Night of Fire and Snow

by Alfred Coppel

  He took it and slipped it into his pocket. “I’m chained to it,” he said. “It’s my bread and butter.”

  “Do you want anything? Some coffee? Cocoa?”

  “Ovaltine, Sanka, or brown celery phosphate?”

  She giggled softly and said, “I’ll leave you alone.”

  He watched her walk back up the aisle and disappear into the front cabin.

  It wouldn’t be too long before they were past Elko and then Reno. Then under them would be Donner Summit. God, he wanted to be asleep by the time they passed Donner. That was where Tom had left his legs.

  It could have been better for him all along, Miguel thought if he hadn’t tagged along with me. But it had started too long ago, maybe with that scuffle in the dirt at the Russian River, or before that. In some odd way he had established a claim on Tom that had eventually led to destruction the way such claims always did.

  What Billy Alberg had said so long ago about Miguel owning Tom was probably true. Tom had come down from Moses Lake to see the Cal-USC game and had tied one on with Billy and that’s about what he had said. Tom had also gone to see Raoul, Miguel remembered. And that was about the time Raoul had been working like crazy to get Miguel transferred out of a hot fighter outfit into Kirbee’s headquarters in San Francisco.

  Billy had also said, the night Miguel met Alaine, that Tom had not liked flying. That he had gone into the Air Corps simply because Miguel had.

  Miguel frowned, thinking that it was a responsibility he had never wanted. It was bad enough to accept the blame for your own destruction, let alone someone else’s. But if the years taught you anything at all it was that you couldn’t live in an egocentric universe without being responsible for the things that happened in it.

  Miguel knew that he had run from an intolerable situation at home that winter of 1941-42. A situation largely of his own making. There was no escaping that conclusion. Becky couldn’t be blamed. She was one of those women born to please men. Physically. In another age she would have been a successful courtesan. She could never have achieved the stature of a Pompadour or a Sorel, of course, because she had a small mind. But she was perfect, he told himself, for the aging man of flagging vitality. In all respects, save one. She had too much genuine sensuality in her make-up. She was too sincere a libertine.

  In many respects Becky and Nora were alike. But there was nothing small about Nora’s mind. She was quick, intelligent, and she had a quality of ruthlessness that Becky’s limited point of view denied her. Becky’s inept acquisitiveness could never be dignified with the name of true ruthlessness.

  So I ran, Miguel thought. And I dragged Tom with me. Because of me, Tom became a flier, and because he was a flier, he had a weapon in his hand to turn against himself.

  Miguel ran a hand over his eyes and looked out at the moonlit wilderness below. Tom was a moralist. He never should have married Nora.

  And if Tom was a moralist, where, Miguel wondered, did that leave him. Like Nora and like Becky—yes, like Raoul, an amoralist to his fingertips. The Mendelian law applied perfectly. Heredity was wonderful.

  He closed his eyes and prayed for sleep.

  What good did it do to dwell on these things? Could you undo the past? Why not keep it simple, the way the Army did?

  They gave me a medal, he thought, and a pat on the back for being a good, strong, self-sacrificing American soldier. They gave me their approval. And isn’t that what I always wanted? So the price was high. Isn’t it always?

  On May 1, 1945, while the delegates of fifty nations were meeting in the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco to create a charter for something called the UNO, another, smaller meeting was taking place on the second floor of the Spanish-California style Administration Building at Hamilton Army Air Base.

  The five senior officers were headed by Colonel L. M. Holman, who tapped for order with the hand that had been crippled by Jap infantry fire on Bataan before he had flown out in one of the last remaining P-40s.

  There was an observer there from Western Defense Command and from General Kirbee’s headquarters, too, because Kirbee’s aide was involved.

  Holman had been questioning Miguel closely on the condition of the aircraft before take-off and through the early part of the flight, and finally he came to the point with the direct question Miguel had been expecting.

  “Can you offer any opinion as to why both propellers were in extreme coarse pitch—that is to say, nearly feathered—when the wreckage was inspected, Lieutenant Rinehart?”

  A shaft of sunlight from a high window made a pattern of superimposed crosses at Miguel’s feet as he stood at attention and lied. “No, sir. Unless there was a simultaneous failure in the hydraulic system, sir.”

