by Kim Newman
Charlie was glad he'd been to the privy that morning.
The H-l turned and swooped low towards Baxter Field. As it overflew the crowd at 80 feet, Howie put her through four victory rolls. As far as he was concerned, he had just won the first contest with flying colours.
At the side of the airfield, parallel to the runway, were a pair of large grain-silos. The Roseville Wheat Collective stored their produce there. Each was 150 feet tall and they were 95 feet apart. These were to be the site of the next stunt.
The three aircraft stacked, 200 feet apart, in a circle above the silos. The Spruce Goose was at the top, and Howie made a point of keeping directly above Lindbergh. Charlie fought the slipstream to lean over the side and make rude gestures at Morrison.
The first to try flying between the silos was LeMay. The plane took a long run in at the obstacles, but at the last moment, Stone Age Carpet's nerve must have gone, or he must have misjudged for, a good distance
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from them, the plane banked sharply to the right and upwards, rising in height to rejoin the stack for another go.
Charlie felt sure he could hear Howie jeering.
Next was Lindbergh. He broke out of the stack, curving upwards and turning gracefully half a mile away before beginning his run.
Below them, Lindbergh was down to 50 feet, skimming the flat Kansas countryside. Charlie knew that for a man experienced in flying off the pointy end of an aircraft carrier—and more difficult, landing on it again —this was no challenge at all.
He didn't hear the sound of Lindbergh's wingtip glancing off the side of one of the silos. Nor did he expect to be able to hear the sound of the grain pouring out of the corrugated iron tower like water. But he saw it, and he didn't believe it. He turned to Howie.
"Did that on purpose!" Howie mouthed.
Lindbergh's Curtiss wasn't seriously damaged. It had lost or dented perhaps two inches of wingtip, but he pulled up over Baxter Field, gained more height over Fort Baxter before curving round and coming in to land. Lindbergh had deliberately put himself out of the race.
"Cluck cluck," Charlie shouted. "There goes the Lone Chicken."
Now Howie broke the Spruce Goose out of its circling pattern and flew off over the fields before turning to face the silos.
Slowly, Howie let the plane lose height until Charlie felt as though he could put his hand out of his cockpit and touch the corn-stubble below. Howie was shouting.
"Hold on... tight..."
The twin towers of the silos loomed up ahead. Charlie tensed.
Suddenly, the world was thrown out of perspective again. The harnesses were cutting into his shoulders. His legs were trying to leave the floor and his centre of gravity was moving into his chest. The silos were still dead ahead. But they were upside down. The ground seemed only inches from the top of his head.
Charlie closed his eyes.
He could hear grains of corn, still spilling from the gash that Lindbergh's wing had made in the tower, spattering off the underside of the lower wing as they swooped through.
Howie pulled her up a little, gaining enough height to avoid crashing into Baxter Field's rudimentary control tower, and to do a few more victory rolls to acknowledge the admiration of the crowd, however muted it might be. Charlie wondered how this looked from the ground.
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They ran up to 400 feet and watched LeMay go in for his second run. This time, he didn't refuse the jump, but went straight at the silos. From where he was, looking down from above, however, Charlie couldn't be sure if LeMay had actually flown between them. He may have just gone over the top of them. One thing was for sure: the steel-spined hero had not flown nearly as low between the things as he and Howie had just done.
It was time for the dive bombing contest.
A large cross of sheets and sacking, each axis fifty feet long, had been weighted down with stones on the grass to one side of the airfield. This was the target. The contestants simply had to drop their two bombs as close to the centre as possible. LeMay's Helldiver would be dropping its load from racks under the fuselage. The Spruce Goose's bombs would be dropped by Charlie. This was his main task as co-pilot. He'd done much the same from gliders.
The Helldivers were equipped with the very latest bombsight, and bombing was something the RFS demonstrated every time it visited somewhere. It was something Charlie expected LeMay's bombardier, Major McCarthy, to be quite good at. Presumably he didn't call himself "Bomber Joe" for nothing.
