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Name: Glory Boys
Author: Harry Bingham
ISBN: 9780007438235

Harry Bingham

Шрифт:

HARRY BINGHAM

Glory Boys

DEDICATION

To my beloved N, my writing partner

‘But it is beautiful to unfold our soulsAnd our short lives’

EPIGRAPH

Prohibition is an awful flop.

We like it.

It can’t stop what it’s meant to stop.

We like it.

It’s left a trail of graft and slime,

It’s filled our land with vice and crime,

It don’t prohibit worth a dime,

Nevertheless we’re for it.

From F. P. A., New York World

‘The aeroplane was very easy to fly and very forgiving to pupils’ mistakes, even to the extent of (usually) not killing them when they spun it to the ground… To start off with, and for some reason I could never understand, [it] seldom seemed to catch fire after a crash.’

Allen Wheeler, Flying Between the Wars

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Part One: Beginning

Part Two: Lift

Part Three: Thrust

Part Four: Control

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124

Part Five: Height and Speed

125

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137

Epilogue

Historical Note

About the Author

Other Works

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

To begin with, it looked like nothing. A nick on the horizon. A moving dot. A speck of red and white against the smoky Georgian blue.

Herb Johnson, standing bolt upright on his wagon, followed it with his eyes. The little plane was flying low, carving an unsteady course between the twisting hills. Every now and then it rose sharply upwards, before beginning a slow glide earthwards again.

The town could boast four war heroes, but Herb Johnson was the only one to have seen the front line in France. Consequently, he was also the only guy in town to have seen an airplane. He wanted to hang on to the sight alone; be the only man in town to see it. He looked for a while, then sat back down on the wagon board and settled his hat back on his head.

‘Good God in the morning!’ he hollered. ‘Airplane! Airplane! Airplane!’

Something was wrong.

That much was obvious. The plane, now directly overhead, was gasping for breath. The engine would fire properly for a couple of beats, then choke, then fire again, then cut completely, then spurt back into temporary life.

‘That feller didn’t oughta stay up there,’ remarked Jeb Holling, with a considered tobacco-speckled spit on the ground. ‘That engine ain’t holding him up too good.’

The machine was a biplane, with red wings, a red nose and a clean white fuselage that seemed too bright in the sun. When the plane banked a little, they could see the pilot, no more than a leather-helmeted head and a pair of shoulders. Some of the kids waved, but the pilot must have been a surly type, because he wouldn’t wave back, not even to say hi to a bunch of kids who’d never seen an airplane before, let alone right up close, floating over their town like a giant dragonfly.

‘Ain’t so easy,’ said Johnson, who had quickly and delightedly established himself as the town’s aviation expert. ‘Them planes need an air-eo-drome. In France…’

The plane came back again, lower this time. They could see the pilot’s face better. They could see his lips moving, and he was waving this time, one leather-gauntleted hand gesticulating out of the cockpit, though in an angry kind of way, hardly the way to wave at kids. The engine was still bad and when it cut out, you could almost see the flashing propeller blades slow down.

‘Like to see it come down on my place,’ said one farmer from out of town. ‘Terraced fields like mine, it’d be like landing on a flight of steps.’

‘There’s the woods round by Williams Point,’ said another man. ‘That’d be the place all right. Come down into the trees…’ His words petered out, as he realised that his picture of airplanes roosting in the treetops probably contained more than an ounce or two of inaccuracy.

It was a kid who saw the truth first. Little Brad Lundmark, a red-headed kid, looking a couple of years younger than his fifteen years, yelled it out. ‘He wants to land here. He wants to come down right here!’

The kid was right. The pilot was criss-crossing overhead and waving. The plane continued to bob crazily in the air, pulling upwards when the engine was sound, drifting down when it sputtered. And when you thought about it, Main Street in Independence was about the only hard flat place for miles around. If you excluded those places which were dotted with cows or drainage ditches or trees or houses, then you might have to cross right over into Anderson County before you could find a better place to land.

‘Quick,’ said Johnson, anxious to regain his ebbing leadership. ‘Clear a space there, will you?’

Everyone pushed and shoved, until they had cleared a circle some forty or fifty feet wide. Herb Johnson winked and waved at the pilot, inviting him to come on down. Once again, the kid knew best.

‘He needs the street,’ shouted Lundmark. ‘He needs the whole street.’

Instantly, the street was cleared. Horses were led down side alleys. A couple of buggies were hauled and pushed to the side of the road. There were only five cars in town, but the one belonging to Gibson Hennessey, owner of the General Store, didn’t start too well in the heat of the day, so it was decided to leave them all. Men, women and kids, ran indoors to watch from windows, or stood in the shade of the verandas, until the whole town was lined up in two long rows that quivered with expectancy.

The red-winged plane banked for a final turn. Right overhead, the engine roared into life, then cut. There was an anxious-delicious moment when it seemed the plane must surely crash, but the engines fired again, strongly enough for the pilot to get his machine under control for landing. For a moment or two, the plane disappeared behind the two-storey warehouse belonging to the Agricultural-Mercantile on the edge of town. People craned forwards, desperate to see it again.

Then, when they did, they leaped back again in shock. The plane was headed right at them, diving towards the road from no distance at all. The propeller was a flashing disc. The plane’s nose was a fat red bullet aimed straight at the town.

Somebody screamed. The plane plunged. Wheels slammed hard into the earth.

Then everything happened at once. The plane tore down the street. For a few moments, it looked as though the impossible landing would take place without mishap. Then the tail-skid snagged on a pothole. The plane’s motion altered suddenly and drastically. The fuselage slewed violently round. An axle or a wheel-strut broke. One of the wingtips hit the ground and splintered. The plane skidded sickeningly along the ground, crunching up the end of its lower wing as it moved. It came to rest with the nose four feet from the barber’s shop window, as though about to pop in for a shave.

The pilot’s cockpit was lost in the dust he’d kicked up. The engine was silent. The propeller blade began to slow. Somewhere a piece of wood cracked loudly. The airplane sank.

For a moment, just for a moment, everything fell silent.

PART ONE
Beginning

Afterwards, people like to sit and figure out when it all started.

Mostly people talk about the crash landing, the hot May day in 1926 when an airplane fell clean out of the sky. But there are others who look a little further back. They talk about when the troubles in town first started. They talk about the Volstead Act, the law which prohibited the sale of alcohol the length and breadth of America. They talk about politics and the good old days and the general decline in moral values.

But when you think about it properly, you can see that there is no beginning. Not really. If it hadn’t been for the Great War, there wouldn’t have been Prohibition. If it hadn’t been for the Wright brothers, and Santos-Dumont in France, and all the other guys who spent their lives coaxing chunks of wood and metal to jump into the air and fly, then there wouldn’t have been airplanes, and everything in this story is to do with airplanes.

But if you want to talk about beginnings, then you have to go back to the start. Right to the start. And that wasn’t Santos-Dumont or the Wright brothers, or even Langley and his doomed experiments over the gloomy Mississippi. The beginning was an English guy, name of Sir George Cayley.

Cayley was born in 1773, when George Washington was still a British subject and the good folks of Boston were filling their harbour with forty-five tons of best Bohea tea. Cayley was another one of these guys who ought to have been born with feathers. He wanted to fly. He spent his whole life working on the problem. But unlike all those who had gone before, Cayley got a whole lot of things pretty right.

Up until Sir George, anyone designing a flying machine thought about birds. Birds flap their wings and that’s the whole deal. They get their lift from wings. They get their forward motion from wings. Most of what stops birds rolling around in the sky like corks in a waterfall is built into the wings as well. Lift, thrust and control. All in the same neat instrument.

But that’s birds. Sir George’s particular spark of genius was to see that what worked for birds would never work for humans. So he split the three problems and tackled them separately. He conducted careful scientific experiments on lift, drag and streamlining. He tackled the issues of stability, pitch-control and general aircraft design. He did some tough mathematics and some solid science.

And he got there. He designed the airplane. For lift, he chose a pair of fixed wings, shaped like an aerofoil. For thrust, he chose an airscrew – what we’d call a propeller. And to give his flying machine control, he designed a tail fin and rudder, not a whole lot different from what you see sticking to the ends of airplanes today.

If you want to see the first ever drawing of a working airplane, you’ll find it in the notebooks of good old Sir George. Of course, the gallant knight only had steam engines to play with. There was no way a steam engine of his day would develop enough horsepower to lift itself, an airplane and a human being all together. But he built gliders though, good ones. You want to know when the first true airplane flight in history took place? Answer: in 1853, when Sir George ordered his coachman out of his coach and into a glider. The glider soared happily into the air, flew five hundred yards across a Yorkshire valley, then came to a bumpy rest. The coachman, already the world’s first airplane pilot, wasn’t too keen on becoming the world’s first airplane casualty and he handed in his notice. Cayley, an old man now, quit building gliders and died almost fifty years before the Wright brothers left earth at Kitty Hawk.

So, if you want a beginning, there it was.

Lift, thrust, control. Three problems. Three solutions. The start of everything.

1

The pilot lifted his goggles and removed his helmet, all in the same motion. He let helmet and goggles drop to the floor. The air was still cloudy with dust and his eyes pricked.

