B for Buster (18 page)

I was glad for the darkness as I felt myself blush. The WAAFs, in their pretty blue suits, scared me nearly as much as the ops had ever done.

“Come on,” he said. “You can navigate for me.”

“I want to stay here for a while,” I said.

“Very well.” He took a breath that nearly toppled him sideways. “I'll go on instruments, then.”

He headed off, stumbling on the wet ground. I couldn't let him go alone, not after he'd come all that way to see me. He was my pilot, after all; I owed him a bit of care. “Hang on,” I said.

I put the lantern back inside, blew it out, and said so long to Percy. Then I walked away with Lofty through the rain, letting him bump against me to keep him on the beam. He didn't talk at first; he was far too busy just staying upright.

When we were nearly at the huts, he stopped. His feet stopped first, and then the rest of him, reeling in a circle like a Happy Valley searchlight. “Kak,” he said. “Hey, Kakky?”

“Yes?” I said.

“What's the matter with us, huh? Don't you like us, Kakky?”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“You're always by yourself. Here or there with your ruddy birds. Why don't you hang around us anymore?”

He was drunk. And what drunks said didn't matter for anything.

“We need you, Kak.” He turned toward me, wobbling, and put his hands on my shoulders. “We're a crew,” he said. “Me and you and Ratty and the rest. We've got to stick together, Kid. We
have
to stick together, or all of us are lost.”

I didn't like him being so close that he could hit me before I could move.

“Oh, cripes! I forgot,” he said. His right hand lifted from my shoulder, and I cringed. But he only thumped himself on the head, knocking himself into a funny little dance that ended when he tripped and fell. He lay in the mud, giggling. “I pranged,” he said. “My undercarriage collapsed.”

I hated drunks.

“I forgot to tell you,” he said. “What I came to see you for.”

“What?” I said.

“I got some gen. It's hot.”

Lofty held up his hand. He was like a long beetle lying on the ground. “Help me up!” he said. “Pull my chocks away.”

I took his hand, and pulled, but he didn't come very easily. He rose only halfway before his fingers—wet and slick—popped from mine, and he dropped back on the grass.

“Once more,” he said, and I tried again. He kicked and struggled. “Boosters on!”

I got him up, and we nearly fell together. His arms and legs were muddy, his cap still somehow on his head. All I wanted was to get rid of him, to get back to the loft and the birds.

“So what's the news?” I said. “What did you want to tell me?”

“Oh, yeah.” He laughed again. “We're getting rid of
Buster,
Kid.”

“Really?”

Lofty nodded. “That's the pukka gen.”

It had to be true if it was pukka gen. That was the most reliable news there was. “But why?” I asked.

“We're getting Lancs,” he said.

I almost let him fall. He grabbed for my arms to steady himself. “We're converting soon,” he said. “A week or two at the most. The first one will be here any day.”

“But I don't
want
to change,” I said. “I don't want to fly a Lancaster.”

“Are you nuts?” he asked. “Why not?”

“They don't carry pigeons,” I said.

Lofty groaned. He shook his head and pulled his hands away. “You're hopeless, Kak,” he said. “You really are a twit. You've got those birds on the brain.”

“But we need Percy,” I said.

“Aw, go on.” He gave me a push that didn't shift me at all but sent
him
reeling sideways. He staggered to a stop and slowly straightened. “Go back to your pigeons,” he said. “That's where you belong, I guess.”

CHAPTER 19

IT WAS THE NINTH of August when we flew again. The skies cleared and the moon was in its last quarter, and three kites were sent off. Of course
Buster
was one of them. We wouldn't be “driving the train” exactly, but we'd be close to the head of the stream. There would be a bunch of kites, then old Buster and G for George and V for
Victor;
then the rest of the stream would be spread behind us for mile after mile after mile.

No one was keen on the target. We were going to Mannheim, way down by the bulge of France, in the valley of the winding Rhine. “Wheezy jeezy,” Ratty said. “Can't we ever bomb something close to home?” Old Pop said, “We only pay the piper; we never call the tune.”

