The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [38]
Then Ben saw it beyond the clustered smoke jumpers, the low businesslike building with the mandatory red of a first-aid cross painted on its eave: the "boneyard," right. Broken ankles from hard landings, busted fingers and hands from banging into trees on the way down, those doubtless were the constants of an infirmary at a place like this. Relief pumped through him. Why didn't I guess, Dex? Follow the trail of bandages toward anything medical and there you'll be.
Taking quick leave of the director, Ben climbed back into the ragtop jeep Jones had requisitioned. He still felt somewhat guilty about dropping Jones outside Helena, all by his lonesome, to do the dreary photo shoot on military sled dogs and their earnest trainers, but not overly. Jones and everyone else had to be left out of this. The last thing in the world Tepee Weepy wanted made known was that one of its Supreme Team heroes was sitting out the war at a pacifist camp. For that matter, it was the last thing the others on the team, up to their necks in the armed struggle, would want to find out. As he drove around the end of the airstrip and pulled up to the infirmary, Ben found himself half hoping Dexter Cariston, marked down from dead, was in there on crutches with a fractured something-or-other; INJURED IN TRAINING CAMP was a story he could fiddle around with and not have to say just what kind of camp.
A cowbell clattered above the door as he stepped into the infirmary. Medical clutter was everywhere, shelves and tables of it. Over by a rack of crutches a single shabby desk sat unoccupied. Through a doorway toward the back, however, a sandy-haired figure could be seen bent over a microscope. "Be with you in a jiffy," came the glossed voice, as incongruous here as it was in a football huddle, "quick as I dispose of this strep culture."
"Take your time, Dex, it's looking like a long war."
Dex's twiddling of the microscope ceased for a bare instant, but his head did not budge from the eyepiece. "They all are, Ben."
Ben watched him deal with the glass slide beneath the lens, step out to the sink, and soap up and wash as exquisitely as a surgeon—Dex had only to come into a room and the air grew rarefied—then with just a hairbreadth of hesitation arrive across the board floor with right hand extended. Handshakes are the last to go, Ben thought as their palms met. "Something tells me you're not here to fish famous Seeley Lake," Dex was saying in his easy way. Next, though, a held-in expression twitched across his sturdy Scotch face. "Hated to hear that about Vic. Always has had more than his share of hard luck, hasn't he."
The roar of engines drowned out anything Ben might have had to say about how luck was distributed. Landing briskly, a Ford Tri-Motor blasted up dust as it trundled along the airstrip toward the next set of parachute trainees. Dex moved to the window to watch as if it were his sworn duty, leaving Ben to join him or not. After a moment, he went over. What do I know about how they run this preachy outfit, maybe this is some kind of rite—they all worship the Tin Goose every takeoff. Whatever the foreman was hollering now at the chutists ducking aboard was lost in the plane's racket, but Ben would have bet significant money these next practice jumps would be closer to the mark. He turned and asked:
"I'm curious—how come you're not out there leaping into thin air with the rest of the smokies?"
"Don't think I didn't," Dex answered tightly, eyes still glued to the shuddering aircraft filling with jumpsuited men. "Twice. Both times I threw up in the face mask. Ever try to steer a parachute into a forest of hundred-foot ponderosa pines with a faceful of vomit, Ben?" Consciously or not, Dex rubbed his mouth with the back of his thumb before managing to say: "They washed me out of jumper training. All the years of football and Bruno and his Letter Hill, and five minutes of bumpy air does me in. Isn't that a corker?"
That needed no affirmation. Dex had been the team's best natural athlete, elastic as a circus performer, comfortable