THE DAWN PATROL

Chapter XI part 2

When we settle in—and by that, I mean when Uncle Jack is ready—I make drinks for all of us, and bring them into the front room. Russell and Uncle Jack sit backcomfortably as they wait for me to put the drinks down. Russell pulls out his cigarettes as Uncle Jack opens a small case and brings out the remainder of his cigar.

“You kept your cigar?” I ask.

“Of course. What did you do, throw it out?”

I nod, feeling stupid. I look at Russell and ask him for a cigarette.

“I don’t normally smoke in the house. Ronnie doesn’t like it, and besides, she’s got bronchitis. I figure I got three days before I see her again, and by that time I can air everything out, so go crazy.”

“Your life is controlled by a ten year old?” Uncle Jack asks as he lights his cigar.

“She doesn’t control it,” I say as I light my cigarette.

“But she doesn’t let you smoke in your house.”

“She lives here too. Every weekend. And she has bronchitis,” I remind him.

“A hundred years ago they gave you cigars for things like that.”

“Well, that was then and this is now,” I say a bit testily. “They’ve kinda proven that doesn’t work.”

And don’t tell me my life is being run by a ten year old, because I know behind my back everybody thinks it’s Caroline.

“You don’t wannna piss him off, Uncle Jack,” Russell laughs. “Ol’ Danny boy here has a bad temper.”

“Does he now? A touch of the ol’ Porter potency?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, and try laughing the whole thing off.

“Your Grandfather had a bad temper. He used to beat us regularly with his cane. I think I might even have a scar on the back of my head here,” he says, and bends over so we can see the tiny star shape on the side of his skull. “If it hasn’t faded over the years,” he adds. “He didn’t care where he hit you once he started wailing on you. The man was a real bastard.”

“Dad said the last time he beat him was when he asked him for permission to go to war,” Russell says.

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Speaking of the war,” Russell says.

“Good segue way,” I laugh.

“How else do you bring it up?”

“You want to hear the rest of it?” Uncle Jack says.

We both nod, knowing not to push too hard.

“Alright, where were we?”
“Duck hunting. You were going out duck hunting,” Russell says.

“You have been paying attention,” Uncle Jack grins as he takes a big puff of his cigar and sits back in the chair. He takes a sip of his drink.

*

“You have to understand that duck hunting in England is a lot different than duck hunting out here. I mean here, you just go down to an open field, or down to the ocean, and shoot them as they fly overhead. Then you walk over and pick them up. I’ve seen people rip the breasts out and toss the rest of the bird away, but I always thought it was wasteful. You can make a good duck soup out of the carcass.

“But we went duck hunting because your dad and Ray had never been before, and like I said, it was different. We had a bottle of scotch between the three of us—not exactly the smartest thing to do when playing with guns—but I wasn’t in the mood for anything, and your dad felt certain scotch would help fix me up.

“Ray was a farm boy more than your dad and I were. We may have grown up on a farm, but it was different from where Ray grew up. He came from the prairies. His was a working farm with more than three thousand acres. Our place was maybe five or seven acres at the most. We had three cows I think, two dozen or so chickens, a sow we kept around so we could sell the piglets off, or eat them—like we did the chickens—and a couple of horses we had for riding.

“We had a big garden we all had to weed when we weren’t at school. Beans. Tomatoes. Corn. Peas. Berries. We grew potatoes one year but they didn’t turn out so great - too many air pockets in them—and they kept turning up in the ground for about five years after that. It was subsistence gardening at its best. We canned all the fruits and vegetables we could; we canned chicken, pork—everything and anything we needed to make it through the winter. We’d hunt rabbits and your grandfather had a trap line for muskrats. You’d think between the three of us, we’d know how to duck hunt.

“Except we were in England, not Canada anymore. They do things differently out there. For one thing, you dig a duck pond and fill it with water. Then you wait for the ducks to land on the pond. That’s where the scotch comes in because sometimes it’s a long wait.”

“Where did you get the water?” Russell asks.

“You make it near a stream so you can divert it; you dig a little ditch. When you’ve got a couple of feet of water, you fill in the ditch and wait.”

“And they come?” I ask.

“They come.”

“And that’s when you shoot them?” Russell laughs.

“It never got that far.”

“Because you got too drunk,” Russell laughs again, and I get up to fix us more drinks.

“No,” Uncle Jack says, “because Ray shot himself in the foot.”

“How’d he do that?” I ask, stopping in mid-step with the glasses in my hand.

“On purpose. He had a dream.”

“What kind of a dream would make him do that?” Russell asks. “Wait! Let Danny get the drinks first. He’ll want to hear this too.”

“Ray used to have dreams that told him who was going to die, and who wasn’t,” Uncle Jack goes on when I come back and give him another drink.

“I think that’s why your Dad lived through the whole thing. There were a few times when Ray said to him that maybe they shouldn’t take such and such a plane -”

“Could they do that? I thought they all had their own planes? I mean, you see them in the movies and shit, and they have their names painted on the sides of them.”

“You’re interrupting again,” Uncle Jack says, and Russell shuts up. “I don’t know how they did it. I don’t know if they took a different plane, or if Ray sabotaged their own. I don’t know. I just know what Bobby told me, and he said there were a few times when they didn’t go up in their plane.

“But that’s all beside the point. The point is that Ray used to have these dreams, and he believed them. So did your Dad. When your Dad and I went out to dig the ditch for the duck pond once we decided where we were going to make it, Ray made up some excuse for going back to our little camp. I think he might have said he was going off to take a shit. But the next thing we hear is a gun shot. We run back and find Ray laying on the ground holding his foot.”

“And he did it...why?” Russell asks.

“He’d had a dream about the D-Day invasion. He didn’t know when it was supposed to be, but he said if he went up in that plane on the next flight, he was going to get gut shot because there was a problem with the steel plating that had never come up before.”

“What kind of problem?” I asked.

“Wrong gauge of thickness?”

“And what about everyone else on the plane?” Russell asks. “Obviously someone had to go up in his place. What happened to him?”

“A fighter came in out of the sun, your Dad said. He strafed the plane.”

“And?”

“The navigator was hit.”

“Jesus Christ! You mean he was right!” Russell laughs.

“If you want to look at it that way,” Uncle Jack says, looking somewhat confused.

“What other way is there?” Russell asks.

“That he shot himself in the foot so he wouldn’t have to go.”

“Is that why you won’t talk to him. You think he’s a coward?” Russell says. “Wouldn’t you do the same if you knew you were going to die? I mean, what’s the point in letting yourself get killed, if you can avoid it? Better to be thought a coward than -”

“Yes?” Uncle Jack says, looking at Russell over his glass. “Better to be thought a coward than what? To die?”

“Something like that,” Russell says with a note of caution.

“Shall we ask Ray’s opinion on that?”