Trophy for Eagles

by Boyne, Walter J.

  Taken aback but trying to joke, Bandy said, "If we're so expert how come we're so broke?"

  "Because you don't know how to make money. I do. But I don't know how to make airplanes, and I'm learning from you. When the time is right, I'm going to ask you to help me."

  "Yeah, but how about the starlets? Come on."

  A lid slammed down on Hughes. "Fuck the starlets, Bandy, let's talk airplanes."

  "What were you all saying about fucking starlets?" Roscoe Turner, a man who had forced the world to pay attention first to his persona, then his skills, came over, smiling, resplendent in fawn trousers, sky-blue tunic, and diamond-encrusted wings the size of a Buick hubcap. His soft Mississippi drawl commanded attention. Still irritated with Bandfield, Hughes drifted away without apology.

  Turner watched Hughes leave, smiled, and said, "You used to work at Western, didn't you? I delivered an airplane there. I thought I remembered you."

  The flamboyant Turner was obviously restless, the well-waxed point of his mustache twitching. Bandy sensed that he wanted to talk, to unburden himself.

  "You know, when I think about these closed-course races my gut just crawls. You can't see anything, and the goddam turbulence from the propwash is trying to turn you over all the time. Wait here a second."

  Turner went over to a tray of drinks, brought four back.

  "Let's move against the wall. That asshole Roy Dickens is here, and I just don't feel like arguing with him tonight." Turner watched in amusement as Bandfield carefully slid the two drinks onto his plate. "Hungry?" he asked as they stepped into a little alcove.

  Bandfield didn't know who Dickens was, but was honored to be talking to Turner.

  "Dickens just gets on my nerves," Turner continued. "He's always on his muscle, always complaining, never giving anybody a break." He pointed across the room to a tall Ichabod Crane type, a rawboned New England farmer with a hooked nose and buck teeth. Dickens, at least six-four, was a well muscled two-hundred-pounder who somehow still looked scrawny. His voice was loud and raucous. Bandfield watched and noticed that people backed away from Dickens as he moved.

  "Still, Bandy, we're damn lucky to be here. These are the best pilots in the world, bar none. And most of them good guys. Just don't get in their way on the racecourse."

  He sipped half his drink. "You could walk out there and ask anyone—except Dickens—for the shirt off his back, and you'd get it no questions asked. If your engine was acting up, they'd stay up all night to fix it. But God, don't expect any mercy on the course."

  He finished one drink and started the other. "One of the guys brought his mother to the races last year—bad idea, I think—and she watched everybody for a few days. When it was over, she told him, 'I don't understand it. You men all work together all day long until the race, and then you try to murder each other.' " His voice had dropped.

  Bandy nodded, waited.

  Turner grabbed his arm and lowered his voice to a whisper. "She's right, Bandy. That's what we do, we try to murder each other."

  Bandy didn't know what to say and was somewhat relieved when a reporter buttonholed Turner. Anxious to make up, even though he didn't know why his friend was angry, Bandy went over to Hughes.

  "You should have hung around, Howard. Turner was just talking about how dangerous it was on the course, how pilots tried to murder each other."

  Hughes grimaced, embarrassed at his earlier show of temper. "Sorry about popping off like that, Bandy. You know, Turner may be right. Everybody has every cent he owns tied up in the race. If he loses, he's out of business, might not even be able to come back and race next year. So when it gets down to the pylons, it's Katie-bar-the-door."

  Hughes took a deep sip of his Coca-Cola. "Your drink as good as Pisco punch, Bandy?"

  Bandfield nodded, strangely pleased that Hughes was so obviously trying to make up for being rude earlier.

  "Head's up, Bandy! There's something coming our way!"

  Charlotte had appeared from nowhere, dragging along a beautiful miniature edition of herself, and, limping behind her, a short, dark man.

  "Bandy, Charles!" She said "Charles" as if it had quotation marks around it, letting him know she knew who he was. "So nice of you to come. I want you to meet my daughter and her husband."

  Bandfield had a glass in one hand and a disaster area of a plate in another, all shrimp tails, olive pits, and horseradish sauce. He dumped them both in a palm-tree pot and wiped his hand on his suitcoat pocket.

