Cassada (2 page)

Isbell had long since driven down the black road, heading into the open, past the trees beyond which like some mysterious stretch of water the silent runway lay. A wind was blowing, a German October wind, chilly, with points of moisture in it. They had been sent here on maneuvers, one lone runway, a building or two. There were stars in the sky and tug lights among the airplanes parked in a long line.

In the alert shack Ferguson was sitting by the stove, the poker
dangling from his hands. A furious sound filled the room. It was coming from the stove which glowed brilliant red along the bottom, the middle of the lid, too, and the pipe. Outside, a stream of wild sparks was dancing above the dark roof.

“Step up and warm yourself, Chief,” Ferguson invited. “Compliments of ‘B' Flight.”

“You'll be hot enough when that thing explodes.”

“Have to chance that, Cap'n,” Ferguson said. “The
Natchez
is trying to pass us.”

“Which
Natchez
?”

“Right behind us, Cap'n. She's only half a mile back and gaining all the time.”

“You'd better cut down the draft,” Isbell said.

Ferguson raised a boot and kicked the hinged door closed a little.

On the floor lay a page of the
Stars and Stripes
he had been piercing with the radiant tip of the poker. There was a full-length picture of a girl in a bathing suit. Only her head and shoulders were untouched.

“What time do you go on status?” Isbell asked.

“In about five minutes.”

Just as he said it, the scramble phone rang. A line check. As Ferguson was hanging up, the others began to come in, rubbing their hands and going to the stove. Godchaux was last. He was twenty and had been in the squadron for more than a year, Dunning's favorite, “the best natural pilot I ever saw.” Isbell didn't disagree. White teeth and the smile of an angel. Show me a man who knows how to lie, he thought, and I'll show you a smile of genuine beauty, I'll show you someone who knows how the world runs.

Godchaux stood with his back to the stove and his elbows out to the side, espaliered against the glow, almost satanic. Isbell beckoned him with a slight lifting of the chin.

“Yes, sir,” Godchaux responded without moving.

Isbell motioned to him. Godchaux took a step or two forward.

“Did you have a flashlight out there?”

Godchaux's innocence held for a moment and then he shook his head, not much, like a mischievous, already forgiven boy.

“How'd you inspect the airplane, then?” Isbell said.

“I borrowed the crew chief's.”

“You did, eh? Where's yours? What's wrong, don't you have one of your own?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where is it?”

“The batteries are no good, Captain. They're dead.”

“Well, buy some,” Isbell said. “You're getting paid enough.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Today.”

Grace, the commander of “B” Flight, was shaking his head a little in fatherly disappointment, as if agreeing. In all likelihood he had no flashlight himself.

Soon after, there was the uneven ring of the field phone and the first scramble went off, two ships flowing down the runway, fleeing from a roar that washed over the field like a furnace thrown open, making the corrugated walls tremble. Isbell stood watching as they crossed the trees together, the wheels coming up. An hour of absolution in the clean, holy morning. An hour and a half. How often he had relied upon it himself, a taste of the immaculate with unknown cities far below and in cold silence the first mist vanishing from the hills.

Dunning came to the pilots' meeting later. He appeared in the doorway a few minutes before eight o'clock as someone was trying to go out and stood there, filling the whole frame, waiting for them to come to their senses and step aside. He was the size of a lineman and in fact had played two years in college early in the war. He'd had his crew chief remove the spacer from the back of the seat. As a result it was hard to fly his airplane. It was like sitting up in bed.

“What do you think of that bird of mine?” he would say.

“Yes, sir. It's all right.”

“A little slow,” Godchaux said.

“Slow? Slow? You're crazy. It's the fastest ship on the line.”

“If you say so, Major.”

“Don't just take my word for it.”

“It may not be fast, but it is roomy.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You can hardly reach the stick. You have to have arms like a gorilla.”

“You've got to grow some, that's all,” Dunning said. He looked around, grinning.

There were always a couple of minutes like that. Nothing began until Dunning leaned back with an expectant look on his face and puffed on his cigar. He would listen attentively, hands folded one over the other in his lap, thumbs like broom handles. After Isbell finished he would rise to say a few words himself, walking to the front like an owner, hands in the pockets of his flying suit. He started off with a courtly, “Gentlemen. I'd like to impress a few things on your minds,” he said, “though we may have mentioned them before. Very important things. This field, gentlemen, pretty as it is, has a few shortcomings which you should all be aware of. Can you name one of them, Lieutenant Godchaux?”

“No GCA,” Godchaux said.

“No GCA, gentlemen. If the weather starts closing in, don't take any chances, there's no one here to talk you down. What else, Lieutenant Grace?”

“The runway is a thousand feet shorter than ours, sir.”

“Shorter runway. Also unfamiliar. The road you always put your base leg over back home—you know the one I mean—it's not here. You have to use your judgement more in the landing pattern. Short and unfamiliar. Got that? Lieutenant Ferguson, what else?”

In a slow voice, “Long way to town,” Ferguson said.

Amid the laughter someone said, “But when you get there . . .”

“Good beer,” Ferguson added.

“Nice professional attitude,” Dunning said, perhaps tolerantly, it was difficult to tell.

When the meeting was over a small circle formed. Harlan, blunt and usually suspicious, began on the inevitable subject, flying time and how much a rival squadron, the 72nd, was getting. They had over five hundred hours already this month. They were pushing. “They say Pine claims he's going to get twelve hundred.”

