The WWII Collection. William Wharton

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СКАЧАТЬ I’m going to be able to climb back up the slippery sides of the reservoir. I can feel panic grabbing me. Where the fuck did I get such a screwy idea anyway; who the hell needs to walk around underwater shooting fish. If it weren’t for Mario and Birdy watching me, I’d scramble right on up out of there. I try a few slow deep breaths. At the least, I have to get the whole helmet underwater. I take a few more sliding steps down. My feet start sinking into soft cold mud over my ankles. I turn on the light but all I can see is a blur. There isn’t going to be any shooting fish, that’s for sure. I’m just managing to beat down surging panic. I take a few more steps and the mud is up to my knees.

      Then, I don’t know what brought it on; the helmet is working perfectly, the air bubbles are plopping out of the bottom, I have enough air, everything is perfect; but I need to get out of that helmet.

      I rip it off and pull on the rope. I’ve ripped off the helmet before I realize I’m really underwater and I don’t know how deep. Nobody is pulling on the rope either. I’m not sure which way is the way back. I don’t even think of pulling myself back by the rope. I’m completely ape. I drop the flashlight and try to swim up to the surface. I can’t make it because of the mud and the weights on my legs. I breathe in a full swallow of water; I’m choking, drowning, when Mario and Birdy start pulling me out. They pull me sidewise up the side of the reservoir like a gaffed fish.

      The air feels wonderfully warm and thin. Mario and Birdy are bent over me. I’m stretched out, shaking, choking. Jesus, I’m glad to be alive. Birdy leans close.

      ‘What happened, Al? Did it leak?’

      I nod. I don’t look at him. Now it’s Mario.

      ‘You all right, Al?’

      I nod again. Mario starts pulling in the helmet. Birdy is undoing the rope from around my waist; the knot slipped when they pulled me up the side of that wall and I can hardly breathe. Mario leans over the water.

      ‘The light’s still burning down there. Look at that.’

      ‘Forget it. Let the damned thing burn itself out.’

      Birdy’s taking apart the pumps.

      ‘What happened, Al?’

      I look over at him. He’ll believe anything. He wants to believe.

      ‘Water began coming in. It started rising up past my mouth, then past my nose. I ripped the thing off and tried to swim up but I couldn’t move; these fuckers weighed me down and the mud on the bottom is thick as cow shit.’

      I’m sitting up now and trying to untie the weights from my legs; I’m starting to get cold. Birdy gives me a hand. Then I get dressed and we take all the stuff back with us. Later, I use the diving helmet as a project in Science, get an A for it. I write it up as if it really worked. Actually it did.

      To try out Birdy’s crazy wings, we have to wait till the wind’s blowing from the right direction. This wind has to blow on a Saturday or a Sunday when we don’t have any school. Birdy has the whole thing planned out with written instructions so it’ll only take the two of us to pull it off. He’s already gone down and cleared a path about a hundred yards long for the bike to make its run. He’s cleaned off all the tin cans and used a shovel to fill in any dips and knock down any bumps. I hope nobody saw him flattening out the top of the dump; they’ll figure for sure he’s crazy. I go down and look at it; it’s like a short narrow runway for an airplane; in fact, Birdy’s rigged a little wind sock with an old, starched silk stocking.

      Birdy doesn’t want anybody to see his machine, so we take it down at night and hide it up where we used to have the pigeon loft. We still have the rope ladder; Birdy’s old man didn’t find that. Everything’s set.

      Finally, after about three weeks, the wind is blowing perfectly on a Friday night. We make arrangements to meet at home plate at seven o’clock the next morning. When I get there, Birdy’s already waiting with his crazy bicycle and the platform hooked to the front. We’ve been practicing riding around the block with him standing up there. This itself is a hot trick both for Birdy and for me. The kids in the neighborhood are laughing their asses off watching us. We don’t care; they’re just a bunch of morons anyway. I give Dan McClusky a clout on the side of the head, for the sheer hell of it. Nobody can hurt an Irishman by hitting him on the head.

      When we get down to the dump, Birdy straps on those wings and runs around a little flapping them. He’d run fast into the wind, jump, and flap like mad. It does look as if he’s getting some lift. He says he can feel it. He tells me he hasn’t eaten any dinner or breakfast. He’s been dieting for a month so he’s thin as a rail. I try to talk him out of the idea again but no go. He’s all fired up to fly out over that creek. He really thinks he’s going to take off and fly into the blue. I’m glad nobody else is around; they’d lock us up.

      Birdy’s figured it all out. He has a special stand to hold the bike so he can climb up on the rack while I hand him the wings. Then I help hold the bike, steady it, while he straps them on. He looks super weird standing on the front of the bike with those wings on. He looks like a gigantic Rolls Royce radiator cap, that’s what.

      There’s a mark he’s made at the edge of the hill. I’m supposed to throw on the brakes there and he’s going to spring off the bike. He goes over everything with me again. He should be nervous. There he is about ready to jump off into the air at about thirty-five miles an hour over a forty-foot drop with all that hardware on his back. Not Birdy. All I can see is he’s anxious to get started.

      I start pedaling the bike like mad, trying to keep on the path. After I get moving, I’m going straight. I have powerful legs and I’m giving it all I have. It’s one of those things you don’t just half do. Birdy’s crouched in front of me, wings outspread, ready to spring off. We’re really moving when we reach the line and I hit the brakes.

      Birdy springs off and over the edge. He’s flapping those wings like a mechanical seagull. For a few seconds he goes straight out, his legs spread, soaring, a gigantic, silver winged bird. He actually begins to go up, but he’s losing forward momentum and he goes into a stall. Out there, way off the hill, he begins to drop, feet first, with the wings spread and still flapping but flapping sideways. They’re designed to flap down, when Birdy’s flat out. Now he can’t get his feet up again. He’s dropping down into the creek; flapping his wings uselessly all the way.

      I run after him. I’m sliding down the dump hill, getting ashes into my shoes and all over me. I scare the bejesus out of a rat. When I get there, Birdy’s standing up in the middle of the creek unbuckling his wings.

      ‘You OK, Birdy?’

      ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’

      ‘That’s what you said after you fell off the gas tank. You sure you’re OK?’

      ‘Sure I’m sure. When you only weigh ninety-three pounds, you don’t fall very fast; especially if you have as much air surface as I did. I didn’t come down fast at all.’

      Birdy just isn’t real. He climbs out of the water, adjusts a few vanes that’d gotten bent and wants to try again. I tell him he’s going to get himself killed and I don’t want any part of it.

      We scramble up the side of the dump hill, more ashes in the old shoes, dragging the wings with us. We get up there and Birdy tries to show me, drawing it out with a stick in the ashes on his runway, how with his light weight, accelerating at thirty-two feet per second per second, after he’s fallen twenty feet or so, his downward velocity isn’t going to increase. He СКАЧАТЬ