The second reel snickered to its close. Willard got up again, tweaking the cuffs of his shirt from his jacket sleeve so they showed up better. He’d just spent four hundred bucks on a set of silver cuff-links and it annoyed him when they didn’t show. Powell stood up to flex his back. The cigar smoke filled the room like a migraine.
‘How’s distribution coming along? If I was going to be picky about it, I’d have to remind you that your first repayments were due last week.’
‘Distribution?’ said Willard. ‘Don’t you even want the third reel?’
‘Oh, there’s more? Sure…’
The reel ran on in ugly silence. Willard watched it with new eyes and found himself hating every frame of it. A picture of class, indeed! The picture was pitiful, truly pitiful.
He owed Ted Powell one hundred and ninety-four thousand bucks.
There was plenty to do.
The first thing was to cut away the ruined fabric and assess damage to the wooden structure beneath. Using knives sharpened in a little engine oil on the step of the barn, Abe and Brad cut away the torn cotton and piled it up in the yard to burn later.
As the ship’s frame began to come into view, Abe was relieved to see that the main wing-struts were scuffed and cracked, but basically intact. The plane looked more like a skeleton now; but there was something fast and hungry in her look as well. He whittled splints for the cracked spars and screwed them carefully into place, wrapping twine round the joins for extra strength.
Then Abe stripped the engine, so he could clean, oil and reassemble it. As he’d known from the outset, it had been a faulty valve in the fuel-line which had created a blockage in the feed. It had been the work of five minutes to locate the problem and fix the valve. Most engine problems were like that. Little tiny niggles, which sometimes killed you, sometimes didn’t.
As the first week merged into the second, the new undercarriage began to take shape. Abe had some ideas on putting a cowling around the wheel base to reduce drag. By stretching cotton tightly over an arrangement of hoops and battens, he succeeded in putting his ideas into practice. Poor old Poll looked like she was wearing her winter stockings, but he promised her that she’d like them once she was airborne.
When the structural work was all done, he and Brad wound swathes of cotton around the exposed frame, pulling it tight so the fabric was hard and taut. Then they painted her: red and white, the colours Abe had used ever since his days as a barnstormer. Then, to protect the paint and fabric, they painted her again with cellulose dope, a kind of aviator’s varnish.
The battered airplane began to look herself again; perhaps better.
Abe usually worked alone – he usually did pretty much everything alone – but he liked working with the kid. The kid’s enthusiasm was uncanny. His aptitude too. Again and again Brad reminded Abe of himself at the same age. It was almost like working with a version of himself plucked from twenty years into the past.
As the days passed, Abe had counted another twenty-three bullet holes in the buildings around Independence. The glossy boomtown down the hill still seemed to be invisible. There was still no explanation of why Independence was the only town in America which still treated ex-army pilots as descended demi-gods. Abe kept his eyes open and his mouth shut.
On the evening of the tenth day, Abe was sitting alone in the hotel dining room, eating cold pie and potatoes. Then, just as he was finishing, Gibson Hennessey, the tall storekeeper, wandered in. The two men nodded a greeting.
‘Ed Houghton looking after you OK?’
Abe thought of the mountainous puddings he’d been subjected to – each one of them ‘in his honour’.
‘Yeah. Sometimes even better than that,’ he commented.
‘Ted’s right hospitable when he wants to be, especially in the pudding-making department.’ Humour flickered round the storekeeper’s mouth, before his voice changed again. ‘You won’t take this bad, I hope, but there’s a little whiskey to be had, if you were a whiskey-drinking man.’
‘From time to time.’
The storekeeper wandered over to the shelves where the glasses were kept. He helped himself to a couple and led the way upstairs, clearly knowing which room Abe had been given. At the door, he stood back politely and let Abe open up.
The room was the best in the hotel, but simple enough for all that. There was a deep and comfortable bed, a dressing table and chair, a wardrobe, and a small green armchair which emitted puffs of dust if anyone sat on it. There were a couple of oil lamps, grown smoky from needing their wicks trimming. A thin curtain moved sluggishly in front of the open window.
‘This OK for you?’ said Hennessey, looking around. ‘I got a better room over at my place if you want it, only I figured you’d be happier without a troop of little Hennesseys yelling and screaming the whole time.’
‘You figured right.’
‘I’d probably be happier, matter of fact.’
Abe pulled off his boots and stretched out on the bed. Not satisfied with his first attempt at getting comfortable, he pounded and pummelled his pillows into shape, before lying back with a sigh. Hennessey put the two glasses on the table and produced a pint-bottle wrapped in brown paper from his coat pocket. He poured the whiskey and handed Abe a glass.
‘Local moonshine. Been going long before Volstead, keep going a long time after. It’s always had quite a following in Independence.’
Abe sipped. The whiskey was good and he drank again. They’d been varnishing again today, and, though Abe liked the smell, it always made him dizzy. The whiskey helped.
‘Mind if I smoke?’ Hennessey produced a packet from his pocket and offered them to Abe. The pilot shook his head, but told Hennessey to go ahead. For a while, the two men were silent together, Hennessey smoking by the open window, Abe lying, eyes half-closed, on the bed. Eventually the storekeeper broke the silence.
‘Being a famous man and all, I guess you get a lot of attention? Even when you don’t announce your presence by putting your machine right down on Main Street.’
Nothing in Abe’s manner changed, except that beneath his lids, his eyes grew more alert.
‘Truthfully, Hennessey? I haven’t been received like this for five years.’
The storekeeper smiled. ‘No shortage of patriotism in Independence. That’s the trouble with this country, see. Short memories. People ought to remember more.’ He finished his cigarette and tossed the glowing butt in a wide arc out onto the dirt street outside. He watched it go.
‘That’s the trouble with America, huh?’ said Abe softly. ‘And what’s the matter with Independence?’
The tall storekeeper turned from the window. ‘What makes you think there’s anything wrong?’
Abe closed his eyes and rested the glass of whiskey on his chest. ‘Only everything I’ve seen since coming. That’s all.’
Hennessey nodded. Some of his pleasure in their little drama left his face. It was replaced by something sadder and older.
‘What’s wrong with Independence?’ he repeated. ‘Everything’s wrong. Everything bar the whiskey.’
‘Two