B for Buster (8 page)

He must have been talking to me. No one else seemed sad or glum.

“So long as we all keep awake and do our jobs, there's no worries tonight.” He looked at each of us, eye to eye, then tightened his arms and drew us into a smaller circle. “No mistakes, okay? If
one
of us messes up,
all
of us get the chop.”

We looked sadder when he finished than we had before he started. Simon was the first to break away from the circle. Then Ratty followed him, and Pop wandered off, and I didn't mind being left alone. I wanted to talk to Donny Lee, to tell him that I'd changed my mind.

CHAPTER 9

DONNY LEE WAS SITTING on his bed, with a collection of little things spread across the blanket. He was picking them up one by one, holding them for a moment in both his hands, then setting them back on the gray wool. He had a wallet, a pocketknife, a photograph or two. He had them arranged in a row.

He looked at me as I walked down the aisle between the beds. “Hi, Kid,” he said.

I thought he was sorting out the things he could take on the op. We weren't allowed to carry wallets or train tickets, or anything else that might show where we came from. We weren't allowed to take a single thing that a German spy could take from
us
and use to blend himself into England.

Donny picked up his knife. “You want this?” he asked.

“For keeps?” I asked.

“Sure.”

I couldn't believe it. He had owned that knife for years and years. I had watched him slice the blade through the bark of a pine tree, carving his initials inside a heart.

“Don't
you
want it?” I said.

“Don't need it,” he told me.

“Well, thanks, Donny. Thanks a million.” I took the knife and opened the blade. It was sharp and shiny.

“Anything else you fancy?” he asked.

His hands moved across the bed, palms up, the way a storekeeper would show off things on display.

“Why? What are you doing?” I said.

“Moving out.”

“Where to?”

He smiled sadly. “I don't know, Kid; not for sure. But I won't be coming back.”

“Don't say that, Donny.”

“It's true,” he said. “I can feel it, Kid. As soon as I woke up, I
knew
it. I'll get the chop tonight.”

“It was just a dream,” I said. “I heard you shout. You were only dreaming.”

“I was
dying.
” He panted a little laugh. “You want my wallet?”

“No,” I said. “I don't want anything.” I threw the knife back, and it bounced across his blanket. “I don't even want to talk about this.”

“Hey, it's okay, Kid,” he said. “There's nothing I can do to stop it.”

His calmness upset me. If he knew he was doomed, he should have been more scared than I was. He should have been trembling or crying or
something.

“Don't go tonight,” I said. “Just say you won't go.”

“Come on, Kid.” He started gathering his things, putting them all in one little pile. “If I don't go, I'm a coward. They'll mark me down as LMF and—”

“What's that?” I asked.

“Lack of moral fiber.”

It sounded silly the way he said it, as though his body—or his soul—could tatter and unravel. “So what?” I said. “Who cares?”

“
You
did,” he said. “I told you I could get you out, and you told me no.”

“I've changed my mind,” I said.

He laughed. “Don't bind me, Kid.”

“It's true,” I said. “I'm scared now, Donny. I'm really scared.”

He didn't understand. He thought I was scared for him, and not for myself. He got his little pile together, then stood up and put his hands on my shoulders. “Don't be frightened,” he said. “Don't worry about me. I've seen so many guys come and go. So many, Kid. I think they're waiting for me somewhere: for all of us. It's like they'll meet a train or something, and I'll be on this one and maybe you'll be on the next. In the end, we'll all be together, I think.” He leaned toward me. “Kid, I've
seen
them.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Them. They come back.”

He touched his teeth, ticking his fingernails across them. He took one more look at his bed, at his wallet and his pictures. “Let's go,” he said. “You can watch the fun.”

He led me from the hut, outside and along the path. He looked down at the ground and up at the windows, here and there at everything we passed, as though he knew he was seeing it for the last time. At the sergeants' mess, his fingers caressed the door handle before he went inside.

