Quentin didn’t move, but Owen tore off his coat, his sweater, his shoes. He was in the freezing December water before he could think. She hadn’t surfaced. He dove down. It was dark. He couldn’t see anything. It was too cold. He wouldn’t last long, he knew. Surfacing into the sunshine, he heard shouting. One more dive and then he’d have to get out. Back down under the water, he thought he saw the outline of a pale face and swam towards it, but it disappeared farther below. He kept going and then knew he couldn’t. He started swimming back up but was suddenly too tired. He knew that face. It wasn’t the girl’s face. It was Charlie’s face; it was Flora’s face. Then someone’s arms were around his waist, pulling him up. And in the daylight, he saw Quentin, Quentin holding him.
They were dragged out by a group of men who had rushed down to the quay when the girl jumped in. They sat there shivering. Did anyone know her? No. Yes; she was a bus conductrice. She’d just found out her son was dead. No, she was a waitress at the Brasserie Saint-Louis. No, she was a war widow and she’d lost all her money. It didn’t matter.
They’d made it back to their hotel and sat on their twin, flea-bitten beds, facing each other, wrapped in blankets.
“You shouldn’t have gone in,” Quentin said, shaking his head. “She wanted to die. You shouldn’t have interfered.”
“Well, she did die, so that should make you happy,” Owen said, lying back on the bed. He stared up at the ceiling. “I’m staying. With the French, I mean. I’m going to fight. They’re sending kids—I mean really kids, Quentin—to the front. I’m staying.”
He was quiet for a while, then Quentin said: “Fuck it. What’s home anyway?”
Later, when they were falling asleep after drinking themselves into a stupor at the local café, Owen said: “Besides, you went in too.”
“It’s different,” Quentin mumbled, “I went in after you.”
In his cot, Owen knew they’d run out of time. Ten, fifteen minutes maximum before they’d be ordered up. Quentin was asleep. Owen had heard the cigarette case fall to the floor. They were going to die today.
He wondered about saying things. Living in Boston, he’d heard orators, lesser men, floor bosses, missionaries; all of them spoke as if to relieve themselves of the burden of their thoughts. But in all the great moments of his life, there’d been no words. He wasn’t like that; he couldn’t summon them. His farewell to his mother, his shame before Mr. Glass, his gratitude to Mr. Cushing, his brotherhood with Quentin, all these things were left unsaid.
On the field outside the makeshift hangars, their mechanic met them, bleary-eyed. The pilots in Escadrille Fifteen, dressed in their fur-lined suits and boots, began to prepare their SPADs. They were the best planes available, fast and powerful, but also unreliable and impossible to land. They all loved them.
Owen’s, the Lettuce 10, was a beauty. She was the latest in a long line of Lettuces—the others having been sacrificed to La Chance’s luck—and she was kept clean by Arnaud, his French mechanic, a fourteen-year-old kid from Paris whose own superstition was managed through obsessive cleanliness.
At first, when it went around that La Chance had named his plane after a beloved cow, the French boys couldn’t stop laughing. He was teased for being a paysan and a plouc until Quentin said firmly: “What you boys don’t understand is that a good cow is far more reliable than a sweetheart any day.”
Unlike the other pilots, Owen didn’t have a good-luck charm. But he did have a ritual. He would run his hand along Lettuce from nose to tail, whispering to her all the good things about her, all the ways in which she would help him. He did it before he went up, every time, without fail. No one interrupted another pilot’s ritual.
That morning, as the sun was coloring the sky a light purple, that peculiar dreamy haze, he whispered to Lettuce about fire. He told her to hold until he was down. All the while, though, he could see Quentin out of the corner of his eye, waiting for him to finish.
When he was done, Quentin walked over.
“Don’t talk about that girl again,” Owen said, putting on his leather hood and adjusting his goggles.
“No,” Quentin said. “But I’m right.”
Owen nodded, but only in acknowledgment that Quentin had spoken. He looked up at the horizon. “One hundred feet,” he said.
“One hundred feet,” Quentin said.
