The Last Mission

by William Kennedy

  I raise my eyes suspiciously. “Sure. They’re in storage with everything else. I found them when I was cleaning out the house.”

  “I’d like to take a look at them,” he says. “Maybe even keep one of them, if you’re not displaying them.”

  “Okay…” It’s inflected so that it asks, “What the hell do you want with them?”

  “I think maybe that’s the part of you I never got to know,” Todd explains. “Me and my friends always thought of the military as the fascist police. I didn’t want to know what you did during your hitch, but I guessed it was terrible. Firebombing Dresden…incinerating Hiroshima…all the good stuff.” He looks up shyly. I realize that this is his way of apologizing for mocking my medals.

  “And now you think…?”

  “That it must have taken a lot of courage. You were holding your life in your hands, like facing down death.”

  I blush. “I don’t think it was a matter of courage. It wasn’t as if we had a lot of choice.”

  Todd stirs his coffee and looks absently out the window, through the reflection of the courthouse. “I guess what I hated was the sellout. It seemed that your generation just tossed your lives on the tracks in front of a train. Like you laid down and let mindless mediocrity run over you.”

  “I’m not sure we were completely mindless…”

  He flashes an annoying smirk. “When you were a kid you really wanted to spend your life at a desk shuffling actuarial tables? You wanted to get rid of all the risks?”

  “No. As a kid I wanted to be a fireman.”

  “So how did you do it?” he asks.

  “Do what?”

  “How did you fly twenty-three missions over Germany, putting your life on the line every day, and then come home and decide to spend the rest of your life in the safest, dullest, most anesthetizing way possible?”

  “I guess I didn’t decide. I just let it happen.”

  He nods. “That’s the way I always thought of you: a guy who just let his life happen. But now I want to think of you as the ballsy guy who could take off in a plane full of bombs, knowing that he might not be coming back.”

  There’s no answer I can think of, so I begin picking up the crumbs from my muffin with a fingertip.

  “I guess that’s why we never got along. I thought you’d wasted your life and I was damn sure I wasn’t going to let that happen to me. I was going to live my dream. Break through the Novocain and feel the vibrations. Smell the roses. All that shit.”

  I nod. “I probably should have done a little more of that myself.”

  And suddenly his anger flashes. He’s talking through clenched teeth. “And now I’m going to go across the street and kiss the ass of some suit who beat himself senseless with his fucking law books. I’m going to plead, and crawl, and promise him that I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to be just like him. Upstanding! Responsible! Fucking brain-dead!”

  “Todd, all you have to do is say you’ll follow the law…”

  “Well, if I’m going to throw myself away to please some asshole clerk, then why did I give you such a hard time? It’s all wrong. I spent thirty years busting your chops, and now I’m going to roll over and play dead for some stranger. Can you swallow that?”

  “Sure. I wasn’t going to send you to jail. This asshole clerk can tell the judge that two years in prison might make you a model citizen. He’s not a guy you want to offend.”

  “He probably does drugs himself,” Todd says.

  “But he didn’t get caught buying them illegally.”

  “So he gets to sit like a big shot and watch me beg.”

  “Ethically and logically, you’ve got a point,” I tell my son. “But this isn’t about ethics, and it sure as hell isn’t logical. It’s about staying out of jail. So you tell him how sorry you are and I’ll tell him what a wonderful son you’ve always been. I’ll suggest that the recent loss of your mother has us all crazy.”

  “Jesus…”

  He doesn’t want to bring his mother into a lie, even though we both know she spent half of her life lying to cover up his misdemeanors.

  “It’s a game, Todd. It’s how life gets played.”

  A long pause, and then he nods his head slowly. “Yeah, I suppose so. I guess that’s why I wanted one of your medals. I want to think of you when your life wasn’t a game.”

  I’m thinking about him, and keeping him out of jail. And he’s thinking about me, trying to find some part of my life that wasn’t just mindless routine. Trying to find a time when I wasn’t in jail.

