The Girl in the Blue Beret

25.



MARSHALL HAD RARELY TALKED ABOUT THE PLANE GOING down, and he hadn’t told Gordon all of it. He had never felt like taking credit for bringing the plane down safely. Webb was unconscious, perhaps already dead—exactly when, Marshall couldn’t say.

“An FW-190. A mean f*cker,” Gordon was saying.

Marshall squirmed. “Your father had been hit. He was slumped over by the time we stopped moving.”

Gordon shook his head. “Damn.” He surveyed the room blankly. “That’s what’s called a bad day,” he said, forcing a laugh. He flexed his fists.

“Nothing was anybody’s fault,” Marshall said. “Your dad did one hell of a job. Nobody could have done better.”

Gordon called to the bartender, “Garçon—what do I have to do to get a refill?”

The bartender raised his eyebrows and turned his back. He made a show of dawdling before bringing the bottle.

“There’s certain things I’ve got against these Frenchies,” Gordon said to Marshall, after the bartender left. “Why they didn’t do the job in Vietnam. Why they hate us for doing the job they couldn’t do. We saved their ass in the World War Number Two, but they forgot about that. They have convenient memory. I tell this to my wife, and she says, ‘Gordon, you’re like a dog worrying a bone. Bury that bone and let’s go add another garage to the split-level.’ Or some other crap.” He laughed again, apparently struck by his own wit.

“Have you been married long?” Marshall asked.

“Linda and I got together after I came back to the States in 1970. Now, that was a bad scene for you, 1970. All those protesters, spitting on GIs coming home.” He swallowed an eye-popping slug of Scotch. “I had some problems with that war from the start, but I did my job. That’s American values.” Webb turned serious. “We had military discipline when I was a boy—lights out, reveille, spit-polish your shoes. When I saw my stepfather in the hall on the way to the goddamn bathroom, I had to salute! He was a career Army man, a colonel. I don’t know when he met Mom.”

He paused. “Then you see what I did to repay him—joined the Air Force!” Gordon rubbed his hands together. “The One-Oh-Wonder! Man, I was one afterburning bastard.”

Gordon asked Marshall a few questions about his father then—how he did takeoffs, what he liked to do on his time off. Marshall tried to paint a lively portrait, but he was flummoxed. It was hard to come up with stirring stories about Gordon’s father.

Then he remembered that he had bicycled into the English countryside with Lawrence Webb and a couple of other crewmates after a tough mission to Bremen. They had made a day of it, biking through peaceful country, racing on flat stretches.

“He was a speed demon on a bike,” Marshall said. “A One-Oh-Wonder.”

He declined another drink. After promising Gordon he would be in touch, he left. He walked to his apartment in the early twilight, shedding the alcohol and feeling his eyes grow clear again.