“Poor fucking Marines.”
“Poor fucking Germans,” Quentin said and he smiled that rakish smile of his.
Owen laughed and held out his hand. “See you up there.”
They shook hands, looking at each other, and then Owen broke the contact. He signaled to Arnaud and climbed into his plane as Quentin walked away.
The support mechanics joined them and they began the job of purging the fuel line: fueling, ignition, turning the prop, throttling, cutting the engine, and starting again. It was a tedious chore, but failure to purge could mean a sudden stall in the air, and as the SPAD was too heavy to glide, she would drop to the ground like a brick. When the mechanics were finished, Owen tested the two Vickers machine guns.
Around him, he could hear the rest of his squadron making the same tests. The first wave had left an hour before, and Owen’s escadrille and Escadrille Twelve—thirty mounts all together—were to fly out on the second. If the timing was correct, they would meet the first two squadrons in the air on their way back to refuel. It meant their groups wouldn’t have the element of surprise on their side, but hopefully they would meet a somewhat depleted enemy.
Owen closed the radiator and set the fuel gauge to its thickest level to feed the engine before calling “Essence et gaz” to Arnaud, who gripped the prop.
“Contact,” Arnaud yelled.
“Contact,” he yelled back, snapping the switch.
With a strength that always surprised Owen, Arnaud braced his thin frame and spun the heavy propeller, and the low growl of the vibrating engine filled his ears. Owen increased the power and let the engine warm up.
To his right, he knew without looking, Quentin was doing the same, while to his left, he could see Allaire, Grenier, and Massart already moving down the runway. Their squadron would fly in three V formations of five each at twelve thousand feet until they hit the front.
When the tachometer held steady, Owen gave the thumbs-up, and the support mechanics removed the stops. The engine heightened its growl as he put on full power, and Lettuce 10 began to move across the field, bouncing slightly. Then the wheels lifted, and Owen took flight.
It was a funny thing, when the machine left the ground. Whereas before, the speed rattled his teeth, the minute the plane lifted, she seemed to slow until, finally, she barely seemed to be moving at all. Then it was only the roar of the engine. That had been the hardest part of training for Owen, not being able to use his hearing to make sense of his surroundings. Only his eyes were of any use, and in that way, it was like being deaf and dumb. He constantly had to scan all around him, twisting his neck this way and that, to situate himself and look for enemy patrols. It was only later that he realized his ears had become adept at detecting engine problems, that the slightest stutter could break through his consciousness and alert him to a possible issue. In fact, silence was a pilot’s enemy, because unless you were in a full dive, it meant something was disastrously wrong.
After leveling out, he closed his radiator and checked his position in the formation. He looked over to his right and saw Quentin, who raised an arm in salute.
It was a cocoon of engine noise and early-morning sun high above the fields, all human violence swept away at that altitude. No corpses or machine-gun fire or breaking shells or screams. Just lines and blocks of brown and green. He checked his clock. The Sixth Regiment had been scheduled to jump off east of Vierzy at 7:00, an hour after an artillery barrage and just behind a rolling barrage. It was 8:20. Depending on the resistance, they could have made it some good distance by now. Owen calculated twenty to thirty-five minutes to reach them. Ten minutes or so before his group shou
ld meet the first two squadrons on their way home. Once at the front lines, they would lower their altitude and dive in to strafe the enemy troops.
They were too far behind the lines to expect any German pursuit groups, but he scanned around anyway. They were flying southeast to meet the Marines, and the sun was against them at this hour. He squinted into the distance, and then again, to make sure his eyes weren’t fooling him. A formation of black specks was moving towards them. He looked over at Quentin, who raised his hand to indicate he’d spotted it too. Then he looked to his left, to Allaire.
