'You shoot your own prop off and you shoot yourself down,' Daniel Dudley answered. His face clouded. 'That's what happened to Smitty, the guy who used to have that cot. If it does happen to you, the beast is nose- heavy. You have to watch it in your glide.'
'Thanks. I'll remember.' Moss started unpacking his bag. 'When do you suppose they'll let me up in one?'
'Tomorrow, unless I'm all wet,' Dudley answered. 'Hardshell doesn't be lieve in letting people sit around and get rusty.'
He was right. Captain Pruitt sent Moss up as tail-end Charlie on a flight of four Martins-himself and his tentmates-the very next morning. His scout aeroplane was factory-new, still stinking of the dope that made the fabric of wings and fuselage impenetrable to air. But the mechanics here had modified it as they had the other three Martins of the flight: by mounting on the left side of the wooden cockpit frame a rear-view mirror like those on some of the newest model motorcars. Moss found that a very clever idea, one that would keep his neck from developing a swivel mount.
The rotary engine kicked over at once when a mechanic spun the prop. Castor-oil fumes from the exhaust blew in his face. The in-line engine in the Wright he had flown had been petroleum-lubricated, which had made his bowels happier than they were liable to be now.
One after another, the four single-deckers took off. Moss tried to get a handle on Innis and Carlsen by the way they flew their aeroplanes; he hadn't had much chance to talk with them the day before. Carlsen was always exactly where he was supposed to be in the flight, which Dud Dudley led. Cap tain Franklin would have approved of that precise, finicky approach. Innis, on the other hand, was all over the place. Whether that bespoke imagination or carelessness remained to be seen.
Up to the front they flew. Dudley swung the nose of his Martin so that he flew parallel to the front, on the American side of the line. The rest of the flight followed, Innis frisking a little, up and down, from side to side. They were under orders as strict as Captain Pruitt could make them not to cross over to enemy-held territory no matter what. Neither the Canadians nor the British yet had a working interrupter gear, and nobody in the USA wanted to hand them one on a platter.
Flying a combat patrol was nothing like being trained on a new aero plane. Moss had discovered that when he'd made the transition from the Su per Hudson to the Wright 17, and now found out all over again. When you were in training, you were concentrating on your aeroplane and learning its idiosyncrasies. When you were up here on patrol, all you cared about was the other fellow's aeroplane, with your own reduced in your thoughts to a tool you'd use to shoot him down.
He spotted the Avro in that newfangled rear-view mirror. It had probably been flying a reconnaissance mission on the American side of the line, and was now heading back toward Canadian territory with its pictures or sketches or whatever it had. Moss peeled off from the flight and gave his Martin single- decker all the power it had as he raced toward the Avro.
Its pilot spotted him and tried to bank away, which also gave the observer a better shot at him. He dove and then climbed rapidly. All he had to do was point his aeroplane's nose at the enemy and squeeze the firing button on his machine gun. He'd practiced shooting during training, but having the bullets miss the prop still seemed half like black magic to him.
The Avro was still trying to manoeuvre into a position from which it could effectively defend itself. He kept firing, playing the stream of bullets as if they were water from a hose. All at once, the Avro stopped dodging and nosed toward the ground. As he had with his first kill, back when the war was young, he must have put the pilot out of action. The observer kept shooting long after he had any hope of scoring a hit. Martin respected his courage and wondered what he was thinking about during the long dive toward death.
He looked around to see if he could spot any more British or Canadian aeroplanes. He saw none, but all his flightmates were close by. He hadn't noticed them coming to his aid; he'd been thinking about the Avro, nothing else.
Dudley, Innis, and Carlsen were waving and blowing him kisses. He waved back. He might not have fully belonged in his new squadron the day before, but he did now.
The U.S. Army sergeant doing paymaster duty shoved a dollar and a half across the table at Cincinnatus and checked off his name on the list. 'You get the bonus again today,' he said. 'That's twice now this week, ain't it? Don't usually see Lieutenant Kennan actin' so free and easy with the government's money.'
