The doctor glanced up at him, convinced that this pilot — he looked back at the file — Shirer knew very well it was an F and, like so many others, was probably trying to fudge it in an attempt to eke out a little more rest and recreation if at all possible. It was known he was keen on a young nurse, Lana La Roche. Well, the young ophthalmologist thought, I might be green, but not that green. He wasn’t about to underwrite malingerers, and he told Shirer straight, “I guess you don’t want to hear it, Major, but you’re fit for flying duty again.”
Frank mumbled an obscenity, taking the RTD — return to duty — slip with feigned reluctance. The head nurse and Doolittle were still arguing outside. It was getting on the doctor’s nerves. He knew he shouldn’t have wasted so much time looking for the damn pointer, but he’d had it since medical school and it had become like a charm to him. He rose, opened the door and called out briskly, “Next!” It was Doolittle, only his eyes and nose visible, the remainder of his head still bandaged.
“Right!” said the doctor, sitting on the stool in front of the examination chair. “What letters can you make out?”
“Where?”
“On the chart.”
“What fucking chart?”
That afternoon, Frank Shirer was officially posted back on the active duty list, but the day was to end in disappointment. It hadn’t occurred to him that once he got back on the active list he would be assigned anything else but fighters. However, with not enough fighters to go around, and his earlier experience of flying 727s coming up on the Pentagon’s screen, he was assigned to Far East Bomber Command, Nayoro, Japan. B-52s. For Shirer it was like being told you’d been assigned to driving a Mack truck after having been at the wheel of Alfa-Romeos.
Lana was delighted. With Japan so close to Siberia, only F-111s and one or two of the precious few Stealth B-2 bombers were being used, as far as she knew — the long distance B-52s merely on reserve standby.
“Too bad,” she lied. “But it’ll help you to have a new challenge.”
“Is it that easy?”
“Well, no, but hell, after flying Tomcats. They don’t call B-52s ‘BUFFs’—big ugly fat fellows — for nothing. Anyway, they’re not using B-52s over there — least not where it counts.”
“Oh?” Lana said, sounding disappointed. “Too bad, hon.”
He turned to her. “You serious?”
“Of course.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll grow old in B-52s,” he said morosely.
“When will you be shipping out?”
He handed her the fax. “Tomorrow. They don’t waste any time once you’re fit, do they?”
“Well, it’s what you wanted. I mean at least you’ll be flying and—”
“Yeah, sure.”
It was a bright clear day over Roosevelt Island, with Manhattan towering against a background of a hard blue winter sky. Johnny Ferrago bent down to hoist his six-year-old daughter Linda onto his shoulders so she could see over the crowd gathering for the opening of the third water tunnel. Johnny was what was known in the excavating business as a “sandhog,” one of the “unsung thousands,” as
“Daddy?”
“Yes, hon?”
“Won’t all the water be dirty?”
Ferrago’s wife, Lenore, smiled as he pulled young Linda forward over his head and, looking up, ostrichlike, said, “Hey, what you think your daddy’s been doin’ all this time? That water’s clean as you can get.”
Ferrago’s twelve-year-old son, Danny, his face all but covered by the collar of his parka and earmuffs, grumbled, “Can’t be clean as snow water.”
“What the hell you talking about?” said Johnny.
“You shouldn’t say that, Daddy,” came Linda’s voice from above.
“Sorry, little girl. But that water’s passed the sniffer test, Danny. Better than half the bottled water you can buy.”
“What’s a sniffer test?” asked Danny sullenly, wanting to know, but his pride at odds with his curiosity.
They could hear a murmur in the crowd of several thousand strong, someone saying the governor, with police escort, was approaching. He wasn’t — it was traffic control cops on bikes keeping everyone behind the tape. “Sniffer test,” Johnny Ferrago explained to Danny, “is done by a lady who sniffs the water. Right? Like a wine tester.”
“They don’t drink it, Daddy.”
“Sure they do, Lindy—”
“No, Daddy. I saw it on ‘Mister Rogers.’ They spit it out.”
“She means wine tasting,” put in Lenore, his wife.
“Oh,” said Johnny, looking up at his daughter. “That’s right, honey. They don’t drink the wine. Maybe the lady doesn’t drink the water, but it’s the best test they have.” He looked down again at Danny, to include him in the conversation. “Some people can smell bacteria better than a machine. How about that, eh, Danny?”
“Yeah,” said Danny. “I can’t see anything.”
“Well, you ‘scuse yourself,” Johnny told him, “and move up front. Your mom can’t hold you up. You’re too big.”
“Don’t want to go up front.”
“All right then, stop squawkin’.”
“I’m not squawkin’.”
“All right, you two,” said Lenore. “Cool it. We’re supposed to be having fun. Remember?”
“How do they clean the water, Daddy?” asked his daughter, her head bending down over his.
“Don’t have to, honey. Sunshine kills a lot of the bugs, and all the other bad stuff settles down in a big dam.”
“What’s a dam?”
“Well, place where you collect water. Lots of it. Keep it still so all the bad stuff can settle out. Then they put a seki disk — sort of like a black and white lid — down into the water. They have to be able to see it for at least two meters — that’s just higher than Daddy. If they can still see the disk, then the water’s safe.”
“How come we drink bottled water, then?” pressed Danny.
“Don’t be a smartass, Danny,” said Ferrago sharply. “Because I don’t like all that chlorine they put in tap water, that’s why.”
“Miss Lawson at school says they put fluoride in it. It’s good for your teeth.”
“Yeah, well,” said Johnny, “far as I’m concerned, the jury’s still out on that one.”
“What’s a jury, Daddy?” asked Linda.
“Never mind,” said Johnny crabbily. “You keep your eyes on all the people going up there on the dais — the stand. You see the mayor’s limo yet?”
“No.”
“Can
“No. Just a few motorcycle cops.” She nudged Johnny, lowering her voice. “Don’t let Danny get on your nerves. He’s just pushing your buttons.”
