The aerodrome was surprisingly busy when he and the rest of his flight bumped over the rutted fields. It was the kind of activity he hadn’t seen for a long time. Everybody was tearing things up by the roots and pitching them into trucks and wagons.
“We’re moving up?” Moss asked a groundcrew man after he shut off the Wright’s engine and his words were no longer his private property.
“Hell, yes,” the mechanic answered as Moss descended from the cockpit and, awkward in his thick flying suit, came down to the ground. “Front is moving forward, so we will, too. Don’t want you burning up too much gas getting where you’re going.”
“That sounds plenty good to me,” Moss said.
“Me, too.” The groundcrew man pointed to the bullet holes in the fabric covering the fighting scout’s wings. “Looks like the natives were restless.”
“Ground fire,” Moss replied with a shrug. “But I knocked down a Pup that was strafing our boys, and Hans got another one, and we came back without a scratch.”
“Bully, sir!” the groundcrew man said. “What’s that bring your score to?”
“Six and a quarter,” Moss answered.
“I knew you were an ace,” the fellow said, nodding.
Moss laughed-at himself. “And I’ll tell you something else, too: I was keeping track so well that they were able to give me a surprise party after my fifth victory, because I didn’t remember which one it was. Hans gets everybody drunk tonight, though-this was his first.”
His flightmates were down from their aeroplanes, too. He went over and thwacked Hans Oppenheim on the back. He hit Oppenheim a solid lick, too, but all the leather and wool his fellow flier had on armored him as effectively as anything this side of chainmail.
“Major Cherney will not be unhappy with us today,” Oppenheim said. He had all his self-possession back, and seemed faintly embarrassed to be the object of Moss’ boisterous congratulations.
Percy Stone shook his head. “Cherney won’t even notice we’re here, except that we give him some more things he has to think about. He’s got moving the aerodrome on his mind.”
“He doesn’t have to worry about moving our aeroplanes-we’ll fly ’em,” Pete Bradley said. “I just wonder where the hell we’re supposed to fly ’em to.”
“Don’t let ’em promote you past captain,” Stone advised Jonathan Moss. “Once you get oak leaves on your shoulders, you have to worry about too many other things to do as much flying as you want.”
“That’s so,” Moss said. He started to add that he would be as happy not to have unfriendly strangers shooting at him up in the sky. Before the words came out of his mouth, he realized they weren’t true. He never felt more alive than he did two or three miles above the ground, throwing his aeroplane through turns it wasn’t meant to make so he could get on an enemy’s tail or shake a Canuck off his own. It was pure, it was clean, and it made everything else in the world-fast motorcars, fast women-seem about as exciting as solitaire.
Women…maybe not. After the flight had reported to Major Cherney, the squadron commander said, “Get yourselves packed up, boys. You’re scheduled to move out bright and early tomorrow morning. New aerodrome’s over by Orangeville, twenty miles up the road. We have made some progress. And well done to you all. Hansie, first drink’s on me tonight, for losing your cherry.”
“Thank you, sir,” Oppenheim said. Moss never would have had the nerve to call him Hansie, not in a million years.
Back at the tent the flight shared, Moss looked over his meager belongings and said, “I can throw this stuff in a trunk and a duffel bag in half an hour flat. I think I’m going to take a walk before I pack.”
“I know where you’re walking,” Percy Stone said. Amusement glinted in his eyes. “I’ve walked that way a time or three. You’re wasting your time. She still hates Americans.”
“All right, maybe I am wasting my time,” Moss said. “At least I’ll be wasting it in better-looking company than any of you lugs.” He left the tent to the jeers of his flightmates.
When he got to Laura Secord’s farm, she was on her hands and knees in the vegetable garden, weeding. When she saw him, she gave him the same greeting she usually did: “Why don’t you go away, Yank?”
“That’s what I came to tell you,” he answered. “I am going away. The whole base is going away. I came to say I’d miss you.”
She glared at him, which only made him find her more attractive. “Well, I won’t miss you or any other Yank,” she answered, gray-blue eyes flashing. Then she softened a little. “Where is the base going?”
“I won’t tell you,” he answered. “If I did, you’d probably try to imitate your famous ancestor and let the British know where we are. I don’t want to wake up one night with bombs falling all over the place.”
Laura Secord bit her lip. She must have been thinking about doing just what he’d said. Indeed, she admitted it, saying, “You weren’t supposed to see through me. Go on, then. Go wherever you’re going. I only wish you-all you Yanks-were going out of my country and never coming back.”
“That isn’t going to happen,” he said. “In fact, I will tell you we’re going forward, because you could find that out for yourself.”
She looked down at the ground. When she raised her face again, it was wet with tears. “Damn you,” she whispered. “Damn all of you, however too many there are.”
Moss found himself with little to say after that. It was his usual condition in conversations with Laura Secord. But, for once, he did come up with something: “When the war is finally over, I hope your husband comes back here safe.” Most of him even meant it.
“Thank you, Captain Moss,” she said. “You make it hard for me to hate you in particular along with the United States.”
“That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” he replied with a smile.
“It’s the nicest thing I’m likely to say to you, too,” she told him. “Now go your way, wherever it is that you dare not let me know.” With unmistakable emphasis, she returned to her weeding.
And Jonathan Moss walked back to the aerodrome and landing strips that would soon be abandoned. He’d never seen any of Laura Secord but her face, her hands, and her ankles. He’d never touched her. He’d rarely had anything but insults from her. He was whistling as he walked. He wondered why he felt so good.
The Dakota ’s seaplane splashed down into the South Atlantic close by the battleship. Sailors on deck, Sam Carsten among them, waved to the pilot. He waved back, delighted as always to come down in one piece.
Carsten turned to Luke Hoskins and said, “I hope to Jesus he’s found something worth our while to fight. Otherwise, we’re going to have to turn around and head back to Chile.”
“Goddamn ocean is a big place,” Hoskins said, “and the limeys’ convoys are hugging the shore now that they know we’re in the neighborhood.”
“We’ve got to hit ’em in Argentine waters, too,” Carsten agreed unhappily. “If we sink half a dozen freighters inside Brazilian territory, it’s even money whether we scare Dom Pedro IV into coming in on our side or make him so mad, he’ll declare for the Entente.”
“I don’t want to get all that close inshore,” Hoskins said. “The limeys have been selling those damn little torpedo boats to Argentina the last twenty years, and everybody and his brother’s been selling ’em to the Empire of Brazil. Run up against one of those babies when you’re looking in the wrong direction and it’s liable to ruin your whole day.”
That was more talk from the shell-heaver than Sam had heard for the past week. “Those torpedo boats are one of the reasons we’ve got the destroyers playing tag with us,” he said.
“Come on, Sam, I know that-I didn’t ride into town on a load of turnips,” Luke Hoskins answered. “Here, let me ask it like this: are you happier knowing your neck is on the line if somebody on one of those goddamn pipsqueak four-stackers didn’t polish his telescope when he should have? Damned if I am, I’ll tell you that much.”