Don't usually see him give a Negro anything close to an even break, was what he meant. Cincinnatus had no doubt that was true. But — for a white man, for a U.S. soldier-the paymaster seemed decent enough. Figuring he owed him an answer, Cincinnatus said, 'Whatever you do, you got to do it as good as you can.'
'Yeah, that ain't a bad way to look at things,' the sergeant agreed. 'But you made Kennan notice how good you're doin' it — you got a black hide and you manage that, you got to be doin' awful damn fine.'
'My wife's gonna have a baby,' Cincinnatus said. 'Extra half-dollar now and then, it means a lot.' He cut it short after that; no point to getting the la bourers in line behind him angry.
He was about halfway home when it started to rain. Herodotus and a couple of the other Negroes with whom he was walking ducked under an awning for protection. The awning, conveniently for them, was in front of a saloon. They went on inside. Cincinnatus kept going. He took off his hat and turned his face up to the warm rain, letting it wash the sweat off him. That felt good. Sometimes, after a hot, muggy day, he felt as crusted in salt as a pretzel.
When he walked past Conroy's general store, he looked in through the window, as he often did. One lone white man was in there with the storekeeper. After a second glance, Cincinnatus stiffened. That white man was Tom Kennedy.
Kennedy saw him, too, and waved for him to come inside. He did, his heart full of foreboding. A U.S. Army patrol was walking down the other side of the street. One of the men paused to smear petroleum jelly on his bayonet to hold back the rain. All they had to do was look over and recognize Kennedy and everything went up in smoke. They didn't. They just kept walk ing, one of them making a lewd crack about what else you could do with a greasy hand.
'Hello, Cincinnatus,' Kennedy said, about as cordially as if Cincinnatus had been white. He didn't know whether he liked that or not. It made him nervous; he did know that. He wished Kennedy had never come knocking at his door in the middle of the night.
But Kennedy had. 'Evenin',' Cincinnatus answered reluctantly. 'What kin I do for you today?'
'Glad you stopped in,' Kennedy said, again sounding as if Cincinnatus were a favourite customer rather than a Negro labourer. 'Would have had some body by to pay you a visit tonight if you hadn't.'
'Is that a fact?' Cincinnatus sounded dubious. The last thing he wanted was some white man coming around his house late at night. He'd been lucky none of the neighbours had said anything to the U.S. soldiers after Kennedy paid him a visit that first time. Lucky once didn't have anything to do with lucky twice, though. Half-probably more than half-the Negroes in Coving- ton preferred the USA to the CSA, although a plague on both their houses had wide popularity among them, too. 'Who wants to visit me, and how come?'
Kennedy and Conroy looked at each other: Kennedy kept doing the talking, which was smart, because Cincinnatus trusted him further than the storekeeper. He said, 'We've got a delivery we need you to make.' He grinned. 'Sort of like old times, isn't it?'
'Not so you'd notice,' Cincinnatus answered. 'What did you have in mind? Drive a truck up in front of my house? Don't think I'd much fancy that.' He'd been trained to be cautious and polite around whites, so as not to let them know everything that was going on in his head. That was the only thing that kept him from shouting, Are you out of your skull, Mr. Kennedy, sir?
'Nothing like that,' Kennedy said, raising a soothing hand. 'We'll have somebody bring by a wagon with a mule pulling it — nothing that would look out of place in your part of town.' The unspoken assumption that that was the way things ought to be in the Negro district of Covington grated on Cincinnatus. Oblivious, Kennedy went on, 'We'll have a colored fellow drivin' it, too, so you don't need to worry about that, either.'
'You already got a wagon and a driver, you don't need me, Mr. Kennedy,' Cincinnatus said. He put his hat back on and touched a forefinger to the brim. 'See you another time. Evenin', Mr. Conroy.'
'Get back here,' Conroy snapped as Cincinnatus turned to go. 'We know where you live, boy, remember that.'
