Jim Shepard - Paper Doll

Snowberry had settled in now, hands in his pockets, testing various scat phrases. He’d diversified recently to duets, a fact of which he was secretly proud, and he began both parts of “An Apple for the Teacher”: “You’re sophis-ticated. I think I’m naive.” He softened his tone to affect the transition from Connie Boswell to Bing. Part of the key to Crosby was that certain insouciance.

Lewis opened an old forwarded newspaper he’d brought along to read in the sun and flapped it in Snowberry’s general direction. Snowberry lapsed into a more unobtrusive run: Buh buh buh bum, buh buh buh bum.

“Story here,” Lewis said, “about an Army Trainer that lost it and pancaked onto a funeral procession.” Bryant opened his eye a crack to see, but Lewis was folding the paper, the Dayton something.

“Pilot error,” Snowberry said.

“That One Check He Didn’t Make,” Bryant said.

“So the headline,” Lewis said, “is What Began As a Funeral Ended in Tragedy .”

They were quiet, thinking about it. “Can’t deny it,” Snowberry finally said.

“You know what I feel like?” Bean was awake. He hadn’t opened his eyes, though he looked considerably more dignified with his mouth closed. He was Paper Doll ’s radio operator, and unpopular. He was fat around the face in a way that seemed childish, and was instantly recognizable as unathletic. He was already well known for his inability to touch wriggly things. Squadron if not base opinion was that he was insufficiently masculine.

“I feel like Mexican food,” he said.

Bean had once confided to Bryant and Lewis that he always kept thirty-five cents in mad money on his person, at all times.

“Mexican food,” Lewis said grimly.

“Lewis doesn’t like Mexican food,” Snowberry said.

Lewis bounced something small and light off Bean’s head. “You think they’d be swimming that river if the food on their side was good?” he asked.

Whatever Lewis had thrown, Audie had gotten to and was now eating. Audie was one of the base dogs, blind enough that they’d often hear around the base the small-scale collisions and yelps involving the dog and recently moved equipment. When there was major movement going on, the dog stayed in one spot, next to their Nissen hut. A jeep had knocked her sprawling once, and the sound of the engines and brakes had made a lasting impression.

Bean tried to pet her, and she pulled away. Bryant had toyed with the idea upon first seeing her that here, finally, was his own puppy, but she had proven too stubbornly independent for that, disappearing for long stretches even as she seemed to recognize and acknowledge their kindness.

Bryant wondered aloud, gazing at her, when the G variants might come through.

“When they’ve used up all the F’s,” Lewis suggested.

“That’s not very funny,” Bean said.

“Shut up,” Lewis said.

Bean apologized. He seemed to feel he was always saying something to irritate people and never knew why, and his method of handling it was to apologize frequently in general, hoping to suggest that he meant well.

Lewis stood and straddled a child’s bike he had bought in the village. Or claimed he had bought in the village. He began pedaling in wobbly circles, his knees high and wide on the undersized frame, the front wheel nosing erratically about as he attempted to gain speed. He leaned dramatically over and, picking up velocity, scooped up a deflated Mae West with one hand.

“Where is everybody?” he asked. “We’re supposed to be taking a picture here. Don’t tell me I hosed down for nothing.” He took a swipe with the Mae West at Bobby Bryant as he went by.

“They said they’d be here,” Bryant said.

“You got somewhere to go?” Snowberry asked. Lewis swept past, trying to hook the soft noose of the Mae West collar around his head. He whapped Snowberry in the face.

“Lewis is the kind of guy,” Snowberry said, “it said in the yearbook, ‘Enjoys a good practical joke,’ and what they meant was he likes to kick people’s teeth out.”

Lewis ran over his hand.

“You know, all you’re doing,” Snowberry said, “is making enemies of the very people on who your life may depend.”

“I don’t have enemies,” Lewis said. “Though some of my friends could stand watching.”

Snowberry said, “In my mind you’re riding in a hole that’s getting deeper and deeper.”

Audie could hear the motion and sniffed the air nervously. She stood and stretched and curled deeper behind Snowberry into the tarpaulins.

“What a stupid dog,” Lewis said, and swished the Mae West at her. Her ears curled back. “We get dog stories and blind dogs and every other thing. I’m sick of dogs.”

“I like dogs,” Bean said.

“What do you know?” Lewis asked. “I heard you once go ‘Somebody get the door’ during a Lionel Hampton solo.”

“Dogs for sale,” Snowberry crooned. “Appetizing young dogs for sale.”

Lewis stopped riding. The rest of the crew was waving them down to Paper Doll. Tuliese had finished the bomb and was rolling the scaffolding away.

Their pilot, a first lieutenant named Gabriel, had arranged a photo session to promote crew esprit de corps and give everyone something to send home. Lewis was on his second tour and third crew and rarely tired of comparing the present group unfavorably to any other group in the ETO. On the way back from their first mission together he had angrily suggested changing the plane’s name to Chinese Fire Drill , in honor of the overall coordination and performance of the ship’s gunners.

Gabriel had a chart on which he’d figured the positioning for the photo, and he read it aloud: Kenneth A. Gabriel, Jr., pilot, Ellis Cooper, co-pilot, Willis Eddy, bombardier, Samuel Hirsch, navigator, standing, back row; Sebastian Piacenti and Lambert Ball, waist gunners, Harold Bean, radio operator, Robert Bryant, flight engineer, Gordon Snowberry, Jr., ball turret, and Lewis Peeters, tail gunner, kneeling, front row. While Gabriel read, they snickered at each other’s names.

They lined up in that order and Bryant retrieved his shirt from the engine nacelle. Gabriel approved of their sloppiness in terms of the picture: it gave them that casual veterans’ look.

He had talked another pilot, a guy named Charley Rice who flew Boom Town , into taking the picture. It was one of Rice’s hobbies.

Rice had sauntered up while they were positioning themselves and had begun unfolding the camera tripod before them without comment.

“I figure you should frame it, Charley, so that you can see the name, too.” Gabriel pointed at the name behind him on the nose of the plane.