With an automatic hand, he checked his switches (all off) and the cockpit fuel pipes (all sound). He sniffed to detect any escaping gasoline. The air stank of petrol, but the pilot had never been in a crash where the air smelled any other way. The pilot flexed his left leg, then his right leg, then both arms, then ran his hands over his back, neck and head. His left foot was sore where the rudder bar had snagged it, but apart from that, he seemed to have escaped uninjured. His left arm struck the instrument panel a couple of times softly.

‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ he muttered.

He lifted himself to the lip of the cockpit and stepped down to the ground. The movement made him grimace. Not because of the pain in his foot, but because the undercarriage should have been lifting the fuselage well clear of the ground. But the plane no longer had an undercarriage to speak of, and the fuselage was lying prostrate on the ground like a beached sea animal.

The pilot undid his flying jacket, wiped his forehead on his arm and stepped, blinking, away from the dust and the plane wreck into the brilliant glare of the sun.

And that was how they saw him first. Long afterwards, that was how most of them would remember him as well. A man a little less than medium height. Not big built, but light on his feet. Poised. A sense of athleticism held a long way in reserve. Fair hair very closely cropped. Skin deeply tanned. Eyes of astonishing blueness. His face lined but still somehow young. Or perhaps not young exactly, but alert, watchful. And smiling. That was how they first saw him.

Smiling.

The pilot was used to being stared at, but even for him this was something new. Independence, Georgia boasted a population of 1,386 and right now the pilot was being given the chance to inspect almost every last one of their number.

He wiped his forehead again. Leather flying clothes make a whole lot of sense six thousand feet up in an eighty-mile-an-hour wind. They make a lot less sense the second you touch earth. He shrugged off his jacket and advanced a few more paces. The town had grouped itself into a semicircle around him and was staring at him, like he was something out of the Bible.

‘Hi, folks,’ he said. ‘Seen better landings, huh?’

He laughed. Nobody else moved. They were still staring, still in awe.

‘Thanks for clearing a way for me. Things were getting kinda tough up there.’

There was a bit of shuffling amongst the townsfolk and one of them was pushed to the front.

‘Good afternoon, sir,’ he said. ‘My name’s Herbert Isiah Johnson, and on behalf of Independence and Okinochee County and on behalf of … of … everyone, we’d like to welcome you to Georgia.’

Johnson’s mumblings broke the spell. People surged forward.

‘Gee whizz, Ma, did you see the wing go pop…?’

‘Spark plugs, was it? I once saw that on a Model-T. Lousy sparks…’

‘You OK, pal? You shouldn’t be walking any, not after…’

‘He didn’t take a left. You go past the Ag-Merc, you have to jink a little to the left…’

‘I said them things weren’t safe to use. If the good Lord…’

But amidst the crush of people, there was no one more determined than Brad Lundmark, the red-headed kid who’d first understood the pilot’s need to land. Within seconds of seeing the pilot emerge safely from the wreckage, Lundmark was running. First he ran hard, round a corner, into a simple two-storey house on Second Street. He was inside for about twenty seconds, then came racing out again. He tore back the way he’d come and hurtled into the thick of the crowd. Doggedly, he fought his way to the front.

‘Excuse me, sir. Sir, excuse me, please. Please, sir…’

There was something in Lundmark’s single-mindedness which made other people quit talking, until he found himself talking into a vacuum.

‘Sorry. Sorry. Just…’ He held out the things he’d fetched from the house. They were a well-chewed pencil and a photo. The photograph had been neatly clipped from the pages of a boy’s magazine. It was unmistakably a picture of the pilot, a few years younger and stiffly dressed in military uniform. ‘Captain Rockwell, sir, I wonder if I could have your autograph.’

2

‘Oh for God’s sake!’

Willard Thornton, a dazzlingly good-looking actor of twenty-something, felt sick.

It wasn’t the plane, a neat little Gallaudet, that upset him, but the take-off site. The Gallaudet had been precariously winched up on to the roof of the Corin Tower, twenty-five storeys above ground. The tar roof was flat, a hundred feet square. A low parapet had run round the outside, but had been removed for filming. The place where the blocks had been wrenched away showed up white against the tar. A camera crew stood sullenly, underdressed for the wind that flicked across from the mountains. The cameraman jabbed a finger at the sky.

‘We oughta go. We’re losing light. But what do I care? It’s your picture, buddy.’

Willard scowled again. The cameraman was right. This was his movie. He was actor, writer, director, producer, financier – and right now there was a decision to be made. He thought of the stunt he was about to pull and felt another bout of nausea rise towards his throat.

‘OK, OK,’ he commented, ‘only Jesus Christ!’

‘Jesus Christ is about right, darling,’ said Daphne O’Hara, taking a cigarette from the cameraman’s mouth and smoking it down to the butt. O’Hara (or Brunhilde Schulz, to give her the name she was born with) was dressed in a silver evening gown, with enough paste diamonds to bury a duchess. The wind was wrapping her dress hard against her legs and her carefully set hair was beginning to unravel.

‘The light,’ said the cameraman.

‘Forget the light. It’s my hair, sweetheart.’

‘Oh for God’s sake! Let’s do it.’

Willard felt angry and out of control. The cast and crew were on their thirteenth week of filming their feature, Heaven’s Beloved. They already had enough film in the can to make a six-hour movie. But Willard was a realist. He’d seen the rushes. And they were bad. Badly done, badly shot, and dull. Deadly dull. The script had been hastily revised. Stunts had been shoved in in a desperate effort to lift the story. Willard had grown to loathe any mention of the budget.

And now this. The Gallaudet stood in one corner of the roof, with the wind on its nose. They’d selected the plane for its low take-off speed, but even so, Willard guessed, they wouldn’t be fully airborne by the time they reached the edge. Would he have enough lift and forward speed to keep his tail clear as he left the roof? He didn’t know. If the tail caught, would it hook him downwards, or just give him a fright? He didn’t know, but felt sick thinking about it. In the past, he’d preferred to hand the tough stunts over to professional stuntmen, but his last two stuntmen had quit on him after rows over money. In any case, it was only flying wasn’t it?

‘OK. Ready?’

The camera crew positioned themselves. The production guys fussed over the Gallaudet. Then Willard and O’Hara burst from the steel doorway onto the roof. Willard pointed dramatically at the Gallaudet, then the two actors raced across to it.

O’Hara struck a pose by the rear cockpit, which meant, ‘No! Surely not!’ Willard stuck out his chin and looked darkly resolute. ‘But we have to!’ Willard stepped behind O’Hara to help her in. ‘Keep your hand away from my fucking ass,’ she said.

The two actors clambered inside. It was the sort of move which Willard found difficult. He hated the idea of looking bad on camera but could never quite get the hang of making an ungainly move, such as swinging his leg over the cockpit rim, in a way that made him look good. He tutted with annoyance and said, ‘Again!’

They got out and in again. Willard’s second attempt was worse than his first, and what’s more he grazed his hand in the process. Willard wanted to do it over, but was aware of O’Hara behind him, smoking like a steam train and swearing darkly in her native German.

‘That’ll do,’ he said, annoyed.

The camera crew took a few shots of them in the cockpit. The wind rose. Willard knew he ought to cancel the shot and wait until conditions were better. But O’Hara was being wooed by United Artists – Douglas Fairbanks himself had lunched with her – and Willard knew it was only a matter of time before she quit. There was another, stronger flutter of wind. Ten knots gusting to twelve or thirteen. Wind was good because what mattered in take-off was wind speed, not ground speed. But too much wind was bad, because of the risk of the airplane being blown straight back into the side of the building. Willard’s sickness came back, stronger.

The lead production guy said mildly, ‘Thornton, I think…’

‘Yes. Get her started. Jesus Christ!’

The production crew swung the propeller. The engine roared into life. The propeller flashed into a blur. The cameramen positioned themselves. O’Hara stopped smoking and swearing, and flashed a dazzling smile at the cameras. Beneath the wheels, Willard could feel the wooden chocks being pulled away. The graze on his hand was red and angry. He hoped it wouldn’t show on film.

He jammed the throttle forward. The pitch of the engine rose into a full roar. The little plane began to roll forwards. The edge of the building rushed towards them. The Gallaudet’s wheels reached the edge. Her tail was lifted, but the main gear was nowhere close to being airborne. She plunged sickeningly over the edge and was lost from sight.

3

The wall at the end of the barn wasn’t solid, but built of vertical wooden slats to allow the entrance of light and air. The golden evening sunshine poured in and lay in bars across the floor. In the middle, amidst a debris of straw and spilled grain, the airplane sat. It looked oddly at home, like an obsolete piece of agricultural equipment or perhaps an exotic animal lying down to rest. It was a peaceful scene, but somehow sad. The plane looked like it had been shut away to die.

For the first time since his unconventional arrival, Captain Abraham ‘Abe’ Rockwell had a moment alone with his plane. He walked slowly round the battered craft. The hull was badly scraped and there were patches where the plywood had been smashed away completely. Aside from that, there was damage to one of the propeller blades, damage to the lower left wingtip, and the utter destruction of the plane’s undercarriage.

