He found himself in actual combat, as an interceptor pilot in the Eighth Air Force, over England, before he thought to regret the whole thing. Until he was shot at, he had kept his mind closed to that aspect of his temporary trade. But when, high in the British air, he felt and saw German bullets entering the delicate tissues of his plane, Kit went into funk. He dived clear of attack, leaving two wing mates exposed to a fate which both met soon and heroically. On the ground, he found a plausible explanation for his “lucky” escape. The attack upon six Nazi scouting fighters had not been observed by anybody save those engaged. It was a cloudy day.
Kit knew, however, that in some very present mission he would be obliged again to engage the foe and he knew he would, again, turn tail. He spent two febrile days trying to figure a way out of a situation which, until then, he had regarded as an exhilarating sport and which, to his horror, had become deadly dangerous. Then, on what he sweatily felt was the eve of his disgrace, he and his fighter group were reassigned to another field and a different activity. Buzz bombs had appeared over Britain and it was the task of Kit to intercept these, if possible.
Attacking buzz bombs was dangerous and demanded skill. Ram-jet engines drove the miniature planes at terrific speed, for that era. It was necessary to wait high above, spot one (or learn of an approach by radio) and dive down toward it, using the acceleration of the plunge to overtake the missile. When these bombs were shot at, they usually exploded in the air and the plane that did the shooting was often unable to evade the blast. Thus, some attacking planes, in the early days, blew up themselves to save London’s citizens; others on the same dedicated mission were torn to bits as they streaked into flying fragments. Soon, however, it was discovered that the slipstream of an overshooting fighter could be used to knock down a buzz bomb, tipping it over, causing it to crash prematurely in the open countryside rather than on the intended city.
This feat was a matter of technique and daring. And the VI’s had a negative characteristic which perfectly suited Kit’s personality: they did not shoot back. A cool and skillful pilot with very fast reflexes, Kit became one of the most celebrated assailants of the buzz bombs and so a hero. Where he would have failed altogether in the purpose for which he had been trained, this substitute endeavor matched his inadequate specifications. No one ever doubted, not even the men in his own squadron, that his “nerve” was anything but consummate. It was, so long as the risks he took involved only decisions made by himself. The appearance of any factor he could not control, such as hostile fire, alone unmanned him. He had cut close to pedestrians and other cars—and clipped a few—all his life: diving on a ton of HE carried by a zombie aircraft was no different. It could not hurt him so long as he made no blunders at the controls. That was his psychology and he came home to U.S.A., went back to Princeton, cloaked in a wreath of medals, Sister City awe and maternal ecstasy.
By that time, so long as the issue did not rise in fact, Kit had completely repressed his short-term awareness of any combat defect. He could talk air slaughter on even terms with any ace.
On a cold, gray day, shortly before Thanksgiving, feeling at loose ends and noting (on the bathroom scales, after rising and showering) that he had gained five unwanted pounds, Kit made two decisions which he regarded as important. He would skip lunch for a week. And he would get more exercise.
At breakfast he told his mother, with the urgent solemnity of a businessman who had decided to open a new branch, or a surgeon, to open a peritoneum. They were sitting in the upstairs breakfast room of the Sloan mansion, looking out over their landscaped acres on Pearson Square which, in Victoria’s time (or Garfield’s or Grover Cleveland’s), had been the center of River City bon ton but now, save where Minerva held the fort, was much like the decayed area a mile or so on the other side of Market Street: a run-down neighborhood in which the big houses were compartmented for roomers, or hung with signs denoting piano and voice instruction, furniture repair, spiritualist readings, philately and whatnot, or torn down and replaced by already shabby row houses, which in some instances had yielded again to supermarkets and filling stations.
“Five pounds,” Kit said with a shake of his handsome head.
Minerva shook hers in sympathy. “But why not eat a small breakfast and a small lunch?”
“It’s a problem, I admit. If I don’t eat lunch at all, I’ll get hellishly hungry. That means, I’ll have to do something pretty interesting in the afternoon, to stave off the old pangs. So I thought I’d drive the Jag out to the airport and fly first. Then back to town and the A.C. for squash. The fellows wanted me to play for the club and I was too lazy. But I’ll change my mind.
A rubdown up on the roof solarium, maybe a cabinet bath, perhaps even a few fast rounds with Percy Wigman, on days when there’s time—and home again. All reduced. Or, if it’s an evening out, home and change and scram.”
“I wish you wouldn’t fly.”
“I know, Muzz. Silly of you.”
He went at the matter of losing five pounds, and diverting his mind from hunger’s pangs meanwhile, with great intensity. His heredity had, after all, geared him for large enterprise and since he’d eschewed them he was obliged to undertake small things in a big way. His red Jaguar roared north from Pearson Square and west the five miles on Elk Drive to Gordon Field, the civil airport. He’d phoned ahead; his fast, small plane was ready. He took off, ignoring rule and law, in the manner of hot Soviet pilots, retracting his landing gear to become air-borne.
High above the vast panoply of the two cities, he stunted. People on the ground watched with fascination. Old hands at the airport, even if they’d missed the take-off, identified the pilot by his performance in the air.
After half an hour, Kit tired of using the gray sky for a trampolin and came down closer to the cities, separated by a leaden river, which soon would freeze and bear a burden of dirty snow on its ice. He cut south and on the way came close to earth. Using the deserted Gordon Stadium as a kind of inverted hurdle, he made several passes into it at an altitude lower than its cement circle of seats, its press stand and TV stalls. The maneuver, also illegal, reminded him of faster and trickier antics over Britain. That thought sent him farther south and west to Hink Field, the military airport, where, keeping to the letter of the law, he annoyed several junior officers in Flight Control by circling the area at the closest permissible approach and shooting past nervous young men in trainers.
Swinging, then, on an arc of several miles, he bethought himself of Lenore Bailey. It was easy, at five thousand feet, to sight the metal glint of Crystal Lake. He came in over it low, circling its banks, unmindful of wincing patients in the Jenkins Memorial Hospital, and, zooming, twisting, he sorted from the residences below the intersection of Walnut and Bigelow.
On the northwest corner, the Bailey house sent up chimney smoke. Kit dived fast, pulled out hard, and blew the smoke into the yard. He climbed at full power and came down in a series of loops. He took all of Walnut in a roaring run, at the end of which he zoomed and came back-upside down.
These antics attracted a large and almost unanimously indignant audience among which he could not spot Lenore. People ran out of their thunder-stricken houses—mothers with babies in their arms, housewives with sudsy hands; carrying dish towels, waving pans and pots, and irate businessmen who lunched at home, with shaking fists and tucked napkins. Netta Bailey appeared, in a kimona and hair curlers, which the pilot could not discern; Beau was not there. He did not practice the economical but plebian custom of lunching at home. And Lenore was downtown shopping.