Fata Morgana

by Steven R. Boyett

  Today they had another reason for their ritual game of catch. The B-17F heavy bomber that Shorty was painting was brand-new, delivered the day before yesterday and parked on a hardstand in the slot the much-reviled Voice of America had occupied for half a dozen straight missions.

  At the moment the new bird was just a number, unchristened and untested. And even though her delivery had also been her shakedown cruise and she’d been checked out on arrival—and would be gone over again by the ground crew if Ordnance got the go-ahead tonight—Wen had told Captain Farley that a little tire-kicking session might be a good idea.

  Farley had agreed. This was one of the world’s most complicated machines, about to be loaded with four tons of coiled death and thrown into the sky with ten young men who squabbled like close brothers even though they had been strangers to each other the year before, and schoolboys the year before that. A successful mission and those ten lives could turn on a tightened oil gasket, a correctly loaded ammo belt, or any of the ten thousand other things that could go graveyard wrong. When that huge and intricate web could be undone at almost any strand, you bought yourself whatever insurance you could.

  So today’s game of catch served as a smoke screen to let the crew check out the ground crew’s work without looking as if they didn’t trust the ground crew. Because you had to trust the ground crew. The alternative was to worry that one link in that chain had not been done right, and go completely out of your mind. And the crew couldn’t afford that, because doing their own jobs right could drive them foxhole crazy if they thought too much about what they were doing. USAAF hospitals were full to bursting with promising young men who had looked too long and too hard into the wholesale abattoir that was the new science of aerial warfare. Human brains might have invented it, but they sure as hell weren’t built to endure it. As Lieutenant Broben put it, going daffy was the only reasonable thing a man could do in these conditions.

  Somewhere behind Shorty a ball clapped into a leather glove and someone shouted a friendly insult. Shorty could listen to it all day. It sounded like home.

  Every so often one of the men would take off his ball glove and jump up into the main hatch of the bomber. Sometimes the crew heard banging from inside. Sometimes swearing. They ignored both. They played catch and smoked cigarettes. Or, in Boney Mullen’s case, a pipe. A few minutes later the missing crewman would hop back down to the concrete and put his glove back on and quietly rejoin the game, and the ball would come his way and he’d give a little nod.

  At one point Shorty heard Plavitz yelling up at him, and he patiently finished painting a section and turned around to see the navigator shaking a finger up at him. “What are you doing with my sticks?” he demanded.

  “Simmer down, Gene Krupa,” Shorty said. “I saw them laying around and I knew you’d blow a gasket if they turned up missing, so I grabbed them. Here.” He drew Plavitz’s hickory drumsticks from a rear pocket and tossed them down.

  Plavitz caught them up and twirled them in the same fluid motion. “I never,” he said.

  “You’re welcome, I’m sure,” Shorty said in Bugs Bunny’s voice, and turned back to the painting taking shape before him.

  “Yeah, okay, thanks,” said Plavitz, and disappeared into the bomber. A moment later rapid-fire rolls and lazy paradiddles sounded from different parts of the aircraft.

  Shorty mixed paints on a page torn from an old Yank magazine and leaned back to study the figure he was forming on the metal. He dipped his brush in a sheared beer can of black paint and pulled the wet bristles between his thumb and forefinger several times, testing the flow. Then he got to work on the black lines, starting with the legs, which were bare from ankle-strap high heels all the long way to the dark blue leotard at her pelvis. They were plenty long enough, thank you very much.

  The drumming stopped and Plavitz hopped out of the aircraft. “It’s still got that new-bomber smell,” he announced.

  Shorty made a pained face. “Your parents must be some very patient people,” he said. “Or deaf.”

  Plavitz twirled a stick like a majorette. “You’ll be laughing when I’m playing with Glenn Miller,” he said, and hurried to rejoin the game of catch.

  Shorty shook his head. Plavitz was okay, except when he wasn’t.

  Shorty’s father, Howard Dubuque, owned a radio sales and service shop in downtown Grandville, Michigan. Little Wayne had grown up surrounded by radios and radio programs. He had learned to tell time by what show was on the air. In fifth grade he had built his first wireless radio with a piece of galena crystal and a safety pin, and he still remembered the thrill of hearing Fibber McGee’s voice come over a speaker he had salvaged from a busted radio.

