path: root/CH-5.txt

The living room was covered in photos, 8x10 images of young men, most barely old enough to shave, hair recently shorn away, eyes looking innocent, unsure, some frightened. All of them stared up at her from the coffee table, the couch and the floor where they were scattered. Chase curled her legs beneath her and leaned back on the couch. Steven had come through, though he seemed to be harboring some sort of a grudge about her behavior earlier in the week. She'd decided to ignore it, at least until he had finished tracking down her images, that way, even if he did have some sort of male emotional blowup, she could still walk away until he cooled down again. Though perhaps that was a bit cold she thought, after all he did probably put his job at risk to get her these photos. 

She had managed to match the service photos Steven had sent her to the men in Norm Canton's squadron Christmas photo. In the end she found her mystery man. Twice.

She had already resigned herself to the fact that nothing about this case was going to be easy, nothing about it was going to make sense in the beginning. But the two unidentified men troubled her because it was so unlikely. It would have made more sense to not be able to find half a dozen, or to find them all, those were error of dataset. Narrowing to one would be easy, narrowing it to raised red flags, though she wondered if she would feel that way in absense of men following her around D.C. But two men raised as many questions as it answered. At least, however, she was pretty sure, just based on looking at them, which one was Lt. Lawrence.

One of the men in question was a short, stocky, dark haired man sitting on the wing of a P29, legs dangling in the air above the others in the photo. He was one of five that had climbed on the plane, most stood against the fuselodge, the dark haired man was the only one on the wing. At first his presense on the plane led Chase to think perhaps he was her man, since she considered it unlikely that enlisted men, squardon mechanics and like, would be climbing on the wings of the plane. But a bit of searching the net had set her straight. In fact the mechanics were more likely to be on wings than the pilots, who generally seemed to think of their aircrafts not as things, but as exentions of themselves, whereas for the mechanics they were typically birds, or girls, in other words, external things. One could climb on external things, one did not climb up on an extention of one's self. That would be perverse. Chase considered that perhaps she was over braining the question, but in the end it made sense, pilots sat in cockpits, mechanics sat on wings. 

Since most of the men in the image were not in uniform, and even among the handful that were she couldn't see their insignia and ranks, there was no way to tell for sure what rank the man on the wing might be. She'd even taken the photo down to the basement, dug up her grandfather's old microscope and tried to see if there were more detail. There wasn't, unless you considered film grain to be detail. She called up a friend of Steven's in the tech department and sent him a scan to see what he could do, but he acted like she was crazy. She was pretty sure she could hear him laughing as she hung up the phone. 

So she had put the image away for a while and went for a walk down the road to Duncan's place where she had been invited in for a cup of coffee and recounted her mother's adventures in Las Vegas for Duncan and his wife Eileen. Thus far anyway, since, as Chase told them over a second cup, she thought there was a decent chance her mother wasn't comng home at all. She sat out on the deck with her neighbors and watched the sun sink down over the mainland. Eventually she wandered back down the road in the dwindling Firday evening light and went back to her pictures. 

The second unknown man in the image was squatting down in the very front, sandy hair swept back with pomade. His smile leaped out of the photo in a way that made Chase seriously doubt he was the sort of man anyone would forget. She certainly would not have forgotten him. He looked a bit older than the rest of the men and even without a uniform he conveyed a sense of authority, whether or not that meant an actual rank Chase didn't know. Of the two though, this one struck her as a Reese Lawrence moreso than the man of the wing.

She realized just how tired she was, pinched the bridge of her nose. She got up and opened the fridge looking for something to eat. There wasn't much, save the chinese takeout she had ordered two days ago. For the most part she was subsisting on boiled eggs, spinach salad and wine. She pulled out the chinese and half a bottle of Rose. She flopped down on the couch, pulled out the cork with her teeth and drank from the bottle. The only way to drink Rose she thought with a giggle.

