The Night Flyers

by Elizabeth McDavid Jones

  “Yes, but that was hours ago. I been worried half to death.” Mama’s voice broke then, and Pam collapsed against her. Mama held her close. Pam breathed in Mama’s smell—soap sweetened with bayberry, wood smoke, sun-dried linen. Mama’s deep voice crooned, “Child, child, what on earth’s got into you? Running off like that, telling tales, playing hooky, shirking your chores.” Mama sounded like her heart was breaking at the extent of Pam’s sins. Then her tone changed, scolding, severe. “Your papa would whip you good for half of what you done today.”

  The reprimand cut into Pam like a knife. She’d been trying not to cry; now sobs poured from deep inside. She told Mama everything.

  Mama listened in silence, but her lips were set tight. When Pam finished, Mama said quietly, “I don’t want you repeating none of this to anybody, you hear?”

  For an awful moment Pam thought Mama didn’t believe her. “It’s true, Mama, all of it. I swear. We got to do something.”

  “I’m not doubting you, sugarfoot. But this is serious business, making accusations of spying. It’s clear the man lied. Why, we don’t know. We can’t up and report him as a spy for telling falsehoods. Let me think on it a spell, over the weekend. Come Monday, I’ll figure what to do.

  “For now, you got to eat you some supper. Then you can answer for disobeying me and locking your dog up in the barn.”

  Pam gasped. She’d been so all-fired set on getting out to Sanders’ place, she’d forgotten to let Bosporus out of the barn. “Mama, I—”

  “I ain’t interested in your excuses, Pam. The very idea of letting a wild dog in our barn, with a newborn calf in the stall. He could’ve killed that little calf with no trouble at all. And Mattie, well, he scared her half to death, poor thing. She already had a terrible head cold from being caught out in that storm.” Mama shook her head. “I pray she don’t give it to Iva or those twins.”

  “Mama,” Pam said, annoyed with her mother’s straying from the subject, “Mattie’s scared of Bosporus anyway, for no reason.”

  “Well, she had reason this afternoon.” Mama’s voice betrayed irritation. “He startled her when she opened the barn door. I heard her hollering, and by the time I run out there, he had her backed up against the barn door, growling. I had to pull him away.”

  “So where is Bosporus now?” Pam asked, her mouth dry. She was almost afraid to hear the answer.

  “Oh, he lit out into the woods, good thing for him. Luckily he hadn’t touched the calf.”

  Pam was indignant. “Bosporus would never hurt Pyrenees. You know how good he is around my pigeons.”

  Mama’s tone softened a little. “You do work wonders with your critters, honey, but the dog is wild, and wild animals are unpredictable. You don’t really know what he would do. We can’t sit idle till he seriously hurts someone. Or kills ’em. He’s going to have to go, one way or another—tomorrow.” Her voice was as firm as hard-packed clay.

  There was no doubt in Pam’s mind that Mania’s patience with Bosporus had run out. And she knew what Mama’s “one way or another” meant. If Bosporus wasn’t gone tomorrow, Mama would shoot him. Pam felt cold all over as she forced her tongue to move. “I’ll take him off tomorrow, Mama, way back in the swamp where Papa and I used to go deer hunting. There’s all kinds of caves and hollow trees, and plenty of rabbits to chase, and a great big old pond with ducks. He’ll be so happy, he’ll forget all about us.” She swallowed a lump in her throat. “He won’t come back. I promise.”

  That night Pam slept fitfully. She dreamed she was running through a forest of old, craggy oak trees, being chased by something—what, she didn’t know. She kept thinking she’d be safe if she could get out of the woods to Currituck Sound, only she kept getting lost, and whatever was chasing her was getting closer. Her legs felt like dead weight; she could hardly lift them. Then she heard a shotgun blast, and she turned around, and the Hun from the poster was right behind her, grinning. He was carrying something under his arm, and he held it up for her to see. It was a pigeon, a dead pigeon. It was Caspian.

  Pam woke up shaking.

  After the nightmare, she couldn’t go back to sleep for a long time. She lay in bed, staring at the map of Europe on her wall, wondering where Papa was now, if he was even alive. She must have drifted off finally, for the next thing she knew the rooster was crowing and a pearl-gray light sifted through the window.

