By Robin Reinders
The engines wind down real slow –
Each cylinder kicking once or twice more –
Reluctant machine, spooked like some creature.
The airfield lies under an anaemic morning light –
Mist clinging dim and dewy along the perimeter markers –
And the lamps beside the runway burning weak and washy –
Like tired, winking moons.
Inside the cockpit of the fortress
The air is cloyed with cold and damp –
Spent warmth and breath gone sour under rubber.
The gunners –
Both young bucks from Tennessee –
Eagerly out the rear door.
Your hands are still fixed on the throttles
Though the engines have been quiet
Nearly a minute-and-a-half now.
‘You can let go’, I say –
Unhelpful.
You do not look at me.
Tighten your jaw –
‘Thought of that.’
But the leather of your gloves is still wrapped
Tight around the metal –
Creaking like skin
Stretched across the white bone
Of a palsied hand –
Or the cracking leather of an
Old Midwestern diner booth.
Your shoulders ache –
I see it in the way they sit too high –
Tell it by the faint tremor
That runs through the
Strong line of your forearm.
You finally pull your hands back –
And the gloves do not follow suit.
They stay hooked on the controls –
The mould hugging your fingers
To the metal –
As though the cold
Has nailed them there.
You stare at them.
At me.
‘Don’t start’, you warn –
I haven’t spoken.
The frost at elevation has worked its way
Into the seams of the leather –
The hardened grip of wool and hide
Holding them fast.
The glove lacquered with altitude –
A fine rime worked into the stitching –
White crust clinging to edged thread –
To the stitching across the knuckles.
They have stiffened
Into the exact shape
Of your stolid, icicled grip.
You wrench your wrist in small,
Sharp motions –
Breathe out
Through your nose –
And in
Through your teeth.
I lean across the narrow space
With the same slow cadence as a horsemaster –
Feel bile at the back of my throat –
Note the swallow inside yours –
Your keyed-up caballine kick inevitable.
Our knees interfere under the instrument panel.
The smell of you is richer now –
Fuller, more animal –
Sweat,
Sheepskin,
The bitter ghost of oxygen.
My thumb presses along the seam of the glove –
The leather rigid as bark.
‘Don’t make a business of it’, you mutter.
‘Not a chance, pilot’, I defend –
Business-like.
Frost breaks
Under the pressure
Of the pad of my finger
With a brittle crackle of protest –
A small granular fracture,
Like biting soft and sweet into glacé.
Your idle attention flares in my periphery.
‘You always do that’, you whinge –
And it sounds like you have nine cylinders behind your ribs.
I can hum at the bait.
You clarify –
‘Act like you’re the only one
Who knows how to use your hands.’
And that throws me a bit –
Makes me take a hard look at you.
‘That so.’
‘You fuss’ –
Snarled from your shark-mouth.
‘I told you to wear your electric gloves.’
‘And you enjoy being right.’
‘And I enjoy you being wrong more.’
It seems to ease you out of your mood –
The mouthy play-fighting.
Eight months from now
I won’t be able to get a word out of you.
When I work the seam open
It feels like a part of you goes with it.
It yields by degrees –
Each finger released in phases –
The glove stubborn in its claim
On your extremities.
Your hand inside remains
Determinedly still –
I do not expect to notice this –
To feel the restraint in it –
The effort not to assist –
Not to betray need.
Mangy mutt drooling at the muzzle.
Terribly still.
The abominable heat of your cheek reaches the skin
Beneath my helmet strap.
…
The glove begins to give.
Each finger crooked and reluctant –
Your hand swelled and distended
By pain and cold.
When I tug harder –
A little mean –
You set your jaw firm and brave.
‘That hurt?’ I ask –
A little meaner.
Your head is angled
And gracious
And acquiescent against the seat rest.
‘Just get it off.’
…
My hands cupping yours –
Your wrist braced in the recess of my palm.
Small bones
Shifting like the
Slight, sinewy spars of
The very first bomber bird.
I pull and
You watch –
Like Hughes watches his own films.
The gauntlet releases its grip.
The skin of your hand dark red –
Flushed
Deep and swollen
Like fruit bruised beneath the rind.
Blooming blood vessels,
Tender contusions.
Your knuckles shine faintly –
Blood forced close to the
Taut, tight surface
Of your stinging skin
By the returning warmth.
You flex your fingers once –
Tendons moving all a-jitter
Beneath the skin.
Indecent, somehow.
Your mouth pulls askew .
‘Bad?’ I ask.
‘Raw, ‘s all.’
‘You’re shaking’ –
Unhelpful.
‘So are you.’
It’s not often you man up
And choose to be right about something.
…
The second glove is worse.
Your knuckles have caught stiff and dry-skinned
In the lining.
When I pull –
The cowhide gives only grief.
You shift impatiently.
Your knee jams harder into mine –
Pressure deliberate –
Provoking –
Desperate for horseplay.
Hell,
You’d romp with the Germans
If they gave you no reason not to.
Scuffle right in Stuttgart –
Half a bottle of brown in your belly
And a dollar on the line.
I look up.
Your eyebrow raised
Like fists by your face.
Your features etched with irritation.
‘You like telling me what to do’, you state plain.
‘Someone has to.’
I think of you behind the wheel.
Bail-out siren blaring –
And your parachute somewhere not on your person –
And all our boys with their silks torn open, safe and settled upon the ground –
Waiting for you to listen to your Kraut-crazed copilot and eat your grief –
And jump –
And come home to them –
Wounded –
And weepy –
And wonderful.
‘Thought that was the colonel’s job.’
‘He makes a poor go of it.’
‘And you manage well?’
‘Well enough.’
I think of you caught in the collapse –
Strapped fast –
While the fuselage folds upon itself,
The harness holding you
In saintly posture –
Head bowed slightly,
Arms drawn in,
As though the machine had arranged you
For burial.
I think of the long, awful fall
And the ground rising
To meet what is left of you.
…
I hook my fingers beneath the cuff
And yank harshly.
The leather complains.
Your mandible too –
Molar on molar.
For a moment I think
Your hand will come off like a doll’s.
When your wrist slips free –
And lands atop
The heel of my palm –
The heat of it is scalding.
Pulse jumping as the recoil of a gun
Just fired against
The heel of my palm.
You look down at the mess of limbs you put there –
Your wrist and
The heel of my palm.
Some small noise comes from you then
Which I have not yet heard –
Angry and frustrated,
Simpering and childish.
‘You do this’, you strain after.
‘What.’
‘This—’
The familiar edge in your voice.
The small flare of fury
That lives just under our skin –
Has festered since basic training –
Worsened in one another’s pockets.
You do the rest of the work –
Pull your hand away –
Flex strong fingers again. –
The redness all but gone.
‘Better?’ I ask –
Cringe at my own condescension –
‘Better.’
You do not thank me,
But when you reach for the latch
And haul yourself down the forward nose hatch,
You are there
To push your palm between my shoulder blades –
All pesky and puerile –
And send me stumbling over my own boots.
That wicked smile –
With all your teeth
Still in their right place.
Featured Image: Imperial War Museum, United States Eighth Air Force in Britain, 1942-1945