  As he grew older he helped his father in the shop, troubleshooting ornate Gothic Hartcos, arched Philco cathedrals, cheap Sears Bakelite Silvertones. Eventually Wayne had his own little corner in the shop’s back room. He’d repair the electronics, polish the wood with lemon oil, clean the Bakelite with dish soap. A Dubuque repair was good as new, and loyal customers and strong word of mouth helped carry Wayne’s family through the Great Depression.

  When Wayne’s father asked him to spruce up the store’s faded signage, Wayne went ahead and made all-new signs. He had a knack for drawing, and soon half the stores along First Street sported Wayne’s lettering and artwork. Often he worked in trade for groceries or dry goods, one time even a month of free tickets at the Paramount.

  Eventually Wayne became a ham radio operator, driving his mother crazy with the constant “CQ, CQ, this is Grandville, Michigan, USA, come in” that came from his bedroom. She would chase him out of the house, laughing and saying “Why can’t you hang out on street corners like other boys your age?”

  Radio Operator was an ironclad cinch for Wayne after Basic. His knowledge and experience pretty much guaranteed a slot on a bomber roster, and flying with the new Army Air Force and all that Buck Rogers gear was the cat’s meow to the newly minted Pfc. Dubuque. After preflight training he was sent to Scott Field in Illinois for radio operator training. Wayne aced Morse Code, but he was surprised how much more than radio he was supposed to learn. Basic navigation, aircraft identification, gunnery, oxygen mask systems, generators. And radios, too—more intimately than even he could have imagined. By the end of training Wayne could assemble an aircraft radio by feel in a pitch-black room.

  He’d been promoted to sergeant—all bomber crew were sergeant or higher so they’d be treated better if they were captured—and assigned to a B-17 crew under Captain Logan at Maxwell Field, Alabama. When the crew found out his hobby was shortwave radio, Wayne was Shorty from then on. When they found out he could draw, Captain Logan asked him to do the nose art for their new bomber, which he was calling Voice of America. Shorty painted a towering Uncle Sam shouting bombs through a megaphone at a cowering Hitler.

  And now here he was, on the other side of the Atlantic, and Captain Logan had been killed by flak over Cologne, and Shorty was painting a new bird for a different pilot. Life worked out funny, when it worked out at all.

  Shorty finished the black lines and stepped up a rung on the folding ladder and set a hand on the hull. He worked on the face again, adding contour and highlights, color to the cheeks.

  “Hey, Shorty,” a voice behind him called in a thick New Jersey accent. “How come you didn’t make that little number look like Francis’ sister?” Then a long low whistle, and a few laughs from below.

  Shorty turned to see Lieutenant Broben sitting on the Number Two engine cowling. The copilot lit a Lucky and gestured with it. “That girl’s a blue-plate special.”

  “Aw, jeez, lieutenant,” said Francis, whom Broben had instantly dubbed “Saint Francis” because he was pure as angel piss. “I don’t even have a sister.”

  “Whose picture were you showing these deprived apes the other day?” Broben demanded. “Your Sunday School teacher?”

  Francis colored. He shaved once a month and had lied about his age when he’d joined up, and if an
yone was going to get out of this war still a virgin, it was him. “Gosh,” he said, “that was my mom. She does teach Sunday School, though.”

  “That dame was your mother?” Broben looked up at the clouds. “I wouldn’t show these saps a picture of my great grandma. They get worked up when they see an overstuffed couch.”

  “You should make her look like Francis’ mom,” Plavitz called up. “It’s good luck to have the mother of a saint on your bomber.”

  The others laughed.

  “The captain was pretty definite what he wanted her to look like,” Shorty said.

  In fact, over beer in the Boiler Room the other night Captain Farley had gone into great detail about the girl he wanted on their bomber, nodding more and more enthusiastically as Shorty sketched on napkin after napkin, zeroing in on the face the captain wanted. Shorty had wondered why the captain didn’t have a picture if the girl meant so much to him, but you didn’t ask about that stuff. Whoever she was, Shorty wanted to do her justice.