The room wasn't full, but there was still quite a crowd sitting around in the old wicker chairs or standing at the bar. Lofty was there, his pipe in his mouth, reading the front page of a newspaper. Buzz was frowning at his tattered crossword, and Ratty—at the bar—was playing shove-ha'penny with himself, dashing back and forth to catch his coin as it teetered at the edges. Donny went straight to the piano. He stepped onto the bench, up to the keys with an unmusical jangle, and up again to the piano's top.

In most places he would have drawn some attention. In almost any place at all it would have seemed unusual for a fellow to climb onto a piano that was propped up with a bomb. But the sergeants' mess was pretty wild, and no one even looked.

Sunlight from the window shone on his bright red hair. He did a little soft-shoe in the center of the piano, but no one looked at
that.
Then he pulled his car keys from his trouser pocket and held them up above his head. Still nobody looked.

“Who wants the bus?” he asked.

“Donny, don't!” I said. He could give away his knife, but I hadn't dreamed that he would ever give away the Morris. “Please, Donny.”

He stared down at me—straight down from the piano. “I'm okay,” he said. “Don't worry, Kid.” He shook the keys, and the sunlight sparkled on them.

“Who wants the bus?” he said again, louder than before.

All over the room, the sergeants looked up. They put their papers down, their magazines and drinking glasses. I saw Lofty watching, and Buzz and Ratty, and maybe twenty others altogether. There wasn't one of them who hadn't fancied that sleek black Morris. But none of them said a word, as though they couldn't believe that anyone would give away that treasure.

“Come on,” said Donny. He shook the keys, and they jingled in his fingers. “Doesn't anybody want the bus?”

They must have seen the sadness in his eyes. They must have known that he was serious. Seven sergeants came suddenly leaping from their chairs, and Lofty was among them. They ran toward the piano and made a little mob around it, shouting out, reaching for the keys.

Donny laughed; he was pleased by that. He walked a circuit round the piano as the sergeants' fingers brushed against his knees. “A list!” he cried. “We'll make a list. Write your names on the chalkboard, and the first one gets the Morris.”

The seven went off at a rush. “Go, Lofty, go!” shouted Buzz. And Lofty hurdled tables and wrestled with a gunner; then all of them were crowded in the corner by the blackboard.

“No shoving, now,” said Donny Lee. “You might all get a turn if you're lucky.”

The sergeants struggled. “Lofty! Lofty!” shouted Buzz, and others chanted different names. They laughed and cheered the seven on as they battled for the chalk, as they flung themselves like blue waves against the wall. Their arms reached up; their legs kicked out. When at last they fell away, Lofty's name was sixth. At the top of the list was the navigator from
J for Jam,
a big and burly fellow.

Donny stepped down. He hung the keys on the nail beside the blackboard, where he hung them every time he flew. “First guy gets it,” he said. “Then the next, and the next.”

He came and stood beside me, flushed and happy— truly happy. “They'll remember this for years,” he said. “For years and years. In every mess in every squadron they'll talk about the guy who stood on a piano and gave away a car.”

I saw that was all he wanted: to be remembered, to be famous in a way. He could easily refuse to fly that night, be marked as LMF and wonder forever if he would have got the chop or not. Or he could give away his lovely Morris and go off on his op, to catch that train to a different place. And even if he was wrong, and he came home, people would remember.

He seemed his old Kakabeka self, his cares stripped away. He told me, “Kid, if you ever want out, go and see Uncle Joe. Go talk to him, okay?”

“Why won't
you
?” I asked.

“We're different,” he said. “You can do it, but I can't. Kid, I gotta go.”

I thought he wanted to be by himself for a while. So I said, “Okay. I'll see you later, Donny.”

But he laughed, and I realized he'd been talking about his op, that he had to go on that. “Yeah,” he said. “I think you will, Kid.” Then he turned around and nearly ran from the room.

He went and wrote a letter, as it turned out. He wrote a letter to his mom, then left it with his other things, in a tidy pile, so that it wouldn't be any bother to the fellow who would have to come along and pack it all in a box. That was what bothered me later, thinking how he'd told me that he
had
to go, as though he hoped I would talk him out of it.