But Abe’s manner wasn’t simply the manner of an equipment-owner attempting to quantify the damage. He didn’t just feel the plane, he stroked it. He ran his hand down the leather edging of the cockpit and brushed away some cobwebs that were already being built. When he got to the nose of the aircraft, he pulled his sleeve over his hand and cleaned up the lettering that read, ‘Sweet Kentucky Poll’. Dissatisfied, he went to the engine, fiddled with a fuel-pipe, pulled it free and dribbled a little fuel onto a rag. Then he set the pipe back in place and scrubbed at the name with the gasoline-soaked cloth. This time, he got the name as bright as he wanted and he straightened.

Straightened and stopped. He turned and spoke directly into the heap of straw that filled the opposite end of the barn.

‘It’s rude to stare.’

Seeing that the straw made no answer, Abe picked up an axe handle from the floor and tossed it onto the top of the heap.

‘Ow!’

The straw wriggled and a red head emerged.

‘I said it’s rude.’

‘Sorry, sir. I…’

‘Yes?’

‘Nothing.’

Abe waited a short moment, then shrugged. ‘If it’s nothing, then you won’t mind leaving.’

‘No, sir.’

The red head attached itself to a skinny kid, who slid down the straw pile and landed with a soft thwack. ‘Sorry, sir.’ The kid, whom Abe recognised as the autograph-hunter from earlier, glanced across into a corner of the barn, then brushed himself off, ready to leave. Abe followed his glance. There was a bucket of warm water there, soapy and still steaming, a bath sponge floating on the surface.

‘Wait.’

The kid stopped.

‘You came to clean her?’

The kid nodded. ‘Doesn’t matter, sir. I can do it later. Sorry.’

Abe shook his head. The gesture meant: Don’t leave yet.

‘D’you have a name?’

‘Lundmark, sir.’

‘Your ma and pa think of giving you a first name to go along with that?’

‘Yes, sir. Bradley. Brad.’

‘Mind if I use it?’

‘No, sir.’

‘OK, Brad, now I’m not over-fond of this “sir” business. I’m not in the army now and I don’t want to be. If you want to call me something, I’m happy with just plain Abe. If that’s too much for you, you can call me Captain. Understand?’

‘Yes. Yes, Captain.’

‘Good.’

There was a pause. The slatted evening light was moving round, bringing new parts of the airplane into view and hiding others. Abe found a cobweb he’d missed before and brushed it away absent-mindedly.

‘We’ll start at the nose.’

Abe brought the bucket over to the plane and the two of them began to wash her, nose to tail, removing the dust and the flaking paint and the burned-on oil and the scatter of straw-dust and insects. For about fifty minutes they worked mostly in silence, changing the cleaning water from a pump in the yard outside. Then, as the light began to fade, Abe threw down his sponge.

‘Hell,’ he said. ‘That’s not too bad. For a moment back there, I thought the landing was gonna turn out rough.’

Still clutching his sponge, the kid turned to Abe. ‘You’ve smashed up worse ‘n that?’

‘Yeah, plenty worse.’

The kid’s eyes, which had been large before, grew moon-shaped and moon-sized. Abe, irritated with himself, added sharply: ‘Anyone who flies enough will have a few bad smashes. Most machines fold up pretty easy. The accidents mostly look worse than they are.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Captain.’

‘Yes, Captain.’

‘You ever been up in a plane?’

Brad Lundmark shook his head, the way he might have shaken it if the Archangel Gabriel had asked if he was acquainted with Paradise.

‘If you got some time to help me out here over the next week or two, I’ll give you a ride. What d’you say?’

‘Oh, yes! Sure thing, Captain! Gee! I promise I’ll –’

‘Hey, hey, it’s OK. It’s only a plane ride. If I’ve got any cash left after we’ve fixed her up, I’ll give you a couple of bucks a day as well, but no promises.’

Abe rummaged in the rear cockpit and brought out a fur-lined sleeping roll which he threw out under the wing. Lundmark looked shocked.

‘Captain, there’s a boarding house just down the block. You can’t –’

Abe pulled his shirt off, took the sponge and the bucket of water, and scrubbed himself hard all over. He sluiced water through his close-cropped grey-blond hair, until it stuck up in spikes, and rubbed hard at the back of his neck, where there had been a line of sweat and grime.

‘That’s better.’

Abe fiddled in his luggage for a spare shirt, which he pulled on. Lundmark noticed that the cuffs and collar were old and worn.

‘Brad?’

‘Yes, Captain?’

‘I gotta have food. Poll here’s gotta have fuel. She’s got some pretty bad hospital bills coming up. One thing I can’t afford to spend money on is a bed.’

Lundmark shook his head. ‘That ain’t right. If you explained who y’are to Mr Houghton at the hotel, why I’m sure he’d –’

‘He’d tell me to pay for my bed just like anyone else. Brad, I’m gonna lie under the wing of my airplane. Can you think of a better place for a guy to sleep?’

Lundmark shook his head.

‘No, Captain. Say –’

But what he was about to say, Abe would never know. There was a minor commotion in the yard outside. Somewhere a small dog barked angrily. Then four men appeared in the barn door against the violet air. They were dressed in dark suits and ties, which they wore with Sunday stiffness. One of the men – six feet plus, mid-fifties, lean, intelligence in his face, moustache – spoke.

‘Good evening to you, Captain Rockwell. My name’s Gibson Hennessey, owner of the General Store down there. On behalf of the town, I’d like to apologise for being so neglectful earlier. I want to assure you that we didn’t mean no disrespect. It wasn’t ’til the kid here informed us who you were, that we realised we had a hero of the United States in our midst.’

Abe’s blue eyes gave nothing away, but his mouth possibly hardened a little before he answered. ‘I didn’t feel no disrespect, Mr Hennessey. I didn’t exactly let you know I was coming.’

‘No, indeed.’

‘And I’m plenty happy with the barn here.’

The second of the men laid his hand across his chest. He was a plump man, fat and buttery. “Low me to introduce myself. Ted Houghton’s my name, proprietor of the Independence Hotel and Bar, only these days I ain’t got a bar. I’d be only too honoured, if you’d accept my hospitality for the duration of your stay.’

‘Right, and any assistance we can give in getting your airplane all fixed up, you just ask.’

The two sides fought gently for a minute or two. Abe wanted no fuss. He just wanted to fix up his plane and move on. But there was no escape. Surrounded by the four dignitaries, Abe was escorted back to the centre of town, feeling like a prisoner on his way to the jailhouse.

‘The folks here wanted to show their appreciation…’ murmured Hennessey, as a crowd of two hundred people stood and cheered Abe’s arrival. A collection of schoolkids performed a rendition of the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’. A man, whose name Abe didn’t catch, made a truly dismal speech of welcome. Abe was expected to reply at length, but he just stood on the hotel steps and said, ‘I’m mighty grateful to you all. Thank you.’

There was another round of applause. Half the schoolkids thought an encore of the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ was in order, but luckily the effort sputtered quickly out. Abe was bundled into the hotel where he was the guest of honour at a five-course dinner, ending with a vast sponge cake in the very approximate shape of an airplane.

By eleven o’clock, Abe had finally escaped to his room.

He rooted around in his bags for a tattered pack of Pall Mall cigarettes, then stretched out on his bed and lit up. With the oil lamp set low, he lay on his back and breathed smoke at the ceiling. His face was tired and he looked ready to sleep.

For ten minutes, he lay and smoked. Then a couple of circular marks on the wall high up behind the wardrobe caught his eye. Swinging his feet lightly to the floor, he took a chair over to the wardrobe and examined them.

The marks were gouged right through the plaster through to the room next door. The top of the wardrobe still had a little white dust beneath the marks, indicating either that the hotel didn’t dust very often or that the marks were relatively recent.

Captain Abe Rockwell had earned his rank as a pursuit pilot in the United States Army. Before the war, he’d been an auto mechanic, then a racing driver. When war had broken out, he’d decided to switch trades. He’d thrown in his job racing cars. He’d wangled his way out to France as a mechanic attached to one of America’s newly formed flying squadrons. He’d fixed planes by day, and by evening more or less taught himself to fly. Despite being over-age and lacking either a commission or a college education, he nevertheless persuaded the authorities to give him a chance in the cockpit. He’d repaid their faith. His first victory over a German machine had come within two weeks. Another three months had seen his fifth victory – and his official recognition as one of America’s few fighter-aces. By the end of the war, he’d been promoted to captain, had command of a squadron, and had had nineteen victories officially confirmed. Of the American pilots to have survived the war, only Ed Rickenbacker had shot down more enemy planes.

Abe was a military man who’d seen plenty of combat, plenty of action. He knew what bullet holes looked like, and these were bullet holes.

4

Willard didn’t get headaches. He didn’t get them from heat. He didn’t get them from noise. He didn’t even get them after a jugful of martinis, when everybody else was looking as white and fragile as a porcelain teacup. But he had one now.

He stepped inside. The shades were down and the interior was cool and dim. Reflections from the pool outside trembled on the ceiling. Willard closed the door, and the voices grew small and distant. He had been holding a letter in his hand, which he let drop on the carpeted floor. The letter was from his accountant. A stunt plane they’d used but hadn’t insured had just smashed up. Another eighteen thousand bucks had slid uselessly down the pan.

He sank into a deep chair and sat slumped, hardly moving.

