ON MY KNEES on the ground still spitting out sand and it's turned into a goddamn nightmare, some sort of reverse miracle because Laughing-friggin’-Jack, of all people, has lost his nerve.
Me and the rest of the Nobodies have made the jump safely, landing a bit away from the runway where the peckerwood sergeant waits with the truck. Every man has cut himself free and double-timed it to the runway, as if by being there we could change the ugly truth that was about to come howling down and ripping across the tarmac in front of us.
Sweet Potato is on his radio, crying, and of all things, talking to Verna as if his damn radio could somehow transmit eight thousand miles directly into Verna's brain. Maybe that is what breaks Jack, being alone up there with a weeping boy he has to kill. He just keeps circling the landing strip, maybe burning up the fuel to prevent a fire, maybe trying to convince himself he can walk back there and blow a crying boy's brains out.
Sweet Potato starts apologizing to Verna and giving her advice on how to live and be happy and to move on. It's when he starts apologizing to the kids that they're never gonna have that we all lose it, a bunch of hard assess in the middle of camel hump nowhere sitting on the sand, arms around each other bawling like we ain't done since we was kids. Even that big peckerwood gets down there with us, blubbering. I reckon this is the first time I ever look at a peckerwood bastard and see a damn person. It rattles me until I think I can't get no lower. But I do after Laughing Jack swings it out extra wide and disappears into the sun. He's does it so he can have the sun at his back on landing, and that's when Sweet Potato starts begging.
"Hey. Hey!" Sweet Potato shrieks. "What are you doing, man? Hey, what the hell are you doing? Oh God, don't you do it! You listen to me. Don't do this. I can't take it man. I can't take this weight on me. Please. Don't!" And all the time we hear the thunks and creaks and scrapes of him thrashing around in his belly turret tomb.
It's not something you ever want to say, but you hate the ones that beg for their life. They make you feel dirty and shamed, put you right there with them, on your knees fingers laced behind your head while you wait for the snick-snack of a shell being jacked into the chamber, on the gallows with a noose snugged tight and rough against your neck and you listen for the creak of the thrown lever that will snatch the trapdoor from under your feet, or like right now, crammed into the belly turret of a B-17 and still alive because a man you thought was a god has finally cracked under the pressure. This is what they are forcing on us, hating Sweet Potato for begging, hating Jack for leaving him alive and worse for being a man and not a god, meaning that we have been vulnerable the whole time—not god-favored like we believed in the worst times. We feel all that to cover how much we despise ourselves for being helpless and for being glad it is those two bastards up there and not us.
That all changes when we see how he comes out of the sun.
None of us can even speak except the peckerwood who says, "Sweet God in heaven, what is that crazy bastard doing?"
And that is the question of the goddamn century. Why the hell is he coming in for a landing not only banking, but sideways? All he can do is scrape a wing tip and cartwheel down the runway, disintegrating the whole plane, killing them both. Is that what it is? Some kind of suicide because he can't face that he isn't the man he thought he was. Couldn't just walk up and shoot a nineteen-year old boy? Like that's something to be ashamed of?
For the first time Laughing Jack's voice comes over the radio, steady and strong as always, the voice of a man who hasn't been broken, never could be. "You can have the future, Hopewell. I'll take right . . . fucking . . . now.”
"I love you!" I scream. "You beautiful bastard!" I finally understand those sad circus eyes. Sweet Potato hurts easy, but he mends and grows. Me, I can adapt to pretty much anything. A soul is made differently.
Crazily, I try to get onto the runway, but my Nobodies tackle me, pin me down, and we gape at the scene playing out like a movie with the film spliced by a drunken projectionist, all of us laughing like school boys at the sight of Laughing Jack bringing a shot-ta-hell, B-17 flying fortress in for a landing . . . upside-fucking-down.
Looks like he's going to pull it off when the nose dips, and our skins flame with terror. But our clothes start snapping in a suddenly risen wind, which forces us to squint through sand-filled air. Maybe that wind comes through there every damn day at that time, or maybe mother Africa is blowing her returning sons a kiss. Jack skims just above the runway, almost low enough to touch down and slide, but a B-17 isn't made for what Jack's trying to do. The tip of the dorsal-fin-like vertical stabilizer near the tail scrapes the runaway and snaps off. If that had been the whole stabilizer, Jack might’ve pulled it off. Instead, the remains of the stabilizer screech down the landing strip in a furrow of sparks, yanking the nose down into the tarmac, which annihilates the cockpit. The Great White Hope skids down the runway, spinning madly, flinging debris in every direction.
We sprint after it, boots thwacking on the tarmac, jagged metal fragments whirring through the air around us. We reach the wreckage, clambering onto it despite furnace-like heat from the friction of the slide, the fire flicking like the devil's tongue, and the fear that the fuel tank will explode, we struggle shoulder-to-shoulder with the peckerwood, freeing our heart.
~
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A sample of The Black Song Inside, a new Mystery Thriller shortlisted for the 2012 Faulkner-Wisdom Award, by Carlyle Clark has been included for your convenience.