Read Online The Last Supper: And Other Stories by Howard Fast - Free Book Online

porch of the mess and waited for the crew of the C46, who were approaching across the blazing concrete airstrip. They were three cheerful, healthy-looking children, with mustaches, blue eyes, and broad smiles.
    â€œCan you take out a passanger?” I greeted them.
    â€œOh, yes, sir,” the pilot said. “That is, if you have papers?”
    â€œMy papers are OK. You have a passenger.”
    â€œWhy, that’s fine,” the pilot said, “and we like passangers. It makes things interesting. It’s very dull flying cargo in the desert. Nothing interesting ever happens. You’re a war correspondent, aren’t you, sir? Well, all sorts of interesting things must happen to you.”
    â€œGetting out of here will be the most interesting so far,” I nodded.
    â€œFine—just fine. It will take us a few hours to load cargo, and then we take off. Where are you bound for, sir?”
    â€œWherever you’re bound for,” wondering again what kind of cargo went out of this place. However, I soon learned, and it should have been obvious from the first. There was only one possible kind of cargo that could be shipped out of that forsaken airstrip, only one product that had lavish and extravagant consumer use. A line of sweating, staggering GIs began to load the plane with crates of empty Coca Cola bottles.
    The C46 was a strange, vast, ugly two-motored plane, a huge, whale-like, drop bellied plane, used principally to carry cargo. I had traveled in them many times and had nothing against them except the knowledge that pilots did not like them and vivid memories of the ear-splitting, nerve-wracking crash when the retractible landing gear was lowered. But since all planes were equally uncertain to me, I was able to feel kindly toward this ship from the skies that had come to prevent my body and soul from frying.
    This one, however, had no doors. The C46 in service in that part of the world had large double doors, wide enough to accomodate a jeep or a howitzer, but somewhere along the line this one had dropped the doors. It was a little unorthodox to fly in a plane not too unlike a convertible car, but I was in no mood to complain, and I watched with interest as the little pile of Coca Cola crates within the plane grew. It is remarkable how many Coca Cola bottles you can load into an empty C46, but I found it even more remarkable how many bottles of Coca Cola one airstrip can consume. My interest turned to fascination. Again and again, I was certain that it could not continue, that the mess could disgorge no more Coca Cola and that the C46 could hold no more, but soon I began to realize that the capacity of both was beyond anything I had imagined. For almost three hours, under that blazing sun, a steady, unbroken stream of empty Coca Cola bottles poured into the C46. Hot as it was, I had to watch, and I was gradually overcome by a sense of fate and a wave of fascination as the great-bellied plane filled up with the crates of bottles. Thoughtfully, the crew left a narrow area between the Coca Cola bottles and the wall of the plane; otherwise there would have been no room for the single passenger.
    Finally it was done, and the navigator, the smallest member of the crew, and seemingly no more than eighteen years old under his whispy mustache, came to inform me that they were ready for the takeoff. As we walked out to the plane, I asked him where he wanted me to ride.
    â€œWhy you just make yourself comfortable anywhere,” he answered cheerfully. “We’re awful glad to have you with us, because it’s very exciting meeting someone like yourself.”
    â€œAnywhere” was a passage of about eighteen inches between the Coca Cola crates and the wall of the plane, so I chose a spot just forward from the gaping doors, spread my raincoat on the floor, and stretched out to await the cool and soothing winds at five thousand feet. From where I lay, I had a pleasant view, not unlike