Willard felt lousy, when all the time he knew he should be happy. After all, he was a lucky man, born into a lucky family.

His great-grandfather had begun it all, manufacturing handguns and rifles for sale to the country’s wild frontier. The business had prospered. The Civil War had turned Thornton Ordnance into one of the country’s biggest profit-makers, one with international reach. The nineteenth century had been a good one for wars and the firm had benefited from every one. When the Great War had broken out in Europe in 1914, Thornton Ordnance entered its most profitable phase. Junius Thornton – Willard’s father – made money hand over fist. On America’s entry into the war, profits had doubled, then doubled again.

But it wasn’t just Willard’s family which had been touched with magic. He had been too. Willard had been a student at Princeton when Germany, in a fit of lunacy, began unrestricted submarine warfare against American shipping, thus propelling America into the war. Willard’s studies hadn’t exactly been going badly, but they certainly hadn’t been going well. Willard happened to meet a British pilot and saw the way the man had used his war stories to pull any girl he wanted.

And so, one sunny autumn’s day and with almost no prior consideration, Willard had taken the plunge. He’d joined up. He sought a pilot’s commission and got it. Within three months of that sunny October day, he was in France, a lieutenant in the US Army Flying Corps.

He hadn’t been there a week before he regretted it.

On his first flight over enemy lines, he was almost killed. On his second flight, he returned with bullet holes plugging his upper starboard wing and the tail mounting. Within three weeks, Willard could count four lucky escapes – and not one time when he’d even got a shot away at the enemy.

That had to change and it did.

By a fluke, Willard was transferred to the Ninety-First Squadron, under the command of Captain Abraham ‘Abe’ Rockwell.

Before letting his newest recruit out on patrol, Rockwell ordered Thornton to take to the air, twenty-five miles behind the lines, to take part in a dummy patrol and dogfight. Willard thought he’d done OK, but Rockwell had torn Willard’s combat-flying to pieces. Over the next two weeks, he’d reassembled it, from the ground up.

When Willard was allowed back into the air, he scored his first kill on his very first patrol. He wasn’t the best pilot in the sky, but he was no longer a dangerous novice. By October 1918, he’d brought down three German machines – just two short of the magical number, which would turn him from a fine pilot into an officially recognised flying ace.

Rockwell had seen the younger man’s desire and, in the first week of November, assigned him to fly against the enemy Drachen – gas-filled observation balloons, that rose from fixed steel cables a mile back from the collapsing German front. The assignments were simple and dangerous. Simple, because there was nothing easier than shooting at a giant inflammable balloon. Dangerous, because the Germans curtained their precious balloons with intense and accurate anti-aircraft fire. Willard accepted his assignment gravely. Before each flight, he was so afraid, he vomited secretly in the hangar toilet. But he’d hit his targets and escaped being hit himself. On November 8, three days before Armistice was declared, Willard downed his second Drache. A Drache counted the same as an airplane. By the time peace broke out, Willard Thornton was a flying ace. He returned to America, a hero.

He hadn’t been the bravest pilot, or the best. He hadn’t scored anywhere near as many kills as Rockwell or Rickenbacker. But none of that mattered. He was an ace – and he was stunningly good-looking. Up-close, far away, carefully staged or thrillingly informal: there just wasn’t an angle that made him look bad. Sandy-haired, blue-eyed, wide-chinned, strongly built. His smile was terrific, his eyes enticing, his mouth full and kissable. He was dazzling to look at and he knew it.

Hollywood saw the potential and was quick to move. The studios fought to get his signature on a movie deal. One of the studios had a guy literally follow him round with a blank contract. Willard rose to the bait and signed.

His first picture had billed him as ‘Willard T. Thornton, America’s favourite ace’. A movie-going public, still enchanted with its war-time heroes, flocked to see it. For a few brief weeks, Willard’s had been one of the most recognisable faces in America. The second picture had sold well. The next two movies had done OK. The last two had sagged, flopped, sunk from sight.

But Willard had grown up a little. He knew enough to make a picture of his own – ‘Heaven’s Beloved, a picture of class’. He’d asked his father for finance. His father had put him in touch with Ted Powell, a Wall Street banker. Willard had made his pitch – and Powell had bought it. And although the picture was over-schedule, although Daphne O’Hara had just quit right in the middle of filming, although costs were out of control and his precious stunt plane had just crashed, Willard’s luck was staying the course.

Ted Powell continued to believe, continued to come up with cash. The original sixty-thousand dollar loan had mushroomed. First to eighty, then to a hundred, then to one-twenty, then to an ‘open-ended loan facility’ – banker-speak for don’t-even-ask.

Willard was a lucky man, born into a lucky family.

5

The Lundmark kid showed up at seven o’clock sharp, with a pot of coffee and a couple of rolls.

‘Feeding me, huh?’

Abe had been up at dawn, and found nobody yet awake at the hotel. Sooner than wake anyone, he’d come directly to the barn. He’d shaved in a can of hot water brewed over a primus stove, then stripped to the waist and washed under the yard pump. Right now, he was stretched out on a bale of straw, rubbing soft wax into his flying boots and mending a small tear on his jacket.

‘I just thought … if you don’t want it, I can…’

‘No, Brad, I want it. There are a couple of mugs in there,’ said Abe nodding at the rear cockpit of the broken plane. ‘Green canvas bag.’

Lundmark approached the plane like it was holy, and came away with a single mug.

‘Don’t drink coffee? You’re missing out.’

Abe sipped his coffee and took a bite of the bread roll.

‘We’ll get to work shall we? We’ll need to send away for a new blade,’ Abe indicated the busted propeller. ‘Aside from that, if we can find some timber and a forge, I haven’t seen anything we can’t fix.’

‘Really? Wow! You can get it going again, Captain?’

‘Careful, Brad. She’s a lady.’

‘Huh? Oh. I mean, her. Sorry.’

‘Reckon we can. First thing is to send a wire to my friends at Curtiss. Get a new blade out here. There a post office in town?’

‘Sure, Captain…’ Lundmark’s reply wasn’t exactly confident.

Abe was silent for a minute. He’d flown over the town, searching the ground for landing sites. He brought the view to mind. There are an infinity of obstacles that can smash up an aircraft. A cow. A ditch. A rickety fence with a single strand of wire. A boulder. A pothole. A tree stump.

Or telegraph wire. During the war, a friend of Abe’s had been shot up in a dogfight over enemy lines. With fabric streaming from one wing and controls mushy from German bullets, the plane had limped home. Struggling in to land, barely skimming the tree-tops, the plane had struck a line of telegraph wire. The wheels had snagged. The nose had been yanked down. Pilot and plane had dived into the ground at seventy miles an hour.

Abe thought back to his view of the town from above. No wires. ‘There’s no telegraph, is there? Where we gotta go? Brunswick?’

A tiny hesitation. Then: ‘Yeah, Brunswick. Joe Borden takes his cart in on a Tuesday. I guess we could ask him.’

‘Good.’

Abe paused. He’d seen something else from the sky; something that had puzzled him then and was puzzling him even more now. ‘A mile south of here,’ he said, ‘there’s another town.’

‘Uh-huh.’ The kid was non-committal, but evasive. He began cleaning invisible muck from a side of the aircraft which enabled him to keep his expression concealed.

‘There’s no other town marked on my map. It’s Rand McNally, 1921. I’ve never known ’em to be wrong before. Not that wrong anyways.’

‘It’s called Marion. It’s kind of new. Grew up a lot the last couple of years.’

‘That’s a lot of growing.’

‘I guess.’

The kid clearly didn’t want to talk, and, though Abe’s intense blue-eyed stare held the boy a few moments longer, he allowed the matter to drop. But it was a puzzle. It wasn’t just that Rand McNally hadn’t marked the town. It was where the town was and what it was.

What it was, first of all. From the air, Abe had seen large white houses, big yards, motor cars, even a couple of swimming pools. The contrast with the sun-bleached timbers and dusty streets of Independence was even stronger when darkness fell. Whereas Independence couldn’t boast a single electric bulb, the town below had been a blaze of light. The thump of oil-fired generators had thudded softly through the night.

Then there was the matter of where it was. Independence stood in a low range of hills on the edge of the Okefenokee swamps. Between Independence and Jacksonville there were salty marshes, mangrove swamps, a maze of creeks running out to the ocean. Independence was connected to the rest of the world only by a single-track unpaved road, plus the railway which ran just inland from the coast.

Why on earth had a slice of the brash new America wound up in these back-of-beyond swamp lands? Where was the money coming from to finance those new houses, the big cars? And why was the kid Lundmark lying to him about having to hike in to Brunswick to find a telegraph?

Abe could remember the view from the sky perfectly well. Marion, Independence’s mysterious new neighbour, had a line of telegraph wire running directly into it from the south. If Abe wanted to send a telegram, he only had to stroll a mile downhill.

6

The cigar smoke hung blue-grey in the projector beam. The first reel snickered to an end and the screen filled with light. Willard jumped up to change the reel.

‘That dame,’ said Ted Powell, prodding the air with his cigar, looking every inch like the Wall Streeter that he was. ‘Is she meant to be the same as the first one?’

‘Brunhilde Schulz? O’Hara?’

‘Blondie back there. The one who just got kidnapped by the bank robbers.’

