Jim Shepard - Paper Doll

They were silent. Someone slammed a hatch door violently way off in the fog.

“American League,” Snowberry said. “Inch Gleich. Bootnose Hoffman. Whoops Creeden. Boob McNair. Ping Bodie.”

“Ping Bodie,” Lewis said. “I remember Ping Bodie. Somebody once asked him what it was like rooming with Babe Ruth. He said, ‘I don’t room with Babe Ruth. I room with his suitcase.’ Ping Bodie.”

Bryant gave Audie another pat and got up and went over to Bean. He sat beside him and Bean nodded and rubbed an eye with the back of his hand. Bryant wondered whether or not to congratulate him. Bean was looking out into the fog, concentrating on something. “ Habe, ” he said. “Ich habe ein … injury,” he finally added. “I don’t remember the word for injury.”

“How you doing?” Bryant asked. “You all right?”

“Oh, I’m okay,” Bean said. He sounded tired and sad. “I just hate this waiting.”

“It stinks,” Bryant agreed. “You know what Lewis is always saying — as long as it keeps happening quickly.”

Bean seemed further discouraged and Bryant regretted bringing Lewis up.

“You know, in some way, this is just worse odds,” Bean said. “We’re all gonna die, you know, someday, and anything could happen. This is just worse odds.”

“That’s a good way of thinking about it,” Bryant said quietly.

“Except it doesn’t help,” Bean said.

“I have some extra candy,” Bryant said, although he didn’t. “Want some?”

Bean shook his head. “You know, I don’t really think about getting killed,” he said. “I’m scared of getting hurt. I can imagine disappearing, or not being around anymore. But I don’t want to feel it. Imagine how some of those guys felt?”

“A lot of guys say that,” Bryant murmured. “Me, I worry about dying, too.”

“The one thing I can’t figure,” Bean said, “through all of this, is why Lewis signed up to go through it again. Even Lewis.”

Bryant thought about it. A jeep swept by, the mist soupy before its headlights. “He told me once he’d rather listen to us idiots talk about the war than the idiots back home,” he offered. “So I guess he wasn’t happy there.” It sounded obvious and lame.

“One night he had this horrible dream,” Bean said. “You know, like Snowberry has. We were alone in the hut, sacked out early. I woke him up. I asked him then. He said, ‘Harold, it’s a shithouse bind. You become a real American by fighting in another country.’ Then he tried to go back to sleep.”

“What’d he say after that?” Bryant said. “Was that it?”

“I said, ‘So then what?’” Bean continued. “And he said, ‘So then you lose that America.’”

Bryant looked back over his shoulder at Lewis. He was a ghostly form in the fog, part of the equipment he leaned against.

“Gabriel’s come out,” he said. “Something may be up.” He stood.

“Let me know,” Bean said. He continued to look off into the grayness. It was lightening, and closer to the ground visibility was better.

Back with the group Gabriel and Hirsch had more news. “It’s postponed again,” Gabriel said. “But we’re still on station.”

“What time is it?” Lewis asked.

“After six,” Hirsch said. He returned to the plane with Gabriel. Tuliese had come back and was poking distractedly at the number four engine from below.

Lewis resumed what he had evidently been talking about. “They want to pull off a big one. They need to pull off a big one. Put up or shut up time. I think it’s like they been comparing the losses to the accomplishments and we’re not doing so good. Maybe this whole idea of bombing during the day is hanging on this.”

“Maybe it should,” Snowberry said.

“Maybe. I myself think the RAF have got it knocked, going at night. Everyone bombs a field and comes home happy.”

“It’s a helluva way to run a war, this daytime stuff,” Piacenti said. “Shoot your way in, shoot your way out.”

“That’s the idea of the Fort to begin with.” Lewis tapped his head ironically. “All it is is a fat-assed bird with a lot of guns all over it. Put all the guns together. That’s the idea. Who needs fighter help?”

“Yeah,” Snowberry said. “Who needs fighter help?”

“It’s a shitty idea,” Lewis said. “But they want to make it work. Someone wants to make it work. You telling me they wouldn’t have come up with a long-range fighter by now if they had wanted to?”

They thought glumly about the Air Corps’ neglect on that score. Snowberry was wearing his World’s Fair button.

“This is Charge of the Light Brigade stuff, is what this is,” Lewis added.

“Bean’s doing German up there,” Snowberry said. “I can hear him.”

Lewis snorted. “At this point I just want to hit the ground alive. Let’s start from there, and worry about sprechen sie later.”

Tuliese had a panel off and was fiddling. They listened to the click-click-click of his spanner wrench. “They should cancel,” Lewis said. “They have to cancel. The Regensburg people have to be running out of time. They have to get to Africa in daylight. I can’t see how they can send us up in this. We haven’t exactly lived and breathed instrument flying.”

Bryant reflected on the relative laxity of the base and Lewis’s anger at their free time and the base CO, the car salesman from Pocatello. He understood this was what Lewis’s anger had meant. They were not ready for this. He hoped the car salesman from Pocatello understood that and passed the information along. They sat, and waited. Ball finished the rest of his candy. Bean lay on his back under the nose like someone wishing to be run over. The darkness was completely gone now, and from moment to moment the clouds inched a little higher in an irritating meteorological tease.

There was another delay, to 0715. And then, while Bryant was urinating off behind some oil drums, Piacenti tapped his arm and told him of another delay, of nearly three and a half hours.

Lewis was aghast when he got back to the plane, and tried to get Gabriel to listen to him. “ Three and a half hours? ” he was saying. “What about the Regensburg force? They couldn’t be waiting that long.”

“I don’t know,” Gabriel finally snapped. “Who are you, Bomber Command? Maybe they are waiting. Maybe they’re scrubbed and we’re not.”

“Sir, isn’t there someone we could ask?” Lewis pleaded. “Sir, do you under stand? If they went off, then the Germans can catch them and rearm and refuel for us. Sir, they can go after us both with everything they’ve got.”

“Peeters, shut up,” Gabriel said. “You’re gonna have everybody shitting their pants before we even take off.”

Lewis stepped back and looked at him. “Yes sir, thank you sir,” he said. He sat down and put his hand in Bean’s old vomit. “I’ll have more faith in the Army, sir.”

Gabriel shook his head and walked away from him, standing with arms folded where Bean was lying. Bryant said to Lewis, “That’s the worst possible case you’re talking about. Things aren’t that bad.”

“I’m beginning to catch on,” Lewis said. His eyes were glittering. “I’m the one who gets to figure this all out, and then no one gets to listen.”

They remained where they were. It was hot. Everything was ready and there was nothing to do. They hated the Army, hated the mission, hated the wait. At eleven o’clock Lewis announced they had now been up nearly ten fucking hours and they hadn’t started the mission yet. They had been at the planes for almost six hours. No one around Bryant had spoken for two hours. Bryant was talking to himself in discrete little snippets of conversation. He had no idea how long he could wait like this, but he did know he was approaching some sort of limit.