The Night Flyers

by Elizabeth McDavid Jones

  Pam was speechless. Bos went to Buell like a cricket to a hearth. If Buell was the pigeon thief, why wasn’t Bosporus all flustered like he’d been with Arminger and Henry? It didn’t add up. Maybe Buell wasn’t the thief after all. Her mind raced. What could she say to him now? “Why ain’t you returned Papa’s crab pots?” she croaked. It was all she could think of.

  Buell looked at her funny. “Your mama told me I could keep ’em as long as I needed ’em.”

  I’m making a fool of myself. Again, Pam thought.

  Then a rumble escaped Bos’s throat, and his lips quivered so his teeth showed. Pam heard the thud of footsteps behind her, and leaves crunching. She turned. It was Mattie.

  “I saw you from the window,” Mattie said. “I had to wait till Ma left the kitchen ’fore I could sneak out.” She was breathing hard and coughing.

  “You all right, Mat?” Buell asked, concern in his voice.

  “Yep,” she said, coughing harder. “That cold’s done settled in my chest, is all. I’ll be fine directly.”

  Bosporus growled again, louder, and stepped forward. Buell ruffled his fur. “Simmer down, boy. What’s wrong with him?” he asked Pam.

  “I don’t know.” Pam was watching the dog, watching how his eyes were fastened on Mattie. “He is acting queer, don’t you think, Mattie?”

  It was as if Mattie had just noticed him. “What’s that dog doin’ here? Thought you got rid of him.” She eyed him warily. “Don’t let him near me. He don’t like me.”

  “Why don’t he like you, Mattie?” said Pam. “He likes Buell fine.”

  Suddenly Bosporus barked and leaped forward. Mattie jumped back and squealed. Pam dropped quickly to one knee and fastened her arms around the dog’s neck. She stroked him as she talked. “Mama changed her mind about getting rid of Bos. He turned out to be too good a watchdog. He sure did. You should’ve seen what he done to Henry Bagley when he caught him taking one of my pigeons.”

  “What?” Mattie’s voice was trembling.

  “And that stranger in town, that Mr. Arminger, why all he had to do was look like he was going to swipe a pigeon,” Pam went on. “Bos lit out after him so fast, it was all I could do to hold him back. And you know, it’s funny; dogs never forget. I reckon he’ll go after Henry every time he sees him now.” She paused. “But you got nothing to fear from him, Mattie.” Pam’s eyes locked onto Mattie’s. “Do you?”

  Mattie licked her lips. She coughed. Another rumble escaped Bosporus’ throat. Suddenly he strained against Pam’s arms. Mattie cried out and cowered. “I didn’t aim to take your birds, Pam,” she whined. “If Buell’s bird hadn’t up and died on me—”

  At last Pam knew the truth. She felt a surge of relief—at first. Then anger at Mattie began to build in the pit of her stomach. She saw the pleading in Mattie’s eyes, but Pam didn’t feel like being forgiving. Not after what she had been through in the last few days. Not before she got a dang good explanation for Mattie’s actions. “You stole my birds, Mattie? Why?”

  Mattie winced at the word stole. It was the common excuse of many landlords whose overworked land wasn’t producing: My tenants are stealing me blind. Pam felt a pang of guilt at using the word, knowing Mattie would be sensitive to it, but she felt it only for an instant. She wasn’t a landlord and Mattie wasn’t her tenant, and Mattie had stolen from her. It was as simple as that. Pam waited in stony silence for Mattie to speak.

  “I didn’t aim to,” Mattie insisted. “It’s just … well … the day Ma took sick, Buell come home full of tales about that foreigner with the motor truck offering you a fortune for your pigeons. I told Buell we oughtta sell his pigeons to the man.”

  “And I told you he wouldn’t want my pigeons,” Buell cut in.

  “Yeah, but you wouldn’t tell me why not,” Mattie shot back. “You told me to mind my own business.”

  “Well, why didn’t you?” said Buell.

  “’Cause. The way I seen it, a pigeon is a pigeon. I thought you was being stubborn, so I decided I’d take a pigeon to the man myself. I figured you’d be so happy, Buell, ’bout all the money I got us, you wouldn’t even be riled at me for takin’ it.” Here Mattie’s eyes sparkled. Pam knew her well enough to know Mattie had been already spending that money in her mind.

  “I sneaked off while Ma and the twins was sleeping and walked all the way into town with a pigeon and found that feller. But Buell was right. The man wouldn’t buy it. Then on the way home”—she glanced at Buell with apprehension in her eyes—“it died somehow, in its basket. I knew Buell’d be mad as a hornet when he learnt I’d kilt his pigeon, and I didn’t know what to do.

  “That was ’long about the time I was passing by your place, Pam, and the idea come to me, all of a sudden, that you wasn’t likely to miss one li’l pigeon amongst that passel you got. If I took one of yours that looked like Buell’s, maybe he wouldn’t notice the difference. I seen a nice black one like I wanted a-sittin’ outside in that wired-off part of your pigeon pen, but when I started to pry the wire off to grab him, that dog come a-runnin’ up barking. I hightailed it for the storage shed and locked myself in till he went away. Then I climbed out the back window and hid up in your hayloft. After dark I went back in the pouring-down rain and grabbed a black pigeon. Don’t know if it was the same one or not; you got so many. I figured you wouldn’t even notice it was gone, Pam.”

