Late Autumn 1944
"South Jersey... it's more than just Camden and Atlantic City. But, I guess Ay-Cee is a good place to start the story," she says with a florid Italian accent.
Benny Haskins turns his big head her way as the Chevy Stylemaster they sit in speeds down Forty Nine. Huge hands rest placidly on worn out denim jeans. "Story, huh? Look, Frederica -"
"It's Crank. Everybody calls me Crank," she says, eyes on the road while she drives. Her only movement is a barely noticeable flick of her head, a vain attempt to get the straight black hair out of her face. She pushes the car like a cop in hot pursuit along a glassy road this rainy evening, this dangerous evening.
"Okay, Crank," Benny states in an elevated tone. He rubs his hand across the top of his brown and gray buzz cut. He thinks for a second about helping the young lady get the hair out of her eyes, but shoots down the thought. "Why do people call you that? You seem like an alright kid, sans the violence. Are you typically unhappy?"
She immediately turns to face him, while the powerful car races down the road at one-hundred miles an hour plus. She's got very white skin for an Italian, hair like a moonless night and deep-set eyes. She looks oddly enough like the wife in that Charles Addams' comic strip, scary and beautiful all at once. Her mood is constantly dire.
"Why do you ask that? I'm happy right now," she poses with a blank face, staring into his confused eyes.
"Nevermind," he grumbles, shaking his head and waving his huge hands around the car's space. "You grabbed me outta the poultry farm from where I was working, harassed my boss Mister Harmon, and for what, because we gotta go to the Army airfield in Millville to pick up someone - - or something- - called Milkman?" He laughs sarcastic for a good while, and then holds on for dear life as Crank takes her souped-up baby around a bend like a pro. Ice water swishes past the passenger window. Benny chokes.
"That's the short of it!" Crank answers, a bit of anger in the tone. Somehow, the lady could drive like a maniac and still fit in time to adjust her black lace gloves and cashmere sweater of cream with roses across the shoulders. "They got smart this time around. Didn't fly in directly across the river from Philly, but arced around the Shore and snuck into Egg Harbor and Cape May. I had to get out of the Cape and find help, so I bolted for Atlantic City, which brings me to where I began. That was the last order I got. Hand me that hat on the backseat, please."
Benny grabs the black soldiers' hat, noticing the badge on it is not any military branch he'd ever heard of and bearing the initials 'ST'. She places it down snug on her head, and immediately looks like an alluring chauffeur. He doesn't know what to make of this chick.
"Anyway," she begins, "you've been reading the papers, right? Weird stuff started happening right after Pearl Harbor three years ago. Stuff like that?"
"Yeah, I've seen a lot, and assumed even more. But that's typical of government cover ups. I flew with the Ninety-Fourth in the Great War, and there's always things they won't tell a guy. So what?"
"Vecchio, what I've got to show you is a lot stranger than a government secret. Let me slow down La Donna a little so I can talk."
The Stylemaster powers down to a mean seventy-five. Benny wonders why the car's hood is so high, seats so jacked up and why the engine revs like one from a fighter plane. The chick did say she was a mechanic when she came literally kicking his door down. He thinks about whether he should have brought more from his house than a mere change of clothes, flashlight and his old 1911 handgun. Benny thinks one too many thoughts on this unfriendly drive across the dead of South Jersey night. As the car speeds over wet asphalt, Haskins regrets not writing his will before ditching Ay-Cee.
Frederica, a.k.a Crank, places a hand on Benny's thigh. He tenses. "What I have to tell you cannot be said to anyone else, or you have to die. There's a very good reason the U.S doesn't want anyone to know about the war's new twist, and that reason is mass panic." She speaks it in perfect English, but Benny is beginning to find the thick accent to be very agreeable to his ears.
"Weird like what? Like those U-boats off shore dropped off more than Nazis?" he asks, half serious.
She turns to face him once again; shadows on her deep eyes make her appear frightening. "If it was Nazis only, we'd be doing okay. Haven't you heard about the blackout in New York City, and the one in Philly?"