  “Please, Todd, let your lawyer do the talking. And when they ask you questions, just say what they want to hear.”

  The prosecutor’s office is a bullpen that he shares with three other assistant district attorneys. His desk is gray metal with a rubber bumper around its edge. It’s stacked with legal-size file folders. To get there, we have to go in single file around an island of secretaries’ desks. The mountains of folders cover everything, even the telephones. The place is purposefully sterile, probably to show taxpayers that their money isn’t going for frills and extras.

  The prosecutor waves us into chairs, without looking up from Todd’s records. He’s in his late twenties, a good fifteen years younger than the accused, and a full generation behind Bob Bacon and me. Like us, he’s wearing a suit coat and tie. It isn’t a jury of his peers that will be judging Todd.

  “So who have we here?” the young man asks when he finally looks up.

  “I’m Robert Bacon, counsel to Mr. Marron.” He presents his card and waits while the prosecutor examines it, and then continues, “This is the accused, Mr. Todd Marron, and Mr. James Marron, who has had custody of his son since the arrest.”

  The prosecutor doesn’t bother with an introduction, letting the small sign on the desk it front him do his talking. It reads J.T. McGrath, Asst. District Attorney. He focuses on Todd. “This is your fifth arrest,” he says. Todd looks down at his hands while I shake my head gravely. Actually, it’s more like his twentieth, but most of them never got into the judicial system.

  “May I point out, Mr. McGrath,” Bob Bacon says, “that these five arrests cover a period of over fifteen years. I’d like to suggest that Mr. Marron is not in contempt of the law, but rather a reformed user who, unfortunately, has experienced a few relapses.”

  McGrath purses his lips and bobs his head. The gesture says he supposes you could look at it that way. He scans further down the document. “He hasn’t taken the terms of convictions too seriously. There’s nothing in here to indicate that he’s ever performed the required community service.”

  Ouch! I’m not ready for that one, but Bacon has given it some thought. “That’s not completely accurate. Mr. Marron has performed many hours of community service, but the institutions involved aren’t always meticulous about their paper work.”

  McGrath looks at Todd. “Where have you worked on behalf of the community?”

  “Grand Street Shelter,” Todd says without an instant’s hesitation.

  McGrath checks his paper work. “That was for your second offense. What about the other offenses?”

  “I’ve been on and off at the shelter for fifteen years,” Todd answers. “I didn’t think I was particularly good at raking leaves or washing graffiti off public buildings, so no matter where they sent me, I went back to the shelter. I could do something there.”

  “Like what?” McGrath demands. “What did you do?”

  “Play guitar for the guests. Get some of them singing.”

  “That’s fine, but what work did you do?”

  Todd is beginning to boil. “That is my work. I’m a musician. I play guitar, and I mix recordings.”

  This isn’t the answer the prosecutor wants. I’m hoping that Bacon will step in or that Todd will quickly shift gears.

  “I’m sure, Mr. Marron, that the people at the shelter enjoy singing, but that’s not what the court means by community service. The kinds of projects the court has in mind are exa
ctly the leaf-raking tasks that you seem to think are beneath you.”

  His fists are clenching. “Nothing is beneath me. I just tried to serve the community in the best way I could. Isn’t that what you’re doing? You’re not out raking leaves.”

  “No, Mr. Marron, but I would be if a court assigned me to as part of a suspended sentence. And that’s what I need to know. If this court assigns you to rake leaves or scrub graffiti as an alternative to prison time, are you going to do it?”

  It looks more as if Todd is going across the desk to get at McGrath. Bacon intervenes. “He will, Mr. McGrath. His father is here as a representative of his support group, and I’m sure he will provide encouragement and incentive for his son to perform any service that the court decides.”

  I guess I’m supposed to jump on the bandwagon, but Todd isn’t a mischievous teenager. He’s an adult. What makes him different is that he still pursues his passion. His definition of success has nothing to do with propriety, or status, or wealth, or public acclaim. That may make him difficult, but it doesn’t make him a criminal.

