Mission &Num;6
Stuart James
Lieutenant Flowers sat on the edge of his cot. He wore only his long underwear and looked like some hunched ghost in the gloom of the Nissen hut. It was one A. M. and the C. Q. had just waked him for his and his B-17 crew's sixth mission over the continent.
Flowers held one sock in his hand and stared at the dark wall. He was thinking of home, of the bright, warm kitchen in the house in Pennsylvania where his father and old Mr. Laudenslager used to sit arguing for hours. They called their gabbing "philosophical discussions," but they never agreed about anything, unless it was the crazy idea that life was just a run of "unacceptable alternatives." Flowers could even smell his father's pipe and see, as the two men sat by the sprawling range, Mr. Laudenslager's old bulbous-toed shoes turned out in a perfect ninety-degree angle.
Flowers spoke suddenly into the dark. "Just like Dave's feet in that upper turret!" Behind the pilots' seats in their B-17 he could see Dave's long legs sticking down out of the turret, his flight boots turned out in a ridiculous Charlie Chaplin angle.