"Sure, but we ration just about everything there is! I guess even electricity had to take a hit, but again, so what? I got no interest in big cities anyway. I'm a poultry farmer, period. If the mainland got invaded, call out the troops and the big guns and get to it. What garage do you really work for, and why am I involved?"
Crank of 'ST' turns on the radio. Some young cat plays piano live from a hall in Jersey City. Benny rolls his eyes so loud it makes Frederica grind her teeth.
"You're supposed to be the Lost Generation! I thought all of you guys loved jazz!"
"Give me a real orchestra any day over this chaos," Benny bemoans. "Oh, and opera! Yeah, you can't beat Caruso and Verdi. Now, you gonna answer my questions?"
She mumbles some Italian he can't possibly decipher, and cranks up the sound. Benny watches her lips move, and shakes his head again at this volatile child.
Crank displays a grin of perfect and large teeth. Her little foot renews its pressure of the accelerator. "I work for Special Technologies. At least, I have since they drafted me nine months ago. As to why I got you, Vecchio? Well, because I need you to get hold of the big guns."
"What big guns are you talking about, chickadee, and who's Vecchio?" he yells.
"Milkman is the big gun, idiota! And Vecchio means 'old' because you're old and slow to catch on!" Crank yells at the window before rolling her eyes Benny's way. "And don't call me chickadee!"
Benny folds his arms as LaDonna maxes out to one-hundred and forty miles an hour. Both parties sigh and clench their jaws. Rain begins to fall like wet gunfire outside on the highway, but it doesn't slow down the Stylemaster one bit.
"Now I see why they call you Crank," the grim poultry farmer mumbles.
_____________________________
Millville, New Jersey
Army Airfield
5:05 A.M
The rain turns the long dirt road at the Millville Army Airfield into a muddy sluice. The Chevy, parked next to the white blocks of airmen's quarters, hums softly with headlights off. Crank toys with a satchel of tools while Benny looks out into the dark deluge. He sees nothing, feels horrible and worries about everything. Frederica sits cool as a cucumber.
"Soooo..." Benny begins the beguine, "where is this Milkman at, so we can get to it and I can go back to my ducks and chickens?"
She never looks away from the tools. "Don't you even want to ask me why it's called Milkman?"
He sighs more, does the head shake and grabs his heart as if it will soon stop beating. "Okay, Crank! I'm forty-four and tired and losing my mind! But sure, let's play another round of 'What's My Meaning'! Why, oh why, is it called Milkman?"
Crank closes up her satchel, satisfied with its contents. "Because of the six bottle-shaped rockets under its engine, that's why."
Benny sits up straight so fast that Crank thinks he's a rocket. "Rockets, you said? You mean Milkman is a fighter plane?" Giddiness rules his voice.
She glances out the windshield again, staring blankly. "It's actually a fighter-bomber. Well, kind of. Sort of. You see- wait. Forty-four? So, you were like a child in the Great War? "
Benny leans closer to the mechanic. She takes in his big blue eyes and massive, six-foot four frame and realizes he may have been something in his day, and that day had come and gone. Maybe. "No one questions the age of a man once he passes six feet and has body hair in abundance. Now, this fighter-bomber, you want me to fly it?"
Her full lips curl inside her mouth, as her eyes slowly slide away from Benny's gaze. "Yeah, I was given a file of some good pilots. You were the only one in the area, and the record states you volunteered to join the current war effort, but got turned down due to your age."
"I'm still just as good as these young flyboys," Benny says, reclining back to his seat in a huff. "They humored me. Showed me the new controls, guns and all, but then left me in the position of some part-time tactical trainer on Long Island for two years. I had enough of their excuses, and came Down Jersey."
"What's that?" she asks.
"My mom and older folks used to call South Jersey Down Jersey. So do I."
"Oh," Crank says in a really rounded enunciation. "Well, I need a pilot. You, as a pilot, will need a mechanic. We grab Milkman. You keep it fighting, I keep it flying. Deal? We will also need to steal a truck to transport it to Salem." She pronounces the last word in very audible syllables, as if Salem is two distinct words.