  McGrath is looking straight at Todd. “Mr. Marron?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Todd answers, “whatever the court assigns: leaf raking, wall scrubbing, bird shit in the park…” His tone is nothing like the defeated acquiescence that McGrath is looking for.

  The prosecutor spins in his chair and consults a calendar that is clipped to the wall, then he spins back, and scribbles a note on the cover sheet attached to Todd’s folder. “Your court date is a week from Tuesday,” he says. “You’ll be notified by mail. If you don’t show up, a bench warrant will be issued for your arrest.” His face relaxes and he announces, “That’s it.” He stands, indicating that we are dismissed.

  “So what do you think?” Todd asks when we are standing outside next to Bacon’s car.

  The lawyer shuffles. “I’d be more confident if you had just said yes, and promised to follow the court’s instruction.”

  “That’s what I did,” Todd answers.

  “Without characterizing community service as picking up bird shit in the park,” Bacon concludes.

  With his fate in the hands of a professional suit, Todd should be dry mouthed with fear, but he isn’t interested in his own predicament. All the way to Kit’s house he keeps talking about my stay in the Army Air Force. He wants to know about the plane I flew, the flak fields, and the fighter attacks, and he wants to know about the targets and whether we could really put the bomb right down the smokestack.

  I laugh and tell him that we were lucky if we could get the bomb into the right town. “We never really hit the crosshairs.” His questions are simple, but it’s obvious that he’s done a good bit of reading.

  “Here’s what I don’t understand,” he announces. “You kept getting back into the planes when you knew that half of you wouldn’t make it back alive. You thought it was your duty, even though you generally didn’t hit the targets you bombed. Why? Wasn’t there anyone who knew that it was sort of stupid?”

  It’s hard to explain to someone his age what it was like in my generation. How can you defend our absolute deference to authority? Or make a case for marching in line, no matter where the line was headed? It wasn’t courageous, and it wasn’t stupid. It was just what was expected of us, and what we expected of ourselves. He had said earlier that we had accepted careers that didn’t interest us and had simply thrown our lives into the grinding gears of dull routine. He’s right. That was what was expected. That’s what responsible people did.

  “I suppose we felt like we had to do something,” I finally answer. “Even if most of the bombs didn’t hit the targets, some of them did so we were doing whatever we could do to win the war and save democracy.” I’m embarrassed as soon as I finish the thought. It sounds a lot more high-minded than in actually was.

  But Todd doesn’t think it’s corny. He nods his understanding. “That’s the way it was for me at all those protests. We got our heads beat in and didn’t accomplish much in the bargain, but we were doing what we could to save the country.”

  I’m not sure I agree with his comparison, but it’s easy to see that he didn’t just set out to be a troublemaker and an outcast. He had been fighting his own war. I remember that my problem with Todd was that he was embarrassing me in front of my friends. He wasn’t falling into line. Why was that so much of a problem?

  “I really would like to have one of those medals,” he says as we reach Kit’s street.

  “I’m honored.” And I really mean it.

  At dinner we recount the day’s events to Kit. Her expression shows fear when Todd repeats his comments about cleaning up after the birds. Like me, she thinks he has blown his chances of avoiding prison. “Why?” she asks. And when he doesn’t understand the question she explains, “Couldn’t you just suck up to the guy to stay out of jail?”

  “When you start sucking up, you are in jail,” he says.

  We shift the subject to my schedule. They both think I’ve done all that I can and that I should get back to my half-century-old police investigation in England. I protest that I’m staying around until the court date, but Todd is adamant that he doesn’t want me in court. “Nothing you can do there,” he insists. “Why waste your time? I’ll tell you how it comes out.” For a moment I’m hurt that he doesn’t want me by his side, and then I realize that Todd fully expects to be sentenced to prison. That’s the moment he’s trying to spare me.