‘O’Hara quit on us. Right in the middle of filming. Breach of contract. We found a girl who looked OK from a distance, but all the close-ups are of O’Hara.’

‘Is that why the backgrounds are funny?’

‘They’re not that funny.’ Willard fiddled the second reel into place, poking the fragile celluloid through the little rollers. The lamp inside the projector was burning hot and the whole apparatus was scorching to the touch. ‘Ow! Here. You’ll like this next bit.’

The next bit was the skyscraper scene.

‘That’s me in the plane. I did this stunt myself.’

‘Funny place to park an airplane.’

Willard and the girl who really was O’Hara bounded out onto the roof. They looked dramatic – tragic – resolute. Then they bounded into the plane. The next shot had the propeller whirling and Willard clenching the muscles in his jaw.

‘Plane that starts itself,’ commented Powell. ‘Nice.’

‘She’s only a Gallaudet and she didn’t start herself. We’re doing things cheap here, Powell. Cheap as we can without … without…’

‘I was kidding, Will. And call me Ted.’

The plane rolled to the edge of the building, then plunged out of view. The next shot, taken from a neighbouring rooftop, showed the little Gallaudet dive nose-first for the ground. After falling ten or twelve storeys, the nose had come up and levelled out. There was another close-up of the hero: resolute – victorious – defiant. Then a shot of the Gallaudet flying out of sight, while a group of hoodlums poured out onto the roof and began shaking their fists at the sky.

‘Jesus Christ!’ said Powell.

‘Pretty good stunt, isn’t it?’

‘Looks like you just fell clean off the edge.’

‘We did just fall.’

‘Something wrong with the airplane?’

‘No. It’s a question of air speed. You have to build speed before you can climb. And it was a dive, not a fall. Saying “fall” makes it sound bad.’

‘I saw a picture recently where they pulled a stunt like that.’

‘Breaking Free. They had it in Breaking Free.’

‘Yeah, maybe. Only there, the airplane flew, it didn’t just fall. You sure your plane was OK?’

‘They had a catapult. We thought about using a catapult, only it wouldn’t have been very realistic.’

‘Realistic…?’

The two men watched in silence to the end of the reel. They watched the girl be captured twice more by the hoodlums and be rescued back both times. The best stunt showed the girl being snatched by an airplane from a speeding car. The girl didn’t look too much like O’Hara and the pilot didn’t look too much like Willard, but it was a good stunt all the same.

The second reel snickered to its close. Willard got up again, tweaking the cuffs of his shirt from his jacket sleeve so they showed up better. He’d just spent four hundred bucks on a set of silver cuff-links and it annoyed him when they didn’t show. Powell stood up to flex his back. The cigar smoke filled the room like a migraine.

‘How’s distribution coming along? If I was going to be picky about it, I’d have to remind you that your first repayments were due last week.’

‘Distribution?’ said Willard. ‘Don’t you even want the third reel?’

‘Oh, there’s more? Sure…’

The reel ran on in ugly silence. Willard watched it with new eyes and found himself hating every frame of it. A picture of class, indeed! The picture was pitiful, truly pitiful.

He owed Ted Powell one hundred and ninety-four thousand bucks.

7

There was plenty to do.

The first thing was to cut away the ruined fabric and assess damage to the wooden structure beneath. Using knives sharpened in a little engine oil on the step of the barn, Abe and Brad cut away the torn cotton and piled it up in the yard to burn later.

As the ship’s frame began to come into view, Abe was relieved to see that the main wing-struts were scuffed and cracked, but basically intact. The plane looked more like a skeleton now; but there was something fast and hungry in her look as well. He whittled splints for the cracked spars and screwed them carefully into place, wrapping twine round the joins for extra strength.

Then Abe stripped the engine, so he could clean, oil and reassemble it. As he’d known from the outset, it had been a faulty valve in the fuel-line which had created a blockage in the feed. It had been the work of five minutes to locate the problem and fix the valve. Most engine problems were like that. Little tiny niggles, which sometimes killed you, sometimes didn’t.

As the first week merged into the second, the new undercarriage began to take shape. Abe had some ideas on putting a cowling around the wheel base to reduce drag. By stretching cotton tightly over an arrangement of hoops and battens, he succeeded in putting his ideas into practice. Poor old Poll looked like she was wearing her winter stockings, but he promised her that she’d like them once she was airborne.

When the structural work was all done, he and Brad wound swathes of cotton around the exposed frame, pulling it tight so the fabric was hard and taut. Then they painted her: red and white, the colours Abe had used ever since his days as a barnstormer. Then, to protect the paint and fabric, they painted her again with cellulose dope, a kind of aviator’s varnish.

The battered airplane began to look herself again; perhaps better.

Abe usually worked alone – he usually did pretty much everything alone – but he liked working with the kid. The kid’s enthusiasm was uncanny. His aptitude too. Again and again Brad reminded Abe of himself at the same age. It was almost like working with a version of himself plucked from twenty years into the past.

As the days passed, Abe had counted another twenty-three bullet holes in the buildings around Independence. The glossy boomtown down the hill still seemed to be invisible. There was still no explanation of why Independence was the only town in America which still treated ex-army pilots as descended demi-gods. Abe kept his eyes open and his mouth shut.

On the evening of the tenth day, Abe was sitting alone in the hotel dining room, eating cold pie and potatoes. Then, just as he was finishing, Gibson Hennessey, the tall storekeeper, wandered in. The two men nodded a greeting.

‘Ed Houghton looking after you OK?’

Abe thought of the mountainous puddings he’d been subjected to – each one of them ‘in his honour’.

‘Yeah. Sometimes even better than that,’ he commented.

‘Ted’s right hospitable when he wants to be, especially in the pudding-making department.’ Humour flickered round the storekeeper’s mouth, before his voice changed again. ‘You won’t take this bad, I hope, but there’s a little whiskey to be had, if you were a whiskey-drinking man.’

‘From time to time.’

The storekeeper wandered over to the shelves where the glasses were kept. He helped himself to a couple and led the way upstairs, clearly knowing which room Abe had been given. At the door, he stood back politely and let Abe open up.

The room was the best in the hotel, but simple enough for all that. There was a deep and comfortable bed, a dressing table and chair, a wardrobe, and a small green armchair which emitted puffs of dust if anyone sat on it. There were a couple of oil lamps, grown smoky from needing their wicks trimming. A thin curtain moved sluggishly in front of the open window.

‘This OK for you?’ said Hennessey, looking around. ‘I got a better room over at my place if you want it, only I figured you’d be happier without a troop of little Hennesseys yelling and screaming the whole time.’

‘You figured right.’

‘I’d probably be happier, matter of fact.’

Abe pulled off his boots and stretched out on the bed. Not satisfied with his first attempt at getting comfortable, he pounded and pummelled his pillows into shape, before lying back with a sigh. Hennessey put the two glasses on the table and produced a pint-bottle wrapped in brown paper from his coat pocket. He poured the whiskey and handed Abe a glass.

‘Local moonshine. Been going long before Volstead, keep going a long time after. It’s always had quite a following in Independence.’

Abe sipped. The whiskey was good and he drank again. They’d been varnishing again today, and, though Abe liked the smell, it always made him dizzy. The whiskey helped.

‘Mind if I smoke?’ Hennessey produced a packet from his pocket and offered them to Abe. The pilot shook his head, but told Hennessey to go ahead. For a while, the two men were silent together, Hennessey smoking by the open window, Abe lying, eyes half-closed, on the bed. Eventually the storekeeper broke the silence.

‘Being a famous man and all, I guess you get a lot of attention? Even when you don’t announce your presence by putting your machine right down on Main Street.’

Nothing in Abe’s manner changed, except that beneath his lids, his eyes grew more alert.

‘Truthfully, Hennessey? I haven’t been received like this for five years.’

The storekeeper smiled. ‘No shortage of patriotism in Independence. That’s the trouble with this country, see. Short memories. People ought to remember more.’ He finished his cigarette and tossed the glowing butt in a wide arc out onto the dirt street outside. He watched it go.

‘That’s the trouble with America, huh?’ said Abe softly. ‘And what’s the matter with Independence?’

The tall storekeeper turned from the window. ‘What makes you think there’s anything wrong?’

Abe closed his eyes and rested the glass of whiskey on his chest. ‘Only everything I’ve seen since coming. That’s all.’

Hennessey nodded. Some of his pleasure in their little drama left his face. It was replaced by something sadder and older.

‘What’s wrong with Independence?’ he repeated. ‘Everything’s wrong. Everything bar the whiskey.’

8

‘Two hundred thousand dollars? Two hundred exactly?’

Junius Thornton, Willard’s father, named the figure. You need to be a rich man to name a sum like that and show no feeling aside from a businesslike care for arithmetical exactitude.

‘One ninety-four. I rounded up.’

‘One ninety-four, I see.’ The older man nodded. He had his son’s strong face and broad bones, but whereas Willard looked handsome, Junius just looked heavy. He looked the way a boxer might look, if he’d been hauled out of the ring and given five thousand dollars to spend at Brooks Brothers. ‘I had no idea pictures were so expensive.’

‘It’s not just the actors. You need the cameramen and the stunt guys. We used a lot of airplanes and … it adds up.’

