“I’m very sorry,” Colin said.
“Uncle Lewis was stinkeroo a few hours ago,” Bryant explained.
“I’m sorry,” Colin said again. “I’m sorry you’ve been stinkeroo.”
Lewis winced, rubbing slowly in tiny circles. “The kid’s great,” he said.
Snowberry finished his program with a spirited whistling rendition of Al Jolson’s “Toot Toot Tootsie,” and the children and village girls applauded enthusiastically.
An Irish staff sergeant from Geezil II stood up and started on the “Indian Love Call.”
“What is this, Talent Night?” Snowberry said. “Siddown.”
He announced the conclusion of the cultural part of the program — on quite a high note, he felt compelled to add — and set about accepting entries for what he called the Derby, pulling a blackboard over and starting two columns, Rider and Mount. He began the Mount column with his own name, and climbed off the crate to circulate among the children in search of a rider.
“What is it?” Robin asked.
“We race on our hands and knees with the kids on our backs,” Bryant said. “And if I know Gordon, he’ll lay out a doozy of a track.”
The children milled around chaotically and pairs of names were going up on the board. “How about it, Colin?” Bryant said. “Ready to bring home the Cup?”
“No thank you, Sergeant,” Colin said. “But my friend Keir might enjoy it.”
Bryant smiled down at the little boy. “Any gum, chum?” he asked. When Keir didn’t respond, he added doubtfully, “Is Keir old enough?” He visualized trying to explain a fall to a mother who had never liked Yanks in the first place.
Once the question registered, Keir nodded.
Snowberry laid out the route and they lined up twelve abreast. A wide lane was cleared of everything but grease and oil spots, some of which were clearly considerable enough to play a role. They were to race down to the Wright Cyclones under the canvas and back. To minimize trampling, when riders fell they were out of the race. Bryant instructed Keir to hold on around his neck and lie low and the boy took his advice with ferocious concentration, digging eager fingers into Bryant’s windpipe. He was sandwiched between Snowberry, still in the Santa suit, and Hirsch. Piacenti, also representing Paper Doll, was at the other end of the line.
Lewis had volunteered to call the start. Snowberry whinnied and snorted impatiently, and his rider giggled with delight. After several intentional false starts Lewis cried “Bang!” and they were off in a tumbling rush, Bryant feeling the shocks in his arms as he jounced forward. There was a good deal of shouldering and the riders shrieked happily as the mounts falling behind grabbed the feet or calves of those ahead and were kicked in retaliation. Snowberry elbowed Bryant and took a big lead heading into the wide curve around the engines, splaying maniacally through the turn like a crab. Bryant accelerated on skinned knees and palms and lowered a shoulder into the turning Snowberry and caught him broadside, both riders screaming and laughing, and Snowberry crashed into the gallery lining the racetrack and only kept his balance by knocking over two girls and a gunner drinking soda who’d been facing the other way. The boy flew off his back but kept hold on his neck, and Snowberry came after him furiously, pawing the ground and gobbling distance while the boy clung to his neck like an absurd version of a weight handicap and tried desperately to regain his footing and climb back on.
Bryant called No fair! No fair! He’s off! but Snowberry was covering ground like Man O’ War, the boy by now more or less back in the saddle. Ahead of them Hirsch hit a grease slick with both palms and skidded flat out on his chest before tumbling his rider off to the side, and someone ahead of him crossed the finish line. With Snowberry almost on top of him, Bryant gave it a last burst of acceleration looking for Place or Show, but Snowberry dove in frustration and caught him around the thighs, spilling the four of them like colliding skaters short of the finish line.
Robin and Jean helped collect the wounded and dispense Cokes.
“You were marvelous, darling,” Jean said, helping Snowberry brush off his Santa suit. His knees were black with grease. She wore her red hair swept up on both sides and her skin seemed thick, like rind. “I thought the way you stood up to this bully was simply wonderful.”
Snowberry brushed his chin with the back of his hand and scowled in Hollywood pain. “The story you’ve just seen,” he said, “and the characters in it, are fictional. But acts of courage such as these are occurring day after day, in Europe and the Pacific, as Allied fighting men and women stand tall against aggression wherever it’s found and refuse to say Uncle. Or even meet Uncle. Without their noble inspiration, something somewhere would have been impossible—”
“Such a cynic,” Robin scolded. “And hardly old enough to know the meaning of the word.”
“I know what it means, Mrs. Weisenheimer,” he said. “It means someone who can tell the future.”
Audie was cruising the food tables and thumping into the legs consistently, unaccustomed to the new arrangement. She was pulling in a great deal of attention and very little food from the children. She sat and begged from Lewis until Lewis found an egg of unknown antiquity in the bottom of the box sent over from the mess and cracked it over the dog’s head. Audie sat unaffected at first, her cloudy eyes like the portraits of Lee or Stonewall Jackson, while the albumen slid mercury-like from the crown of her head. The children loved it. Bryant always found the dog’s foolish and inappropriate dignity heartening.
“What kind of person humiliates blind animals for sport?” Robin wondered.
“Tail gunners from Dayton, Ohio, I’d guess,” Snowberry suggested. “Who’ve reenlisted.”
Another game evolved while they looked on, a guessing game which evoked great shouts and un-English arguing from the children.
“It was really very sweet of you to do this,” Robin said.
“It was Gordon’s idea, the whole thing,” Bryant said.
“They know,” Snowberry said. “I told them.”
Jean kissed him lightly on the cheek. “It means so much to the children. I think they see you as superheroes.”
“Not a view to which their parents always subscribe,” Robin said.
The party was breaking up. They joined the others to help with the distribution of candy and paper squadron patches.
Snowberry handed a patch with a double candy ration to Colin and heaped a banana on the pile in his hands. Colin thanked him so profusely he turned away, reddening.
Bryant loaded Keir up. The boy seemed dazed and his grip unreliable, so Bryant put the patch and the Baby Ruths in his pockets and let him hold the fruit. He thanked them in a small voice and Robin asked, leaning over him, what he liked best. “Juice from home,” he said.
The children were then piled back into the trucks, clutching their loot as though they expected all of this to be rescinded at any moment. Robin and Jean’s truck was among the last to leave, and they waved once and disappeared into the interior. The men lingered over clean-up and Bryant took a bucket of water to Audie, who had found a quiet corner and was lapping up some spilled soda she’d nosed out. Hirsch held her collar while Bryant scrubbed. She lowered her head helplessly and submitted, quivering in expectation of further indignities, while Bryant thought of the children’s faces.
They endured ground training sessions that were time-filling and redundant. They were mustered out in front of the briefing hut in a drizzle to listen to a lecture on behavior while intoxicated, relations with the locals, and incidents of petty theft. They went back over aircraft recognition, this time with a glum Bean singled out to hold small wooden models at various distances from those being tested. It was especially galling to Lewis that they were still studying aircraft recognition — his suggested technique was to shoot out of the sky anything which wasn’t a B-17 that approached within range — and not working on aerial gunnery, or on tightening the combat boxes. The Ju88 ambush on the return flight from Hamburg had spooked the brass, though, so they were back to naming silhouettes in the dark. One of the lowest percentile scores came on what turned out to be a Ju88. The irony put them in a horrible mood.