"Yeah I've... been there before," Benny murmurs. But as he returns to face the young mechanic, he swiftly notices something is wrong.
Benny watches her pale face go from chattering evenly to a fixated stare past his head. He turns at a snail's pace. In the dark and rain he's pretty sure he sees a tall figure move, just past the dim light of a street lamp. Something about it makes Benny rub his eyes. The legs! The legs were way too skinny and much too long to be a man. But it has to be a man, right? What else could it be?
"Madre di Dio!" Crank whispers. "The Slicks are already here!"
Benny feels the old nerves of war tingle inside. Looking down, he sees his hand has already found the grip of the 1911, a reassuring feel. Once more, Frederica's gloved hand touches him, this time his massive shoulder.
"Bullets don't hurt Slicks. But if they're here, then they've got remodulated types with them, or else they can't get much done. I know it's a lot to take in, but time is short. We need Milkman to fight, and hopefully reproduce since the blueprints are gone. Are you in or are you out, Vecchio?"
Benny eyes his gun, and then this young ingénue and the dashboard of her car with its airplane-like dials. He thinks about the new war and the old war, of long dead friends and recurring pains. He desperately wishes for the words of his departed old man at this moment, some keen insight on life to utilize. Instead, adrenaline becomes his mentor.
"Strange the way a man gets what he asks for. I'm in."
Liked scared rabbits, they hop out of the car, skating as quietly as two people can on frozen mud puddles and dangerous surroundings.
__________________________________________
5:18 A.M
Rain mixed with ice makes the terrain as slick as a salesman's jive. Benny moves with more ease than his younger partner, and he very much enjoys the irony. Crank switches her slight hips in men's black work pants like she's going to a dance hall, grumbling the whole route about being cold, getting wet, etc. They maneuver past one short white quarter after another, scanning the horizon in vain for signs of an enemy. The only attack comes from the weather.
The pair stare at the barely lit door to the main hangar for five minutes before taking a chance to get near it. Frederica trembles like a banged cymbal, and Benny realizes fancy secret agencies had done little to prepare the mechanic for actual combat. Her cool in the Chevy has definitely died out.
"Breathe slowly in and out," he whispers to her. "This is old hat for me. I'll go first, you see if you can take out the lights. Okay?" Even as he says the words, Haskins grips the handgun tighter, in order to conceal the trembling in his own digits.
She looks at him, eyes widening by the power of stark terror. Benny does some breathing techniques of his own. On the third inhalation, he charges the door. One turn and pull of the knob produces a loud crack. Benny peers inside, seeing one man dressed similarly to himself in a one-piece denim jumpsuit. The cracked door makes the lug turn his head. Benny storms in with gun aimed high. Lug raises his hands slowly, while raising his lips into a malevolent smile.
"Hello soldier!" the lug yells with the fakest of grins. "Fancy meeting you here! A bit early for a test flight, isn't it? Too dark, too wet."
"Don't make any sudden moves," Benny says. He eyes the hangar peripherally, seeing a few P-47's in various states of repair, some vehicle covered in a tarp at the rear and two other men in lab coats coming his way, also smiling eerily. The hangar smells like oil and metal. He swallows hard. The old soldier instincts are firing off in his brain.
"You Nazis are gonna regret comin' to my country and causing trouble!" he yells, more out of reassurance than anger.
"What's a Nazi?" the lug asks, taking a step forward. "I'm not sure, but I know we are something brand new, Mister Haskins."
Benny's 1911 shakes in his quivering hand. "How - - how do you know who I am?"
"Stand near us long enough, and the waves overlap... Benjamin!" one of the coats interjects. "It's simply a matter of frequency."
"Don't get any closer," Haskins orders. A very tense index finger applies pressure to the trigger.
