Paper Doll Read Free Page A

I’m on Fox near the water, where the railroad bridge goes over. It’s a beautiful day tho it’s been raining lots lately. The war seems very far away and very close at the same time. Everyone’s very excited and pulling and praying for you. Your uncle Tom says you’re probably an ace by now, and your father said he read about a guy who shot his foot off cleaning his guns. (Can you be an ace on a bomber?)
    I’m glad you have a dog, because I think they’re good company. Even if you have to share them. It’s too bad that the dog can’t see. I guess you’re a Seeing-Eye person. Your father says he didn’t know you could have dogs. I didn’t tell him what you said about your friend taking a squirrel up in the plane with him because I don’t believe you and that’s that.
    Lewis claimed that he had had a squirrel, Beezer, trained to eat out of his hands—the little son of a bitch would sit there like Arthur Treacher, he’d say—and that it had flown two lowlevel missions with him toward the end of his first tour. According to Lewis, at altitude the animal skittered all through the fuselage, its feet sounding like light hail on the aluminum. It showed up on the co-pilot’s shoulder and nearly scared him to death. A rat! he’d screamed over the interphone. Jesus Christ, we got rats! He’d been reassured by the pilot and an amused bombardier that it was no rat, judging by the tail, but he’d cursed throughout the flight to the target that he’d wet himself because of the goddamned thing and that it was probably eating through the control cables right then, while he was talking. Ever see the teeth on those bastards? he kept saying. They were all sitting there laughing, he insisted over the interphone, and pfffft —right through the cables, and into the drink the hard way. They’d bombed some marshaling yards in Holland and Beezer had never been seen again.
    Beezer, Lewis liked to theorize, had done a flying one and a half out of the bomb bay. Some Nazi manning an antiaircraft battery got it right in the face. He would mimic the plummeting Beezer, arms outspread, snarling. He speculated on the aerodynamics of the tail. He said, You think anyone’s going to know what he did? We’re talking about unsung heroes here.
    So what’s new?
    There’a a young boy with the government that moved into the third floor of the Duffy’s (very mysterious) and everyone’s wondering what’s up. All the girls are wild about him. But you don’t have anything to worry about as you KNOW.
    Everyone we talk to is thrilled when we say we have a boy in the service. The poor girls who don’t are so left out. People say that’s our part—find a boy, write him letters, maybe even get engaged. Mom says maybe they figure you’ll fight even harder and do a better job if you’ve got someone in mind you’re fighting for. How did I get on to that subject?
    Bryant folded the letter and got up. He sighed, and went outside. Lewis was breaking plates over his head.
    They made a curious and fragile wooden sound and separated easily into a rain of pieces, like clay pigeons. Snowberry was handing him plates from a tea service, and one by one he was breaking them over his head. Crockery pieces bounced and ticked off the pavement.
    â€œIsn’t it great?” Snowberry said. Bean and Piacenti were standing behind Lewis. “Lewis found all this stuff in the village. He got it all for nearly nothing. Some woman had lost her sons and was selling like everything she owned just right out in front of her house. Flipped. The neighbors were trying to talk her out of it and everything.” He gestured at a small heap of plates and teapots, cups and platters. Lewis broke another and a piece ricocheted a startling distance. It struck Bryant again how young Snowberry was: the same age as Lois’s little brother. He had a fleeting