  Late that night, long after Kit has gone to bed, we’re sitting in her living room, sipping on a bottle of her husband’s best bourbon. We haven’t talked for nearly an hour when I finally say, “Todd, I don’t think you should go to jail.”

  He laughs. “It sure as hell wouldn’t be my first choice.”

  “What will you do if you get sentenced?”

  He shrugs. “Do the time, I suppose.”

  “How about Canada?” I ask.

  “You mean run? Jump bail and run?”

  “I don’t think they’d go after you. The biggest problem would be that you couldn’t come back, but they must need music mixers in Canada, too.”

  “You’d lose your bond.”

  “It’s found money. Selling the house was a windfall.”

  “You’d lose a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “It was a pretty good-sized windfall.”

  Todd shakes his head. “I don’t believe this. You’re telling me to take a chance? To break the rules? Have you been smoking some of my stuff?”

  I raise the bourbon. “Probably drinking too much of my stuff.”

  “I couldn’t do it to you,” he decides.

  “I’m thinking about what you might do for yourself.”

  “Out of the question.”

  “Just think about it,” I tell him.

  Two days later, he drives me out to the airport, handles my luggage out of the trunk, and starts telling the porter that I need to be checked in.

  “Todd, I think I know how to get myself onto the plane.”

  “Mom used to handle the details,” he reminds me. “I guess I’m playing her part.”

  “Mom liked to be in charge, but I’m finding that I really enjoy taking care of myself.”

  He steps back and gestures grandly toward the porter. “I leave you in good hands.” Then he adds, still in a flippant tone, “I’ll see you when you get back.”

  “You will,” I tell him, “even if it’s in Canada.”

  “It won’t be Canada,” he says, “and we may be talking by telephone through a couple of inches of bulletproof glass.”

  “I don’t need the money,” I remind him, “and I’d hate to see you go to prison over a few spots of bird shit in the park.”

  I stand inside the terminal, looking out through the glass, and watch as he drives away. I want to see him again, as soon as I get back, but with Todd, you never know.

  Then

  We were pretty much grounded in the fall because of the weather. At least that was the official line.
The weather was rainy and generally overcast, and the strategic bombing advocates could curse our luck. “Damn this soup, and just when we had them on their knees,” they briefed reporters.

  “We’ve broken their backs,” a visiting general told us, “and now this rotten weather is giving them time to recover.”

  Most of the air action was turned over to the B-26 Marauders. They carried only half our bomb load, but they were faster and more capable of maneuvering on their attack runs to confuse the antiaircraft gunners, and they flew much lower so their drops were generally more accurate than ours, particularly in overcast weather. The Marauders tore into the antiaircraft batteries that had salted our bomb routes with flak, basically clearing the paths for our future attacks.

  Even on those days when the sky was clear, our big bombers found reasons not to venture deep into Germany. We hit submarine pens on the North Sea ports, railroad yards connecting the German factories with the French coastal defenses, and storage depots that were building up in anticipation of our invasion. Important targets, to be sure, but not the strategic assault that was supposed to destroy the enemy’s means and will to fight.

  In truth, our 1943 missions had failed. Our losses had been greater, more crippling, and more demoralizing than those we inflicted. Our real mission during the last months of the year was gearing up for the next year’s raids. We were replacing our losses with new squadrons, more hangar pads, more housing for air and ground crews. We were upgrading our equipment, moving to later versions of the Fortress and Liberator that had more firepower aimed forward, toward the Germans’ favored direction of attack. Most importantly, we were adding new squadrons equipped with the long-range P-51 Mustang fighters. The Mustang was the blissful marriage of an advanced American airframe and a superb British engine, yielding a plane that performed better on less horsepower. It used fuel so sparingly that it could accompany us all the way to the heart of Germany, and then it could outfly and outfight the Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs that had been cutting us to pieces. With the Mustangs to take care of the German fighters and the Marauders pruning out the flak farms, our chances of survival were improving enormously.