  "Patty, Stephan, may I present Frank Bandfield and Charles Howard. Gentlemen, my daughter, Patty, and her husband, Stephan Dompnier."

  Bandfield said, "I've read a lot about you, Captain Dompnier. I understand your machine is very fast."

  "Very fast when it runs well—but so far it is not running well; there are some difficulties with the engine."

  Hughes asked Patty, "Are you entered in any of the events?"

  Pleased to be treated as an equal, Patty said, "No, although I might try one of the aerobatic contests. I'm going to practice some more in the next few days, then see what happens."

  They made the usual small talk, until Dompnier asked about the Roget Rascal. Bandy plunged into conversation, and didn't notice that Hughes had taken Charlotte into the ballroom.

  Patty listened for a while without comment, then said, "You men are incorrigible! I've been listening to nothing but airplane talk all day. The band is playing and I want to dance."

  Bandfield nodded and turned to leave. Stephan said, "Mr. Bandfield, I'm sorry, but for the past few weeks I've had a little problem with my legs. I was in your Southwest, and apparently contracted some sort of rash. I'm not dancing tonight. Will you do the honors for my wife?"

  Bandfield put out his arm and led her into the ballroom where Buddy Baskette and his Shaker Heights Heroes were playing "How Deep Is the Ocean" underneath a revolving mirrored ball.

  Patty was light enough on her feet to avoid Bandfield's. He was trying so hard to say something clever that his hands were wet with sweat.

  She noticed. "Are you all right? Would you like to go back?"

  "No, I'm fine, I'm just a little nervous. I haven't danced in a long while, as I'm sure you can tell."

  She floated in his arms, easing the need for conversation by singing the words of the song softly. It was over too soon, and he took her back to Stephan, who looked like a Singer's midget standing between Roy Dickens and Roscoe Turner. Dickens was swaying as if he'd had too much to drink, and his voice, always loud, was slurred. Dompnier, looking uncomfortable, spoke.

  "Thank you, Mr. Bandfield. Colonel Turner was just talking about some of his cross-country flights."

  Dickens's booming voice sneered, "Colonel Turner? Colonel?

  He's no more a colonel than I am. A fancy uniform don't make you no colonel."

  Dompnier looked appalled as Dickens, obviously thinking he was on to a good thing, went on, "Well, Colonel, you get rid of that goddam flea bag you used to haul around?"

  Patty had heard Dickens's voice, and came over as he droned on, "Old Colonel Turner here, he used to carry this shitty-assed lion named Gilmore around with him, like it was a big deal."

  Dompnier pulled himself to his full height and yelled into Dickens's chest pocket, "Be careful of your language, Mr. Dickens. My wife is present."

  Dickens's hands shot out and caught Stephan by his shoulders, lifting him to his own eye level. "You watch what you say, Froggie, or I'll smash you."

  Turner moved behind Dickens and grabbed his arms as Bandfield's fist slammed noiselessly just under the big man's rib cage. Dickens's breath whooshed out, and he was doubled over, gasping, as they hurried him out, Turner murmuring something about "too much to drink."

  When they returned, Dompnier was standing at the side, rigid with fury, embarrassed as much by being saved as by being assaulted. Bandfield said, very formally, "Captain Dompnier, on behalf of the other American pilots, I apologize. Dickens is always obnoxious, and there is nothing I can say to e
xcuse it."

  Turner said, "Well, let's get a little good out of a bad situation. Ah'll tell you fellows about a little trick our friend Mr. Dickens uses, to show you the sort of Yankee gentleman he really is."

  Stephan feigned close attention, trying to find a way out of his physical humiliation. Vague, irrational thoughts of duels ran through his head. If only the man had not been so enormous, if his movement hadn't been so sudden. If only the other two had not intervened!

  Bandfield sensed Dompnier's burning indignation, and understood it. Dickens was a slob. Taking advantage of the Frenchman's size and the element of surprise was nothing compared to his insensitivity in treating Dompnier like a rag doll in front of his wife.