‘Yes, I see. I’d never thought about it.’

There was a pause. Willard flicked at his trouser leg with irritation. Whoever had last pressed them had put the crease in the wrong place, so that the old one was still showing up like a shadow of the new. Willard wished he’d noticed before dressing that morning. The silence ran on.

‘Well, anyway,’ said Willard eventually, ‘Ted’s on at me about his money. I can’t help admitting I feel a little peeved. He’s not being quite gentlemanlike. I mean he can’t possibly think there’s a problem, can he?’

‘I don’t know,’ said his father. ‘I don’t know the nature of your arrangement.’

‘It was a loan, of course. But I mean to say, the understanding was always…’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, he never said anything about chivvying me, like some Lenox Avenue rent collector.’

‘But perhaps you never said anything about failing to repay him.’

‘Oh for heaven’s sake! Don’t take his side. It’s not like that.’

There was another pause, an even longer one this time. Sometimes, silences are shared. They belong equally to both people in the conversation. But not always. This one wasn’t. This one was strictly the property of the older man. Willard’s scalp tightened. Noises from the street outside seemed like an invasion. Eventually, the older man lifted his gaze.

‘You haven’t made it very plain why you wanted to see me. But, if I have it right, you are asking me to settle your debt with Ted.’

‘Yes. Yes, I am.’ Willard had been intending to ask for some money in addition. It had been a long time since he’d seen any income, and after selling his Hollywood villa and settling his other debts, he’d only have around twenty-five thousand dollars in the world. To ninety-five per cent of Americans, twenty-five thousand dollars would have felt like an impossibly large fortune. To Willard, it felt like the breadline.

‘You seem equally confident that I shall agree.’

‘And I should hope so! Lord, it’s not as though I’ve ever asked for money before.’

‘No. No, indeed.’

His father slid open a drawer and drew out a slim case in unmarked black leather. Inside, Willard knew, there was a chequebook issued by the Morgan Bank; America’s most prestigious bankers – and ones who offered their services only to the very, very wealthy. Junius picked up the fountain pen from his desk, uncapped it, examined the nib, dried it carefully on the pink blotter, then wrote out two cheques. He examined the nib again and frowned before screwing the cap back on the pen. He placed the chequebook back in the drawer and closed it.

All this time, Willard was silent and sulky. But if he’d been honest with himself, it hadn’t been too bad. His father had been difficult, but not nearly as bad as he might have been. He’d known some fellows back in college who’d had the most furious fights over money. All in all, he’d got off lightly. His headache drummed away, but wasn’t any worse.

His father took a dry sheet of blotting paper and held it down over the cheques, rubbing from side to side with a thick forefinger. He didn’t say why he’d written two. He didn’t say anything about how much he’d written the cheques for. They stayed invisible beneath the blotter.

‘Willard, in a way I’m pleased that we should be having this conversation.’

‘Yes, Father,’ his son responded, not quite clear what conversation it was they were having.

‘I am fifty-seven, as you know. I expect I shall have another thirteen years or so at the Firm. Perhaps less. I shan’t attempt to push myself if my health turns poor.’

‘No. Quite right. Worst thing to do. Did you ever meet poor old Noggy Edwards’ pa? He…’

Junius waved a finger. ‘Your concern for my health is creditable, but is not what I wish to discuss.’

‘No. Quite. Sorry.’

‘It has always been my expectation that you should succeed me. My hope, I should say. My hope.’

‘Well, of course! I mean, after all –’

The older man didn’t so much interrupt as simply continue, trampling whatever Willard had been about to say. ‘But the Firm is a very demanding organism. It turns a profit because I compel it to turn a profit. Making money is never just a question of holding your hat out.’

Willard shook his head. His headache was squarely back now, like an angry bruise. He sat with his hand pressed to his temple.

‘It isn’t clear to me yet if you have the…’ the businessman groped for the correct word. He couldn’t find it and shook his head. ‘If you have what it takes. Brains. Guts. Desire. Ambition. Everything it takes to be a man.’

Willard opened and closed his mouth. ‘Lord, Father, I’ve just turned twenty-five. I’d say I’ve accomplished rather a lot. Not just during the war, but in Hollywood…’

‘Your time in California has been an unmitigated disaster.’ Junius held one of the two cheques up and shook it. ‘I have the proof of that here. You did well enough as a pilot although, as I remember, you decided to serve your country at much the same time as Princeton was wondering if it had done wrong in allowing you a place.’

‘Oh heavens! Mr Rooney and his conic sections! I…’ Willard’s hand dropped away from his head. He jutted his chin. His manner was defiant, but also cowed. He didn’t argue.

‘I don’t wish to belittle your accomplishments. You are my son and I continue to have faith in you. I suggest we let the past dwell in the past and instead look to the future.’

Willard nodded agreement. ‘Oh, yes. Give me half a chance and I –’

His father interrupted. ‘I have always assumed, perhaps wrongly, that in due course you wish to lead the Firm. I have thought you would wish to do this, because I have been unable to believe that a son of mine should wish for anything else. But it is a decision you must make for yourself. Do you wish to lead the Firm? Yes or no?’

Willard stuttered for a second or two. He stuttered because he hadn’t expected the question and because he was never entirely comfortable in his father’s presence. His father hated people who mumbled or repeated themselves or didn’t complete their sentences. Willard had a tendency to do all these things and his bad habits grew worse under his father’s gaze.

But the answer itself was as clear as day. Of course he expected to lead the Firm. Willard was a Thornton, the only son, the natural and rightful heir to the family throne. Of course he would one day lead the Firm.

‘Gosh, yes, Pa. As a matter of fact, I was about to say, isn’t it time I began? I mean, the movie business is one thing, but it’s hardly… I’d like to start, Pa. I think I’m ready.’

Willard hadn’t come into the room with any intention of getting started at the Firm. But now that his father had raised the issue, the answer seemed obvious. The movie business had turned sour. It was time he started at the Firm. He was the heir anointed. He was ready to lift his crown.

His father nodded massively.

‘Good. I should not have wished your answer to be any different.’

Willard began to feel a surge of relief. His father would never want him to start work with a two hundred thousand dollar debt around his throat. His father could cancel the debt, give him a position, get him started. Willard supposed there would be hard work to put up with, but, for all his playboy past, he wasn’t afraid of hard work.

‘That’s wonderful, Papa, I –’

The businessman raised a finger, stopping his son in mid-flow. He placed the two cheques face up on the blotter and pushed the blotter across the desk so Willard could see them both clearly.

The first one was written out for twenty-five thousand dollars and Willard moved his glance aside with a flicker of irritation. The second cheque was better. Much better. ‘One million dollars precisely.’ The figures were so many that the older man had had difficulty fitting them into the space designated. Willard felt an almost overpowering urge to reach out and take the money.

But first there was a question. He lifted his eyes.

‘Father?’

‘You may take whichever cheque you choose. You may take the million dollars. You can pay off Ted. You can make pictures. You can do whatever it is you wish to do. But you will have nothing to do with the Firm. There are professional managers available these days, who will conduct business in a first-rate way. As for the future, I shall treat you as I propose to treat the girls. I shall give each of them a large gift upon marriage. That’s this, in your case.’ He tapped the million-dollar cheque in front of him. ‘Thereafter there will be nothing further during my lifetime. When your mother and I pass on, you and the girls will inherit everything in equal fifths.’

‘Or?’ asked Willard in a whisper.

‘Or you may take the smaller cheque. You got yourself into debt. You must get yourself out of debt. If you succeed in doing so, I believe you will have the wherewithal to make a creditable leader of the Firm.’

‘But two hundred thousand dollars, Pa. I…’

The businessman didn’t soften his expression at all.

‘You may come to whatever accommodation with Ted Powell you can. I would not expect him to make any special allowance for you because you are my son. But he is a good finance man. He’ll be reasonable.’

Willard stared back at the cheques. The large one and the small one. Both, in their different ways, represented a life sentence of a sort. Willard’s headache thundered in his temples. He felt like a small boy asked to do a man’s job.

‘As I say,’ said the older man, ‘the choice is yours.’

9

Hennessey finished speaking.

It was gone midnight. Outside, a few dogs howled, a few birds called, the breeze set up a low murmur that ran from tree-top to tree-top. Abe’s blue eyes, the brightest thing in a dingy room, had been fixed on his companion for the past hour and a half. Hennessey had smoked twelve cigarettes, Abe just one. Though the pint bottle of whiskey stood within easy reach of both men, it was still nearly full. Abe hadn’t even finished his first glass.

There was a long silence which extended beyond the two men out into the whispering night beyond.

‘That’s a hell of a story, Hennessey.’

‘You can call me Hen. Everyone does.’

The story was this.

Four or five years back, Independence was like every town the length and breadth of America. It wasn’t too good, it wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t too rich, it wasn’t too poor. The sheriff was busy now and again, but so was the preacher. Folks made money, they made love, they made merry, they made out.

Then, in the early days of 1921, things began to change. At first, it was nothing so extraordinary. A big block of land down in the river bottom was sold to out-of-towners. Up the hill in Independence, people laughed. The land down by the river was marshy and prone to flooding, pretty near useless for farming. There were jokes made about cows learning to swim, about harvesting corn from a rowboat.