They do advance, but then the lights go out. Six flashes match with six gunshots and the clamor of blind men in savage warfare. One cries out in agony, another ran headfirst into metal. Clanging and banging ends when a small hand in lace switches the power back on.
Crank stands over a coat, one hand in the electrical panel, the other firmly squeezing a monkey wrench. She looks like Morticia Addams' psychotic sister to Haskins' squinting eyes.
"Great job kid!" Benny hollers. He runs over to the lug who was taking his last breath after being hit square with three rounds. "If you're not a Nazi, who are you?" Benny asks while grabbing the lug's collar.
"I'm - Francis Curran," he spits out. "I was home. How did I get ...here?" He perishes right after. With his last breath, Benny hears a distinctive wheezing sound. No. It's more like the sound of a small engine winding down when it's been turned off, but inside the man's body. The sound gives Haskins a critical case of goose bumps.
Benny lets him go, closing the man's eyes with his fingers. He stands up and faces his tiny partner. "What the heck is going on here, Crank?"
Crank points at the men's bodies with the wrench. "You see how they behaved, like villains from a bad movie? They got remodulated by the Slicks. It's a pill or something like that. They put it inside, and it sends a radio signal that turns a person out from themselves to somebody, well, worse."
"And these, Slicks, the long-legged things, control them?" he gulps asking.
"No. Motherville does that. Only we don't know where she is, or even what she is."
Benny paces the hangar, hands on his hips, head shaking like mad. "How is that even possible? What radio signal travels that far and that advanced to control three guys at once?"
"I told you this is more than just a secret," Crank whispers. "This is some crazy foreign experimentation stuff! I got chosen for 'ST' because I'm the third smartest mechanic in the world, according to some crazy chart they have. But I'm having trouble figuring it out! My best guess is - - outer space?" She shrugged.
The back door to the hangar abruptly slams shut. "That's the other lab coat!" Benny yells. "We let one get away!"
Crank approaches the big guy, and puts both of her hands on his huge chest. "Calm down, okay? I faced Slicks before, but not so close up. Remodulates I have...unfortunately." She looks down and seems to stifle a cry. "Anyway, the coat will go and tell however many Slicks are in the area, but they'll take time to regroup and come in here. Besides, they burn lots of diesel moving around, and refuel regularly. They sniff out fuel almost as much as they fight and snatch people. We have time to wait and get Milkman in order."
"Right," Benny answers, still trying to wrap his head around this crazed concept. "Where is it? All I see are Jugs." He is right. Jugs, P-47's with their huge cylindrical front and large propellers fill the hangar.
Almost giddy again, Crank skips to the hangar's rear, urging the soldier to follow. She reaches the tarpaulin covered vehicle, pulls off the cover with a robust, "Ta-da!"
Benny Haskins studies this hunk of metal with his arms tightly folded over his chest. His face sours. Crank studies Benny's response, and notices his face and hands hold the red sun-kissed tan of white men who worked outside too long, while the lower part of his neck remains bright white. Benny walks around and under the contraption, touches it, kicks it.
"Ta-da!" Crank offers once more, but with less enthusiasm.
"How in the world am I supposed to fly this-this - children's toy? It's not even streamlined. And why does it have legs and arms?"
It's Frederica's turn to go sour. She waves around a wrench like a wooden pointer for a lecture. "Look Vecchio, this is built on the plans for a Jug, a P-47. But wanting to get ahead on urban warfare, the big boys decide they needed a plane with more maneuverability and quicker landings. That talk led to a lot of ideas, and failures, but only this one worked."
He looks at it again: a monster airplane in the front with the nose plugged by machinegun barrels, but with the Pratt and Whitney engine turned around the other way, and the propeller, a huge one, six feet behind the cockpit and in a metal ring, tail flaps longer and just ahead of the blades. Otherwise the frame and girth have the same solid shape as a Jug, but beneath the hull are two long legs with feet like giant arrowheads and flat, wing-like arms with ailerons and ending in three blunt digits of differing lengths. It seems ungainly. It looks like a bad dream.