  Mattie’s eyes looked enormous in her thin, pale face. Pam knew she was seeking forgiveness, but Pam wasn’t ready to give it. What made Mattie think she could up and take her birds just because Pam had a lot of them?

  Then Buell voiced her own thoughts. “Mattie, just ’cause a body’s got a passel of something don’t oblige you to help yourself to their belongings. That’s same as stealing.”

  “Oh, I aimed to bring him back directly, soon as I figured a way to tell you what happened,” Mattie said. “But then me and the bird spent the night together out in our barn—it was so late I was afraid Ma would catch me sneaking in and light into me—and that thing cuddled up to me and cooed like he was so content, and he felt so silky and warm, well, in the morning I … I couldn’t bear to turn him over to you. I couldn’t. So I fixed him up an old rabbit hutch and hid it in the tobacco barn. I was only gonna keep him a little while.”

  “That’s why you was so eager to take care of my pigeons for me,” said Buell. “So I wouldn’t notice one gone.”

  “Yeah, I figured I’d keep that up till I could bring myself to part with Blackie. That’s what I named him—Blackie. Then he started acting poorly, like he was pining for his pigeon friends. And I knew how he felt, and I didn’t want him to be lonely, so I went back and took more pigeons to keep him company. I know it weren’t right, but I never aimed to give you grief, Pam.” She lowered her eyes, and her voice got very small. “I reckon I was looking to have something of my very own for once.”

  Pam felt herself being pulled two ways. On the one hand, she sympathized with Mattie. No one knew better than Pam how comforting an animal could be, especially to a lonely girl whose father had been snatched away by war. On the other hand, she couldn’t quite release her anger. She still wanted to chew Mattie out, but she didn’t have the heart. Not with Mattie standing there fiddling with the hem of her dress and looking like an orphaned puppy.

  “’Course, I know that don’t excuse what I done,” said Mattie. “You’re my friend, Pam, and it ain’t right to hanker for all the things you got.”

  Mattie’s words caught Pam off guard. “I don’t know what you could hanker for that I got. We ain’t that much better off than you.”

  “For one thing, you got all them critters you can call your own.”

  “But you don’t even like animals,” said Pam.

  Mattie shrugged her shoulders. “I might. If they was mine.” She paused. “You got your ma all to yourself and time of your own to do what you want. And you go to school, and have your own friends there.” Then she added sadly, “And you get your own letters from your p
a, and you can read ’em.”

  Mattie thought Pam was privileged? It was a new thought to Pam, and she turned it over in her mind. Maybe she wasn’t so poor after all, despite what Henry Bagley said.

  The wind picked up then and rustled the few brittle leaves still clinging to the pecan branches. Mattie’s hair stirred with the breeze, and Pam felt her anger starting to slip away. Mattie had put her through a lot of grief, but look what had happened as a result. Pam never would have discovered Arminger’s compound if she hadn’t been searching for her missing pigeons. In a way, she owed Mattie. It all depended on how you looked at it.

  Mattie thought she was privileged? Then why shouldn’t she share what she had with Mattie? Pam stroked Bosporus absently as she weighed the words she wanted to say.

  Buell must have taken her silence as ill will. He stepped over beside Mattie and put a hand on his sister’s shoulder. “We stand ready to make amends to you, Pam. She’ll give you your pigeons back, and you can have all mine to boot. And I’ll come over and help out your ma in the evenings, till you figure I’ve worked off the damage. Suggs is honest folks. You know that.”

  Buell’s gesture touched Pam. It made her all the more certain that what she had decided to do was the right thing. “No need for that. What Mattie did wasn’t right, but I reckon I can see my way clear to forgiving her. Under one condition.”

  “I’ll never go near your pigeons again, Pam. I swear.”

  “Oh, but you’re gonna have to.” Pam tried to make her voice sound severe. “In fact, you’re gonna need to be over there every day, so plan on it.”

  “What? You want me to clean your bird shed for you? Water the birds, stuff like that?”

  “It’s called a loft, Mattie, not a shed. You’re gonna have to get used to calling things by the right name. And no, I don’t want you to tend my birds. You won’t have time. You’ll be too busy tending yours. Squeakers take a lot of work.”

  “What’s a squeaker?” Mattie asked.

  “A baby pigeon, you dunce. Pam’s offering to give you some baby pigeons of your own—I think.” Buell looked at Pam uncertainly.

  Pam nodded. “But you’re gonna have to take care of ’em right, Mattie. Feed ’em right.” She shot a look at Buell. “Handle ’em right, so they’ll mind you and trust you.”

  Mattie’s eyes were shining. “I’m gonna have baby pigeons of my own?”

  “Not ordinary pigeons, Mattie. Night flyers. And if you come over every day and let me teach you how to train ’em, they might end up being … well … maybe the second-best night flyers in the county!”