For most of the sergeants it was just another night on the ground, and the party kept rolling on. In the mess, they stood amid the wreckage and sang about Happy Valley, about the flak and the blinding searchlights. For me it was hard enough to sit outside and listen. It seemed so strange that we were flying off across half of black Europe while the others were carousing. I didn't understand how Ratty and Lofty and Buzz could join the party. But there they were, in the last hour before the op, surely the only ones not drinking. I could tell it was Ratty banging away on the piano; I heard his funny squeak that filled in for each missing note when he hit the empty key.

It was especially hard to be alone that evening. I kept thinking of the Lancasters, and what changes they would bring for me and the pigeons and Bert. A movie played endlessly in my mind: the birds screaming as they were slaughtered; Fletcher-Dodge grinning over his roasted pigeon; the loft sitting empty and forgotten. I knew I couldn't cope without my little friend.

The singing from the mess grew louder. The voices howled like mournful dogs.

“There was flak, flak
Bags of bloody flak
In the valley of the Ruhr.”

And then others chimed in for the chorus:

“My eyes are dim, I cannot see,
The searchlights they are blinding me.”

A sergeant came out of the mess and walked right past me, as though I wasn't there. It made me remember how I had seen Donny Lee in almost the same place, and I turned cold at the thought that I was joining that lonely world of the dead men. I got up and went through the door.

Buzz was sitting on the piano bench beside Ratty. Lofty was in his favorite corner, reading a paper that was crinkled by his fists. Pop wasn't there, but it didn't surprise me. He always spent the moments before an op lying on his bed, holding the crucifix, talking to a photograph.

I found a chair that still had four legs, turned it upright, and sat by myself near the door. The cigarette smoke was as thick as the clouds over Hamburg, and I squinted through it, with my eyes burning. I watched Ratty's hands slide along the keyboard. I tried not to think about pigeons.

From outside came the clatter of the Morris. The car came closer, then stopped by the hut with the bang of a backfire. Shoes pounded up the steps, and through the door came the pilot of
G for George,
the fellow who owned the Morris then. He went straight across the mess, straight to the piano, and stepped in front of Ratty. The music stopped; the singing stopped.

In the silence someone coughed. The pilot looked around the mess and asked, “Who wants the bus?”

He didn't say it the way that Donny Lee had done. He sounded desperate and frightened. He shook the keys; he held them up. “Who wants the damned bus?” he shouted. “Anyone can have it.”

There was no rush for the keys. No one even answered.

“Doesn't anybody want the thing?” said the pilot. “Doesn't
anybody
want it?”

The mess was absolutely silent except for his voice. There was no rattle of bottles, no scuffing of feet. There was only a faint jingle as the keys trembled in his fingers.

The pilot looked again around the room, all around at every face, then sort of sighed and sagged. His hand came down. His eyes darkened and his brows lowered, and he marched across the room to the blackboard on the wall. He stared at the names on the Morris list, all the smudged-away names, and then his and then Lofty's. He turned toward the corner. “Lofty,” he said.

He had to say it again before Lofty seemed to hear him. Then the newspaper tilted down, folding backward over itself.

Lofty looked as calm as ever, and I felt a happy twinge to think that he was my skipper, the best of the bunch. “Hmm?” he said. “What's that, old boy?”

The pilot swallowed. “You want the bus?” he said. “You can have it now.”

“Thanks, old boy,” said Lofty, more British now than Fletcher-Dodge.

Buzz stood up from the piano bench. He looked frightened, ready to shout at Lofty. But Lofty didn't even look toward him as he folded the paper on his lap. “Thanks awfully,” he said. “But no, I'll wait my turn.”

The pilot stared at him.

“Cheers, though. Ta very much, old boy.” Lofty slowly picked up his paper. He shook it open in front of his face with a snap that made the poor pilot blink.