S-47E stands out in bright white beneath the arm/wings, the plane's legitimate designation.
Crank gets to work on Milkman. She hums tunes from some jazz melody, while Haskins continues gawking at the beast. What the - -? remains his constant thought. At some point, he rolls a wheeled ladder to the plane/robot and climbs up, sighing all along the way. He gazes into the cockpit. The dials are all the same, save for an added gear labeled 'FLIGHT MODE' and a set of funky leather gloves with diodes and straps attached to a helmet like a locust's head. Bizarre! All of it has quickly become oh so very bizarre. He carefully slides back the greenhouse canopy, and slips into the cozy comfort of the seat.
"Well, it's got the luxury seating of a Jug," he mumbles. "Guess that's a plus." He fingers the knobs, the new lever and tries on the gloves. Tight fit, but a fit nonetheless.
A shadow startles him. Crank lays on the front of the plane, blinking rapidly with her greasy hands folded under her chin.
"I am in love with her!" she shrieks. "Aren't you?"
"I still say it won't fly. But, yeah, it's growing on me." Benny rubs the panel like the head of an obedient child and ignites the engine. Milkman roars to life like an army of berserkers.
"Bene! I can show you the small changes and additions. The rest you already know about. At sunrise, we break out. We need to get out of here, but the airfield is compromised. Listen to the drum of that engine! Like a baby hurricane suckling from Mother Ocean! Oh, I just know we're going to make a killer team!"
Benny sighs. "What you're saying is we have to get rid of the Slicks that are here before we go anywhere else. Right?"
Crank winks and clicks her tongue at the roof of her mouth. "Roger, Roger!"
Benny lifts himself up out of the cockpit. He strains to look out of a window. There are odd green lights dancing about in the pitch darkness. It makes him nervous to face the unknown. It makes him angry to know a hostile force has invaded his home. Is this really a crazy Hitler scheme, or something far more intricate? What if this Motherville won? No poultry farming, no friends and family, and there are already too few of the latter at his age. Heck, maybe there'd no longer be a Down Jersey, at least, not in the way he knows and loves.
"Show me what I need to know, and let's make it quick."
_______________________________________________
6:45 A.M
Fuel Storage Shed
Five Slicks guzzle a third of a barrel of fuel apiece. They stand back up, lean black metal configurations with thin rods for limbs ending in thirty-five inch scissors over three simple digits. One large camera eye zooms in and out over a smaller one with a red lens, as a roving series of steel whiskers sense the air for trace particles. Beeps sound from their heads. After the fifth beep, large steel blades on their backs unfold into four-bladed propellers. The Slicks rev up for flight as the beeps grow into a coded language, one only they and their mistress understand:
...BOMB THE HANGAR...BOMB THE HANGAR...BOMB THE HANGAR...
Flat metal feet like spades lift from the floor as the machines resisted gravity. From out of the bulky chest cavity, .50 caliber machinegun barrels rise. The enemy is on the move.
Under a clear sky made blue, indigo and orange by the rising sun, five monsters zoom, a remote-controlled Luftwaffe. Their buzzing wakes up the neighborhood, troubled souls panicking at the thought of a Third Reich incursion. Before anyone can telephone the police, the audible tang of gunfire rips into the hangar. Millville, you are now a war zone.
The door to the hangar opens with nerve wracking slowness, while overhead, Slicks drop little bombs on its curved roof. Down goes the roof in a vile display, along with the hope of an aerial defense by the state of New Jersey at its southern end. P-47's, equipment and munitions all give in to tons of crumbling debris. The command to the Slicks proves successful.
But out of that slowly moving door, one machine squeezes itself out and into the free world.
"Wooo-hah!" screams Benny from behind the control stick. Milkman is free, only cosmetic scratches to its checkered paint job upon exit. She soars up into the morning sky, a weird plane with a rear propeller and its legs folded up flat beneath the body, pointing forward like spearheads. The arms are out at the sides, stiffened and unfolded flat in the front, curved at the back. But the feel of it! The passion of flying again for an 'old man' mixes with the sublime feeling of near death escape!