  1908

  GOING BACK IN TIME

  LOOKING BACK: 1918

  In 1918, most Americans lived on farms or in small towns or villages. If you lived in a small town like Currituck, the outside world would have seemed very far away. News and letters traveled slowly. The radio, or “wireless,” was so new that few families had one. Telephone service was not available in most rural areas. People didn’t travel much. They grew up, married, raised families, and died within a few miles of where they were born. In your town everyone would have known everyone else. The arrival of a stranger like Mr. Arminger really would have been big news.

  But when America entered World War I on April 6, 1917, the outside world began to touch all Americans’ lives, as fathers, husbands, and brothers—like Pam’s papa—left home to fight in Europe. There the war had already been raging for three years. It began with the murder of a prince in Austria-Hungary. Europe at that time was divided into two military partnerships: the Allies (Great Britain, France, and Russia) and the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy). If one of the countries was attacked, its partners would fight, too. Within weeks of the prince’s murder, all the major countries in Europe were at war. Eventually more than 25 nations around the world joined in.

  At first the United States vowed to stay out of the war. But Americans became outraged at Germany’s attacks on civilians, especially the sinking of the British passenger ship Lusitania. Finally, Congress declared war. Every American man of fighting age had to register for military service. If he didn’t, he could be sent to jail. Wealthy businessmen signed up as soldiers, and so did illiterate tenant farmers like Ralph Suggs. Once in the army, men who had never traveled 50 miles from home were sailing thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean to fight.

  Our doughboys (the nickname for American foot soldiers) joined Allied forces already dug into trenches, complex systems of ditches made to protect soldiers from enemy gunfire. Soldiers spent months living in these ditches, waiting for the call to go “over the top”—to pour out of the trenches and fight. The area between battling trenches was known as no-man’s-land. Soldiers who entered this scarred wasteland faced enemy cannon, machine-gun fire, barbed wire, and poison gas attacks that left men blind, paralyzed, or dead.

  Troops in the trenches needed some way to communicate with their commanders, who were often stationed 50 miles or more from the battlefront. The outcome of a battle might depend on a single message reaching command posts quickly. Often soldiers relied on homing pigeons to carry these vital messages.

  The birds wore aluminum tubes on their legs to hold coded messages, sketches, or maps. Both the Allies and the Central Powers used pigeons with great success—the birds delivered 95 percent of their messages safely. Pigeons were tossed from trenches, tanks, planes, balloons, and ships. Even spies used them.

  Many birds were wounded by enemy gunfire. The loss of an eye or leg was common, but injuries rarely stopped these brave little messengers from completing a mission. An example is Cher Ami, a black checker cock with the American army at the Battle of Argonne in France. German troops had completely surrounded Cher Ami’s battalion. Cher Ami, the Americans’ last pigeon, was their only hope for rescue. His leg was shot off by the enemy, but he still flew on to deliver his message—with his message holder hanging by a tendon. Thanks to his brave flight, the American soldiers were saved.

  Pigeons had only one drawback as wartime messengers—they would not fly at night. So the U.S. Army began secret experiments to develop night-flying pigeons. Agents like Mr. Arminger chose 1,200 privately owned pigeons to be trained in government lofts. Four hundred birds eventually learned to home at night, and they were bred to produce night flyers for the war.

  While American soldiers, along with their pigeons, fought in Europe, at home the United States government waged another kind of war—a propaganda war. Propaganda is information intended to make people support a cause or point of view. During World War I, a government agency called the Committee on Public Infor-mation, or the CPI, used propaganda to rally Americans to support the war. The CPI whipped patriotism to a fever pitch by planting frightening images of German soldiers in Americans’ minds. The agency distributed millions of pamphlets and posters—many, like the one Pam saw, showing German soldiers as cruel or evil. Other posters warned that German agents lurked everywhere, trying to gain information to use against American troops. Citizens were told to report possible spies to the CPI, just as Miz Gracie wanted to report Mr. Arminger.

  Prejudice against Germans and other foreigners erupted throughout the United States, especially in areas where many immigrants lived. Leaders of German-American communities were threatened or run out of town. People of German heritage lost their jobs and property. Some were even killed. Anything German was banned, even the performance of music by German composers who had died centuries before! Most German-Americans were loyal citizens, but the prejudice against them lasted long after the war ended with Germany’s defeat on November 11, 1918.

  No battles were fought on American soil, yet the Great War changed the face of our nation. Cities grew as people left farms and villages. Many women who held wartime jobs found new independence. Along with thousands of returning soldiers, they moved to cities to attend college or take jobs in offices and factories. For the first time in America, girls like Pam could dream of a future beyond their small town.
/>   About the Author

  Elizabeth McDavid Jones is an English teacher and the author of nine books and many magazine and serial stories for young people. She has won the Edgar Award and other accolades for her work. She now lives in North Carolina with her husband and children, where they share their home with a big brown dog and a mountain of dirty laundry. Please visit her at www.elizabethmcdavidjones.com.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text Copyright 1999 by Elizabeth McDavid Jones

  Map Illustration by Nenad Jakesevic

  Line Art by Greg Dearth

  Cover design by Amanda DeRosa

  ISBN: 978-1-4976-4660-5

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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