  Pam was out of the house before Mama was up. It was a beautiful Saturday morning, the sky a pale blue and every bird in creation singing. The air had a nip in it, as fall mornings in Currituck do. A breeze from the creek carried the tart smell of ripe grapes. How could the world wake up so bright and cheery when Pam felt so dead inside? Her last day with Bos and he didn’t even suspect. He was waiting for her as usual by the pigeon loft, his tail whipping happily back and forth.

  Somehow Pam wasn’t surprised when she discovered another pigeon missing, this time a young, untrained hen named Toulouse. She figured Arminger would keep up his pilfering until every one of her birds was gone. And she was powerless to stop him, completely powerless.

  If I’d sold them, she thought bitterly, at least we’d have the money. The way it turned out, he got her birds and she got nothing.

  After breakfast, Pam set out in the canoe with Bosporus in the bow and Odessa in her basket strapped to Pam’s back. Best to be prepared, Papa always said. She pulled upstream for miles, until the creek wound into gentle curves through a vast forest of long-leaf pines and towering hardwoods.

  “This is it,” Pam said, rowing to the grassy bank. Bosporus was out of the boat before Pam could get it moored. Barking, he bounded into a copse of sparkleberry bushes and flushed out a covey of quail, then leaped halfway up a chestnut tree after a squirrel. Pam trudged after him, watching his antics with amusement but also with a heavy heart. She wondered if he would hate her for abandoning him, or if he would simply feel bewildered and betrayed. He’ll get used to it, she told herself firmly.

  The place Pam had in mind to leave Bosporus was a thickly wooded hummock on the edge of the Little Dismal, several hours’ hike from here. Pam had brought food in a knapsack, some apples and buttermilk biscuits for her and Bos and some grain for Odessa. That, with a couple of bass from the pond, some sparkleberries and papaws, and she and Bos would feast like Christmas dinner. Pam would be home in time for supper, and she would leave some fish for Bos.

  The woods chattered with squirrels—gray squirrels and silvery-black fox squirrels—and the blue jays and cardinals were jewels against the dark green of the pines. Bosporus ran here and there and yonder, Pam steering him slowly in the general direction she wanted to go. Once, a doe frisked out of the brush, eyeballed Pam, then bounded across the clearing and, with a flash of white tail, disappeared into a pine thicket.

  The morning danced by more quickly than Pam wanted, and soon the piney hummock loomed in front of her like a bad dream. On the pond, cinnamon-brown and studded with lily pads, a pair of pintail ducks glided and dived.

  Pam found a deep pool among the weeds where the bass bit like there was no tomorrow. She caught five two-pounders quickly, then built a fire and roasted them on a flat rock. After eating, she and Bosporus lazed in the shade and dozed. Pam woke up with Bos’ head on her belly, and she ached inside with the pain of leaving him behind.

  They took a walk around the pond. Pam wanted to show Bosporus the caves on the side of the hummock. She figured he could make a nice den out of one for the winter. He plunged into several, sniffing feverishly, and emerged with his tongue hanging out, looking pleased.

  Pam dreaded the moment of betrayal she knew was fast approaching. When Bos cocked his ears and whipped off after a rabbit into a wild-grape thicket, Pam sprinted in the other direction. She half splashed, half swam through the pond to throw Bosporus off her scent. When she hit the opposite bank, she took off running. The pigeon basket bounced on her back, and Odessa quarreled at being jostled.

  Pam ran wildly, in no certain direction, angry tears s
treaming down her face, hating everyone in general and Arminger and Mama in particular. She crashed through briars and leaped over rotting logs, paying no heed to the blood trickling down her scratched legs. When she tripped over a protruding root, she fell hard and bashed her knee on a stone. Odessa set up a racket, but there was no way she could be injured strapped snugly in her corselet. Pam sprawled on the ground, gasping for breath, her knee smarting and her head pounding, wishing she was someone else—Nina, Louisa White, even Alice—someone who had no dogs to betray and whose father was safe at home. A hawk screamed overhead, and a woodpecker hammered from high in a hickory tree. Pam felt weary to her bones.

