A Private Little War(50)

Ted had followed his feet across the field, thinking Christmas with each step. Christmas, step-step. Christ-mas, Christ-mas. He didn’t know what he was going to say. He felt as though he should look like he knew what he was going to say. But he had no earthly idea.

He pushed through the flap door and into the mess, his face bruised by exhaustion. And for a broken second, he stood there, just inside the door, swaying slightly, drinking in the warmth of bodies, of breath. He felt like a drowning man suddenly given one more gasp of air. His back was straight. His eyes were bright. The rest of him felt like it could turn to liquid at any second.

“First squadron took fire over Mutter’s Ridge five minutes ago and are coming home hot. Two planes damaged. One pilot wounded.” He swallowed. His throat felt hot and distended, like he’d swallowed a billiard ball halfway. “I don’t know who, I don’t know how, I don’t know sweet fuck-all, so don’t ask me any questions. I want crews on the field with emergency gear and all pilots to their planes double-quick.”

Ted looked around. He tried to catch each man’s eye. There was a lot of blinking but for one terrible, long moment no one spoke, no one moved, no one even breathed.

And Ted could’ve yelled. He knew he could’ve screamed his head off to snap everyone out of their collective trance. And maybe he should have done that, but he was so tired, so spent. Scared. Sick with it.

So instead, Ted just spoke. One word, dropped with all the intensity of an atom bomb as, in the background, everyone heard the grinding moan of the scramble siren beginning to wail.

“Now,” he said.

And the tent was empty before the word hit the floor.





CARTER WAS ON THE FIELD WITH ENGINES HOT, the squadron arranged behind him in scramble formation, and the ground vibration was enough to shake his vertebrae like dice. They were ready to go, ready to fly, but instead they sat, boxed together for fast takeoff, idling impotently on the west end of A strip with orders to go exactly nowhere.

Carter was still thinking about breakfast because breakfast was preferable to death. Breakfast was preferable to most anything, and death, obviously, was among the worst things in the world.

Carter was thinking about toast. About real toast. Not too long ago—less than a year, maybe—he and Fenn had had a long conversation about toast. Real white toast made from real white bread by a machine, perfected across centuries and made to do nothing else.

Toast. Seriously, they’d talked for hours. How toast, made well, was one of those things a person didn’t ever think about missing until it was gone and then missed with an ache that was incalculable. How toast might be the one thing he’d wish for if he were suddenly granted one wish and, of course, couldn’t wish to leave, to go home, to be just gone and, of course, wealthy and, of course, dog-piled by naked girls.

Ridiculous, sure. Ask them on any other night and it would’ve been something else, some other stupid little thing that no one ever thought about until it was unavailable.

Toast. Golden brown, still hot from the toaster, dripping with butter until the middle of a piece of it got a little wet and squishy but the edges stayed crisp. How even bad toast was great toast when compared with having no toast, and was fucking phenomenal toast when measured against the coarse, gritty, heavy local bread toasted over a fire or in a pan on the gas stove in the galley. The bread on Iaxo was terrible. What bread must’ve been like when bread was first invented, before anyone knew better. It tasted green and almost moldy even when fresh. And the toast made from it suffered accordingly.

Toast. Hours of talk about toast until they were mad for it. And now, all Carter could think was that this was one of the things they’d talked about, wasted their time on, when Fenn wasn’t saying whatever it was he’d claimed to have known about for a year. If it’d been important, he thought—important enough to mention now, important enough and right enough that he’d copped to it just a minute before Ted had opened his big mouth—motherfucker should’ve said something.

Carter hadn’t been able to ask Fenn about it in the mess. No time. Certainly, he hadn’t been able to ask when they’d broken in a frantic sprint for the tent line—for their gear, their gloves, their warm coats and collars; scrambling for them and then running out again, whooping and cursing, for the flight line where the planes were being shoved out of the longhouse like boarders late with the rent. And now it was bothering him. And now he really wanted some toast, too.

First squadron had come down on the southern tip of C strip, which was the emergency strip, while Carter and two squadron were taxiing into position and before Fenn and his squadron had even gotten their planes out of the longhouse. Consequently, no one had seen what sort of shape they’d been in. No one had been able to count planes and guess at who was hurt, who was down, or anything. No one in the control tent was taking questions. Ted couldn’t be raised on the radio.