The fellow looked miserable. He turned around, scanning the faces, and an expression of rage came over him. “Well, it's not mine. Not anymore,” he said, his teeth gritted. “I'm rid of the damned thing.”

He put the keys on the nail; he snatched up the chalk brush. He touched it to the board, beside his name. His hand quivered as he held it there.

But in the end, he didn't rub out his name. I supposed he just couldn't do it; I didn't think that
I
could have done it either, if I had been him. I couldn't have added my own smudge to the other smudged-out names of dead men.

He put down the brush, and chalk flurried around him in a white cloud. Then he turned and left the mess, weaving round two broken chairs, his feet drumming on the floor.

“I shouldn't worry, old boy,” said Lofty from behind his paper. “It's only a lot of names, you know. Everyone's on a list, after all. I say, we'll all get our tickets; it's just a matter of time.”

That was an odd thing to come from him, and it put a damper on the party. The singers moved apart, and the room emptied by half. Buzz and Ratty left, then Lofty himself, and he smiled at me as he passed. “Come on, Kid,” he said. “It's a long way to Germany. We'd better get moving.”

We changed into flying clothes, got our chutes and gear. I went behind the others, from one hut to the next, hardly a part of the crew. Again we were all being punished for what I had done, and I kept myself away to save them the bother of driving me off.

I got my pigeon box from Bert, and made sure that Percy was inside it. For the first time, the pigeoneer shook my hand. “Good luck to you, sir,” he said. “'Appy 'unting, as we used to say.” His fingers wrapped right around my hand, so that he held me just as my mom had held me when I was a tiny boy. “No worries, sir,” he said. “Just think of Percy and 'is eye-sign.”

I nodded.

“I'll see you when you're 'ome.”

I sat right at the tailgate of the truck as we rumbled across the runway. I lingered at the edge of the dispersal, nearly a wing-length away from the others. Lofty stood staring up at the engine that had failed over Germany, his pipe going in and out of his mouth. Both Sergeant Piper and Pop joined him for a while, pointing at the thing from the front and the back. Then Sergeant Piper held out the 700, but it seemed that Lofty didn't want to sign it. They talked again and pointed some more before Lofty signed his name. He shoved the clipboard back at the erk, stalked to the door, then told us, “Come on, boys. Let's go.”

Buzz was still crawling around, looking for his clover. He had grazed over the same bit of grass again and again, like a sheep in a pen, and now he was worried. “Help me, Ratty,” he said.

“Never mind that,” I told them. “It's not the clover that helps us.”

It was a dumb thing to say. No one had ever spoken aloud about Buzz's clover or Ratty's rabbit's foot, or the others' lucky charms—the photograph, the crucifix, the handkerchief. My ray gun was the only thing anyone had mocked, and that was no wonder, the thing had been so stupid.

But I blundered on. “You don't need it. You don't need
any
of that junk,” I said. “Percy keeps us safe.”

“Oh, shut up, Kak,” said Simon. His hand was in his back pocket, but he snatched it out.

“It's true,” I said. “He's got the eye-sign.”

“Shove off, Kid,” said Ratty.

“Never mind him,” cried Buzz. “Just help me look.”

Simon helped, and Will. Even the old guy got on his hands and knees. I pretended to look in the grass right beside me, but I really only searched for the little yellow shoots that Percy loved to gobble down. At
Buster
's door, Lofty called, “Hey, let's go!”

“No!” said Buzz. “Wait a minute.”

He moved faster and faster, scuttling over the grass. Even Lofty poked his toe around, but it was Simon who found the lucky leaf. He held it out in his palm like a little green jewel. “There you go, Cobber,” he said.

“Gee, thanks,” said Buzz. But he got Simon to put the clover down so that he could pick it up himself. “It's best that way,” he said. “I think that's the way I have to do it.”

The tiny leaf fluttered down, and Buzz snatched it up again. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.
Now
we can go.”

