. For me it’ll be prison, I suppose, sir. Years of ’ard labor.” He breathed three quick breaths. “But what else can I do, sir? When the pigeons are gone, and the loft’s destroyed, there’ll be no use for me ’ere anymore. Fletcher-Dodge will get out those files, and it will all be there in black and white. A coward; a malingerer.”

  “He won’t even look,” I said. “He’ll send you somewhere else. To another loft at another squadron.”

  “The files will go with me, sir. I could sooner ’ide the loft than ’ide those blasted files.” He mopped his face with the rag. Then he looked up and shouted at his man upstairs. “Damn you! Damn you! ’Ow can you let this ’appen?”

  His anger filled him, then drained away, as it always did. He sighed and went back to his wiping. “Some of these birds, sir, they belong to people,” he said. “People in the fancy, sir, who lent them out for the war. When a pigeon gets the chop, I write to the breeder, sir. I tell ’im the bird went out in the line of duty, that it went out a ’ero, sir. ’Ow can I tell a man ’is bird went out as a pie?”

  I felt like laughing, but there was nothing funny underneath it all.

  “I’ll make sure those birds get ’ome,” he said. “No matter what ’appens, I’ll see to that, sir. But what about the others, the ones like Percy that I bred myself? Who will speak for them, sir, if I don’t do it myself?”

  I didn’t answer. But in a flash of guilt I knew it wouldn’t be me. I couldn’t face an angry Fletcher-Dodge for a second time.

  Bert dropped to his knees and called the pigeons around him. He whistled and clucked, and they flew up to his arms and shoulders, to his hands and his head. Even Percy went over, and I felt a jealousy that I shouldn’t have felt. The birds were so happy with Bert, and he was so happy with them, that I couldn’t imagine them ever being apart.

  “Oh, it’s awful, sir,” he said. “It’s ’orrible to think about.” He was covered with birds, and the sound of them made his voice faint. “I would rather a fox got them, sir. Or a cat, God forgive me for saying it. I would rather burn them.”

  “No!” I said.

  “It’s ’appened before.”

  He waited until the birds were calm, until they nuzzled at his clothes and his neck. Then he told me a story from the last war, about a pigeoneer who had set fire to a loft full of birds as the German army advanced toward him. They were beautiful birds, said Bert, such good fliers that the Germans couldn’t be allowed to have them. He told me how the pigeoneer had wept as he’d held a torch to the wooden loft, how the birds had panicked as the fire caught.

  “It must have been frightful, sir. It must have been . . .” Bert shook his head. He got to his feet, knocking the birds away. “I ’ave to be alone, sir,” he said.

  Bert went off to his room, and I washed the boxes for him. I washed the floor and the roosts, looking at Percy every few minutes. Inside, I felt cold. Through all the thoughts about birds and pies, and the fate of the pigeoneer, my own selfish dread kept oozing to the top. I knew I’d be lost if I couldn’t take Percy flying.

  On his roost by the roof, he blinked at me, with his eye-sign shining in the lantern’s yellow glow. Then he stood at attention, and I was sure that Fletcher-Dodge would come in through the door. I turned to look, to wait, and there was Lofty standing at the window, his face a frightening skull in the moving shadows of the light.

  “You scared me!” I said.

  “Sorry, old boy.” He slipped sideways from the window; then the door opened beside it and he walked in.

  “Who came with you?” I asked.

  “Simon. But he’s gone right by.” Lofty looked surprised. “How did you know that?”

  “You’re a sergeant.”

  He frowned, not understanding that Percy only stood at attention for officers. “Well, never mind.” He shook his head. “Listen, Kid; about tonight.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “The bloody old bus. Those damn magnetos.”

  “I understand,” I told him.

  He’d been drinking. I could smell it on his breath. His face was pale and blotched; his hands shook as he jammed them into his pockets, nearly shoving his trousers right off his hips.
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  “You know, Kak, you’ve changed,” he said. “You were such a kid when I met you. So young and wide-eyed. You couldn’t wait to fly, to be a hero. Then you got scared, eh? You got the jitters, didn’t you?”

  “A bit.” I backed away as he came closer. “You know I did.”

  “Yeah, but now you’ve changed again.” He brought out his pipe. He poked it against his cheek before he found his mouth. “You’re not frightened anymore, and I want to know how come. How’d you do it, Kid?”

  I had told him already, and I didn’t want to do it again when he smelled of beer. He would only laugh at my faith in Percy. “I just don’t worry anymore,” I said. “I know we’ll always get home.”

  “How?”

  “I just know it, Lofty. Okay?”

  He nodded in that clumsy way of a drunk. “But what about the list? Aren’t you scared of the Morris list?”

  I looked up at Percy. He seemed to be watching me, his head turned sideways. His eye was enormous and bright, the tiny stars sparkling round his iris.

  “Eh?” said Lofty. “It scares everyone else. What about you?”

  Percy winked at me. His eye closed and opened again, and I could hardly believe he didn’t understand everything we were saying.

  “I think it’s maybe just a list,” I said. “I’m not sure it really matters.”

  “Yeah, why should it?” Lofty puffed his empty pipe. “Just a bunch of names, eh?”

  He squatted down in a boneless, drunken way and tried to call one of the birds toward him. It only scuttled out of his reach, but Lofty stayed there with his arm stretched out. “I like you, Kak,” he said. “Have I told you that?”

  “Yes,” I said. “The last time you were drunk.”

  I didn’t want him in the loft. It was my place, where I came to be away from him and everyone. But when I tried to help him up, Percy made a funny noise and hopped a circle on his roost. And then, beyond the wire roof, into the lantern light, came a pigeon. It dropped down with its wing feathers splayed, with that soft whistling sound growing louder. It landed above me, pushed through the trap, went straight to the bell, and tapped it with its beak.