  One of the officers, a command pilot with fifteen thousand hours of military flying behind him, murmured, “Extremely unlikely.”

  It was unlikely. It was so unlikely as to be virtually impossible. But there was that doubt. It could have been mechanical failure, and there were only two persons who knew it hadn’t been. The truth would serve no purpose here.

  “In your inspection of the airplane before take-off, you saw no evidence of tampering, Lieutenant?” one of the Board members asked.

  “I wouldn’t have taken the ship up if I had, sir.”

  “The crew chief was a Sergeant Lippo, I believe. He was on furlough at the time of the mission and the aircraft was in the hands of the assistant. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then it is possible that the airplane was not airworthy and neither you nor Lieutenant Eubanks discovered the fact until the time of the accident?”

  “The ship was on red diagonal, sir. But we could have missed something internal. Something that isn’t ordinarily on the pilot’s check list,” Miguel said. “But if this is so, the responsibility was entirely mine. As airplane commander I should have caught any defect.” Except, of course, that there hadn’t been any defect. The airplane had been airworthy. It had been her crew that had broken down.

  Colonel Holman looked around at the members of the Board and said, “Any further questions? If not, that will be all, Lieutenant.”

  And Miguel had saluted, about-faced, and walked straight to the officers’ club to drink himself into a stupor.

  But no matter how much liquor he poured into himself, he wasn’t going to forget it. The way Tom looked, what Tom said, the strangely light weight of him.

  Then Nora had gone away south. “There is nothing more for me here,” was the way she put it. It didn’t help much to tell yourself that Nora was all of a piece—that she was unswervingly selfish and ambitious. Her desertion wasn’t easy to minimize.

  At the station, before boarding the Lark, she told Miguel, “I can’t force you to leave Alaine. But you’ll come to me eventually, because you have to, darling. What Tom told you on the mountain is true.”

  People watched them saying good-by. What did they see, Miguel wondered. Simply a soldier and a pretty girl?

  And as a final irony, having perjured himself to a Board of Inquiry, instead of the court martial he deserved, they had decorated him with a Soldier’s Medal for saving Tom’s life.

  Nine days before the crash and a month after that day at Stinson Beach with Nora, on April 2, 1945, Miguel met Tom in Base Operations. Tom wanted to talk and Miguel didn’t, but they left the field together and stopped at Le Château on the highway for a drink because Miguel couldn’t think of any way to get out of it.

  Miguel had been begging Colonel Holman for a transfer into one of the new Northrop Black Widow squadrons forming for night fighter and intruder work at Salinas and Fresno. But Holman wasn’t anxious to reassign General Kirbee’s personal pilot to combat duty. Miguel’s requests for transfer were stolidly refused.

  Nora had been making increasing demands on his time since that day at Stinson Beach. He hated the petty deceits, the constant lying to Alaine, the back-road trips—all of it. But it was the way it had to be.

  The
worst of it was facing Tom, and Tom not knowing. It made Miguel feel dirty and trapped.

  They ordered rum Cokes because that was about all they could get. Tom looked tired and overwrought. Miguel never remembered seeing him this way.

  “Did you see the paper last night?” Tom asked.

  “I was in Chico last night with Major Durst,” Miguel said.

  “Ella got picked up for drunken driving. She smashed up the old man’s car.”

  “Jesus, Tom,” Miguel said, concerned. “Was she hurt?”

  The dim bar lights gleamed on Tom’s insignia. Miguel thought suddenly that Tom had never looked at home in a uniform. He belonged in corduroy trousers and a sweat shirt—with TE loves Nora on the back? God, why did he have to think that right now, he wondered.

  “No,” Tom said. “Ella wasn’t.”

  “Oliver?”

  Tom made a sour face. “Oliver wasn’t with her. It was some baldhead son of a bitch commander from Western Sea Frontier.”

  Miguel could think of nothing to say. It had always been that way with Ella Eubanks. The wonder of it was that she could still keep it up at her age.

  “How would you like to have a pushover for an old lady, Spick?” Tom asked bitterly.