Dunning smiled at him, a false V, nothing humorous in it, just a seam across his face like the line on a stuffed toy. Harlan shrugged slightly.

“That's what I hear.”

“I wouldn't pay too much attention to that,” Dunning said knowledgeably. “There just may be a few things Captain Pine doesn't know about.”

“That's the trouble,” Harlan muttered. He was a country boy. His hands were large, too. “He don't know, so he'll probably go ahead and fly the twelve hundred.”

Dunning nodded a bit as if weighing. “I wouldn't worry about that, Lieutenant,” he said.

Dunning's squadron was the red tails. He would never admit to fearing anything from the yellows. Pine was famous for the conviction that flying hours were the magic formula: “Log two hours every flight whether you fly that long or not.” Isbell was more constrained. There was the meaning of a signature, an official statement.

“Some of them got over twenty hours apiece already,” Harlan said though Dunning had gone. “I know that for sure.”

The scramble phone rang. The two alert pilots were already out the door and running across the grass by the time the horn began. Isbell was looking at his watch. It seemed a long time before the engines started. Then came a great swelling of sound as the ships pulled out and started down the taxiway, moving fast. Gradually quiet returned. About a minute later they could be heard taking off.

“Just the same, I bet they get twelve hundred,” Harlan was saying. “They always get a lot of time. Maybe they don't brief so much.”

All that morning there were scrambles, four or five at least. “B” Flight was in luck. There were days when the phone never rang. Wickenden, the “A” Flight commander, had drawn up a chart to
show how his flight had had four days of bad weather since they'd been there and Grace's flight none; they were getting all the time, he complained.

“It'll average out,” Isbell told him.

“It never does,” Wickenden said. He had Phipps who'd joined at the same time as Godchaux and they'd come from flying school together. Godchaux now had almost a hundred hours more.

“Why is that?” Isbell said.

“He's in Grace's flight. Grace is like Pine. You know that.”

“I don't think so,” Isbell said.

At midday, silvery and slow, the courier floated down the final approach and then skimmed for a long time near the ground getting ready to touch. Nose pointed high, it taxied in. Phipps went to meet it. He stood off to one side and watched it swing around, the grass quivering behind and pebble shooting off the concrete. When the engines died he walked up and waited for the door to open. There was mail, spare parts, and one passenger, a second lieutenant wearing an overcoat. His baggage was handed down. It turned out he was joining the squadron. “This is the 44th, right?”

“Yeah, this is it. Well, you're lucky.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” Phipps said. “It's just what they told me.”

The new man's name was Cassada. He was Phipps's height with hair a little fairer and combed back, Anglo style. Phipps helped him carry his bags while being careful not to be too responsive to questions. Cassada was looking around as they walked. Were these their planes, he wanted to know? Were pilots assigned a plane? Were their names painted on them? Phipps answered yes.

“I'll take you over to meet Captain Isbell,” he said.

“Is he the squadron commander?”

“Who, Captain Isbell? No, he's ops.”

“Oh,” Cassada said.

He was just out of flying school but he'd served as an enlisted man for two years before. He didn't look that old.

In the mess they found both the major and Isbell. Phipps presented the new man.

“Cassada,” the major repeated as if remembering the name.

“Yes, sir.” There were unfamiliar faces all around.

“That's a pretty famous name,” Dunning said. “You don't happen to have anyone in your family who's been in the service?”

“Just my uncle, sir.”

Dunning stopped chewing. “Your uncle? That's not the general, by any chance?”

“No, sir. He was only a private.”

“You're no relation to the general?”

“No, sir. That's QUE, I think. My name is spelled CASS.”

“CASS.”

“Cassada.”

Dunning resumed eating. “Did you just get in?”

“He just got in on the courier,” Phipps said.

“I was talking to Lieutenant Cassada, here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you had your lunch?”

“No, sir.”

“Go ahead through the line and then come on back,” Dunning said.

While Cassada was eating, Dunning asked him a number of questions, where he'd gone to flying school, how much time he had, where he was from, but in fact he listened carefully to only one or two of the answers. He was telling Cassada what an outstanding squadron he had joined, picking his teeth as he spoke. He seemed unobservant. He relied on strong instinct, deciding right off if a man could cut it or not. In the case of Cassada who had not said a lot, perhaps a dozen words, Dunning was not much impressed. He
liked second lieutenants who reminded him of himself when he was one. Roaring. Full of hell, like Baysinger who had a wide gap between his front teeth and one night in the club, just as drunk as Dunning, got into a wrestling match with him and broke his leg. Baysinger had long since completed his tour and was gone, as were the crutches that Dunning hobbled around on for two months afterwards.

Dunning had on a wool shirt, a green tie, and a tweed jacket. Shaking some tonic on his hair, he combed it down. A damp towel hung at the foot of the bed. He took it and cleaned his shoes. He looked like a farmer, a corn-fed farmer on a Saturday night. As a final touch he stuffed a khaki handkerchief in his breast pocket and a thick wallet, folded double, into the back pocket of his pants.

“Might turn out to be a real whoop-de-do,” he commented to Isbell.

There was a drab
gasthaus
on the long road of trees that led to town. Dunning had gotten to know the woman who ran it well enough to slap her familiarly on the behind and tell her to bring whatever it was, a
prima
schnitzel or some good, none of that cheap stuff, wine. He knew a little German. He could say something tasted like rat poison, which always brought a laugh.