  Broben kicked his feet between the prop blades. “You’re gonna be painting her by moonlight if you don’t hurry up,” he said.

  “It’d go a lot quicker if everyone stopped giving me their expert opinion.”

  Broben spread his hands. “Everyone’s an expert on dames.”

  “Well, you can have her fast, or you can have her good.”

  The lieutenant grinned. “Like I said.”

  “Why can’t they be both?” asked Garrett.

  Broben ignored him. “She’s kinda pale, ain’t she?” he asked.

  Shorty didn’t bother to look back at him. “Do I look like Michelangelo to you, lieutenant?”

  “Well,” a mild voice said, “you’re painting on top of a ladder and you’re taking orders from God.”

  They all turned to see Captain Farley standing with his hands on his hips, his crush cap raked back on his head as he looked up at the nearly finished painting. He wore his A-2 jacket despite the day’s unseasonable warmth. A sergeant stood just behind him, a dark, small man with black eyes.

  “What, you got demoted?” Broben asked.

  Shorty shifted the brush to his left hand and gave the captain a casual salute, trying to gauge whether he looked approving or disappointed as he took in the artwork.

  “I don’t want to rush you, Shorty,” Farley called up. “But I think she’ll be happier if she’s dressed up when we take her to the dance.”

  “So we’re definitely going out tomorrow?” Everett asked.

  Farley raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know anything you boys don’t. But if the order does come down tonight, it’s a safe bet we’ll be on the roster.”

  “If these guys’ll leave me alone I’ll have her done in half an hour, cap,” said Shorty. “This crate’ll fly out with the best nose this side of Durante.”

  Farley smiled. “That’s what I want to hear.” He glanced back at the new sergeant and waved him forward. “Gentlemen, this is Sergeant Proud Horse. He’s our new ball gunner.”

  “Proud Horse?” Broben went to the trailing edge of the wing and slid off. He landed on the concrete with surprising grace for a man of his girth. “What kinda name is that?”

  “Lakota,” said the sergeant.

  Broben cocked his head. Beside him Plavitz joggled the baseball in his hand. “Beats me,” he told Broben.

  Proud Horse nodded to himself. “Indian,” he tried again.

  “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place?” drawled Wen. He spat tobacco juice and held up a palm. “How, Chief.”

  The new man looked the flight engineer up and down.

  Beside Wen, Everett put his hands on his hips. “You left your teepee to come all the way to England and shoot Germans?”

  Proud Horse looked at him without expression. Then he pounded a fist against his chest. “Me heap big plains injun,” he said. “Fly heap big planes. Droppum bomb, make-um smoke.” He looked up and opened his hands to the sky. “Send Nazi devils to happy hunting ground.”

  Everett stared. Proud Horse kept looking up.

  Shorty started laughing, and the crew took it up until they were whooping. Broben grinned and stepped toward the new crew member. “This circus needs all the clowns it can get,” he said. He held out a hand. “Welcome aboard, sergeant.”

  The new guy may have been small, but he had a hell of a grip. “Thank you, lieutenant.”

  “Jerry Broben.” Broben leaned in and lowered his voice. “There an Indian word for your name?” he asked.

  Proud Horse looked up at him and shrugged a shoulder. He really was a little guy, about as close to 4-F as you could get and still qualify. “My first name’s Martin, if that helps.”

  “Martin?” Broben shook his head. “Never mind. This bunch’ll hand you a nickname in about two minutes anyways. Like it or not.”

  “I’m used to that.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Hey, chief,” called Garrett. “They play ball out there on the reservation? You know, baseball?” He mimed swinging a bat.

  “Some,” Martin admitted.

  “Well, don’t worry, we’ll show ya. First we gotta get you a glove.” Garrett held up his own and flexed it. “See?”

  “Mine’s back at—”

  “Hey, Shorty!” Garrett called up. “Loan Geronimo here your glove, will you?”

  Shorty pointed with his brush. “It’s by the wheel chock there.”

  Garrett fetched the wellworn fielder’s glove and held it out to Martin. “Your hand goes in this end, chief.”

  Martin put on the glove and stood looking at it. Captain Farley looked as if he were about to say something but changed his mind. Martin glanced at him, and Farley gave back a little smile and nodded. “Have fun, sergeant,” he said. “That’s an order.”