  Turner, hands up and flying, went on, "You know, you fly so close out there that you can't wait for the airplane ahead of you to actually move, you have to watch its control movement to see which way it's going to move. Everybody knows it, even a polecat like Dickens knows it. I've seen Dickens flick his controls to fake turning out when you try to pass him. It looks like he's moving right into your path."

  He drained his drink and sucked an ice cube into his mouth, crunching it. A frazzled-looking Dompnier finished his own drink and started on another.

  "Your natural reaction is to slam the stick to the side and kick rudder." Turner moved his hand and kicked his leg as if he were flying. "If you do, you go outside, and lose position and time, which is what he wants. What you've got to do is bore straight ahead and hope he's bluffing. And knowing Dickens, he is." He paused. "Of course, if he's not, you have a midair. So you've got to be careful."

  They shifted the talk to the Depression and to France. Patty came back and took Stephan's hand. He shook his head at her, and she moved off. He had to be away from her, to talk to the other pilots until his anger cooled.

  *

  Cleveland, Ohio/August 28, 1932

  Bandy had a lot to think about the next day. He had really enjoyed dancing with Patty Dompnier, and he still felt embarrassed for her husband. He couldn't imagine what had gotten into Dickens, but he knew it wasn't over. He was so preoccupied that he didn't do well in his time trials, flying wide, and averaging only 219 mph. Yet he was almost satisfied with the Rascal's performance, even if he wasn't with his own. Roget had pared the frontal area down as much as possible, and the landing gear was little more than a case-hardened automobile spring with a tiny wheel attached—another Roget patent. He turned 230 mph in the straights, fast enough to win if he flew better than he had today, and if he was lucky. And he had to be lucky.

  He thought about the empty factories and the little girl, and he wondered again what he was doing there. The whole racing process was symbolic of the way competition for the few available dollars drove aviation into the murderous frenzy that Turner had talked about. Flying at 250 mph, fifty feet off the ground, and pulling into high-G turns every four or five miles, there was no way to minimize the danger, no way to look out for the other man.

  The risks didn't make sense if you just looked at the prize money, usually just enough to pay part of the expenses. The real goal was the breakthrough from impoverished obscurity, scraping to get new spark plugs, to being on top of the world. You could go from unknown backyard mechanic to national hero overnight, just by winning a big race. And winning a race sometimes depended upon just putting in a little more effort, taking a bigger chance. The Granvilles had failed in two aircraft businesses, and built their 1931 winner on borrowed money in an abandoned dance hall. Now they were at the top of the heap. That was where he wanted to take Roget Aircraft.

  Bruno had insisted on getting corner suites in the Statler Hotel for Patty and Stephan, but even with windows on both sides open the late-evening summer heat raised the room to a warm-taffy temperature. Patty sat in a high-backed wooden chair watching while her husband stood, fists clenched, staring out the window.

  "Stephan, you've got to snap out of it. It was an unfortunate encounter with a drunk, one person out of the three hundred at the party. It could have happened in France, anywhere."

  "No, it could only happen here, in this grubby country with its terrible food, dirty hotels, and stinking weather."

  She walked over and put her arms around him; he was rigid, frozen in his indignation.

  "My darling, Dickens is an ignorant man. All the other pilots detest him. Even before you were talking to him, didn't you see how people moved away from him? He was shunned."

  She felt him give, just slightly.

  "But for Bandfield and Turner to interfere! That was intolerable. And I had to accept it, like some helpless child."

  "They responded in the American way, Stephan. You have to understand, this is not France, this is not the officers' corps. Bandfield is rough-hewn, and so is Turner, for all the genteel manners he affects. But they were sympathetic to you, they wanted to help."

  Her hands began to rub his stomach, to sweep up over his chest. He turned quickly and kissed her.

  "Were you embarrassed? Did I disgrace you?"

  She would have laughed but knew that it was too serious.

  "No, but come over to the bed and let me disgrace you a little."

  Later he lay beside her, his hand on her belly, relaxed and smiling, "I'm sorry. I was being foolish. Nothing matters but right here, the center of my universe." He rose up and leaned over to kiss her navel.

