Black Bear Blues

by Stephen Wishnevsky

  “We are not going to shoot up any allies, are we?”

  “It’s injun territory out there.”

  “Suits me. Fuck’m they can’t take a joke.” She almost broke a smile at that. I would have to find out who this woman was, she sounded old school as hell. But, I made and note to be careful in my interest; I was ass deep in women now, I didn’t need to give her any ideas. Maybe she was a lesbian. That would help. Then she would be immune to my craggy charms.

  >>>>>>>

  All that accomplished, we loaded up and droned west and north for an hour, well into Kazakhstan. It got a little greener, if you can call scrublands coated with dust greener. Looked like a place a camel would have to work hard just to scrounge a living. Or were they dromedaries? That was well into the “who gives a fuck” territory. It was still not quite noon when I saw a dust trail to our north. I tapped her shoulder and pointed, she nodded and cranked the wheel over. We made one pass at a few hundred feet, close enough to see ten motley civilian trucks led by a Feldgrau staff car, a big one. It looked like a Panzerkraftwagen Ehrhard, maybe, cut down to a touring car. And too bad for it. Fuck’m they can’t take a joke.

  I could see a couple of single mount Maxims on the tops of trucks, but Alde left me no time for a survey. She pulled a wingover, or as close as you could get on one of these big mommas, and roared up the line of the convoy, guns yammering. Results were immediate, what the vulgar would call “shit flying everywhere.”

  We nailed them hard, then she came back the other way, and did it again. But by that time, they had their guns unlimbered and were starting to return a few rounds. We felt, more than heard a few impacts, I yelled at her, “Get the fuck out of here!” and for a blessing, she took my word. We did a climbing circle, got a good look from a safe distance. I had binoculars, they were hard to focus with the vibration, but I could see three trucks swerved out of line, one smoking, and the armored staff car pulling away from the convoy, flat out. She pointed at it and jerked her head in a question, I nodded and turned thumbs down. Kill it.

  She had nerve, I swear she did. She came at that bastard head on, so close to the steppe that I was afraid our landing gear would dig in and kill us dead as shit. I swear she was clipping thorn bushes with her wheels. The staff car didn’t have a chance. Our closing speed was close to two hundred miles an hour, and if she missed with a single bullet, I didn’t see it. The Panzerkraftwagen swerved, as the driver panicked or died, but it didn’t matter. Dead meat.

  And then we were gone. The guns fell silent, she headed to the barn. We got back up to cruising speed, she pulled the throttles back, jerked her thumb over her shoulder. She had to do it twice before I realized she wanted me to check for damage. No problem. I needed to piss anyway. Bad.

  I went back and checked as best I could, daylight showing through a few holes, nothing serious. The control lines looked okay, from what I could tell through the windows, but the left wing had a swerving line of pock marks in it. Somebody got lucky, but they didn’t get lucky enough. I creaked the big door open, did the deed, and dogged it shut. The civilian Tris had bathrooms, but this one didn’t. It looked to be about eighty percent repairs anyway, so count your blessings.

  One last check. I thought I saw something, and then I knew I did. Fuck. An enemy biplane, it looked old and battered but I could see the iron crosses plain. Double fuck. A two-seater, the observer was swinging his single mount around as I watched. I ran forward, grabbed her seatback, and yelled in her ear “enemy scout!” and pointed behind and to the right. She didn’t even blink, she crammed the nose down and picked up speed in a near vertical dive. I fought my way into my seat and managed to fasten my seatbelt with sheer brute power. And fear. I managed to keep my meat-hooks off the wheel with a major effort of will.

  I don’t know if it was possible to loop a Trimotor, but she gave it a good try. I saw the scout passing us in a steep dive as the observer tried to draw a bead on us. He might have gotten a few rounds off, but I couldn’t hear anything over the roar of our engines. I guess the pilot was trying to out-dive us, then swoop around and nail us with his front .30s, but he probably did not realize we were armed. As soon as he got in front of us, she swung over and cut loose.

  The tracers ripped his fabric plane apart, the gas tank went up immediately, and some sold chunk of something hit my side of the windshield hard, shattered it. It was supposed to be shatterproof glass, but something got through and cut my face all to hell. Too bad. I was so keyed up I barely felt it, only noticed the blood blowing up into my eyes. Two eyes. Good. I wiped my face with a hand, showed the blood to Alde, and tried to find a rag to stop the bleeding. She leveled the plane out, pulled the throttles back to cruise, and then, only then, unwrapped her white silk aviator’s scarf from around her neck and handed it to me.