  After a long time she rose and tried to figure out where she was. She reckoned she had traveled southwest from the pond about four miles. She was definitely in a stretch of forest she didn’t recognize. If she pushed hard due east, in a couple of hours she should reach the creek. Then she could follow the creek up to where the canoe was moored.

  So she started east—what she reckoned to be east—through a thick beech grove peppered with pines and holly and carpeted with running cedar. The day had turned hot for October. There was not a whisper of a breeze. She tried not to think, only to walk, to keep moving steadily east. It wasn’t long before hunger was gnawing at her belly, so she climbed a chinquapin tree and shook down a bunch of its small, brown nuts.

  That was when she noticed the gash of a newly cut road twisting through the forest.

  Which was peculiar enough in itself. Loggers had never shown much interest in cutting the swamp timberland around Currituck, not when there were virgin stands of more easily accessible hardwoods stretching for acres and acres to the west.

  And why on earth would anyone else trouble themselves to carve a road through this wilderness?

  Pam slid down the tree to investigate.

  What she found only heightened her curiosity. The road was deeply rutted with tire tracks. Fresh tire tracks.

  Burning with interest, Pam followed the road as it wound northeast, deeper into the forest. Soon the trees—laurel and live oak, cedar and gangly pine—hugged so close no sunlight could penetrate their canopies. Only the ribbon of bare earth Pam followed was splashed by the late afternoon sun.

  At last the road opened into a clearing, where wooden buildings were set in neat rows like Mama’s kitchen garden. The buildings hadn’t been there long. The odor of fresh-cut pine hung in the air … along with another smell, much more familiar to Pam.

  Pigeons.

  CHAPTER 10

  A SPY’S HIDEOUT

  Pam stood rooted to the ground, her pulse pounding. Maybe this was where Arminger really lived. Then her pigeons would be here too!

  Suddenly the ground beneath Pam’s feet began to tremble. Behind her, the trees shielding the road from view spit out the sound of a motor lumbering up the road. Someone was coming!

  Pam dove out of sight into the foliage. She crouched in the brush, eyeing the road. Soon a truck rumbled into sight, and another, and another. Three trucks in all, with wooden crates stacked in their beds.

  Pam watched them approach, holding her breath. The roar of their engines swallowed the woodland sounds. The lead truck thundered nearer, until it was close enough for Pam to confirm what she suspected. Her heart skipped a beat.

  The driver of the truck was Arminger.

  Pam’s chest tightened. She couldn’t breathe. She dropped to her haunches while her mind raced. It seemed she had what she wanted: Arminger, red-handed with her pigeons, and a passel of other people’s pigeons to boot. But she felt so frightened she could hardly move.

  The other engines growled past. Gathering her courage, Pam lifted her head barely above the leaves. The trucks had stopped in front of one of the buildings, and the men were unloading the crates and carrying them inside. They seemed to be taking great care with the handling. Pam’s breathing quickened. What did they have in those crates?

  Everything she’d heard and read about spies tumbled back upon her. Spies were everywhere, listening to every offhand comment, monitoring every newspaper report, gathering information on every street corner to use against America’s war effort. They planted bombs under factories and government buildings, and tried to assassinate American leaders. Pam remembered word for word one particular CPI poster: Germans are like hunters studying their game, and for the same purpose. Their object is to kill. To kill. To kill.

  Icy talons of fear clawed at Pam’s spine. In those crates could be anything—weapons, poison gas, even bombs. The men had finished unloading and were standing outside, smoking and talking. Pam strained to hear their conversation, but she couldn’t make out words. Their voices were a low drone like the buzz of a horsefly. If only she dared to get closer ….

  Minutes passed, or maybe it was hours, while Pam wrestled with herself—her cold fear versus her burning hatred for the likes of Arminger and his sons, if they were his sons at all. She was one girl against three men, all probably armed. If she got caught, there would be no one to come to her rescue; no one would even know she had been here. Arminger would go right on with his sinister plans, and no one would ever be the wiser.

  In the end, Pam’s fear won out. She couldn’t bring herself to move any closer. Better to go home and get help, she told herself. She hoped it wasn’t too late for that already.