But the laughter died. Construction crews were brought in. The land was drained. The river was contained behind concrete walls. Houses and villas were thrown up: big, lavish affairs with oil-fired generators, electric lights, air conditioning, indoor bathrooms, one for every bedroom. That part of it was exciting – unsettling maybe, but exciting.

Then people began to arrive. The houses became occupied, the villas filled up.

‘There’s gambling down there,’ said Hennessey. ‘Blackjack, poker, craps, roulette, the lot. And booze too, of course.’

‘Gambling? It’s hardly Palm Beach down there, Hen.’

‘Different type of customer. Palm Beach is for rich guys on vacation. They take a swim, they take the air, they take in a casino. Marion ain’t like that. It’s for serious gamblers. Folk who like the fact that there are no cops in shouting distance. The town is run by hoods, for sure, but I’d say that their clients were mostly just as rough.’

Abe thought again about the view of Marion from the air. There was a single-track rail spur linking the town to the coastal express line and a single-track dirt road heading out towards Brunswick. Neither route looked like it carried a lot of traffic.

‘Marion’s tough to get to, isn’t it?’

The storekeeper nodded. ‘They run a kind of buggy service out to the railroad and back. But hard-to-get-to is part of their pitch. They attract the kind of folks who don’t get on with cops.’

‘And they haven’t been the best of neighbours, right?’

The question had made Hennessey reach for another cigarette, which he lit before answering. ‘I guess we didn’t make a great first impression. Certain parties up here in Independence feel mighty strongly about old John Barleycorn and the whole Prohibition thing. Those parties called the cops, the county government, the County Gazette, generally made a bit of a noise.’

‘And?’

‘The cops came, took a look, said far as they were concerned Marion was full of law-abiding citizens going about their law-abiding business. They told us to shut up.’

‘And?’

‘And that night a couple of cars came up from Marion full of goons and Tommy guns. They shot us up. They weren’t really trying to kill anyone, just trying to let us know how they felt about things. We had four people hurt, plenty of damage to property. So then a bunch of people made a complaint not just to the county but to the state Capitol in Atlanta.’ The storekeeper dragged on his cigarette until a quarter-inch glowed red on the tip. He stared at it as if it held an answer to all the problems of the world. ‘The cops never came. The letters never got answered. But the folk who’d signed those letters had their houses torched, shots fired at them, livestock shot dead in the field, crops burned. Two men were beaten so badly they could hardly see.’

Abe looked intently at the storekeeper. ‘The house behind the store has a new front, Hen.’

‘Yes, I was lucky. I got to the fire before it had done too much damage. I don’t give a damn for Prohibition. I don’t see why federal government should meddle in county business. But then again, I don’t like the idea that some goons could go buy themselves the laws they wanted. I don’t like the way they take out their guns at the first sign of trouble.’

‘And now?’

‘They want us gone. That sound crazy? But it’s true. They just plain don’t want us as neighbours. Course they got jobs down there. Poor folks’ jobs. Would be coloured jobs, ’cept we never had too many coloureds round here. Cleaning floors, mending roads, that type of thing. But aside from that, they want us gone. It’s little things, but it’s all the time. Farmers wake up, find somebody’s fired their hayrick. Houghton here gets his place smashed up ’bout once a year. Me, I’ve had my own problems. If anybody even whispers about resisting, it isn’t long before they’re jumped on and beaten to a pulp. We’ve had one person blinded, six hurt so bad they can’t walk without help, and one very brave man killed. And people are leaving. There are easier places to live, easier places to make a buck. They want us gone, Captain. They’re killing the town.’

Silence filled the room. The breeze outside had fallen almost silent and the thumping beat of the electricity generators down in Marion could be heard.

‘That’s one heck of a story, Hen.’

The older man nodded, reached for his pack of cigarettes and found it empty. ‘The hell with it,’ he said, flinging the pack away from him.

‘Sounds like you don’t plan on quitting.’

Hennessey made a gesture with his hands, which could have meant just about anything. ‘I have a steel plate on my door and bars over my windows. I have a gun in the shop and another one by my bed. I’ve stayed because I don’t like quitting, but not everyone feels that way. No reason why they should.’

Abe blew out. ‘Sheez, Hen… Listen, tell me more about the booze.’

‘What’s to say? You want a drink, I’d say the bars in Marion were pretty nicely stocked.’

‘I didn’t mean that. The way you tell the story, the gambling came first and the booze came second. I don’t figure it like that.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘Think about it. If you wanted to make money out of gambling there are plenty of places you could pick. Marion doesn’t look like the most obvious choice. On the other hand, if you were thinking of making money from booze, then Marion looks like a million-dollar bet. It’s connected to the sea by a few miles of river. The coast is quiet and open. It’s as close as you want to Bimini and the other islands. The local coastguard has its hands full trying to keep booze out of Miami and Jacksonville. How much time will they spare trying to keep it out of Marion?’

Hennessey nodded. ‘Yeah, they bring it in all right. They’ve got a big shed on the river. But still, how much can one bunch of hoods and gamblers drink?’

‘There’s a rail line. A spur running right down to the coastal express.’

‘Yeah. Twenty, thirty years ago some folks from the north found kaolin upriver from here. They built a rail line, then the kaolin ran out and the business folded. But the line’s still there.’

‘I don’t think Marion drinks all the booze it brings in.’

‘They load it onto the railroad, you think? Could be. I wouldn’t say no. Hell, who knows what goes on in a goon’s mind?’

Abe didn’t answer that. Still lying on the bed, he stretched like a cat, right down to his toes. Then he rolled over, reached for his glass of whiskey and swallowed what remained.

‘What I’m wondering,’ he said, ‘is what goes on in a storekeeper’s mind. And specifically, why a storekeeper should go to a lot of trouble to tell a beat-up pilot a lot of things that aren’t any of his business.’

Hennessey picked up the whiskey bottle, thought about pouring himself another glass, but thought better of it and set it back on the table. He looked suddenly old, tired and unshaven. When he spoke his voice had none of its earlier guile or subtlety.

‘We need your help,’ he said. ‘We need you to save us. You’re all there is.’

10

Ted Powell was six foot, an athletic mid-fifties, and had a face that smiled almost constantly. The smile was deceptive. That was a thing Willard would learn to remember. Ignore the smile. Look at the eyes. The smiles were like a gentleman’s agreement. They looked nice and meant nothing.

‘Welcome to Powell Lambert,’ said Powell, as they strode along to his corner office. ‘Your first time on the Street, I imagine. You get here OK? No trouble parking?’

‘Parking? I came by cab.’

‘Oh! Cab?’

‘Sure. I –’

‘And I assumed you’d come by airplane! What? Our roof isn’t good enough for you?’

‘I – uh –’

Willard smirked in embarrassment, but Powell had begun to laugh away at his own joke. ‘It’s a good roof. Nice and flat. Or have you decided to quit falling off skyscrapers? Ha, ha, ha! Hell of a stunt that.’ He zoomed his hand vertically down like a stone. ‘America’s favourite ace! Ha, ha, ha!’

‘I guess we should have paid for the catapult.’

‘That was a stinker of a movie, eh, Will? A stinker.’ Powell’s face didn’t change as he said this. It was still smothered by smiles and tobacco smoke.

‘Well you know, I wouldn’t quite –’

‘You want to know my favourite bit? It was the bit where Blondie has to jump off the clock-tower and there you are right underneath in an airplane. You know –’ Powell leaned forward. His face grew serious and he wagged his finger for extra emphasis. ‘You know, I think you were right about the catapult. I just don’t think that would have been realistic.’

Willard leaned back. He prided himself on a sense of humour, but Powell was pushing things too far. ‘I’m sorry you didn’t like the movie,’ he said stiffly.

‘Ha, ha, ha! I didn’t say I didn’t like it. I said it was a stinker. I liked it. Boy! I liked it.’ He roared with laughter, a series of guffaws that subsided into chuckles and then into silence. ‘So … you’re six weeks late on your first repayment. Second instalment due in two and a half weeks.’

‘Yes. That’s what I wanted to come and talk about.’

Powell’s cigar had run into some kind of problem, and he was puffing away over a lighted match to get things started again. ‘Hmm? Eh? Oh, needn’t have done, Will. No need.’

‘Well, obviously, our income fell rather short of what we’d hoped.’

Powell was shaking his head. It wasn’t clear if he was taking issue with Willard’s words or the disobedience of his cigar. ‘No, no… Not our income. Your income.’

‘Very well, if you prefer, but in any case –’

Powell was done with his cigar. He waved it at Willard. ‘I made you a loan. If I’d been dumb enough to come in for some equity, then you could say our income. That’s the beauty of lending. I don’t care if the movie was a beaut or a stinker, you pay me back just the same.’

‘And I fully intend to.’

‘Right. Otherwise you end up bankrupt.’ Powell was still smiling.

‘I hardly think you need to speak to me in those terms.’

‘I’m calling in the loan. The whole of it. Due in two and a half weeks. Margaret, my secretary, will give you written notice before you leave.’

‘But I have eight months. We agreed. There were to be at least eight months.’

Powell wagged a finger. ‘You’re in default. The rules change. Read the contract.’