The other bit of news for the week was even more curious than two missing pilots. Steven had pulled off quite an exhaustive search and managed to learn that the note in Lt. Lawrence's very skinny, unhelpful file had been written on a smallish lined yellow notepad manufactured for over thirty years by a paper company from Seattle. He was very vague as to how he had tracked it down, which made Chase suspect perhaps we was stretching the truth a bit, but she was nevertheless impressed and told him, if he ever got tired of doing amazing things with Vim all day that he should consider moving over to field research. Of course Steven real help had been what Chase alwways considered much trickier than tracking down data, making sense of data. At first she considered the news of the notepad no help at all. A thrity year range did nothing to help narrow down who might have once had the file. But then Steven pointed out that, while it was unlikely she'd ever know who had put the note in the file she did know that apparently the DPMO had not started looking into Lt. Lawrence until the early to mid 1970s. In other words, it was unlikely any family had been pestering the department after the war. In other words, it was unlikely that anyone had missed Lt. Lawrence.

The wine began to warm her belly. She reached over and turned on the lamp by the window and watched her reflection in the dark glass. On one hand the absense of relatives made her job harder. There was no one to track down, no one to interview, no one to produce War Department telegrams with dates and other helpful information. There were fewer data point to place on the timeline. On the other hand the fact that no one appeared to have missed Lt. Lawrence made the case even more intreguing. Here, thought Chase, was a story that truly needed saving, a person who had vanished, leaving hardly a trace of their existence behind.

Still, she was worried about the results of her search. It seemed obvious to her now that Norm Canton had been lying. He was standing in the photo, a few feet from the blond haired man she suspected of being Lawrence, surely he as least knew the man. Yet Norm had been quite adamant, I'm sure *I never knew anyone named Reese, not the the whole war.* Most people lied to hide something. A few people lied just because it was easier than, for example, tell a sad story or revealing something awkward about themselves. Some people lied because they were pathologically insane, but Chase had never dated Norm so she was pretty sure he didn't fall in the later category. So why lie to her? She needed to go back. Awkward and uncomfortable though it would likely be, she need to confront Norm Canton about his lie. She needed to know why.

Chase was restless. She opened the back door and went out on the deck. It was a lovely night, crisp and clear. She stared up at the Big Dipper, followed Orion's belt down, her eye draw to the faint purple hint of light and city on the far weatern horizen. She drank more of the wine, sat down in the white pastic chair she had previously pulled out of the basement. She could smell the Potomac, she thought about the river, somewhere further up the bay, running all the way from the pennsylvania mountains, perhaps even further she reasoned, though she knew from a few camping trips as a child that river ran through the hills north of Pittsburg. It ran all the way down to here, where it was swallowed up by the Cheasepeake Bay and drug out to sea. All that water disappearing into so much more water. All these people disappearing somewhere, disappearing into so much water, so much time.

The chime of her phone broke the peaceful still of the night. She pulled out her phone and looked down. It was number she did not know. She shivered and went inside to find her sweater. 



                                -------


It was still chilly the next morning when Chase packed her bags and threw them in the car. Her numbed fingers fumbled ith the keys as she locked the door. And hour earlier she had managed to reach Norm and he had been kind enough to not only agree to see her, but invite her to brunch with the 'leven and lenny's as he had called it, which, from what she gathered was a meeting of eleven or so people at a Denny's on the outskirts of Annapolis, down byt he bay. Norm suggested she come since there would several other men from the 234th there and his friend Ed Wald, not a regualr member, would nevertheless be on hand this morning.

Throughout the conversation Norm had been some gracious and friendly she began to feel bad for ever suspecting that he had lied to her. Perhaps he really didn't know that man standing five feet from him in the photo. It was, she though as she drove toward Annapolis, entirely possible.

The Denny's was, as Norm had said, probablyt he nicest Denny's she had ever seen. The parking lot backed up against the highway, but inside the usually drab brown and yellow decor of Denny's was considerably spiffed up with the help fo a spectacular view out over the north end of the Annaolis harbor where hundreds of ships were berthed and slips leading well away from the shore. Once a fan of Denny's, back in her hard drinking, Greasy food craving hangover days, Chase had, along with most everyone else under 65, realized that Denny's was incompatible with the figure she liked to keep. At some poin though, to judge byt he group of the men Norm introduced her to, one stops caring so much about the size of one's waistline and, presumably, re-embraces the Denny's.

The 'eleven at lenny's group was esconsed in a giant booth in the back corner closest to the parking lot. Norm spotted her as she came in the door and waved her over, he was obviously quite proud of her, or himself for knowing her, Chase wasn't sure, and it was clear that Norm had upped his status with the group considerably by bring an attractive young woman to the table.

