Cold War

The twin-engine cargo aircraft had seen better days. Her battered appearance and the smell of oil and dirt triggered J.B.’s memories and he felt a strong surge of nostalgia for flying. Yeah, war was hell, but the flying had been great.

He ducked to enter the small door in the fuselage and his leather-soled shoes slipped on the metal floor plates as he scrambled up the slope to the cockpit. The torn and sagging leather seats behind the control panel were inviting, but J.B. curbed his instinct to just plop down into his old place. Instead, he glanced over his shoulder at Jan and gestured for her to take the lefthand seat. “After you, Captain.”

She smiled up at him as she sank into the pilot’s seat and invited him to sit beside her on the right. Rick stood between them, an elbow on each seatback like the flight engineer. Jan pointed out the controls and chatted happily about the flying qualities and quirks of the bird, while J.B. listened without paying much attention. He was thinking what a life this must be for Rick: flying without anyone shooting at them, without the whole misery of the war, military hierarchies, and regulations. Flying all over the country, too, seeing it from end to end, and best of all, doing it with a business partner who was his wife. J.B. hadn’t known that jobs like this existed, but now he couldn’t imagine a better life.

Then he thought guiltily of Patty. He’d fallen in love with her because she was so beautiful, so poised, so sophisticated and classy. He’d had to fight off a lot of competition, too. Winning her hand had been a triumph to be savoured. Not to mention that she’d already opened a lot of doors for him, getting him that job at GM with a starting salary higher than what his dad earned after 30 years working on the shop floor. Choosing a honeymoon hotel in Niagara Falls, selecting china and furnishings, finding a cute little house to rent in the suburbs with front and back lawns and a second bedroom for “the kids” — all those things associated with planning a future together — had enabled him to envisage a lifestyle more luxurious than anything his parents had dreamed about. Would he give that all up for a life like this? It surprised — and unnerved — him to realise the answer might be yes.

As they dropped down by the tail wheel after the tour was over, J.B. tried to put those feelings into words. “You’re lucky. Both of you. Must be a great life.”

“Yeah, except when we can’t pay the bills,” Rick answered with a laugh. “Financially, we live from one flight to the next.”

Ah, J.B. thought, so that’s the catch. 

Jan laughed, too, but nervously. “Yeah, we got caught out in Atlanta once. A client cancelled on us after we’d already fuelled up and we couldn’t pay the fuel bill.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, Rick talked them into giving us another 24 hours. What choice did they have? They’d have lost fuel syphoning it out again.”

“But they impounded dear old NRJ48 to make sure we didn’t take off in her with their aviation fuel!” Rick reminded her.

“And then there was the time we busted our you-know-what to get a cargo from Salt Lake City up to Seattle only to have the bastard’s check bounce!”

“Yeah, that was pretty bad,” Rick agreed, shaking his head.

“I guess you don’t stay in fancy hotels then?” J.B. was beginning to get a better picture of their lifestyle.

“No way! We bed down right here!” Rick gestured back inside the DC-2. “Have everything we need. We roll out our sleeping bags and the toilet’s just a couple of steps away. We can make a coffee in the galley and keep some orange juice in the fridge there. Better than most trailers!”

 “What would you say to a night with my folks?” J.B. answered. “If nothing else, we’ve got a shower.”

“Naw, I wouldn’t want to impose,” Rick shook his head.

“Look, I’ll give my mom a call and tell her my best wartime buddy is coming over with his wife and I want her to make her best Polish bigos. She’ll be pleased as punch.”

“You’re sure she won’t mind?” Rick asked, tempted.

“She knows how you saved my ass over Mannheim, Orloff. She’ll be happy to meet you at last. And you too, Jan.” Rick included the tall woman beside him, whose lack of pretension had already won him over. He no longer noticed she wasn’t pretty.

“If I’m gonna be in nice company, I better go change into a skirt,” Jan concluded, climbing back into the aircraft. The men moved a few feet away to give her more privacy and lowered their voices. 

“What are you up to nowadays, J.B.? Weren’t you due to graduate this spring?”

“Yeah. I did. Got engaged too,” he added with a grin.

Rick punched his arm as he offered his congratulations, but with a glance at the aircraft to be sure Jan wasn’t coming out just yet, he grew serious again. “Look, J.B., you were always the brainy one among us, who read the papers and all that. What do you think about what’s going on in Berlin? Is this ruckus with the Reds gonna blow up into another war?”

“I don’t think that’s very likely. We’ve got the bomb, the Russkies don’t, and they know it.”

“Yeah, well, given all that, how come the Russkies started this thing in the first place? Why try to grab Berlin from us?”

J.B. shrugged. “Up to now they’ve had it pretty much their way — they annexed Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania back in ’40 when they were friends with Hitler. Now they’ve stolen half of Poland and launched successful Communist coups in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia. They probably thought we’d just pull out of Berlin without a squawk.”

“Do you think there’s any chance this Airlift can work?” Rick asked next, looking at his former captain intently.

“Why? You want to try to get in on it?” J.B. joked.

“Hey, I hear they’re paying big bucks to civilian charter companies,” Rick returned evading his eyes and shrugging awkwardly. “It’s got to be better than what I earn now which, when I add up all the hours I work and see how much cash I have in my pocket, amounts to about a dime a day. The problem is old NRJ48 here,” he jabbed his thumb in the direction of the weary DC-2, “can’t make the flight across the Atlantic.”

“Look, I don’t see how an airlift can work in the long run. There are more than two million people who need food and fuel. One article I read said we’d have to fly in something like ten thousand tons of stuff a day, and all we’ve managed so far is a couple hundred. A few days of bad weather and the whole thing’s gonna crash. That’s what the Reds are counting on. You’re better off flying lobsters around than getting involved in a risky operation like the Berlin Airlift.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Rick agreed without sounding convinced, but at that moment, Jan rejoined them. She was wearing a floral print dress with buttons down the front and a belt at the waist. It had seen better days and was crushed from being stuffed in a kitbag for too long. 

“Sorry, I don’t have anything better,” Jan answered J.B.’s look. “Besides, you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear any way you try. Dressing me up wouldn’t make a lot of difference one way or another.”

“You look just fine, Jan. It just struck me you might want to bring your laundry along with you so you can use our washer and dryer while you’re there.”

Jan looked at him with an expression of amazement. “That is about the nicest proposal anybody — other than Rick – has ever made me. Rick said you were different; now I believe him. I’ll go get the laundry bag.” 

As she disappeared again, J.B. turned to Rick. “She’s a gem.”

“Yes, she is,” Rick agreed proudly.

“Do you ever hear from any of the other guys?”

“Nope. Not that I expected to. We didn’t have much in common.”

“No, I guess you’re right. Just ten guys poured into a bomber.” J.B. paused and then admitted wistfully, “Still, sometimes it seems like they were the best years of our lives, doesn’t it?”