Charlie had an advantage that, as far as he was concerned, evened things up. He would be coming in over the target slower and lower. Besides, a fifty-foot cross was a trickier target than Berlin.
LeMay's ship went down first, dropping its practice bomb to spread a shock of blue dye about the grass a good fifteen feet too soon.
Charlie pulled the first of his bombs from the cockpit locker and sat it in his lap. The plane lowered itself in over the target, almost as leisurely as a hen sitting herself down on a clutch of eggs, then swooped, accelerating sharply.
Charlie leaned over the side, trying to get the right feel of the wind and slipstream, as he'd been taught at bombing classes at summer camp, and let go. The trick was to judge the exact speed of the plane, then calculate from the altitude just how soon before the plane was directly over the target to drop the bomb so it would follow a slanted trajectory towards the crux of the cross.
Howie pulled the plane gently upwards, riding parallel with the runway off to their left. Charlie strained backwards to see the effects of his work. There was a very satisfying splatter of red dye almost bang in the middle of the target.
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On the edge of the field, he noticed three figures lounging in the grass by an old Haynes Roadster, passing a bottle between them. Melvin Yandell and his cronies. He was sorely tempted to drop his second bomb on them, but it wouldn't have been keeping in spirit with the contest.
They ambled about the sky, Howie finishing off the contents of his bottle as they watched LeMay go in for his second bomb run.
This time, Bomber Joe found his target, coming in fast at 100 feet and sloshing his blue paint right in the middle of the huge cross on the ground. It was an impressive achievement, but, Charlie reflected, as much a tribute to good old socialist know-how and repeated practice than any virtue on McCarthy's part.
The General's plane pulled up and away and it was Charlie's turn again. He was worried that Howie would try and outdo LeMay by trying more fancy aerobatics, but he just took her in steady as before.
Charlie dropped his bomb, and looked down and back to find it, too, had hit the target slap in the middle. He grinned back at Howie. Howie winked and handed him the bottle he had just emptied. Charlie was confused to see that the bottle was nearly full again, with a pale yellow liquid.
Howie pointed to Melvin's car and put his free thumb up, and Charlie caught on. Which was just as well, because he had been on the point of taking a celebratory drink. They had, after all, just won the contest.
Instead of taking the plane up to gain height, circle round and land, Howie kept her low as they swooped in over Melvin, Philly and Chick. Charlie, drawing on all his bombing expertise, emptied the bottle of urine over the choking thugs.
Howie banked to one side and Charlie noted with satisfaction that the hoods were shaking fists and brushing down their expensive clothes.
He turned back to Howie to give him the thumbs-up, but he noticed the huge blue shape of a Curtiss Helldiver swooping down from above, passing overhead at what must have been 300 mph.
The Spruce Goose shook and buffeted violently in the larger aircraft's slipstream. In the back of the Helldiver's long glazed cockpit he could see McCarthy drawing a bead on them with a tommy gun.
The gun quivered and small flames issued from its muzzle.
Charlie turned to Howie.
"Are those blanks?"
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br /> Howie pointed to the lower right hand wing. It was pockmarked with half a dozen holes, each surrounded by shreds of ripped canvas flapping in the wind like torn paper.
Eugene Byrne & Kim Newman
In the distance, the Helldiver was turning again for another run at them. Charlie knew that Curtiss Helldivers had six powerful wing-mounted 20 mm cannon. He hoped that they wouldn't be loaded since the plane was simply on a courtesy visit. If they were primed, he and Howie were finished. Using them against an old biplane would be like killing a butterfly with both barrels of a 16-gauge.
Howie turned the H-l on a dime, keeping her low and running across Baxter Field. Keeping her low would stop LeMay from getting in underneath them where they were even more vulnerable. And perhaps Stone Age Carpet would be less willing to murder his opponents in full view of the people of Roseville. At the least, it would show them the bastard was a sore loser.
Even in the distance, and even over the rhythmic clatter of the Spruce Goose's engine, they could hear the Helldiver humming, the noise growing to a guttural roar as it came at them from behind.
Once again, the fragile biplane shook as the navy plane overflew them, slightly to the left. There was no damage done. Clearly, LeMay and McCarthy were wishing their wing guns were loaded.