Once again the suggestion of migraine came to press on Willard’s temples. Somewhere in the last few weeks and months, his world had changed. Not for the better. Very much for the worse.

‘Powell, may I be candid?’

‘Call me Ted.’

‘Ted, I’d like to be candid.’

‘Nothing to stop you.’

‘I haven’t any money. Nowhere near enough.’

‘Bad thing to tell your banker, my boy.’

‘I guess I figured you already knew.’

Powell smiled. He was very calm for a man owed almost two hundred thousand dollars by someone with no money. Willard noticed this and felt even more unsettled.

‘I guess you could run along to Pappy. From what I hear, it’s been another great year for guns and bombs.’

‘Yes.’

Willard knew that Powell was right. After a sharp collapse in profits after the end of the war, the Firm had begun to rebuild. ‘Strengthen the Old; Build the New’ was Thornton’s watchword. By 1922, Willard’s father had proudly announced that the Firm’s profits would equal those of 1916. Since then, each year had continued better than the one before.

‘Look, I have spoken to Father and he’s offered to bail me out if necessary. Most handsomely, as a matter of fact.’

‘Excellent. Money in two and a half weeks, then.’

Willard shook his head. Up until a few weeks ago, life had seemed simple. He had looks, he had luck, he had charm, he had money. But things had grown complex; horribly so. Life had come to seem like a puzzle with a million moving parts and only one correct solution.

He hadn’t simply accepted his father’s ultimatum. The choice of cheques and the conditions that rode with them felt humiliating and unfair. But all his arguing had been useless – and, as a matter of fact, it hadn’t really been an argument. An argument takes two and the businessman hadn’t even bothered to raise his voice. Willard might as well have been throwing sand against granite for all the difference he’d made.

So the scene ended as it had begun, with a choice. Willard could bail himself out and give up his future throne. Or he could take the smaller cheque, extricate himself from his mess with Powell, and take his proper place beside his father, the heir anointed.

‘Listen, Ted, my father has offered to clear my debt, but I’d sooner, if I can, clear the debt myself.’

Powell stopped puffing, stopped smiling. His face was suddenly very cool, very still.

‘You wish to clear the debt yourself?’

‘Yes. Yes, Ted, I do.’

‘I see. And how do you propose to do that, may I ask?’

11

Abe said no.

What else could he have said? A foxy old storekeeper wanted Abe to save the town from a bunch of gangsters down the hill. From all Hennessey had said, it was clear that the gangsters were well-established, well-organised and well-financed. Even supposing that Abe felt like playing the hero – and he didn’t; he truly didn’t – what could one man do in such a situation? The cops, the county, the state had all proved useless or worse. How could one man, working alone, do anything to help?

So he said no. Positively, certainly and finally no.

Hennessey had accepted his answer, or pretended to. But the next day, Hennessey returned to Abe’s slatted barn-cum-workshop, warm and cordial as ever. The storekeeper’s ostensible mission was a concern about getting Main Street ready for Abe’s impending take-off.

‘The street’ll be fine. I just need everyone well clear,’ said Abe.

‘There are some potholes. I’m getting ’em filled. Should be done by the end of today.’

‘Thanks.’

‘And them trees at the end of the road. They ain’t gonna be in the way?’

‘I’ll wait for the right wind. If I get the conditions right, I’ll either clear the trees or have room enough to slip left of them.’

Hennessey shook his head. ‘That ain’t right. We owe you a proper send-off. I’ll have ’em felled. The worst ones, anyhow.’

Abe felt caught between two feelings. On the one hand, he was pleased to get Main Street properly cleared for a take-off. On the other hand, friendly as Hennessey was, Abe suspected him of ulterior motives.

‘Didn’t you hear me last night, Hen? I said no.’

‘Sure I heard.’

‘Listen, I know how to fly a plane. I can fix an engine if it breaks. And if my plane happens to have a gun on it, I’m a pretty good guy for shooting at other airplanes. That’s it. That’s me. That’s all.’

‘Sure, I understand. Probably I was dumb for asking.’

‘You knew that before. But you still went ahead and asked.’

‘It wasn’t because you can fly a plane, Captain. It’s because you’ve got it here.’ The storekeeper struck his heart. ‘And here.’ He tapped his forehead.

‘I reckon you’ve got plenty in both those places yourself.’

‘Hah!’ Hennessey made a hacking noise in his throat. ‘My wife’s got a sister over in Atlanta. If things get bad enough here, we got another place to go. Things being how they are, I don’t see I’d get a lot for the store, but –’ he shrugged ‘– there are others who lost a whole lot more.’

‘I’m sorry, Hen. I’d have helped if I could.’

‘I expect you’re right. Probably nothing you could do for us anyway.’

‘I don’t think there is.’

‘OK, then. You can’t blame me for asking.’

‘No blame.’

The storekeeper shook his head, dismissing the subject. ‘Say, though, before you leave, why not take supper with Sal Lundmark tomorrow? She’d love to have you round. Brad wanted to ask you, but was kind of shy. You’ve got yourself one heck of an admirer there.’

Abe looked sharply at the storekeeper, whose face was a picture of innocent friendliness. Abe suspected him of being up to something, but didn’t know what. In any case, Brad had been a terrific helper and Abe wanted to find a way of saying thank you.

‘Sure. He’s a good kid. I’d like that.’

Hennessey got up to go. The plane still sat in the barn, as she had done since the first day, but there was nothing sad about her appearance now. The plane was trim and clean. Her engine smelled of fresh oil and gasoline. The fabric over her wings was hard and taut, a series of gleaming curves, that seemed only waiting for the command to leap into the air and ride it.

‘There much more to do here, Captain?’

Abe nodded out towards the yard. He’d nailed a long roofing batten to an old horse-hitching post. On the top of the pole, a ribbon of white silk hung limply in the breeze.

‘The take-off site’s kinda short. Lowering the trees will help, but I’ll still want a bit of breeze in my face before starting out. And I’ll probably want to go not long after sun-up, before the air’s heated too much.’

‘Hot air’s a problem?’

‘A plane needs lift to get airborne. Cold air’s got more lift than hot.’

‘So that’s all you’re waiting for? A wind from the south and a bit of cold air?’

‘Uh-huh. Aside from that, we’re ready to go.’

The storekeeper was taken aback. He’d seen the way the plane had smashed up on landing. He hadn’t realised Abe could be ready to move on again so fast. But he controlled his expression and nodded.

‘You’d best go over to Sal Lundmark’s tonight, then. Wouldn’t want to keep you here unnecessarily.’

‘No.’

‘I’ll tell her to expect you.’

‘Thanks.’

Hennessey walked to the barn door and the white dust and beating sun outside. He looked back at the barn, the plane and the pilot. ‘Don’t mention it,’ he muttered. Then he headed out, back to Main Street and his store. He had a cigarette between his lips and was searching his pockets for matches when he heard a movement behind him. It was the airman, a strangely troubled expression on his face.

‘Hen, last night you asked me to do something for you. You asked me to help you and the town here out of a fix, a real bad one. I said no.’

The storekeeper nodded, his face shadowed by the brim of his hat from the fierce overhead sun.

‘I said no for two reasons and I only told you one of them. The reason I told you about had to do with the jam you’re in. It’s not clear to me – as a matter of fact I don’t think it’s clear to you – what one man could hope to do. Even if I wanted to, I don’t see as I could do anything to help.’

‘Uh-huh. And the other reason?’ Hennessey spoke slowly as though the sun was stealing energy from his words. The storekeeper’s cigarette was still between his lips, still unlit.

‘The other reason is me. Before the war, I was a racetrack driver. When the war came, I did everything I could to get out to France, because I thought I’d be able to fly planes and fight them. And I was right. I was right about that part. But I hadn’t understood something then, which I understand now.’

He stopped speaking. His jaw actually locked and he looked as though he wasn’t going to speak another word. It took Hennessey a moment or two to realise that Abe hadn’t simply paused, so it was only after a few seconds that the storekeeper stepped closer and prompted, ‘Yes?’ When Abe spoke, his answer was so quiet that only the baking stillness of the air allowed Hennessey to catch it.

‘A man’s got to want to play the hero. And at first I did, I guess. I was crazy for it. But then they promoted me, gave me a squadron. And I changed, or maybe the war changed me. I wanted nothing to do with any of it. But I had no choice. I was a serving officer with orders to carry out. What I did, I did because I had to. To the best of my abilities. But I’m not the man you thought I was, Hen. I’m sorry.’

The storekeeper nodded, his mouth slightly open and a dark crease running between his eyebrows. He looked surprised or disbelieving. But the look was only temporary. He held up his cigarette, still unlit. He smiled like a man who looks around for his glasses and finds them on his nose. He lit the cigarette and inhaled.

‘I’ll tell Sal Lundmark to expect you. You’ll be getting a pot roast, I expect.’

‘Pot roast sounds good.’

‘And you should ask to see the kid’s collection of flying stuff. He’s nuts about it.’

‘Yeah.’

The storekeeper looked up at Abe’s makeshift windsock. The strip of white silk still hung down, as if in surrender. The two men nodded. Words still unspoken drifted just beyond them, out of reach. Then the storekeeper turned and walked away, shoes scrunching in the dazzling dust.

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