I didn't try hard enough. In the end, I let him down. I watched him run from the sergeants' mess, and I saw him only one more time before the op, as he climbed into the back of the truck that would take him out to his bomber. He stopped halfway, with one leg hooked over the tailgate. He waved at me, one-handed. He said, “Hey, Kakky. Look after yourself.” Then he winked. “I'll be seeing you, Kid, okay?”

“You're coming back,” I said.

He shook his head, and I got angry. “Then don't tell me that,” I said. “Don't jinx me, Donny.”

It was a terrible op, worse than the first one. We nearly collided with another Halifax high above the sea. Nobody saw it in the utter blackness until our wings were overlapping. Then we veered across the bomber stream, shaken by the propwash of aircraft that seemed invisible.

Gilbert rustled nervously in his pigeon box as we crossed the enemy coast. He fluttered from side to side in there, so violently that a little feather drifted out through the hatch. I looked around, wondering why, and saw through my window that the clouds I'd thought would hide us were worse than no clouds at all. The searchlights splashed across their bottoms and turned their tops into glowing sheets as bright as movie screens. And I thought of the night fighters above us and how, to them, we would stand out against those clouds like a cockroach crawling on a pure white floor.

Our turrets whined round and round as the gunners watched the sky. But they didn't see the night fighter that pounced from above. The tracers suddenly flickered past, and Ratty cried, “Corkscrew left!” But Lofty didn't react; he flew us straight and level. “Corkscrew! Corkscrew!” Ratty shouted. The kite shook from our own guns, and at last Lofty sent us cartwheeling through the sky. We plunged into the clouds and went tearing right through them, nearly out of control. My arms were pinned at my sides, my feet to the floor. We came hurtling out into the searchlights and flak, plummeting down in a tight spiral. Pop shouted at Lofty. “Pull up, pull up!”

And down we went.

I saw the ground spinning fast, a pinwheel of searchlights and tracers and flak. Someone vomited, and the reek of it came oozing through my mask. Ratty, in the tail, kept crying out, “He's still behind us!”

The wings thumped. The rudders creaked.
Buster
came shuddering out of its dive with its nose high, its wings tipped over. I felt the airspeed falling off; I heard the shriek of wind fade to a whisper. “Watch it!” said Pop. “You'll stall her now.”

Slowly,
Buster
rolled over. My window faced the ground and now the sky. My stomach filled with butterflies as
Buster
tipped and rolled, then tumbled again through the night. We fell a thousand feet to our right, a thousand more to our left. Then Lofty brought the nose up and hauled us round in a swooping turn.

He set the throttles; he set the trimming tabs. And up we climbed toward the clouds, back on route to Bochum. I shone my light into the pigeon box and saw the bird lying on the floor, twitching like a dog in a dream. I gave him water, and he settled down a bit.

Our engines growled; the deck was slanted as we climbed. Then Lofty, breathing heavily, came on the intercom. “Will. You okay?” he said.

“Okay, Skipper,” said Will.

He was the one who had thrown up, dizzied by the motions. He was crawling now across his splattered Perspex, cleaning up as best he could.

“Simon?” asked Lofty.

“Here, Skippa,” he said in his Australian way.

“Kak?”

“Yes,” I said. My voice cracked in a high tremble.

“Pop?”

“Right here.”

“Buzz?”

“Here, Skipper.”

“Ratty?”

There was no answer from the tail.

“Ratty?” asked Lofty again. “Ratty!” he said more loudly.

“Roger,” said Ratty. He sounded frightened. “Skipper, I'm okay.”

We carried on and bombed the target. It was a nightmare over Bochum, with the clouds lit up, and the night fighters floating bright white flares above us. We never saw the buildings we were hitting, only the flashes of the bombs and the reddish glow of a spreading fire. We bombed on sky flares that drifted, red and green, through the canyons of the clouds.

Then I dropped the photoflash. We took our picture and turned for home in the bomber stream. Lofty kept us jinking left and right as we flew a weaving, droning course.

An hour after midnight, somewhere over Gelsenkirchen, Donny Lee and all his crew vanished from the sky.