  Good pilots never panic. She was one of the best.

  I mopped up as much as I could, then unbuckled and went to the back, looking for a first aid kit. There was one, I found some gauze and a styptic pencil and did what I could, which was not much. I stripped off my flight jacket, ripped off my uniform blouse, and used that as a pad to soak up as much blood as I could. Then I shrugged back into my jacket, and went back to my flight station, still holding that pad to my face. Alde slapped my shoulder, yelled “Take the wheel!” I dropped the cloth, grabbed the wheel, she unbuckled, strapped me in, then ran back for the first aid kit. While I played ‘steady as she goes,’ she swabbed me down with iodine, and attacked the bigger cuts with gauze and tape. She used the styptic pencil liberally on the smaller cut while I invented new curse words.

  “That might hold you. You big baby.”

  “Is it bad?” That was what I meant to say, what came out was more like “Eee eet baaa?” All fucked up.

  “You will live. You have both eyes, but your right cheek is wide open. I am surprised you can’t taste the blood. I can see your teeth.”

  “Eee ust eee in shoo…”

  “You must be in shock? Correct. I’m taking the controls. Try to relax. If you want to lie down, go ahead.” There was nothing but bare metal floor to lie on, I was better off where I was. A pair of goggles would have helped, but fuck it. I’m tough. At least I thought I was, until it started to hurt. There might have been some morphine in the kit, but I was weak with reaction, shaking from the cold, and as content as I might be, considering how fucked up I was.

  Maybe I dozed off, maybe I just wanted to, but I came back to reality when the wheels touched the hardpan. They had good medics, they had me bundled into an ambulance and into the field hospital in a very few minutes, morphine in my veins soon after.

  >>>>>>>>

  I woke up, more or less normally, my head felt like a block of wood, and I was floating on a nice pink cloud of dope. A vast improvement. A bossy nurse was there, helped me use a bed pan, and found me a glass of lukewarm bullion with a straw to suck it down with. It hurt even through the cocaine and the morphine. Let’s just say I recognized the feelings, and let it go at that, shall we? Morphine had been my friend in the hospital in France in the AEF; welcome back, buddy.

  >>>>>>>

  The next time I came aware, Alde was sitting next to my bed, reading a Zane Gray book. “Oh, you’re awake. I took the liberty of bringing your things from BHQ, I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Nooo. What day is it?” I could feel my lips; they sort of worked. Good enough.

  “Thursday. They kept you out for three days. You are good to go.”

  “Go?”

  “Wherever you want to go. The cannon ship is finished, we tested it, it does not tear itself apart in mid-air. That’s the best I can say. You are done here. Where now?”

  “Back to my train I suppose. Jiu-quan. I have work to do. Vacations are over-rated.” My face told me it would hurt, when it got good and ready.

  “You want to fly or ride?”

  “Fly. Passenger.” Almost conversational here.

  “Good. I’ll have the nurse clean you up, dress you, I will
be downstairs with a car. I’m glad you made it. You didn’t look really good, you know.”

  “A mirror?”

  “Nothing to see but bandages. You look like one of those mummies from Egypt.”

  “Plan. Thanks.” Gee, she almost sounded like she cared. What was that all about?

  I followed the program, was wheeled out to the entrance, the hospital was another dugout, a fancy one with wood walls and a tile floor. All good. I was bundled in, still unsteady on my pins, and off we went. “I’m taking the cannon ship back to Jiu-quan for more evaluation. Your General Earhart is very interested.”

  “My general? I only met her three or four times.”

  “She asked about you over the radio.”

  “News to me.”

  “She said you helped get her the command of the Air Service in Asia.”

  “Well, sort of. But I think Hodges is going to yell at me. He ordered me to not fly combat anymore.”

  “After your wife was killed?”

  “Yeah. That.”

  “I think the word is out that you are expected to take risks, no matter what the orders. A dashing freebooter type.”

  “Fuck Jim, have they ever got me wrong? Is there a rack in back, or do I get the copilot seat?”

