“Billy?”
There was no reply.
Pickering overflew the auxiliary field.
It’s not in use. Otherwise, there’d be an ambulance and some other ground crew, in case a student pranged his Yellow Peril.
Billy, you just about managed to run out of runway! What the hell is going on?
Pickering picked up a little altitude and flew around the field. Then he put his Wildcat in a steep turn in order to release his gear in the usual (but specifically proscribed) manner. And then he made an approach and landing that he considered to be much safer than the one executed by Lieutenant Dunn.
Christ, you’re not supposed to put a Wildcat down on one of these auxiliary fields at all!
He stood on the brakes and pulled up beside Dunn’s Wildcat. The engine was still running. Dunn was a hundred yards away, walking toward an enormous live oak tree.
Pickering unstrapped himself, climbed out of the cockpit, and trotted after Dunn. He had to wait to speak to him, however; for as he caught up with him, Dunn was having a hell of a time trying to close the zipper of his new flight suit after having urinated on the live oak.
“You want to tell me what you’re doing?”
“Officially, I had a hydraulic system failure warning light and made a precautionary landing. When you were unable to contact me by radio, you very courageously landed your aircraft to see what assistance you might be able to render. All in keeping with the honorable traditions of The Marine Corps. Semper Fi. ”
“What the hell is this?”
“Actually, I am planning for the future,” Bill Dunn said, very seriously. “Fifty years from now… what’ll that be, 1992?… Colonel William C. Dunn-anybody who has ever worn a uniform in the Deep South gets to call himself ‘Colonel,’ you know…”
“Billy…”
“Colonel Dunn, a fine old silver-haired gentleman, is going to stand where you and I are standing. He will have a grandfatherly hand on the shoulder of his grandson, William C. Dunn… let me see, that’ll be William C. Dunn the Sixth… and he will say, ‘Grandson, during the Great War, your granddaddy was a fighter pilot, and he was over at Pensacola and out flying a Grumman Wildcat, which at the time was one hell of a fighter, and nature called. So he landed his airplane right here where this pecan orchard is now. That used to be a landing strip, boy. And he took out his talleywacker and pissed right up against this fine old live oak tree.’ ”
“Jesus Christ, Billy!”
” ‘And the moral of that story, Grandson, is that when you are up to your ears in bullshit, the only thing you can do is piss on it.’ ”
“You’re insane.” Pick laughed.
“You landed here when you knew goddamned well the strip wasn’t long enough for a Wildcat. You’re insane, too.”
A sudden image came to Pick of Bill Dunn as a silver-haired seventy-odd-year-old with his hand on the shoulder of a blond-haired boy.
And his mouth ran away with him.
“You’re presuming you’re going to live through this war,” he said.
Dunn met his eyes.
“I considered that possibility, Pick,” he said. “Or improbability. But then I decided, if I do somehow manage to come through alive, and I didn’t land here and piss on the oak, I’d regret it for the rest of my life. So I put the wheels down. I certainly didn’t think you’d be dumb enough to follow me. This was supposed to be a private moment.”
“Sorry to intrude.”
“And then I realized, when I heard you coming, that I should have known better. If you are so inclined, Pick, you may piss on my live oak.”
“I consider that a great honor, Billy.”
As Pick was standing by the tree, Dunn said, “Under the circumstances, I don’t think we should even make a low-level pass over Corey Field, much less a barrel roll. Colonel Whatsisname would shit a brick, and I really don’t want to wind up in the backseat of a Yellow Peril.”
“Yeah,” Pick said. “I guess he would.”
“And the sonofabitch is probably right. It would set a bad example for those kids.”