Once again Charlie could see McCarthy squinting down the sights of the Thompson gun. It occurred to him that in combat, the Curtiss's rear-mounted weapon was normally a pair of .50 calibre machine guns. It was luck of a kind, though McCarthy's toy could kill them just as effectively if he got a bead on his target.
McCarthy's gun stuttered. Howie broke left to throw his aim.
It worked. By the time he realised what was going on, McCarthy was too far away to get an accurate shot. But it hadn't stopped him from trying anyway, and in following through, he had made the most dumb, elementary mistake imaginable.
If Charlie needed any more proof that the war record of Major Joseph McCarthy, at least, was somewhat exaggerated, here it was. He had just shot through his own tail.
He realised his mistake before it was too late. The Helldiver's huge sail-like tailplane was a little the worse for wear, but still intact. But McCarthy kept firing, even though the distance between the two planes was growing. Howie threw the H-l all over the sky to evade fire.
They were overflying the edge of Baxter Field again, just where Charlie had earlier seen Peggy Sue, Patsy and Jack, and the Helldiver was still firing uselessly at them. Major McCarthy must be madder than hell, Charlie reflected, to be using up his ammunition in this way.
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Howie turned the plane again, still keeping low, as the much faster naval aircraft disappeared into the distance. He brought the Spruce Goose over Baxter Field yet again, looping three loops and coming out into three victory rolls to prove to everyone that he and Charlie weren't harmed or scared.
Being thrown about the air like this was annoying Charlie a little. He was searching his brain for the vital statistics on Curtiss Helldivers, the rate of turn, rate of climb, stalling speed...
The Helldiver was coming up behind them again.
Once again, it took up position ahead of them to give McCarthy a shot at them. Once again, Bomber Joe took aim.
Nothing happened.
McCarthy's gun had either jammed or run out of ammunition.
The Helldiver swooped on into the wide blue yonder.
It was all over. Charlie could add another 45 minutes to his flying time.
Howie tapped him on the shoulder again, signalling for another bottle. Charlie leaned forwards and found one wedged at the back of the rudder bar.
"You...take...'er...in," yelled Howie, grabbing the bottle.
For a moment Charlie panicked. His 22 flying hours barely qualified him for a single-handed landing.
The Spruce Goose jinked lazily across open fields as Charlie realised that, without a bottle of rotgut jammed in front of it, the rudder bar in the front cockpit was operational and that his feet were on it.
For the first time, he grabbed the stick. Howie, singing in the back, had clearly decided to call it a day.
For all that she looked like a stringbag, the H-l was light to the touch and very responsive. Charlie jerked her up and to the left and passed in a wide semicircle around the perimeter of Baxter Field to line her up on the runway.
There was no sign of the Curtiss Helldiver that had been trying to kill them. But down below, he noticed a growing knot of people away from the main area. An olive green army ambulance, painted at the top and sides with red crosses on white circles, was bumping across the field towards the group. There must have been some kind of accident.
Two minutes later, Charlie had the Spruce Goose pointing down the main runway. He took a deep breath and brought her in, easing
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down the throttle, hoping that Peggy Sue's rabbit's foot still had enough luck left in it.
It was a perfect landing. Tyres touched the tarmac and stayed there.
Suddenly, Charlie became aware that his shirt and trousers were soaking wet. He had shed more sweat in less than an hour than Porky Rook did in a year's worth of sexual incontinence lectures.
"Fuckin'-A-OK, Charlie boy," slurred Howie from the back. "Yer a born flier! Shit, I couldn't do a landing smooth as that, drunk or sober!"
Charlie taxied her to the area in front of the crowded grandstand before shutting off the engine.
Silence. Perfect silence.
He and Howie clambered out of the plane, pulling off gloves, goggles, helmets and jackets.
It was only then he realised that everyone was clapping and cheering.
Over the public address system someone was saying "ladies and gentlemen, comrades, I give you the heroes of the hour. That old barnstormer certainly showed the RFS a thing or two. The pilot of the H-l, as I was telling you, has a very distinguished war-record. I should know because I was Howie's squadron commander when we were escorting bombers over Germany and..."
