The Air of Castor Oil by Jim Harmon (10 ebook reader .TXT) 📕

I was in the saddle of the cockpit, feeling on my face the bite of the slipstream—no, that was a later term—the prop-wash?—no, that was still later—the backlash from the screw, that was it. I was lifting to meet the Fokker triplanes in the dawn sky. Then in a moment my Vickers was chattering in answer to Spandaus, firing through the screw outfitted with iron edges to deflect bullets that did not pass to the left and right. And back through the aerial maps in the cockpit pocket at my knee.

Here he comes, the Spandaus firing right through the screw in perfect synchronization. Look at that chivalrous wave. You can almost see the dueling scar on his cheek from old Krautenberg. He can afford to be chivalrous in that Fokker. I'd like to trade this skiddoo for it. That may be just what I do too if I don't watch it.

You ain't any Boelcke, mister, but this is from the Fifth for Squadron 70.

Missed!

Hard on that rudder! God, look at the snake in that fabric. At least it was a lie about them using incendiaries.

One of your own tricks for you, Heinie. Up on the stick, up under your tail, into the blind spot. Where am I? Where am I? Right here.

Look at that tail go. Tony can't be giving you as good stuff as he claims.

So long. I'm waving, see.

He's pulling her up. No tail and he's pulling her up. He's a good man. Come on. A little more. A little more and you can deadstick her. Come on, buddy. You're doing it. You're pulling her up—

But not enough.

God, what a mess.

I'm sick.

That damned castor oil in the carburetor. I'll be in the W. C. until oh-six-hundred....

No, the air wasn't one of castor oil but the pleasant smell of aged paper and printer's ink.

I'd been daydreaming again. I shouldn't forget things were getting different lately. It was becoming dangerous.

I gathered up an armload of air-war magazines at random.

Leaning across the table, I noticed the curtain in back for the first time. It was a beaded curtain of many different colors. Theda Bara might have worn it for a skirt. Behind the curtain was a television set. It was a comforting anti-anachronism here.

The six- or eight-inch picture was on a very flat tube, a more pronounced Predicta. The size and the flatness didn't seem to go together. Then I saw that the top part of the set was a mirror reflecting an image from the roof of the cabinet where the actual picture tube lay flat.

There was an old movie on the channel. An old, old movie. Lon Chaney, Sr., in a western as a badman. He was protecting a doll-faced blonde from the rest of the gang, standing them off from a grove of rocks. The flickering action caught my unblinking eyes.

Tom Santschi is sneaking across the top of the rocks, a knife in his dirty half-breed hand. Raymond Hatton makes a try for his old boss, but Chaney stops his clock for him. Now William Farnum is riding up with the posse. Tom makes a try with the knife, the girl screams, and Chaney turns the blade back on him. It goes through his neck, all the way through.

The blonde is running toward Farnum as he polishes off the rest of the gang and dismounts, her blouse shredded, revealing one breast—is that the dawn of Bessie Love? Chaney stands up in the rocks. Farnum aims his six-shooter. No, no, say the girl's lips. "No!" "No!" says the subtitle. Farnum fires. Swimming in blood, Chaney smiles sadly and falls.

I had seen movies like that before.

When I was a kid, I had seen Flicker Flashbacks between chapters of Flash Gordon and Johnny Mack Brown westerns. I looked at old movies and heard the oily voice making fun of them. But hadn't I also seen these pictures with the sound of piano playing and low conversation?

I had seen these pictures before the war.

The war had made a lot of difference in my life.

Comic books were cut down to half their size, from 64 to 32 pages, and prices had gone up to where you had to pay $17 for a pair of shoes, so high that people said Wilson should do something about it.

Tom Mix had gone off the air and he and his Cowboy Commandos beat the Japs in comic books. Only, hadn't he sold Liberty Bonds with Helen Morgan?

And at school I had bought Defense—War—Savings—Security—Liberty—Freedom—I had bought stamps at school. I never did get enough to trade in for a bond, but Mama had taken my book and traded parts of it in for coffee. She could never get enough coffee....

"Nobody would look at my magazines," the old man chuckled, "if I put it out front. My boy got me that. He runs a radio and Victrola store. A good boy. His name's in the fishbowl."

I pressed some money on him and walked myself out of the store. Shutting the door, I saw that the copy of Doctor Zhivago had been replaced by Gone With the Wind.

The street was full of wooden-paneled station wagons, blunt little roadsters with canvas tops, swept-back, tailless sedans. Only one dark, tailed, over-thyroided car moved through the traffic. It had a light on the roof.

I dodged in front of a horse-drawn garbage wagon and behind an electric postal truck and ran for that light, leaving a trail of gaudy air battles checkering the street behind me.

I grabbed the handle on the door, opened it and threw myself into the back seat.

"Madison Avenue," I said from my diaphragm, without any breath behind it.

Something was wrong. Two men were in the front seat. The driver showed me his hard, expressionless face. "What do you think you are doing?"

"This isn't a taxicab?" I asked blankly.

"Park Police."

I sat there while we drove on for a few minutes.

"D. & D.," the second man said to the driver.

"Right into our laps."

The second officer leaned forward and clicked something. "I'll get the City boys."

"No, kill it, Carl. Think of all that damned paper work."

Carl shrugged. "What will we do with him?"

I was beginning to attach myself to my surroundings. The street was full of traffic. My kind of traffic. Cars that were too big or too small.

"Look, officers, I'm not drunk or disorderly. I thought this was a cab. I just wanted to get away from back then—I mean back there."

The two policemen exchanged glances.

"What were you running from?" the driver asked.

How could I tell him that?

Before I even got a chance to try, he said: "What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything!"

The car was turning, turning into shadows, stopping. We were in an alley. Soggy newspapers, dead