«Who will kill his bulls?» one of the older matadors asks the other.
«We, I suppose… We kill the savage’s bulls, and the drunkard’s bulls, and the riau-riau dancer’s bulls.»
The point is, some people get the job done and some people don’t. A successful writer gets the job done. No matter what is happening around him or her. No matter family or weather or finances, a writer writes. The world can collapse and the writer writes. No excuses. No delays. No waiting for inspiration or the right moment or the proper phase of the Moon. A writer works at it. The rest is all talk.
Humphrey Bogart made somewhat the same point when he said, «A professional is a guy who gets the job done whether he feels like it or not.»
«Brothers» is a story about two professionals, doing two very different jobs that needed to be done on a certain day in November 1971.
5 November 1971: Command Module Saratoga, in Lunar Orbit
Alone now, Bill Carlton stopped straining his eyes and turned away from the tiny triangular window. The landing module was a dwindling speck against the gray pockmarked surface of the barren, alien Moon.
He tried to lean his head back against the contour couch, remembered again that he was weightless, floating lightly against the restraining harness. All the old anger surged up in him again, knotting his neck with tension even in zero gravity.
Sitting here like a goddamned robot. Left here to mind the store like some goddamned kid while they go down to the surface and get their names in the history books. The also-ran. Sixty miles away from the Moon, but I’ll never set foot on it. Never.
The Apollo command module seemed almost large now that Wally and Dave were gone. The two empty couches looked huge, luxurious. The banks of instruments and controls hummed at him electrically. We can get along fine without you, they were saying. We’re machines, we don’t need an also-ran to make us work.
This tin can stinks, he said to himself. Five days cooped up in here, sitting inside these damned suits. I stink.
With a wordless growl, Bill turned up the gain on the radio. His earphones crackled for a moment, then the robotic voice of the Capcom came through.
«You’re in approach phase, Yorktown. Everything looking good.»
Wally’s voice answered, «Manual control okay. Altitude forty-three hundred.»
Almost three seconds passed. «Forty-three, we copy.» It was Shannon’s voice from Houston. Capcom for the duration of the landing.
Bill sat alone in the command module and listened. His two teammates were about to land. He had traveled a quarter million miles, but would get no closer than fifty-eight miles to the Moon.
5 November 1971: U.S.S. Saratoga, in the Tonkin Gulf
Bob Carlton tapped the back of his helmet against the head knocker and held his gloved hands up against the canopy’s clear plastic so the deck crew could see he was not touching any of the controls. The sky-blue paint had been scratched from the spot where the head knocker touched the helmet. Sixty missions will do that.
Sixty missions. It seemed more like six hundred. Or six thousand. It was endless. Every day, every day. The same thing. Endless.
The A-7 was being attached to the catapult now. It was the time when Bob always got just slightly queasy, staring out beyond the edge of the carrier’s heaving deck into the gray mist of morning.
«Cleared for takeoff,» said the launch director’s voice in his earphones.
«Clear,» Bob repeated.
He rammed the throttle forward and felt the bomber’s jet engine howl and surge suddenly, straining, making the whole plane tremble like a hunting dog begging to be released from its leash.
«Three … two … one … GO!»
His head slammed back and his whole body seemed to flatten against itself, pressed into the seat as the A-7 leaped off the carrier’s deck and into the misty air. The deep rolling swells of the blue-green water whipped by and then receded as he pulled the control column back slightly and the swept-wing plane angled up into the sullen, low-hanging clouds. Without even thinking consciously of it, he reached back and pushed the head knocker up into its locked position. Now he could fire the ejection seat if he had to.
In a moment the Sun broke through and sparkled off the mirrors arrayed around the curve of the canopy. Bob saw the five other planes of his flight and formed up on the left end of their V. The queasiness was gone now. He felt strong and good in the sunshine.
He looked up and saw the pale shadow of a half moon grinning lopsidedly at him. Bill’s up there, he thought. Can you see me, Bill? Can you hear me calling you?
Then he looked away. A dark slice of land lay on the horizon, slim and silent as a dagger. Vietnam.
«Contact. All lights on. Engine stop. We’re down.» Bill heard Dave McDonald’s laconic voice announce their landing on the moon.
«We copy, Yorktown. Good job. Fantastic.» Shannon sounded excited. He was due to fly the next mission. «Saratoga, do you read?»
Bill was surprised that he had to swallow twice before his voice would work. «Copy. Yorktown in port. Good going, guys.»
It was an all-Navy crew, so they had named their modules in honored Navy tradition. The lunar lander became Yorktown. Bill rode alone in the command module, Saratoga. The old men with gold braid on their sleeves and silver in their hair loved that. Good old Annapolis spirit.
«You are go for excursion,» said Shannon, lapsing back into technical jargon.
«Roger.» McDonald’s voice was starting to fade out.
«We’ll take a little walk soon’s we wiggle into the suits.»
And I’ll sit here by myself, Bill thought. What would Shannon and the rest of those clowns at Houston do if I screwed my helmet on and took a walk on my own?
The fucking oxygen mask never fit right. It pressed across the bridge of Bob’s nose and cut into his cheeks. And the stuff was almost too cold to breathe; it made his teeth ache. Bob felt his ears pop slightly as the formation of six attack bombers dove to treetop height and then streaked across the mottled green forest.
This was the part of the mission that he liked best, racing balls-out close enough to the goddamned trees to suck a monkey into your air intake. Everything a green blur outside the cockpit. Six hundred knots and the altimeter needle flopping around zero. The plane took it as smooth as a new Cadillac tooling up to the country club. Not a shake or a rattle in her. She merely rocked slightly in the invisible air currents bubbling up from the forest.
Christ, any lower and we’ll come back smeared green. He laughed aloud.
Bob flew the bomb-laden plane with mere touches of his thumb against the button on the control column that moved the trim tabs. The A-7 responded like a thoroughbred, jumping smoothly over an upjutting tree, turning gracefully in formation with the five others.
Why don’t we just fly like this forever? Bob wondered. Just keep going and never, never stop.
But up ahead the land was rising, ridge after ridge of densely wooded hills. In a valley between one particular pair of ridges was an NVA ammunition dump, according to their preflight briefing. By the time they got there, Bob guessed, the North Vietnamese would have moved their ammo to someplace else. We’ll wind up bombing the fucking empty jungle again.
But their antiaircraft guns will be there. Oh yes indeed, the little brown bastards’ll have everything from slingshots to radar-directed artillery to throw at us. They always do.