Chase tolerated some leering she might not have were she not trying to ingratiate herself a little bit, at least with Norm, Shoe, as Charley Shummaker was universally known to his friends and the somewhat aloof Ed Wald, who, while laughing with the rest of them, seemed less at easy. Perahps it was just becase he was not a regular, but Chase sensed something else, Wald was not one of the guys. 

She recognized Shoe from his service photos. He was older yes, but had the same strong, trustworthy face that looked like it had stepped out of a bank's home load broshure. Unlike nost of the men Shoe had retained his hair, which had turned a deep silver and was kept slicked back atop his head, a slight wave from a callick in the bag, more or less identical to what it looked like in 1941. She wanted to compliment him on his lucky genes, but doing so would require explaining why she knew what he looked like in 1941. There was the Christmas photo, but there was no credible way to claim she could make out the details of his hair using that alone. As it was Shoe took it upon himself to explain the group to Chase.

She settle in to the booth, wedged between Norm and Shoe and proceeded to travel back in time with Shoe whispering in her ear, guiding her around the table telling the unit info and background of all the men in the booth. Most had not been int he 234th, though two others had, but only after the unit was  out to Tripoli near the end of the war. "All they ever did was eat pasta and make the Italian girls," Shoe waved his hands dismissively, but good naturedly at TK and TK. "Least we tk" shot back Turner.

What?" Chase asked in mock horror.

"It's nothing, nothing at all."

"Oh come on Shoe, tell her the story."

Shoe turned away and flagged down a waitress for some more coffee. "And maybe some bibs for my friends over here, this lovely young lady is causing excessive drool I believe." The waitress laughed, Chase smiled, but she pressed him because she knew he wanted to tell the story.

"Okay, well one day, this was, ahem, after the war was over. Or at least the war in Europe was. We were thinking we were going to get transferred over to the Pacific see, but we never did. Anyway, we ruled the skies at this point, there was nothing to do but drop food into refugee camps and help get the word to the more remote areas. We didn't have all those fancy phones you see."

"You're kidding?" Chase gave im a deadpan look.

"Oh, a smart one are you. Okay. Okay." Shoe laughed and nodded. "I suppose you know how to fly a plane too huh? You know it's not all grabbing a stick and yanking it around."

Chase raised her eyebrows.

"You have to work your feet too, see. There are two pedals down there for your feet, stomp on the right one you go right, stomp on the left one you go left. Pretty simple right? Well we ere out this day flying over central Italy somewhere, somewhere with a bunch of red neck apparently. Anyway someone took a potshot at me. Probaby with a fucking hunting rifle or something, pardon my french young lady. Anyway this son of a, this guy gets lucky and puts a bollet into my plane. Doesn't do any real damage, but it blows right through my left foot. They never could tell me if it was the bullet that went through my foot or some peice of metal it tore lose. Either way it hurt like a son of a bitch and, truth be told, we'd all dropped out gaurds a little bit when the Germans surrendered. I mean, that was the end right. Flying is dangerous in and of itself, but shit after you've been shot at while flying for five year flying with no one shooting at you seems like a piece of cake. until someone decided to shoot at you again."

Chase instinctively glanced under the table, but he was, naturally, wearing shoes. "I take it you made it back okay?"

Turner and the man wth the mustache were snickering, Shoe glared at them. "I did make it back just fine. My foot hurt like a son of a bitch."

"Is that why they call you Shoe?"

"No, they call me Shoe because Shummaker was tool long for these hicks to figure out. Anything over four letters and they're lost."

Chase glanced around and noticed that everyone was nodding. Shoe's story was clearly not done, nor, apparently, was anyone tired of it.

"So then what happened?"

"Well, I have a hole in my foot at this point and that's making it very difficult to steer the plane. But I manage to fly her back, one footed so to speak. And I bring her in real gentle like and land." Shoe broke into a smile and everyone at the table began laughing.

"What?"

"He never put the gear down on the plane," Canton leaned into her ear. "He was so damn worried about steering he forgot to put the landing gear down. Did do a picture perfect belly landing though. But man," Canton glanced over at Wald, "the commander was pissed."


I came in on the belly

So I still have to go back and add a bit more detail about the two pilots, set them up some more.

She had brunch with the leven at lenny's and talks to Norm and Ed Wald at the same time. The other guy catches her coming out the bathroom and tells her the rest of the story.