With a start, Charlie realised the voice belonged to Lieutenant Lafayette R. Hubbard.
"Howie," he whispered urgently to his companion, "what's going on? Surely LeMay isn't going to approve of this?"
"Beats me, Charlie.
"And, comrades, I'm glad to tell you I've just had word from the doctor. Apparently the stray bullet that young Patsy caught in the leg only gave her a scratch. She's going to be fine ladies and gentlemen, just fine...You know, all this excitement we've had here this morning reminds me of the time I was flying Dauntlesses at the Battle of Midway. We were flying off the aircraft carrier Matewan and Admiral Nimitz came up to me and said..."
"Hubbard was what you'd call a pathological liar, I guess. Totally incapable of telling the truth. But he wasn't dumb. He'd seen that LeMay had flipped, and after Lindbergh and Morrison deliberately put themselves out of the running, the three of them had gotten together on the ground and decided to double-cross him and McCarthy. They
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all hated LeMay and McCarthy anyway, for being stone-crazy. And they'd just made several big mistakes.
"When McCarthy made that last run at us, squirting off all that ammo like it was water, he was firing downwards. And one of his stray shells caught Patsy. Just a scratch. If she'd caught it full, she'd have lost a leg. So when word got to Hubbard and Morrison and Lindbergh that LeMay's irresponsible behaviour had gotten someone hurt, it was an absolute godsend to them. They no longer had any qualms about ratting out on their buddies. So while we were in mortal danger up in the sky, Hubbard was giving a running commentary. Realising the crowd's sympathies would be with the underdogs—me and Howie—he played us up as socialist good guys, and stabbed Stone Age Carpet and Bomber Joe in the back.
"When they landed a few minutes later, everyone was jeering them, and Patsy's father—Peggy Sue's father—could walk up to McCarthy and punch him on the nose for shelling his d
aughter without any fear of reprisal. Way I heard it, LeMay and McCarthy ended up drilling for oil in Alaska, a pretty rough punishment in those days. And Lindbergh, Morrison and Hubbard carried on with the RFS as though nothing had happened. You can't really say everyone got what they deserved, but it was a kind of justice I guess.
"And they all lived happily ever after. Patsy got better a lot quicker than Jack did. Jack and Howie hung around Roseville a couple of days before disappearing over the very flat horizon of Kansas. After nearly getting killed, and after receiving the most almighty whopping for pulling such a stupid stunt, I gradually lost interest in planes. As a matter of fact, I sort of developed a phobia about them. I sometimes have dreams about how near to getting killed I was when McCarthy opened fire, and I've been travelling on the ground ever since. It was my sixteenth birthday a few days later. Same day that Jack and Howie flew off, I recall. My parents traded Jack a couple of home-grown squashes for his guitar, and, for my birthday, gave it to me. I wasn't too sure about the thing at first, but over the months I found myself fooling around with it more, and before I knew where I was I knew I'd found my heartbeat...
"Also, I got the girl, of course. At least for a year or two, but in the end, Peggy Sue got married to someone else. It could have been worse, I suppose. It could have been Melvin Yandell. He went to Washington a few years later and became one of the many people who
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make a good living doing nothing in particular down somewhere along the lines where the Party mixed with the Mafia. Shortly after Vonnegut came to power and he turned the FBI against organised crime, Yandell was one of the patsies thrown to the wolves by the wiseguys. Peggy Sue, I'm afraid, has the lousy taste to call herself Mrs. Pete Horowitz these days. Captain Porky Rook kept at the Pioneers until he was found doing something disgraceful with Melvin Yandell's little brother Fat Billy, and wound up in a re-education centre for the sexually incontinent out in Death Valley. Patsy took off one day a few months later, to get out of going to a dance with Chick Willis, and never came back. She was smart, so I reckon she found something somewhere. Osgood Yandell had a heart attack from overeating, and Colonel Hall was given the Order of Debs in 1961 for lifelong service to the USSA.
