“And?” Clete said.
“I had an epiphany. It was time for me to stop following Cletus.”
“No kidding?” Clete said.
“No kidding.”
“Then why didn’t you go in the Air Corps?”
“Two reasons. One, that would have been following you as a pilot.”
“But you are a pilot. You’ve had a commercial ticket and an instrument ticket since you were eighteen.”
“And a multi-engine ticket and fifty hours as pilot-in-command of my father’s Beechcraft Model 18. And while I was doing that, I had another epiphany.”
“Which was?” Clete said.
“It was just about the time the Marines were trying to recruit me. I was home from College Station for the weekend. Dad had some people at the ranch who had to go back to Dallas. He said, ‘We’ll have Jimmy fly us there in the Beech.’ And they said, ‘Oh, is your son a pilot?’ or words to that effect, to which Dad replied, bursting with pride, ‘Oh, yes. He soloed just after he turned fourteen. He’s one hell of a pilot’ or words to that effect.
“So there I was, at the end of Twenty-two at Midland Airport, with my father and my mother and three of his pals and their wives in the back, and the tower says, ‘Beech Six Four Four, you are cleared for takeoff.’ And I put my hand on the throttles and said, ‘Six Four Four rolling’—and then had my epiphany.”
“Which was?”
“‘What the fuck am I doing here, about to take eight people into the air? I’m a lousy pilot and I know it. I don’t even like flying. My stomach knots every time I put my hand on the throttle quadrant. The only reason I’m flying is so that I can be like Cletus. And being like Cletus is not a good enough reason to risk my life, not to mention other people’s lives.’
“So I went in the Army, not the Marine Corps, and when I was in Officer Basic School and they came and said, ‘We see you’ve got twelve hundred hours and an instrument ticket and a multi-engine ticket. So as soon as you finish here, we’re going to make you an Army aviator, a liaison pilot,’ I said, ‘No, thank you just the same, I’ll drive a tank.’”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Clete asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry, Jimmy,” Clete said, his tone sincere.
“And then they found out that Dad and General Donovan were World War One buddies, and sent me to the Counterintelligence Corps.”
“I’m sorry, Jimmy,” Clete repeated.
“Don’t be. If I hadn’t been drafted into the CIC, I wouldn’t be here about to seize a half-ton of uranium oxide and maybe a German submarine for the U.S. government.”
He exhaled audibly and added, “Thus making the world safe for democracy and Mom’s apple pie.”
Clete chuckled. “I guess this means you don’t want to shoot touch-and-gos in my Lodestar.”
“You don’t understand, Clete. I’m happy to shoot touch-and-gos in your Lodestar, providing you’re sitting in the left seat. What I don’t like to do—what I’ve stopped doing—is flying by my lonesome.”
Dieter von und zu Aschenburg grunted.
“I knew others like you,” he said, nodding. “Both fighter pilots. One in France, and a second in the East.”
“How’d you find out about them?” Jimmy said.
“They told me. I guess you’ve heard that fighter pilots drink more than they should.”
“What happened to them?” Jimmy pursued.
“They didn’t have a choice, Jimmy, so they continued flying until they went down.”
Jimmy met his eyes, and thought, Meaning of course that you—and probably Clete, too—think I’m a coward for not following Clete into the Marines and the cockpit of a fighter.