  It bothered her, and it shouldn't have. This was the first time they had made love spontaneously in months. Their love life, once so tempestuous, had become as regulated as a time clock, dedicated to procreation and not recreation. She still felt great passionate urges, but he had seemed to lose all interest in anything but his clinical determination to make her pregnant. For the last year, he'd been trying to engineer their lovemaking, always bringing in new theories. He wouldn't share them with her—he refused to discuss the possibility that he was sterile. Instead, she would notice that he would make love only during certain periods, or only after having a cold bath, or only with her astride him. She wasn't sure where he got his ideas, but there was a great deal of correspondence with some doctor in Texas.

  "I guess we'd better get dressed and go upstairs. Bruno's back, and Mother wants us to have dinner with them."

  Stephan sighed and traced his finger between her breasts and down to her little mound of hair. "I wonder if something's going on in there. I hope so." He laid his ear against her belly and stared wistfully at the wall, almost as if he were trying to listen to the click of cells dividing.

  Six floors above, in an identical corner suite, Bruno and Charlotte were going through an increasingly familiar ritual, circling around an argument like Indians around a wagon train. Both had their agendas prepared, and were busily sorting through the delicate pre-argument formula that required polite entry. Either one could explode; the winner made the other go first.

  "Are you all right, Bruno?"

  "What's the matter, don't I look all right?"

  "That's the problem. You look too good. You must have lost thirty pounds in the last six months, and you didn't get that tan in a bar."

  "I'm just trying to keep up with you."

  "Sure you're not trying to keep up with your secretary?"

  He snorted. "I'm not so hard up that I have to resort to screwing an eighteen-year-old girl."

  Bruno was lying about his secretary, and she knew it. If anything, his secretary was already too old for his taste; young girls seemed to be a particular passion of his. The really intriguing part of the puzzle was his old wartime uniform; he'd had it cleaned and pressed, and she'd seen him trying it on. That was no doubt why he'd lost the weight. Maybe there was going to be a reunion.

  Charlotte picked up a Lockheed brochure, showing Lindbergh's new monoplane. Anne Lindbergh was standing by it, looking up adoringly at her husband. She was a tiny woman; Charlotte wondered what she was like. She was sure she enjoyed a totally different relationship with Lindbergh from her own with Bruno. She turned the page, and there was a full-length
photo of Amelia Earhart standing by her latest Vega.

  "That bitch Earhart is making headlines every day with that Vega. You can't pick up a paper without seeing her skinny face."

  The litany was so familiar Bruno groaned. "Well, I tried to talk to you about a transcontinental flight. Next thing you know, she's going to make a hop from Hawaii. It's easy—no problems like those in the other direction. Maybe even I wouldn't get lost coming this way." He said it as a conciliatory joke, something to get her in a decent mood before Stephan and Patty arrived.

  Charlotte walked over to the sideboard and poured a thimbleful of gin over the ice in the cocktail mixer. She shook it with silent fury and drank it straight from the shaker.

  "Patty seems to think Earhart is wonderful. She knows I don't like her, but she acts like Earhart is God's gift to aviation." She took another thimbleful, hesitated, and poured it out.

  "Her husband, George Putnam, is forcing her to fly."

  "How do you know that? People probably are saying that about me, and I can't keep you out of a cockpit."

  "It's true. I talk to the other women pilots. He even has her cut her hair and wear clothes so that she looks more like Lindbergh than Lindbergh. Makes everyone wonder if she's normal."

  Bruno glared at her, wondering if Charlotte was a good judge of what was normal. Or if he was, for that matter.

  "I'm not so sure about her myself. And I'm not so sure I like her being so friendly with Patty."

  "Are you implying something? That's a hell of a thing to say about anybody. And what difference does it make about Patty? She might as well have a girlfriend. Stephan isn't doing her any good."

  As he knew she would, Charlotte walked over and slapped him. He had won round one, had the high ground.

  He smirked at her.. "I wish I'd been there last night. I would have taken care of that lout Dickens."

  "Yes, a brawl would have been wonderful. You could have completely destroyed Stephan by protecting him."

  "Look," he said, retreating to a safer line of reasoning, "let's drop that, and get back to Earhart. It's just that Putnam's smart. He is in the publicity business, and he's made Earhart a celebrity by keeping her in the public eye."