  “Don’t be rough on her, Tom,” Miguel said.

  “And a rumpot for a father?”

  “Tom—”

  “Look, I can make plain talk with you, can’t I? You, of all people?”

  Miguel nodded, not meeting his eyes.

  “Oh, it’s okay. Oliver bailed her out of jail and the swivel-chair admiral is just shaken up a bit and his reputation shot. But goddam it, why does it have to be that way?”

  “Another drink?”

  Tom slid his glass over and Miguel ordered again. It was early and the place was quiet. The instruments squatted mutely on the garishly painted bandstand. Le Château was better patronized by AAF people than the officers’ club and the USO combined, but the crowd didn’t start coming in until after six. Tom said abruptly, “Nora’s got the hot pants for somebody.” Miguel felt an icy wave wash over him. He waited tensely for Tom to go on.

  “Raunchy bitch that she is,” Tom said, “she can’t hide it. Some lousy bastard is giving her the prong.”

  “You could be imagining it,” Miguel said carefully, not meeting Tom’s eye.

  “Imagine it, hell. I know what it is when she comes in heat for it. I ought to, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose so,” Miguel said. “Look, you don’t want to tell me all this.”

  “I don’t? Listen, Spick, I’m going flap-happy with that little bee buzzing around in my head. You should see the way she acts around the apartment. Love, love, it’s wonderful. She as much as told me she was screwing around. Goddam it, Spick, why do I always have to get mixed up with tramps?”

  “Tom, I don’t want to hear all this,” Miguel said, getting up. “Sit down, for chrissake. Let me get some of this off my chest, won’t you?”

  Miguel sat down again in strained silence.

  “How’s Alaine getting on?” Tom asked.

  “All right. As well as could be expected, I guess. The doctor says she might have a rough time when the baby is born.”

  “That’s a damn fine woman you’ve got, Spick.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did I ever tell you how I met Nora?”

  Miguel shook his head. He didn’t want to know. He wished Tom would stop talking about it.

  “I had a seventy-two-hour leave. I walked into a joint in the city called The Bird of Paradise—in the International Settlement—you know it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s not your sort of place. I used to take Marybeth Margulies there before the war. You remember her.”

  “Yes.” Miguel’s conversation had degenerated to curt monosyllables, but Tom took no notice.

  “Nora was talking to the barkeep about a job. She was damn near in tears. Wanted to be a cocktail waitress, a bus girl—anything. The guy gave her the big no because she looked under age. I don’t know, Spick. For the first damn time in my life, I felt sorry for somebody. I really did. I tried to buy her a drink but the guy said no to that too. So I took her with me down to Tadich’s and we had dinner. Big soft-headed Eubanks being a knight in shining armor. I bought her a meal and then we went dancing at the snakepit in the Sir Francis—and by two o’clock I thought I’d found something pretty special. She told me what a hell of a time she had at home, and how she wanted to get away. That much was true. I met her old man once and he’s a no-good bastard. Anyway, we spent the night together and in the morning we got on a plane to Reno. The next night was the night we met you and Alberg at the Mark.”

  Miguel sat in silence, his hand clenched around his glass. That wasn’t exactly the way he’d heard it from Nora. She had told him Pete Wallace introduced them at the Empire Skyroom.

  Tom said, “She sure married into the right family. Ella could give her lessons.”

  “Tom, knock this off,” Miguel said sharply.

  “I thought I found something good,” Tom said. “Isn’t that a laugh?”

  “Nora’s all right,” Miguel said.

  Tom shook his head. His face looked gray. “I’m pretty near the end of my rope, Spick. Holman said something to me yesterday about my last trip to Tonopah. A mag went bad on the goddam C-45 and I started to break up into little pieces. The crew chief was ready to go over the side on me and he complained to Holman.”

  “You’re working yourself into a sweat over nothing,” Miguel said in a flat, hard voice.

  “Like hell. If they take me off flying status, what then? I need the flight pay. Nora needs it, goddam her.”

  “Nobody’s taking you off flying status.”

  Tom looked bleakly at Miguel and said, “I wish they would. I just wish the goddam hell they would.”