I laughed at him. I thought everyone would, but the only laugh was mine, and it seemed so loud that it echoed in my ears for ages. I could hear it as I stowed Percy's basket, and even the engines didn't drown it out when they started.

We followed
G for George
along the perimeter and onto the runway. Engines boomed and droned. I felt us rock as
George
took off; I heard the spray of grit thrown back by its airscrews. “We're next,” I told Percy. “Don't be frightened.”

“Testing magnetos,” said Lofty.

It was a change in his routine. He had tested them already, as he always did. But now he wound the engines up and tested them again. Pop told him he wasn't doing it properly, but Lofty said that
he
was the skipper, that he would do what he wanted. “These damn engines,” he said. “You can't trust them.”

I couldn't really follow what was happening. Switches were being thrown back and forth, engine revolutions read out from the gauges. All I knew was that each engine had two magnetos, that
Buster
had eight altogether, and that Lofty seemed very worried. I sat in my compartment, in the darkness of the kite, and listened to the voices on the intercom, each sentence beginning and ending with the click of a mike.

“I'm getting excessive mag drop,” said Lofty.

“It's not a problem,” said Pop.

“Something's wrong. Maybe the engine's U/S.”

“It's not. Everything's tiggety-boo.”

Will, in the second dickey seat, said, “Seems all right to me, Skipper.”

“What do
you
know?” snapped Lofty. “Look at the bloody gauges!”

“But, Skipper,” said Pop.

“It's U/S, and that's it. We're not going anywhere tonight.”

“But, Skipper.”

“This old crate should be out in the boneyard. It's a wreck; it's a bloody disaster.”

Pop sighed through his intercom. “You're the boss,” he said.

“That's right,” said Lofty. “And we're going back.” The engines quickened. We taxied down the runway, lumbering along with our great fat bottom dragging behind us. The intercom clicked. “There go the rockets,” said Will.

I was on the wrong side of the kite to see those signals shooting up from the tower. But Will kept talking, and I imagined the fiery trails burning into the sky. Fletcher-Dodge must have been raging in the tower to order so many signals so quickly. They soared up one after another, until Will told us, “It looks like the
Titanic
going down.”

Lofty pulled off onto the perimeter. The runway flares lined up in a row in my window, then fell away behind as we taxied our way back to dispersal. The engines seemed strong and loud to me, wheeling us along with our thousands of pounds of bombs in our belly. But I was glad that Lofty had tested them. “That was a lucky break,” I said.

Buzz, in his turret, started asking his crossword questions; he knew them all by heart. But no one was interested, and his voice only bleated in the darkness.

Sergeant Piper was astonished to see us back, and Fletcher-Dodge was furious. He came roaring out in a truck, demanding to know what was wrong. Lofty stormed through the door and stood in front of him, right below my window. I looked down at the top of Lofty's cap, at the CO's red face tilted up, shouting at Lofty. The swagger stick whistled through the air.

Fletcher-Dodge didn't give us a ride to the huts. Percy flew back, weightless and free, while the rest of us had to hoof it with all our clobber, lugging our chutes like schoolboys with satchels.

There was a
feeling
that hung around us, a sense of being beaten, as though we had lost a battle we didn't know we were fighting. I felt sorry for Lofty, who tried to struggle ahead with his buckles jangling. It was
almost
as though he had refused to fly, or that was how it felt in a way. No one
said
that he should have flown, but no one backed him up. I was only glad that I had a pilot brave enough to refuse to fly if he thought he had to. What would have happened, I wondered, if we had been halfway across Germany when the magnetos gave out? Could we ever have gotten home again? I wondered about it, then had to know.

“Hey, Lofty,” I said, calling ahead to him. “If we had kept going, what would have happened?”

“Oh, shut up, Kak,” he said. “No one wants to hear from you.”

I had heard the same sort of thing a thousand times from my old man, but it really hurt, coming from Lofty. “Gee,” I said. “I only asked.”