"I changed my mind!" he yells into the radio mike inside the strange olive green insect helmet. "I love this baby too! It's better than a double shot of whiskey any day!"
"Calm down," Crank advises firmly. She sits back in La Donna, practically hugging the steering wheel as she talks to her partner on the radio. "Slicks are decent ground fighters, but they're made for aerial combat. Destroy them fast, and let's get out of here! I'll meet you at the supply hangar where they store the truck."
I'm made for air combat, too, Benny assures himself. Passing thoughts of Rickenbacker leave his mind as two Slicks fly past Milkman from underneath. They definitely are fast, reliable in their movements like an AT-6. Why aren't they shooting him down on the pass?
"They have to wait for the order update, I think," is the answer from his female partner over the frizzled radio. "That gives us the upper hand."
A seasoned pilot, Benjamin Haskins focuses, ignores the shaking of his diode-gloved hand, and pours on the pressure with power from chugging .50 calibers. Booms and clangs rolled out in order as huge shells fell to the earth. One Slick loses a leg, and its ability to remain level. The second one Benny gets dead to rights in its fuel tank, sending the enemy to an explosive downward tailspin. Milkman flies on to turn back for the hangar. As the sun rises higher, so does Benny's mood.
On the turn, his mood darkens. Huge bullets dig deep into the fuselage, rocking the robotic fighter-bomber. Haskins' resolve worsens. Slicks Three, Four and Five roar over and near the cockpit like mechanized hornets. Even through the bug helmet, Benny can smell the burning of diesel fuel. But Milkman, true to its thick P-47 roots, is a toughie. Six shots sink deep, but the old bird flies on with no noticeable loss of performance. It's like flying an iron bathtub, beautiful and durable.
Which is good, and the realization makes Benny mad as a bull seeing a matador. They hit his new plane! Maneuverability is supposedly the best in this short invention, huh? he thought. Let's see...
Milkman does a one-eighty on a dime, banking up and swiftly going from target to alpha male in an eye blink. Benny smiles. Whoever made this baby, Benny wanted his autograph on all of his clothes. Back to business. He lifts the red lever on top of the lever, and taps the button underneath once. From under Milkman, the familiar hiss of a High Velocity Aircraft Rocket, HVAR, departs into the atmosphere. Striking one Slick, its eruption causes the enemy to careen into one of its own allies. Boom! Two birds with one stone!
Wow, it really does look like a milk bottle, thought Haskins. Get it together! One more and its arcing down... at La Donna!
Down an empty stretch of road at the airfield, the Stylemaster looks like a deep green scarab beetle. Benny can only hope Frederica has already entered the supply hub. Slick's firing hit the ground all around the car, but only bust the windshield and passenger side mirror on the pass.
Benny's shots, however, are much better aimed. He sinks hot lead fangs right into Slick's hide, and then bites down again for another taste. Slick plummets down, crashing into a parked P-40 Warhawk. Both explode, just as the sirens of police and fire trucks are heard coming onto the field.
Benny Haskins completes his pass over the hub before circling once. He laughs at the stupefied faces of cops, firemen and nosy folks at the soaring doohickey. Benny continues laughing as he shifts the leg down to a bird-like hunch, and lands the plane in two hops and a fifteen-foot slide across the frosty runway. Milkman skids to a sloshing halt, kicking up a short wave of frozen earth at the gawking assembly. Policemen run at him with guns drawn, but the pilot climbs out of the plane red-faced with joy.
"Boy, if you guys could only see the looks on your faces!" Benny says, slapping his knees.
One cop carefully approaches, waving his hand for his compatriots to lower their arms. "American, huh? You - - care to explain why you're shooting up whatever in our sky, and what in the world is that thing you crawled out of?!"
So, Benny Haskins explains it as best he can. Unknown enemy, remote-controlled planes, brainwashed scientists, etc. The cops rack it up to Hitler Youth and Nazi experiments, end of story. But they argue Benny down about needing Milkman to take to Salem, or his connections to some military unit called Special Technologies.