  “I have a copilot, Jackson Toole. You never met him. This will be his ship, once we get the bugs out of it. You ride in back next to the breach of the pom-pom. The loader’s position. There is a seat there anyway, we added a rack, a chamber pot, and a thermos of coffee. Anything ese you need, better ask quick. Here we are.” Screech. Toole waved from the cockpit. I flipped a hand back. Be nice to people who have your life in their hands.

  “I’m good. Well, a few more pills. It’s a long ride.”

  “Already taken care of. Be careful, that stuff is addictive.”

  “No shit, Sherlock. Been there, done that, wrote a book about it.” Well, actually, just a novella that never got published, but fuck the facts. Us dashing freebooters disdain mere facts.

  The gun installation was obviously a hack and bash job, the front engine was gone, and a foot-wide steel tube had been run from the flat nose of the engine mount, back all the way through the cockpit, to where the cannon was mounted, at the center of gravity. You could still get from the cockpit to the rear of the plane, but it took a little agility. It was very tight.

  The loader’s station was to the right of the breech, cannon was basically a scaled-up Maxim gun, 37mm, and was fed from a canvas belt. That was it. A few boxes of ammo, an extra water tank to keep the cooling jacket full, and a few bolts to hold the whole lash-up down to the airframe. Like Danny Ferguson said, Keep It Simple, Stupid. There was a cable to the front dashboard to fire the gun, that’s all she wrote. It might not work against the front armor of tanks, but anything else was dead meat. You would need a mighty big catcher’s mitt to grab those rounds. And foul tips would be a bitch.

  Eight hours later, counting a refueling stop in the desert someplace, we were back. I checked in to HQ, Ray Reynolds gave me a small ration of shit, Hodges shook my hand, thanked Johannsen for not letting me get completely killed, and off I went to the train. “Alde, I suppose we can find you some sort of a rack on the train. More comfortable than BOQ. Better food, anyway.”

  I was looking forward to a little support from Barbara, and a hassle with Cookie, which shows all I know. Men are basically stupid, ever notice?

  Ray must have called Peaches; she was waiting on the platform with Lupo and a few of the old timers. I just had to say the stupid thing. “Where’s Barbara?”

  “Back in Dalny. She left you a note.” Boom.

  “Fine. And Cookie?”

  “I ran her junkie ass off. A few Shanghai dollars, and off she went. Happy as a clam.”

  “She was pregnant?”

  “Yep. But I told her it was her problem, that there was a war on, she sucked it up, but took it. The last thing you need is a junkie baby. Ever been around one?”

  “Can’t say as I have.”

  “Count your blessings. They cry all the time unless you dose them with paregoric, and that stunts their growth. They usually don’t make it.”

  “Let me guess. Usually dear mommy steals the dope and the kid joneses to death.”

  “You got it. Their whole nervous systems are out of whack. A fucking nightmare. Just like the rest of China.” She looked Alde over, top to bottom. “Who’s the frail?”

  “Alde Johannsen. A… My pilot, I guess. Alde, Peaches. Peaches is the boss bitch of this circus.”

  They nodded to each other, Peaches, as direct as ever said, “Alde. You going to bunk with the boss here, or you want to share a rack with one of us girls?”

  “Ahhh… You… I’m not a lesbian, if that is what you are asking.” She swallowed something, looked from one of us to the other, asked, “Those the only two choices?”

  “The passenger car seats recline. I could find you a pillow or two.” Peaches said, not very helpfully.

  “Shit…” She said.

  “It’s a big bed. I am pretty much harmless. We can worry about this crap in the morning.”

  She shrugged an Olympian shrug. “Screw it. There is a war on.”

  “Yeah, I heard that too. Come on, let’s put on the feedbag. Peaches, what’s for dinner?”

  “Chicken, I think. I think I saw Olga plucking some hens earlier.”

  I stopped by my room, there was a note, a neatly typed note from Barbara, saying she had a long talk with Cookie, and had decided to go back to Dalny, to the Bulletin paper, and do what she could for the war effort there. She wished me well, but felt there was just “too much history to cope with at this point in my life.” Who could argue with that? I shrugged, handed the letter to Alde, for lack of any better idea, and changed into new shirt. She did not avert her eyes or protest, but did measure the bed with her eyes.

