Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [250]
He wrestled out of the seat and started for the makeshift bunk at the back of the cabin. Nick Papas’ big square frame blocked his way.
“All right, Nick, I didn’t beat her.”
“You should of, it would have been better.”
“Don’t kid yourself. There’ll be somebody else in the sack with her in a week.”
“You’re a prick ... Captain ... sir ...”
Scott took the cigar out of Nick’s teeth and stamped on it “No goddamned cigar smoking in the cabin.”
Scott shoved past him angrily, curtained himself in the bunk. Soon, he thought, the sweet music of the engines would sing him to sleep and he could forget. Everybody’s pissed at me ... Cindy ... Stan ... Nick ... half the squadron. Nobody can stand to see a happy bachelor escape.
The music of the engines did not work. Scott squirmed, bunched his jacket beneath his head. Once he had gotten hooked and it ended in disaster. What do women want, disaster? I’m doing them a favor by kissing them off.
Scott Welton Davidson, a son of Norfolk, Virginia. From the beginning, Scott had it his way. A comfortable home and too much doting. He was a three-letter athlete at Matthew Fontaine Maury High School and touted as one of the best in the state.
It was easy to smile his way through. He carried it out of Norfolk to William and Mary College where coeds adored him. The studies were easy, the girls were easy, the games on the field were easy.
Scott was among the first to enlist when the war started and one of the first in all of Virginia to come home on leave with flyer’s wings on his chest and new officer’s bars on his shoulders. Merely another chapter in the success story.
In that strange crush of war, furloughs, sentiment, Barbara Lundy somehow managed to win out over the competition. The Queen of the Chesapeake Festival, the senior class president, was in many ways Scott’s female counterpart.
Scott and Barbara. New flyer’s wings, big war, and lots of patriotic fever ... new wife.
It was a picture-book marriage of the All American Boy to the All American Girl. Norfolk was the proudest city in the country. It was a scene to sell War Bonds.
No one in Norfolk was really surprised when Scott Davidson became the first Virginia ace of World War II. In a dogfight over Bougaineville he shot down three Jap Zeros in a single day to bring his tally to seven.
And one day, Barbara received the dreaded telegram:
YOUR HUSBAND HAS BEEN WOUNDED IN ACTION.
Scott’s squadron had been rammed in one of those crazy last-ditch suicide orgies. Both he and his craft were badly torn up, but he managed to nurse it to a belly landing on a New Guinea airstrip. Nick Papas was one of those who pulled him out of the ship before it exploded.
A Red Cross Girl in Australia wrote for him, “Don’t worry honey, it was only a scratch.”
At the age of twenty-three Scott Davidson refused to believe the big lark of life was over. In a hospital in Australia, identified to Barbara only by a mysterious APO number, he fought to a remarkable recovery.
It was disappointing not to be able to get back into fighters, but the big slow transports of the ATC had their compensations. He could move around to a number of civilized places where he was able to break marriage vows he never intended to keep in the first place.
As a flyer he became enthralled with the precision-flying of four engines and learned to love his new home in the clouds. He was tried time and again as a squadron commander but Scott had no mind for turning in reports on time or taking the responsibility for other men. He just wanted to fly.... And then, one day, the war was over.
Scott returned to Norfolk, bemedaled, to accept the latest chapter of glory, the worship of the returning war hero.
He weighed a number of offers. In those days it was good to have Scott’s name in your business.
He made a vague pass at reorientation to civilian life. Soon he left his young wife confused and weeping by his strange, morose behavior. Scott was still out there, maybe flying over a nameless island, shooting, drinking, gambling, singing ... loving. After