  Martin saluted with the glove. “Yes, sir.”

  Garrett jogged backward along the taxiway, away from the row of heavy bombers parked facing him. He nodded at Plavitz, and the navigator underhanded the baseball to Martin, who caught it in the trap and stood looking at Garrett.

  The burly waist-gunner held his glove in front of his chest. “All right, Geronimo.” He punched the glove, then flapped it. “Put her anywhere around here, got it? Just pretend you’re throwing a tomahawk.”

  Up on his ladder Shorty shook his head. Being the new guy was hard enough without being the new guy and an Indian.

  He bent and mixed up more flesh pink and was just stretching up to start on the face when a loud pop! nearly startled him from the ladder. It had sounded like a rifle shot. Garrett yelled and Everett hooted. Shorty turned as quickly as he could high up on the ladder and saw Garrett wringing his hand like he was trying to flick off snot. His glove and the baseball lay in the grass beside him.

  “God damn it,” said Garrett.

  Everett put his hands on his knees and cackled. Wen laughed and slapped himself on the leg with his grimy cap. Broben grinned like someone had told a dirty joke, and even Boney smiled there behind his great stinking bulldog briar pipe as he sat in the shade of the wing. The captain folded his arms and tried to look above it all. He almost succeeded.

  Martin remained in his follow-through, waiting to see what Garrett was going to do.

  The big man turned his hand in front of his face as if puzzled that there was no blood. “I think you broke it,” he said. “Son of a bitch feels like wood.”

  Martin straightened up and pointed to the trap on his glove. “It hurts less if you catch it here.”

  “Screw you.”

  “And the Proud Horse I rode in on,” Martin agreed.

  Everybody laughed harder, and Broben applauded slowly.

  “Sergeant Horse was a pitcher for the American Legion team in Rapid City,” said Farley.

  “Post Twenty-Two, South Dakota state champs,” said Martin.

  “This just keeps getting better,” said Broben. “You have a nickname when you played?”

  Martin looked embarrassed. “They, uh, called me Red Man. Becau
se I chewed tobacco.”

  “Good thing he didn’t like Beechnut,” Shorty chimed in from on high.

  Everett chortled. “Hear that, Gus? Geronimo here’s called Red Man.”

  “I don’t give a shit if he’s called General Jesus Roosevelt,” said Garrett. “He nearly gimped my goddamn hand.”

  “You do all your pulling with the other one anyway,” said Everett.

  “Only when he sees an overstuffed couch,” added Plavitz. He drummed a rimshot on the hull.

  Shorty turned back to the riveted metal looming above him. Any other day he’d be in the middle of the fun, cracking jokes and doing voices and pulling faces. But tomorrow the aluminum he was painting would carry him across the English Channel or the North Sea in subzero temperatures, possibly through storms and definitely through enemy territory. It was thinner than the steel of a beer can, and it was all the shield he’d have between himself and fighter planes and antiaircraft shells. That shield would bear his artwork, and it had to be right.

  Shorty came off like a goofball, but he was dead serious about his work. He was barely aware of what he was doing as he dipped a trim brush, borrowed from Corporal Brinkman, into half a beer can and pulled on the soft slick bristle and finished up the figure’s face, adding shades and highlights.

  Finally Shorty gathered up his paint cans and climbed carefully from the ladder. He set down the cans and moved the ladder aside and stepped back and looked up at her. Only dimly aware of his sore neck and aching back. The jibes and throws tossed all around him sounded underwater. There was just the parked bomber, angled as if already climbing in the air, the two small windows at the navigator’s station in the nose, the painted figure prone beneath. The setting sun cast magic-hour light across the airfield.

  He became aware that someone was standing beside him and he glanced at the captain. Farley wasn’t smiling, he wasn’t frowning. Shorty couldn’t have said what the expression on his face was. Recognition, maybe. A man who saw some long-held notion given shape at last.

  “Oh,” said Farley. “Oh, she—she’s fine, Shorty. Really fine. Just the way I pictured.” Reluctantly he looked away from the painting. “You’ve outdone yourself on this one.”