Cassada was nodding. Wickenden walked past without seeming to pay attention. Afterwards he motioned to Cassada. “Come here a minute,” he said.
They stood by the blackboard. The room by then was empty. Wickenden looked down at the floor. “I’ve been in three other squadrons,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“This is your first, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sometimes the first is the last one.”
Cassada said nothing. Though it was a matter of only eight or nine years, he seemed much younger standing there. He seemed a different, unrelated breed.
Wickenden went on, as if thinking back, “I had a pilot in my flight you remind me of. Back at Turner. You’re a lot like him. You want to know how?”
Cassada remained silent. Wickenden raised his eyes.
“You couldn’t tell him anything. He was too smart for that. He knew too much.”
“That’s not me, Captain.”
“One day I let him go out alone, just local, and about ten miles away from the field he started some low-level acrobatics. Unauthorized, naturally. He dished out of the first roll. Went straight in.”
Cassada was returning his look, almost with a kind of pity.
“You could have put what was left of him in a matchbox,” Wickenden said.
“So?”
“I knew all along it was going to happen. I just didn’t know how. Or when.”
“Is that it?”
“No, that’s not it. I want you to draw a lesson from that.”
“What kind of lesson?”
“You know what kind.”
Cassada nodded somewhat tentatively. A pilot like Grace was what he wanted to be, a pilot everyone respected, who had flown in combat and been shot at, who’d been hit by ground fire like Grace and brought the airplane back somehow, a man you could count on.
“You couldn’t tell him anything,” Wickenden repeated.
“That’s not me.”
“You think not?”
“No, sir, and I’m going to be alive after you are.”
Wickenden’s face hardened.
“Never happen,” he said grimly.
Chapter V
The flight commanders’ meeting was always at the end of the month, a discussion of concerns and of what things were coming up, ending with Isbell asking each of them directly about any particular problems. Wickenden sat without saying a word, looking bored.
“Nothing?” Isbell said.
“No.”
Isbell knew the truth. Wickenden was waiting for the others to leave, the lesser others. At last they did and Wickenden stayed behind, his mouth in a thin line, staring down at his hands and working the Zippo lighter, open and shut. At last he said, “I know you don’t want to hear this, but it’s not going to go away.”
“What’s that?”
“Cassada.”
“What’s wrong? What’s he done?”
Wickenden opened and clapped his lighter closed several times. Finally he said, “It’s not what he… It’s what he’s going to do.”
“Have an accident.”
“He’s going to kill himself. I know what I’m talking about. I had another one just like him, in the States.”
“The low-level acrobatics.”
“That’s right,” Wickenden said. When he spoke, everything was final. It was like someone beating a carpet, flat, heavy blows. “You could have put what was left of him in that ashtray.”
“I suppose you told Cassada the story.”
“Certainly.”
Isbell could imagine it. Maybe you don’t think so, but I’ve had them like you before. The difficulty was that once you said I can’t do anything with you, what was left after that? It was an ultimate statement.
“Well, I had my doubts about putting him in your flight. I didn’t want to put him with Grace or the others. You’ll just have to make it your job to keep him from killing himself.”
“Nobody can do that,” Wickenden said.
“They can’t?”
“He has the mark of death on him.”
“Oh, my foot.”
Wickenden began clapping his lighter shut again.
“The mark of death,” Isbell said. “You once told me the same thing about Dumfries.”
“It’s true.”
“You’re getting to see it in everybody. Look at me, do I have it, too? If I don’t, I’m going to be worried.”
Wickenden had his eyes on the lighter held in his lap, lifting the lid and snapping it down. He knew certain things. Nothing could change them.
“You know more about flying than he does, don’t you?” said Isbell.
“Yes.”
“You spent four years,” Wickenden’s eyes shot up at this, alert at the number, “learning leadership among other things, didn’t you? They were still teaching that up there, weren’t they?” He could see Wickenden taking the inside of his cheeks between his teeth. “Well, weren’t they?”
“You know just what they teach.”
“I should.”
Wickenden clapped it again.
“You’re the senior flight commander,” Isbell said. “Ops officer is the next step. If I weren’t here you’d probably be ops officer. You’d be telling your flight commander the same thing: take care of this man. Find a way.”
Silence.
“What more do you want?” Isbell asked.
“All right, sir.” He was chewing on the walls of his mouth. The three words were an ancient, a cadet formula.
“Who else should I give him to?”
Wickenden sat motionless.
“Who would you suggest?”
“It wouldn’t matter who you gave him to. There’s a hierarchy…”
“A what?”
“A hierarchy of knowing.”
“What is this, some Eastern religion?”
“And he doesn’t know where he is in it. He won’t ever know.”
Isbell rubbed his ear and seemed as if he might sigh. Without another word Wickenden got up to go. Isbell nearly stopped him but they had been through things before. There came a point where nothing that was said made a difference. Wickenden would stand silently, wearing intransigence like a coat of arms.
He walked out the door.
“Wick!” Isbell called, the tone half apology.
But Wickenden chose not to hear.
Chapter VI
Late in the fall ten planes went to Munich again to take over the alert from Pine’s squadron which had been there a month. There was, for a moment, the lapping of two cultures, a few words here and there, a greeting, a taunt. Squadrons were distinct. They were identical and unique. Pine had been known, when asked for a favor by a rival squadron, to say, what do I get in return?.
Isbell, one foot on a chair, was being briefed and taking some notes, perhaps the name of a bar or a couple of telephone numbers he would post later. As soon as Pine and the rest of them left, he pointed to a broom in the corner. Phipps picked it up and began sweeping. Outside, the first engines of the departing planes were being started. Cassada, the pale imprint of an oxygen mask still on his face, kneeled with the dustpan. Isbell had gone.
“That’s right, lady,” Cassada muttered, “I’m a jet pilot.”
“Hold it flatter,” Phipps said.
In the barracks they dragged their bags along the wide hallway and banged open doors. At the far end there was an empty room. Phipps arrived first. In the top drawer of a bureau there were still matches, coat checks, halves of tickets—weeks of someone’s pockets emptied at two in the morning. Phipps was throwing them into the wastebasket when Dumfries appeared.
“Anybody in here yet?”