Damned if Shorty didn’t go out to California and take Jack Benny up on his offer. He ended up writing for Benny’s TV show, if you can believe that. They were having trouble with the guy who played Winchester because he wanted too much money, so Shorty created a new character—a black valet named Rochester. Ended up being more popular than Winchester ever was. So really Shorty was the only one of us who changed anything back to the way it had been where we came from. After he retired he started going to Eighth Air Force reunions and air shows, painting nose art on aircraft metal and A-2 jackets for vets. He sent me one. It’s even better than the original.
Everett went back to his family farm, got married to some girl he met in Cleveland, and moved there to sell cars. He did all right. Garrett became a high school wrestling coach. Married another teacher and had five kids. He taught at the same school till he died of a heart attack in his mid sixties.
Francis got even more religious than he already was, thanks to his new lease on life. Resurrected like Lazarus. He became a deacon in his church, married a woman named Gail, a real knockout. Out of all of us, I think he ended up the happiest.
Plavitz had a rough go of it. Three marriages, a couple of failed business ventures. He was some kind of black sheep with the family business, shipping or something. He ended up with a bit of a chip on his shoulder, to be honest, and drinking didn’t make it any smaller. He died in a car crash in ’Eighty-three.
We lost Boney first. He went into the woods with his service .45 one day in 1955. They found a note in his pocket with his Silver Star. He had a brain tumor, probably six months left by the time they caught it, nothing they could do. He apologized to his parents and the crew. We took it pretty hard. That apology to his parents had been for leaving. The one to us had been for letting us down.
Martin drifted off course for a while early on. You could see it when we all got together. He wouldn’t look at you for long. Little things would make him tear up. He’d sit in a corner by himself and drink. Well, first the Ill Wind and then us. You’d be haunted, too.
One time, maybe the fourth or fifth time we all met up again, I got to talking with him. Asked him what he was doing with himself back in South Dakota, did he have a girlfriend, all that happy shit. I asked if he still played ball. He just laughed and shook his head no. I told him that was a shame. He shrugged and said he’d been out of the game too long. I said he’d sure be a great coach. High school, American Legion league, who cared? I guess it woke something up in him, because next time I saw him he showed me a picture of a minor-league ball club, him in a team jacket beside them, baseball in his hand and grinning his head off. Sioux Falls Canaries. Good for him.
As for me, I flew. Everywhere I could, every chance I got. Because the one place I knew I did belong was in the air. All those differences, you can’t see them up there. They don’t matter. It’s the only place I feel at home. So that’s what I did, for forty more years.
The crew reunions started about eight years after the war ended. I missed the first one because I was in Korea, flying Stratojets. Reunions like that hadn’t really started yet for most vets. It was still too soon. The war was still too loud. But we’d gone back home and still not made it home. What we had left of the world we’d left was each other.
Eventually we had the internet for updates on each other, but that didn’t stop the reunions. It made it so that when we did see each other, we could concentrate on what we really wanted to talk about instead of playing catchup. We’d wait till the sons and daughters and grandkids went to bed, and we’d talk about what was happening in the world, was it headed toward what we’d seen. As time went by we breathed a little easier about that, but I still see things that make me nervous. It doesn’t seem like all that long a throw from those remotely piloted attack drones to the Typhon.
We’d compare lists of things that we remembered but nobody else did. We’d talk about our missions, of course, but mostly we talked about the Mission. And at the end of the night we’d ask the Question. Have any of us told anyone what really happened?
The answer was always no. No late-night drunk confessions, no diary entries. Not a word. It was easier to keep quiet about everything as time went on, because the further away from it we got, the crazier it all sounded. Like some fairy tale we’d all made up to get us through the war.
Around those dinner tables or on those front porches we were just a bunch of old guys reminiscing. Hearing aids and canes, eventually walkers. But we were also ten men keeping each other company on a lonely watch. And before we all went on our separate ways we’d make one final toast. It was always silent because what we were toasting was the things we couldn’t say. And then we’d leave a glass behind for every one of us we’d lost, five glasses and then six and then seven, on down until two weeks ago, when I got the call from Michael Broben telling me I’d lost my copilot and my best friend for seventy years. Jerry’d dodged flak and bullets and weapons that haven’t even been invented yet. Dodged cancer, too, for a while. But in the end he couldn’t outrun it.
I didn’t want to leave nine glasses behind at a house full of strangers. Or anywhere else. So after the funeral I deadheaded home, and I raised a glass to everything I thought would stay unsaid. I didn’t have to ask myself the Question, because I hadn’t told anybody. I didn’t think there was anyone to tell. Our story would leave this world when I did, and that was okay by me.
But because it was just me now, and because I’m ninety-three years old, there was still a Question that I had to ask myself: Did it really happen?
And the answer is yes. Yes, it did. It really happened.
So that’s the story of what me and nine of my friends did one summer a long time ago, when we were kids.
EPILOGUE
The old man rolled his cane between his palms and watched the F-shaped metal handle slowly turn. He did not look up when someone softly coughed.
A folding chair creaked. A whiskey voice with an East Texas accent said, quietly, “Captain Farley?”
The old man inhaled sharply and looked up from his cane. He blinked and glanced around the ten-by-ten canopy tent as if surprised he was not somewhere else.
A man and a woman sat facing him. The man was in his late sixties, sandy-haired, beefy, thick-necked, wearing Air Force dress blues with lots of chest candy, a silver star on each epaulet. The woman was heavy, kind-faced, late forties, narrow rimless glasses and a tan dress and low heels. Beside Farley was a tripod that held a tablet with the camera lens pointed at him. The tablet’s black case bore a red-white-and-blue sticker. property of veterans heritage foundation. Before the old man a small card table held a pitcher of icewater standing in a pool of its own sweat. The ice mostly melted, an empty glass beside it. Through gaps in the popup flaps the old man saw people passing, a quick glimpse of a child towing an American-flag balloon, patriotic bunting on a distant wall. Distant music sounded echoey and underwater. A live orchestra. They’d been playing big-band swing all afternoon. Right now they were playing Glenn Miller. Pretty good, but not a patch on the man himself.
“Captain Farley?” the man said again.
The old man looked back at the brigadier general—Andrews, he remembered.
“Are you all right, sir?” Andrews asked.
Farley gave a slanted smile. “Hell no,” he said. “I’m ninety-three.” He leaned back in his metal folding chair. It was hideously uncomfortable and his hips were singing an aria. He waved absently and let his double-handled cane fall back against his leg. “I’m fine,” he said. “To be honest, I almost forgot you all were here.” He looked at the woman. Kitchner, that was her name. Dr. Kitchner. History professor. “I do go on, don’t I?” Farley told her.