Then, Crank jogs their way. The police stop interrogating, and started gawking at Benny's petite partner.
"Crank, can you tell these guys what happened here?" Haskins pleads. He's growing weary of the third degree.
She does, even displaying a badge and card from beneath her bright, spring colored sweater that Frederica had never even showed Benny. Urging the cops to call a number and verify her rank, one does while the rest continue the eye exam. Minutes pass where Benny wants to break policemen's jaws, while Crank holds, arms folded high on her chest and giving Benny the evil eye.
"Why did you let the Slick mess up my baby?" she asks with pouted lips and hardened eyes. Is she sad, or furious? He can't call it.
"I blew them all away, while trying to learn a whole new type of plane, might I add," he tells her while crossing his own arms. "Or did that go unnoticed by you? This is what you want to say to me after all that just happened?"
They make the angry faces at one another, while the cops finally begin paying attention to what actually happened. An officer returns from his telephone inquiry with a serious mood.
"She is who she says she is," the officer whispers. "And the plane - - thing - is needed for the war effort." He shakes Benny's hand, wonders foolishly why it makes Frederica gasp and stomp her foot, and motions his guy to depart.
"So," Benny begins, "you were right. I need to fly again, and you need to help ST get Milkman mass produced to fight this new war, or whatever it turns into."
She continues the hate look.
"What?"
Crank rolls her dark eyes, storms off with her arms straight and swinging as if their motion will make her little frame move faster.
"You're still blaming me for the car?" he yells as Crank jumps into the truck's driver seat. "It could have been worse! I saved it from destruction! Right?"
"Load. The. Plane. And. La. Donna. Do. Not. Scratch. Her!"
Benny looks at the debris on the airfield, thinks of Buck Rogers and gets to loading, wondering just how many times a person should shake one's head at another's behavior.
_________________________________________________
On The Road
Fifteen minutes later
An Army supply truck, its back end draped in a well tied down olive tarp, pushes down Forty Nine headed west. Horrendously loud jazz music breaks its way through flimsy speakers, while little Crank tries hard to dig the melody, and wipe out the image of her disabled beauty in the truck's rear.
Benjamin Haskins, not the beauty in question, sits in the back of that Army supply truck watching his hands shiver as if from the chills. He had had that once as a boy, but this time it wasn't caused by the cold. He tries to distract his mind from his past by looking at the bullet-scarred fuselage of the wonderful Milkman, and what Crank had informed of its creation. Roscoe Turner built Milkman? The Roscoe Turner? Bendix Air Race winner, ran around with a big-as-day lion, photogenic Roscoe? Yeah right!
Then again, the guy had built his own airplane, so he knew his stuff. But Milkman? That was the best idea Turner could develop for a war? And the name! Benny tries to come up with another name for it but...
...Milkman always delivers.
The thought makes his nerves more tranquil. Satisfied, Benny takes a chance at getting up in a truck moving eighty miles per hour, to pop the high hood on his partner's crazy car. A quick pull of the hood release nets him access. Now, Benny has never been a mechanic, but he did take the time over the years to learn the basics. But what he sees inside of La Donna makes the pilot's mind take a powder.
And that is the final thought on the matter. But he knows Frederica will find out about his health. After all, they were going to Barber's Basin in Salem, and Salem was where it all went south, back during the last war. What if he runs into people who knew him then? Surely many of them were still alive and living in the town of his nightmares. What if Crank finds out before Benny can sit her down for a heart-to-heart talk? Well, it was too late to worry about those sorts of things now. His past and his future were driving toward a very personal family reunion. But he wants in on the action, wants to be a part of something bigger than him, and now Benny has it.
He wonders just how long he will be able to keep it.
Writer's Note: Thank you for reading this! If you like it, vote for it, comment and scroll on! There's a LOT more in the adventures of Crank and Haskins to go. Aside from some editing this 35+ chapter serial is done. Read, vote, enjoy!