  Dinner was some fiery stew over rice, as usual, but really tasty for all that. Burned the big cut on the inside of my mouth, but no matter. The Olga-Su-mi intercontinental cuisine experiment was bearing fruit, so to speak. It was soft enough to suck down without much pain, actual chewing was not on the invoice, just yet. Even with a load of chow on board, I was drooping fast. I drafted Peaches, she had been Army Nurse Corps, to change my dressings, and she volunteered to help me shower. “I thought you didn’t like men?”

  “Shit, Miles, I seen enough dick to reach from here all the way back home, the long way around. I just… Shit, who knows? I don’t like fucking losing control. I… I guess I don’t like being vulnerable, being in bed with somebody bigger than me.” She shook her head, and repeated, “Shit, who knows?”

  “Yeah, I get it. Thanks anyway. Love you.”

  “Say what?”

  “Sorry, that just slipped out. Morphine, talking, I guess. But I do like the shit out of you. You are a real goddamn person, and I appreciate that. You crazy old damn nurse, you.”

  She slapped my bare ass, said, “Cut the mushy stuff, asshole. We got work to do.” I was good for none of it. I took another pill, flipped through the day’s intercepts, dozed off before I got to the last page.

  I woke up in the night, the radium dial said 3:05, I had been covered with a blanket, and somebody was gently snoring, back next to me. There was a nightlight, not enough to see who it was, but enough to show me my pill bottle. Take two, my face hurt with that itchy pain that indicates healing. Fuck a bunch of pain. Out.

  >>>>>>>

  Those pills got me to morning, woke up long enough to piss and take more pills, but by noon I was feeling good enough to be hungry. I got eggs and eggs, with tea on the side. I was still hungry, Su-mi fussed over me and made me a big mug of soup with some noodles, that hit the spot. I felt good enough to putter off to the Radio Car and supervise. I asked about Alde, they told me she was off doing pilot things.

  >>>>>>>

  After the long radio silence, all hell was breaking loose, I guessed Patton had opened the airwaves again to build support for his Free Amer
ican Army, his militia. The official word was that “thousands” of Western Canadians, a lot of immigrant Finns and Ukrainians and such were flocking to the FAA colors from places like Alberta and Saskatchewan, notably non-French and not particularly British provinces. Which is to say, people who had no place else to go. Rugged cowboy types, maybe, but not many of them.

  There was a USA thrust up from Route 5 in Vermont to some place called Sherbrooke, an obvious attempt to control the south bank of the St. Lawrence. A glance at the atlas showed that Sherbrooke was about sixty miles from Montreal, and was on flat land, the mountains pretty much stopped in Vermont. It looked like a nice place to live, if they weren’t having a war there.

  Most places are like that.

  Montreal was the center of a three-sided war; the French Canadiens, Patton, and the Anglo-Germans. It was almost October now, and snow could be falling anytime. Which reminded me. What few reference books we had told me, that Urum-chi was in the depths of its rainy season, as much as an inch a month, with a total of less than a foot a year. The temperature was moderating, in the seventies, and October should be good, but from November to March, all bets were off. It could get down to forty below. Well, fuck. We were near Siberia, after all, and there was not so much as a barbed wire fence between us and the North Pole.

  Holy jumping fuck blisters. Time to earn my pay. I had one of Peach’s girls copy out the relevant pages, typed a cover letter, had it all shipped off to Ray Reynolds with a big red flag on it. I knew that Bradley and them up on the Line had been through all this for years, but the rest of us were new at this game. Forty below in this damn flat-ass desert? Not a good prospect at all. I could almost hear the wind howling already. I might be a Russian, but I’m from the Crimea. That’s as south as Russia gets.

  I didn’t suspect the Germans were prepared for this, but the damn Uzbeks and Khazaks sure were. We sure the fuck did not want to be frozen into barracks with all the trucks too cold to start, and those fuckers out there on horses and camels and shit. Not a winning situation. Cowboys and Indians, with the Indians winning? Not a good movie. I remembered what that slack-ass soldier, Briggs, maybe, had said about freezing his ass off up on the Trans-Siberian Line in the old days. All the machine guns froze up, the doughs drank up all the antifreeze to survive, the trucks’ motor blocks froze and cracked, people froze to death in their sleeping bags.