Read Online Paper Doll by Jim Shepard - Free Book Online

his hands.
    Lewis said, “Isn’t this something? We’re ready to get killed, but not get stung by hornets.”
    Hushed noises floating over from I Should Care sounded like someone straightening tool boxes, double-checking gear, doing something recommended and orderly and useful.
    â€œMy parents had this cabin once, on the Jersey shore,” Lewis said. Snowberry hummed softly. Bryant studied the morning light on the undersides of the clouds, annoyed with the prospect of a long story at this point and finding it difficult to listen. He was growing more convinced that a scrub was a near certainty.
    â€œWe used to run around over some back acres,” Lewis said, “us kids. Once, in the middle of these bushes, thick bushes, surrounded by trees, we found this ’34 Nash—green with green upholstery—just sitting there, with no roads out and no roads in and no way on God’s earth it could have gotten there. Perfect condition. There were leaves and stuff on it, of course. All the windows rolled up. Trees all around it, and these were big trees.”
    It was clear enough now to make out the doors and Plexiglas canopies and turrets, and Willis Eddy in the bombardier’s station up front sneezed violently.
    â€œI’ll tell you,” Lewis said. “No way of figuring it. We’re being tested every day, boy.”
    Piacenti snorted. “Somebody gonna do something about these things?” he asked. He was peering tentatively into the waist, his weight on his heels.
    â€œMaybe it was a bootlegger’s car, or something,” Snowberry suggested. It was the first indication he had been listening. “Some gangster left it there for the getaway. Al Capone.”
    Why don’t they cancel it if they’re going to cancel it? Bryant thought. Instead of making us all sit around here like idiots.
    â€œThat’s the thing; there wasn’t anywhere to get,” Lewis said, standing and flexing a leg in front of him. “It was like the trees grew up after the car got there.”
    He went in after the hornets, Piacenti following and Snowberry covering their rear. The plane was brightening and detail took on clarity. The fifteen-minute wait had long since passed. While they were inside the fuselage, shifting gear around in the search for the insects like someone rummaging through a closet, notification came to stand down, that the mission had been scrubbed. Bryant made futile and angry jerking motions with his hands down into the gravel and thought, How is Lewis going to get all that ammo back? He hated everything for being harder than it needed to be and sat with his legs spread before him like a child, winging loose gravel and small stones and whatever else his hands swept up from the tarmac at the gray space beneath the body of Paper Doll.

Later in the afternoon the sun came out to mock the entire enterprise, giving the ruts everywhere beside the hardstands and around the base buildings a dusty instability. Snowberry found him beneath a tree, watching the smallish clouds of dust drift from trafficked areas in the distance.
    â€œTuliese is working on the ball,” Snowberry said. He had chocolate or dirt on his chin. “You wanna come look?”
    Bryant got up, officially interested, as flight engineer, with all mechanical problems having to do with Paper Doll. They crossed long empty warm-up areas. Some of the crew of Geezil II were playing football with a rugby ball. Bryant could hear one staff sergeant—Baird?—shouting Yah, yah, yah as he sprinted wide to turn the corner. His duds were greasy and worn in the seat.
    Tuliese was on one knee, leaning precariously beneath the ball turret, tools fanned out beside him in the shade of the fuselage. On the back of his fatigues he had stenciled May Your Ass Never End Up on a Drumhead. The clip and case ejector chutes for the turret were disassembled and curled neatly inside one another on the