They held their line. Owen could feel his heart beating in his chest, the rush of energy that indicated his fight mode. It was another enemy, the adrenaline, making his nerves jumpy and his decisions impulsive. It had to be conquered before any contact was made. Once, in Paris, he’d heard an ace, chastising some eager young flier, saying that flying wasn’t sport, it was scientific murder. He’d held on to that and found his own way of crushing that hopped-up feeling of heroism that got so many pursuit pilots killed. He looked at his controls, took in everything from left to right, checked all the numbers, did the sums in his head. It calmed him, counting, doing mathematical equations. It always had.
When he could feel his pulse slowing, he looked up again. Then he saw the rudder stripes; they were French planes. Their planes. It was the first two squadrons, but they were heading back too soon.
As his formation passed the last of the returning planes, Owen saw one of the pilots give a thumbs-down. Something was wrong, but they wouldn’t know what until they got there.
He scanned the ground in the distance and saw the problem: there were no tanks moving. The Sixth hadn’t jumped off yet. The first two escadrilles must have strafed until their fuel ran low and been forced to turn around without making any forward progress. It also meant the German machine guns had had a chance to get a fixed position on their hundred-foot flying line.
Emptying his brain, he began to drop altitude to prepare for the dive. He glanced at Quentin, but Quentin wasn’t looking at him. He was craning his neck over the side of the cockpit, intent on something in the near distance.
Owen looked too and saw that the French tanks were moving. It was a small group of light tanks, too small, perhaps. But it had begun. Two minutes more and they’d be just in front of them.
At full throttle, they dove, then pulled out at a hundred feet over the first line of German troops—well dug in, it seemed—flattened over the second line towards the antitank artillery, and opened fire.
Owen’s hand vibrated hot on the trigger, his eye fixed to the scope between two mounted guns. The roar of the engine, the hissing thunder of exploding shells as his guns ate through the cartridges; this was all there was. After passing the third line, he pulled out and climbed fast in order to go back and do it again.
He had to look up into the sun to see if there were any Germans coming, but all he saw was the Allied circle painted on the wings above him. The change in gravity and direction disoriented him immediately, and only by looking over the side could he center himself. He was heading back to the Allied lines. Keeping his sight fixed on the partially destroyed spire in the distance that marked the town of Vierzy, he began his turn.
When he came back around, he saw the Sixth Marines go over the top in perfect formation, advancing across the open wheat fields. But the tanks were going too slowly, so the men were unable to avoid the incoming fire. From this height, he could see the Marines dropping in their tracks. And yet still they came, wave after wave. He was mesmerized. The determination, the discipline; it was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen.
He saw Quentin below him, the black heart and his number, 1566, painted on his plane. Ahead, he spotted Allaire and Grenier; he couldn’t find Massart, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything.
He made another pass, blew another small hole in the line. Then another, and another. Enemy machine guns had torn their own holes in his wings, but none had hit the fuselage. In the distance, the other formations were swooping, strafing, turning. He saw one plane go down in a spiral dive and hoped whoever it was managed to land.
The Sixth pushed their costly advance past the first German line, but the Marines under him were now trapped by machine-gun fire and the constant barrage. He knew his escadrille was doing little to stanch the flow. They needed bombers for that, and no bombers were coming. He checked his clock: 9:45. They’d been burning fuel for over an hour and the first two squadrons would be gearing up to return. One more pass.
He saw Quentin come in on his right wing. They looked at each other, but there was no way for Owen to read his expression.
Then he heard the dreaded clack-clack. He twisted his head and saw them: two Fokkers swooping from above, partially hidden in the sun, their machine guns firing. He knew Quentin was some feet above him, somewhere in the glare, but he didn’t have time to look. One of the Fokkers was almost on him and he heard a bullet tear into Lettuce’s body. He broke to the side, zigzagging in an effort to avoid the German’s sights. When the noise of the machine gun didn’t follow, he rolled around and looked up. The Fokker had abandoned him. Farther up, Quentin was preparing to loop the loop to avoid the attack from above. He couldn’t see the second Fokker pulling up underneath.
Before Owen had time to react, the Fokker had raked the belly of Quentin’s plane with bullets. Owen saw the flame start at the front, near the propeller. He saw Quentin’s plane begin its descent, engine cut.