  Pam shivered. The midday heat had melted into the long shadows leaning across the road. It would be a race now to get back to the creek before dark. With her heart as heavy as an anvil, Pam turned into the woods and trotted east. She felt the sun weaker, yet still warm, on her back. Inside she was cold. She hated herself for giving in to fear. Not only had she abandoned her dog, she had also abandoned her pigeons. The stolen pigeons were right there under her nose—they had to be—and she was too much of a chicken to go after them.

  Then and there Pam changed her mind. It was one thing to spy on spies, to eavesdrop on their conversation, to try to foil their plans—that was deadly stuff, not something one lone girl should get mixed up in. It would be another thing entirely to sneak in before dawn while the men were asleep and rescue her pigeons. She could be in and out of their compound in a flash, her birds strapped safely in corselets in her basket. Pam’s confidence surged as the plan took shape in her mind. Odessa would fly with a message for Mama; Pam would spend the night in the woods and steal into the compound before first light.

  Pam hiked a few miles further into the forest. She would have to be far enough away so that Arminger and his men couldn’t see the smoke from her campfire. And she would have to have a fire; nightfall would bring cold, not enough to freeze a body but enough to make a body feel frozen.

  Once she found a good spot to camp, Pam sent Odessa off to Mama. Then, using her belt hatchet and pocket-knife, Pam set up a reflector for her campfire—green pine logs split in half and stacked between posts with the flat side to the fire. The idea was to deflect the heat in her direction. For kindling she picked up cedar shavings, pine straw, and small twigs. Then she gathered fallen logs and branches and separated them into stacks according to size, the biggest logs for keeping the flames going through the night. She shingled together fresh-cut pine branches, overlapping the needles like shingles on a house, to make herself a mattress and a blanket. Maybe she wouldn’t exactly be cozy in her spicy bed, but she’d be warm enough to sleep. All her senses would need to be alert tomorrow for her foray into Arminger’s territory.

  Having seen to her warmth for the night, Pam turned her attention to satisfying her empty belly. Between the wild chestnuts, chinquapins, papaws, and wrinkled yellow persimmons, the trees yielded enough food to ward off hunger pangs. Most of the berry bushes had been well-scavenged by coons and possums, but beside a little stream she found some muscadine grapes, which she had for dessert.

  Soon dusk had dropped a blanket across the woods. The stars, one by one, pricked through and blinked cold and distant above Pam’s head. To Pam the forest was a friendly place in the daytime, but nighttime tr
ansformed the trees into shadowy hulks where, she imagined, yellow-eyed creatures lurked in the darkness. The slightest noise, even the hoot of an owl, sent prickles down Pam’s spine. If only Bos were here to protect her. …

  Pam dozed on and off through the night. Once, the fire went out and she was awakened by her own shivering. It took a while to get the fire started again and for her to get warm enough to drift back off. Somewhere in the midnight hours, a grunting sound broke into her sleep. She jerked awake and thought she was hearing Lula down in the barn. Then she remembered where she was, in the middle of a forest miles from home. She lay paralyzed by fear, listening to something grunting in the trees outside the clearing. She heard stamping and pounding, coming closer and closer; then terror seized her as something crashed headlong through the trees at the edge of her campsite and lumbered away into the night.

  After that, she couldn’t go back to sleep and didn’t dare move to feed the dying fire. From the quiet, she judged dawn to be near, so she waited impatiently for the inky sky to fade to gray. She wanted enough light to find her way to Arminger’s compound, but enough darkness to keep Arminger asleep in bed until she was safely away with her pigeons.

  At last Pam rose stiffly from the ground. Her stomach was growling, but she was far too nervous to consider eating, even though she had saved some nuts from last night. When she stumbled over part of a deer’s antler at the edge of the clearing, she scolded herself for her night terrors. Autumn was rutting season for the deer; last night’s monster had been nothing more than two bucks fighting over a doe and the loser fleeing through the forest.

  The hour or so before dawn is the only time a forest is truly still; the insects have quieted, the night-prowling creatures have returned to their dens, and the birds have not yet stirred. Every twig that snapped under Pam’s feet seemed to echo through the silence like a drum.