Paper Doll Read Free Page B

image of Lois’s brother in a B-17, like a boy allowed to sit in the gunner’s seat at a country fair.
    â€œWhat’s it all worth?” he asked.
    â€œWho knows?” Snowberry said. “You think they give away good china for peanuts around here?”
    â€œOld hell-for-leather Bryant,” Lewis said. “He’d like to be a better gunner, but he knows what the bullets cost.”
    â€œHey, I’m just asking,” Bryant said. “You guys would piss on your mom’s Sunday clothes.”
    â€œWith Mom still in them,” Lewis said. “She used to warn us about that.”
    â€œThey sure break good, though, don’t they?” Piacenti said. “Whatever they’re made of.”
    â€œIt’s a funny gag,” Bryant said.
    â€œHe did it to me, too,” Bean said. “I thought he was gonna crack my skull.”
    â€œI am gonna crack your skull,” Lewis said.
    Bean shifted his weight uncomfortably from foot to foot. “I never know when he’s kidding or not,” he complained. Bean seemed to want to believe that the natural order of things was harmony, that conflict came from misunderstanding. His father had run for selectman with the slogan BEAN: I’TS LIKE BEING ELECTED YOURSELF.
    â€œYou gotta watch out, Bean,” Piacenti said. “He’s out to get you.”
    Bean nodded unhappily, half convinced.
    Lewis did seem to have it in for Bean, and no one knew why. It was an instinctual thing, it appeared; pure schoolyard.
    â€œI’m Bean’s personal bogie,” Lewis said. “His own bandit. In the cloud, out of the sun. Whenever he lets his guard down.”
    â€œI should talk to Lieutenant Gabriel,” Bean said. “I don’t see how we’re supposed to work together.”
    Lewis shouted and jumped on him. Bean shrieked and Lewis drove them both into the crockery pile. The others laughed and a cup skittered edgewise like a top across the hardstand. Lewis held a teacup to the crown of Bean’s head like a tiny dunce cap, and Bryant laughed, grateful to have been spared the humiliation.
    â€œLeave him alone, Lewis,” he said. As they shifted, the crockery made musical sounds beneath their weight. “Aren’t we a little old for this?”
    â€œListen to George Arliss,” Lewis snorted. “A year out of high school under his belt. And Strawberry, not even old enough to have a fight.”
    â€œI prefer other forms of contact, if that’s what you mean,” Snowberry said.
    â€œI’m trying to toughen this crew up,” Lewis said. “I know I’m doing the right thing. Bean knows that, even if you don’t. Right?” He glared down at Bean.
    â€œIt’s pretty clear to me,” Bean said. Lewis got off him.
    â€œYou’re the oldest,” Bryant said. “You should set an example.”
    â€œI am,” Lewis said. “I’m getting pretty tired of you guys not picking it up.” About them as a crew he often said, The third time is no charm, boy, stressing the endless ways they did not, as raw rookies, measure up to his first two crews. He particularly had loved his original pilot, a man named Sewell he described as an “ace tyro,” who flew their plane with a tender, sad care. “Some of these guys, they wrestle and fight the thing,” he liked to say. “Sewell, he understood what I call Lewis’s Law of Falling Tons of Metal.” Sewell had been killed in a manner Lewis did not volunteer information on.
    He pointed at Snowberry, whose mouth was slightly open in childish concentration, as if he were going to sneeze. “This is what I’m talking about,” he said. He twiddled a cup grimly. “We’re going after the best air force in the world, on their own ground. They don’t have tours—you stay on till you get killed. Makes for guys who are real good. And real unhappy. Which makes them mean.