  Miguel said nothing. He was thinking of what Billy Alberg had told him about Tom’s fear of flying.

  “I’m scared green, Spick,” Tom said miserably. “And I’m tired of being scared. When I was with the fighters up north I damn near died every time I had to take a Lightning up. I’ve never said this to anyone, but I can say it to you. I’ve been sweating blood ever since Primary. I thought sure they’d wash me out and that would be the end of it, but goddam it, they didn’t. I’ve got co-ordination, good eyes, quick reactions, and a yellow streak a foot wide down the middle of my back—”

  Miguel looked at Tom. There was a gleam of perspiration on his forehead and the collar of his khaki shirt looked too tight. “Why didn’t you just quit, Tom? You could have—any time. You didn’t have to keep on with it.”

  “How could I quit, for chrissake? The one thing Oliver has to be proud of is the fact that his Thomas is a pilot just like he used to be. I couldn’t just fluff it off, Spick. I figured if I tried my best and still couldn’t cut it, well, okay—that would be the end of it. But it didn’t work that way.” He paused to light a cigarette with a hand that was not completely steady. “And it isn’t that I’m afraid of dying, Spick. It isn’t just that. I’m scared I’ll foul up. I’m afraid of doing something stupid—oh, Jesus, I don’t know.”

  Miguel said slowly, “Do you think it would help any if we flew together for a while?”

  “You mean you and me?”

  Miguel nodded, feeling more and more enmeshed by the moment. “I’ve been flying with Pete Wallace mostly. But Pete’s getting a flight in a Liberator outfit soon. Ill have to have a copilot for trips in the B-25.”

  ‘Tm not checked out,” Tom said.

  “That’s no trouble. I’ll talk to Colonel Holman.”

  “Jesus, Spick—”

  “I’ll do it if you think it will help any,” Miguel said, false and soiled.

  Tom held on to his arm with one hand and tapped his shoulder with a clenched fist. “It’s good to know there is one son of a bitch in the world you can trust,” he said thickly.

  Miguel turned his face away and said, “Sure. Now how about
one for the road?”

  Miguel did not go home until late that night. Instead he got drunk.

  They refused to serve him any more at the Top o’ the Mark and he went across the street to the Fairmont and didn’t have any better luck there. He ended up in the International Settlement.

  At ten o’clock he could get nothing more to drink from the barkeep because of the curfew for servicemen. Sergeant Chavez, the Flight Section clerk, and Lieutenant Wallace found him standing on the corner of Columbus and Pacific.

  “Alaine has been calling the section all evening,” Pete Wallace said. “We’ll give you a lift home.”

  “You better come with us, Lieutenant,” Chavez said. “This place is crawling with MPs.”

  “I’ve been communing with the Great CO,” Miguel said. “Up Yonder.”

  “Sure. Come on, airplane driver. Home,” Pete said.

  “Honest, sir. The MPs are thick.”

  “Up Yonder,” Miguel said. “Shove it, Sergeant. Up Yonder.”

  “Nora Eubanks has been looking for you, too,” Pete said.

  “Blow it out your wobble pump, Lieutenant.”

  “Come on, sir,” Chavez said.

  “Sergeant,” Miguel said. “What are you doing here? You shouldn’t fraternize with drunken flying officers. It will spoil all your illusions.”

  “All right, sir. I’ll try to do better. Shall I call a cab, Lieutenant Wallace?”

  Miguel sat down on the curb and said, “I have to report to the Great CO. Up Yonder. I had my orders cut this afternoon.”

  “Sure,” Lieutenant Wallace said. “Call the cab, sarge.”

  Miguel put his face in his hands and tried to cry. He couldn’t. Chavez and Pete Wallace took him home.

  On April 11, 1945 Tom and Miguel were ordered to take the Mitchell over the mountains and pick up an inspection team at the training base at Tonopah.

  The morning was bright and clear over Hamilton Field, but there were thunderstorms over the Sierra Nevada. Miguel filed the flight plan for an 0800 hours ETD, hoping to beat the weather, but Tom was late. And because he was edgy and anxious to be on the way, Miguel had racked Tom back a bit, never noticing that Tom was pale and sullen and not himself.