As the plane gained speed in the fall, the flames spread across its nose. Lettuce was banking, coming around; Owen’s mind was waiting, waiting for the jump. But the plane just kept falling and then it was almost on him, and as it passed he saw Quentin, his chest engulfed in flames, his face turned towards Owen. He was alive. Not moving. Burning to death. Then, in a flash, the plane passed him and was gone, down to the earth.
The diving Fokker was only seconds behind. Owen prepared for his own loop, flashed up past the German plane, then reversed their roles and dove down on him. He had him in his sights, but as he gripped the trigger, his gun jammed. He sped down past the German, who dove to pursue him.
Out of options, Owen took the last chance he had: a spiral dive. It was a dance, the spiral dive, one they’d been forced to practice over and over in flight school. The defender sped towards the earth in a corkscrew. The idea was to cut the engine and force the pursuing attacker to overshoot. At this low altitude, though, Owen’s only chance was to try to pull out of the dive at the last possible moment in hopes of causing the Fokker to crash.
He had no idea which side of the lines he was on, no concept of north or south or east or west. No time to feel fear or count or think about Quentin, or anyone, for that matter. Just the rush of air that passed him as his plane sped down, ignition cut. He could see the ground rising to meet him, could hear the faint clack-clack of the machine gun above him. And then he hit the switch and throttled her up as hard as he could, both hands willing her to come out in time. But Lettuce responded slowly. He had no glide in this plane. He was now counting in his head as the earth came closer. To his left, he saw the Fokker suddenly swish by, engine smoking. He didn’t have time to think about that. Lettuce’s nose inched up, little by little leveling out.
“Come on, come on, girl.” He didn’t know if he was saying it out loud. “Hold with me.”
Then he was there and it was too late.
The darkness in his eyes slipped away slowly, revealing smoking wood around him, something weighing on top of him. It was his wing, he realized; it was bent over the cockpit. He pushed it away and tried to move. The safety belt was still on. He hit at the clasp with his fist and it released. Owen managed to extract himself from the plane, sliding his body to the earth. It was slimy. The stench was unbearable, smoke and vegetable rot and something else. Lying on the ground next to the wreckage, he listened, trying to ascertain which direction the fire and return fire was coming from. But it got mixed up with the ringing in
his ears. He pushed himself onto all fours, but there was something wrong with his right ankle. And then something wrong with his thigh. There was blood. A bullet? Then a noise so terrible, it shattered every nerve in his body. A moment later, the ground trembled. Where the fuck was he? Pull yourself together, he commanded his brain. He looked around. It was a shell. Next to what had been his plane. They were shelling his plane. They were trying to kill him. But he couldn’t tell which direction the firing was coming from. Then another hit, not as close, but from behind. He would go the other way. He was crawling as fast as he could across the wet ground when suddenly, the earth opened up. One minute he was crawling and the next falling. He heard his bones crunch.
He lay there. Far above him he could see sky. He wanted to just lie there for a while. For a year, or until this war was over. Quentin was dead. Quentin had not jumped. He remembered that. Quentin had not given in. Owen pushed himself up on his elbows. He was in a small, deep hole. Behind him was a narrow tunnel. His mind turned this over slowly. He was in a listening post. Jesus, he hoped it wasn’t German. He dug his nails into the rocky side and pulled himself up to his feet, stumbling against the wall when his right leg gave out. He vomited, bile. Then he started slowly moving towards the tunnel, dragging his right leg behind him.
The tunnel was only about as wide as his shoulders, and very dark; only a thin line of sky and sunlight was visible above him. He couldn’t hear very well, and now he couldn’t see very well. He used his hands to guide him forward. One over the other as he leaned into his right shoulder. Then out of the darkness came another darkness, a shape more defined.
Only when he was on it did he realize it was the profile of a man. There was someone standing there, not breathing, or not that he could tell, eyes closed, pressed against the side of the tunnel. Then one eye opened, white, and the profile turned to face him, and the mouth opened, pink and wide, and with a yell, the person made of darkness leaped on him.
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