Read Online Paper Doll by Jim Shepard - Free Book Online Page B

back through the fuselage, and tear off the tail. Ott’s in it alone, ass over teakettle at twenty-four thousand feet. It’s spinning like one of those seed pods gone nuts. The windows won’t give and the centrifugal force is pinning him against the seat. He finally kicks his way around to face the opening and tries to squeeze by the seat assembly. And gets his shoulders caught on the armor plate.”
    They sat rapt, listening to a story they’d heard before. The only sounds were those of Tuliese’s tools.
    â€œHe must’ve been at a thousand feet he finally got clear, got his chute open, hit with a helluva crack, broke both legs. Rest of the plane came down in the same field, like a brick. Nobody else made it.”
    â€œLewis told me that story,” Bryant murmured.
    â€œThis guy is still flying.” Tuliese said it as though it had a terminal eloquence about the mental state of flyboys. “He screams at night and sometimes, a guy told me, they find him moving his bed so it’s at a right angle to the other beds. Me, I’d think I was Napoleon at that point.”
    He sat back on his haunches and farted with some finality, surveying the turret.
    â€œWho told you that?” Snowberry said. “About the beds.”
    â€œGuy who bunks with him. Same crew. Pissbag Martin.”
    Snowberry and Bryant nodded, accepting the source. Martin had been named for his inability to control his bladder in combat. He was pretty well known, bladder aside, for being one of the calmest and more accurate gunners in the Group. Lewis had said, in their presence, “At least he scares ’em every now and then.”
    Tuliese repacked his tools and left without mentioning whether or not the turret was now fully operational. After he’d left, they sat with their backs to Paper Doll ’s tail wheel, the aileron over their heads an enormous low ceiling, like a boy’s hideout.
    â€œDid you know I hadda stretch myself to get into the Air Corps?” Snowberry asked.
    Bryant looked at him. He’d swallowed some of Snowberry’s stories before and had been made to look foolish, the slow kid who caught on last, or last before Bean. “What’re you feeding me?” he said.
    â€œNo lie. They said I was too short. I rigged some cable between two poles and hung there, two full weeks, on and off. I had bags of sand on my feet.”
    It was possible. Bryant couldn’t read his expression. “Weren’t you worried you’d stretch your arms?” he asked.
    Snowberry nodded, ready for that. “I hoisted myself up and hung with the cable under my armpits,” he said.
    Bryant said, “Are you going to tell me you think bags of sand made you taller?”
    â€œAll I know is, I’m in now,” Snowberry said comfortably. “And I wasn’t before.”
    Bryant thought, He’s pulling my leg, and resented it. While Snowberry made contented squeaking noises with his cheek on his gum, he thought back to Gunnery Training, missing skeet, missing towed targets, missing first with the .22, then with the shotguns, then the thirty calibers, the fifties. He didn’t fully remember how many of his test scores Favale had fudged for him. He thought about his position and the level of ability he had demonstrated and grew frightened and unhappy with his secret, sitting under the expanse of tail. He was both anxious and relieved that no one understood how poorly trained he was.
    â€œIt’s a funny war,” Snowberry said.
    Bryant thought he understood what Snowberry meant. He had tried to write to Lois about it, but didn’t have the words to express his sense of the boredom and tension together, the unreality of the whole thing, and the fear.
    â€œIt seems like nothing’s happening, you know?” Snowberry said. “And everything’s happening.”
    Bryant agreed. “It’s like you just sit around, or you’re like