The officers were ahead 3 to 0—they scored when any part of Snowberry touched the ground as the gunners caught him, tallying on two real rib-thumpers and a cheapie can of corn when a limp foot touched — when Lewis abruptly announced Refreshment Break. He poured a bit of Scotch from an abandoned cup into his Coke bottle and took a slug. Behind him in a tin lid used as an ashtray Piacenti laid a C02 cartridge atop Gabriel’s now-lit cigar and everybody ducked. The cartridge exploded in a rain of tobacco leaf and the concussion knocked Lewis forward onto his knees. He got to his feet grimly amid the laughter, spattered with the dark bits of cigar and Coke, and shook his head. “I’ll have another, barkeep,” he said. “In a clean glass.” Complaining of ringing in his ears, he ended the game prematurely. He and Bryant sat beside Bean while Piacenti and Ball laboriously began to untie Snowberry, who was again showing signs of life. Lewis offered his Coke and Bean shrugged it off.
“I hate to see a grown man dry,” Lewis said.
Snowberry was helping them now with his feet. “You guys,” he said with diffused menace. “You guys.”
“What a stand-up bunch of personnel, huh, Bean?” Lewis said. “Even when the going gets tough, there’s still time for horseplay.”
The victorious officers had left. Snowberry pouted where he lay, rubbing his hip. There were tears in Bean’s eyes.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” he said. “What am I doing here?”
Bryant patted his shoulder. Lewis said, “You don’t have to figure it out. Like today. All you have to do is turn on the Brownings and let them figure it out.”
Piacenti had started the jeep and was waving them over. Gabriel wanted another photo. Piacenti leaned on the horn, and revved the engine.
“I guess it’s my buddy,” Bean said. “I guess I haven’t gotten over him.”
“He’s dead and you’re not,” Lewis said.
“I feel bad,” Bean said.
“Feel good,” Lewis said.
“He told me if anything happened to tell his girlfriend the real story,” Bean said. “I think about that.”
“I think about home, takeoff, assembly, their fighters, our escort,” Lewis said. “Flak.”
They helped Bean to his feet, and climbed aboard the jeep. At the plane Gabriel arranged them as he had before. Snowberry said, “Why don’t you make little white marks on the fuselage over our heads so you can see how much we’ve grown?” For the photographer, though, he joined with everyone else in pointing to the newly painted iron cross on the nose, and holding up one finger.
Tuliese told them what they had already heard, from a pal of the departed Gus Fleener: the operation the following day was going to be big and unusual. “Unusual” in this case had clearly sinister connotations. Bryant suspected Berlin, and was both excited and panicked. He imagined the Providence Journal headline: LOCAL GUNNER A HERO IN HISTORIC FIRST RAID ON NAZI CAPITAL. He had once asked Lewis, Imagine your name in a headline back home? Lewis had responded, Imagine your name on a list in the back of the paper?
Leaves and training courses, they knew, had been postponed. The last few missions had been, Lewis claimed now to understand, morale builders — short and easy with few or no losses. By the time they’d finished chow, there were all sorts of signs that supported the rumors: the beautiful and clear skies, which in the new iconography of the bomber crews meant Danger and Impending Missions; the heavy coming and going at Operations, including a buck-up visit, it appeared, from some major brass; fleets of extra petrol bowsers and bomb trolleys. Spare planes were wheeled to the dispersals alongside the combat-ready ones. Crew lists were displayed an hour after dinner, which struck them as formal and unusual and ominous. Everyone feasible was on the list, including the very newest crews. Lewis joked grimly as he read it that he’d found the names of three of the base dogs, including Audie. They were just to sit around and wait. It was suggested they retire around eight-thirty or nine o’clock. There were hints that roust-up would be earlier than usual.
They sat in the barracks playing cards. They were going to sit and wait for three hours to go to bed, and the theatricality of the unusual preparations made the waiting much more difficult. Hirsch had come out, pale, from a navigators’ early evening briefing, and had not answered questions. He had gone straight to another building with an oilskin packet and could be seen through the window, bent over the pool of light on his desk, scratching long rows of figures with his pencil. Guys from Archangel and Cathy Says told the same story: navigators all over the base shaken and isolated.
Bean was signing his underwear. They found him cross-hatching lines on a small pile of laundry and he explained that that was what he was doing.
“What do you think, you’re going off to camp, Harold?” Piacenti asked.
“Maybe I am,” Bean said, and Bryant understood he meant prison camp.
For a moment he was back in nature camp in Connecticut, with Snowberry sick on Mello Rolls and Bean miserable without his parents. Bean was signing his underwear for prison camp, or as an identification aid (Lewis in talking about antiaircraft casualties had once in his presence made reference to “flak stew”), or because it was a reassuring ritual and maybe he thought the extra bit of caution would help ensure his safety, a gesture of faith in a world that rewarded Preparation and Conscientiousness.
“Maybe you should write your buddy’s girl, if you’re gonna write her, Bean,” Lewis said. “You know. Tonight.”
Bean held up a pair by the waistband — GEANT H. BEAN, U.S.A.R. — Bryant read. Bean’s undershorts were strangely oversized and he looked diapered in them. Snowberry called them his Sagbag Underwear. Lewis liked to suggest Bean was hoping he’d grow into them. “I already wrote her,” Bean said. “I had to tell her everything I knew.”
“Must’ve been humiliating,” Lewis muttered from his bunk.
Snowberry shook Bryant’s arm, and leaned close. “I can’t sit here,” he said quietly. “Let’s get out. Let’s go down to The Hoops. Some of the other guys’re down there. We’ll call the girls.”
“The girls?” Bryant asked. The idea sounded as bizarre as calling his parents. “They won’t be able to come down.”
“Willya try?” Snowberry said. He was bobbing from foot to foot. “They can try, can’t they? We got at least two hours.”
Bryant debated for too long and Snowberry whirled and stalked out, and Bryant got up and followed. At the door he looked back. Piacenti picked up a card and eyed it, tantalizing Ball. Bean folded underwear. Lewis lay with his hands behind his head, eyes on the ceiling. God, he thought as he trotted to catch Snowberry, Ball. What do I know about Ball?
Base preparations over the entire area depressed them further and they were happy to get out onto the lane to the village, away from the activity. Hundreds of Wright-Cyclones were being run up and tuned by ground crews and the result was a wavering roar like an immense child’s first tentative attempts at a musical instrument. The sound was cooler and quieter in the lane, a distant racket from another world. As they walked they heard running feet and Colin and his silent friend Keir from the base party caught up to them, and wished them a good evening.