Floyd didn’t seem perturbed. “Vern, you’ll do fine. The boffins I… well, got this from… they said the German word for this thing translated as ‘telescanner’ or ‘farseer.’”
I knew about radar, from my work at Boeing, but it wasn’t common knowledge in the fall of 1945, so I didn’t say anything. But this truck certainly seemed as if it could have been used to control a German radar installation, perhaps out in the field.
Floyd looked at me, waiting for me to answer. I just stared at the electronics and wondered how long we would both spend in the stockade at Fort Leavenworth for this. After a few moments, Floyd spoke again. “You haven’t seen the best part yet, old buddy. This f-panzer is just a sideshow. Let’s open my crate.”
I followed Floyd back out of the control center, whatever it was. I carefully shut the door behind me. Floyd had removed the shiny German lock. I looked around for him, but he had disappeared, only to return a moment later with two long-handled crowbars and an axe.
“We’ve got to tear this baby down,” he said, handing me one of the crowbars.
“Uh, Floyd, let’s talk this over first.”
“Sure, sure, Vernon. What’s on your mind?” Floyd was obviously feeling expansive. I might too, if I’d swiped a German secret weapon.
“Look, I don’t know how to say this, but… I don’t want to look in that crate.”
Floyd’s eyes crinkled as his mouth turned down. It was like he was acting out his emotions. “I thought you’d love this stuff.”
“Oh, I could love it, believe me. Only, what’s in that telescanner truck of yours is enough to get us both put away for a long, long time. That’s a military secret Floyd. I don’t know where you got it, I don’t know how you got it, and I certainly have no idea how you got it all the way from Germany to Kansas, but it’s—”
“Belgium, actually,” Floyd interrupted.
“Gosh darn it,” I yelled. “I don’t care if you bought it in the camel market in Timbuktu! That thing is trouble, great big heaping buckets of trouble. Either you go and drop it in a quarry, or we call the authorities in Wichita and hand it over to someone in a position of responsibility. I don’t want to know anything more about it. Ever.” I turned my back on him.
Floyd made me so furious, sometimes. For years, he had gotten everything he wanted on charm, good looks and athletic ability. But the war was over, we weren’t in high school any more, and Floyd’s thoughtlessness was really starting to show through. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how Floyd had thought stealing some Nazi secret weapon and shipping it back to Kansas would be a good idea. Not even he could be that dumb.
“Vernon.” Floyd spoke in his small voice. I was about to hear the I’m-so-sorry-it’s-all-my-fault-it-will-never-happen-again speech. I could recite that one from memory. “I’m not going to apologize for what I’ve done,” he said.
He surprised me. Floyd really did. Maybe he was growing up after all. “What are you going to do?” I asked, turning to face him.
“I’m going to ask you to do me one more favor. Then, if you don’t want any part of this, walk out of the barn and go home. Just forget the whole thing. I’ll never say another word, you’ll never be involved again. If there’s any trouble your name won’t come into it. Promise. Honest injun.”
I knew from long experience what Floyd’s promises were worth. He was sincere — he was always sincere — but somehow things never quite worked out. Now he was taking a whole new approach to conning me into something he knew I didn’t want to do. That made me curious. The scam was obviously huge. Being an idiot, I took the bait. “Maybe. What’s the favor?”
Floyd smiled again, flashing that million-dollar grin. He played lousy poker because you could always tell when he knew he had won. “Just take a look in the crate. One peek, I promise. After that, either you’ll be in or you’ll be out. And I guarantee you’ll know what you want the second we open that crate.”
I shook my head, but I couldn’t stop from cracking a smile. “Floyd, I’ve got to hand it to you,” I said. “You could sell ice makers to Eskimos.”
He handed me one of the crowbars. “Take that end of the crate,” he ordered, “and I’ll work the other. We can pull this face off all at once.”
We dropped the wooden stakes off the right side of my Dad’s old Mack truck. With a strain on my gimpy right leg I got up on back of the bed where I pulled and tugged with the crow bar on my end of the crate. It had been nailed shut by an expert, that was for sure. The wood groaned and splintered before the first nails loosened. As I worked, I noticed that the crate had the words “Scrap Metal — Sharp Edges” stenciled on the side. I wondered if that was a sample of Floyd’s sense of humor.
With a mighty grunt, Floyd heaved at his end of the crate. The wooden wall came swinging down. I jumped back out of the way, falling off the truck onto my butt on the littered floor of the old barn. That hurt like blazes, and it was a miracle I didn’t get punctured by some old nails or worse. There was a resounding crash as the wood hit the floor, sending loose straw and dust clouds flying and bringing outraged squawks from the bantam hens. It darn near nailed me, too.
As the dust settled I stood up off the floor on my shaky legs and craned my neck to look into the crate. After a moment, I knew two things.
First, even though I couldn’t properly see the oddly twisted and curved lines of the thing, I knew I was looking at the most gorgeous aircraft I had ever seen. It looked as if it had been milled out of solid titanium, so smooth I couldn’t even see the joins.
Second, I was going to find a way to fly it or die trying.
Chapter Two
“The Cuban War! There was a war!” Mr. Bellamy promptly fell into a coughing fit. He had become so ill so fast, it was strange.
The Bellamys’ dining room was a claustrophobic landscape dominated by a claw-footed dark oak table with matching chairs upholstered in a faded blue floral print. An orphaned breakfront that wasn’t related to any of the rest of the furniture hulked along one wall, while the remaining open space was littered with strangely-carved end tables and stained glass floor lamps from back East somewhere. Doilies were scattered on every flat surface like white crows in a cornfield. Everything was sandwiched between carpets the color of my gums and a pressed-tin ceiling corroded to a splotchy black.
Mrs. Bellamy patted Mr. Bellamy on the back. They were of a feather, those two, old as the hills and tough as nails, at least before Mr. Bellamy’s latest illness. Mrs. Bellamy looked like everyone’s grandmother, pale with curly white hair and thick around the waist. Mr. Bellamy was an old shoe — wrinkled, brown and tough.
“Now Daddy, what have I told you about yelling?” Mrs. Bellamy turned to face me and Floyd, her pinched face flushed with anger. “What is the matter with you boys? You know not to excite him.”
“I, we—” I started to say, then stopped at a look from Floyd. Mrs. Bellamy was already ignoring me again, patting Mr. Bellamy’s back as if he was a colicky baby.
“Don’t bother,” whispered Floyd. “You’ll just cause a fight. He comes out of nowhere with this stuff, and Mama always blames me. At least you’re here as a diversion.”
I picked at my baked chicken. One of the yard hens had met an untimely demise to give us a fresh, farm-cooked dinner. The feral bantams in the barn were too small to bother with.