Paper Doll by Jim Shepard

out,” Lewis said.
    Operations and Planning provided some last-minute operational data, and Stormy talked about the expected weather changes to and from the city. He drew large billowy cumulus clouds on his own chalkboard to illustrate the expected 20,000-foot ceiling.
    They were reminded not to underestimate the enemy, a bit of advice they found as gratuitous as anything they had heard since their induction. The gunners were reminded to harmonize at 250 yards, and to remember the bullet streams would converge at that distance and then begin to diverge.
    The crews were glum and attentive. They always half hoped for unimportant targets, targets which would not stir the Germans into anything more than their usual hostility.
    The CO announced the time and they all set their minute hands to it, and he called “Hack!” and they started their watches again.
    â€œGood luck,” he said. “Remember what’s at stake.”
    â€œWhat?” someone asked.
    The group broke up, navigators heading off in one direction, bombardiers and radio ops to pick up their information sheets, the gunners to the flight line lockers. Piacenti, Ball, Lewis, Snowberry, and Bryant walked in a line carrying parachutes and flak vests to the armament shop to pick up their guns. They piled everything into two jeeps and rode to Paper Doll minutes ahead of everyone else.
    The guns were slid into their steel frames and locked in the stowed position for takeoff. The turrets were turned to face the rear. The five of them stood beside the plane, checking the layers of gear and waiting for the rest of the crew. Bryant hunched near the enplaning hatch on the fog-colored underside and dandled his finger around the connecting ring of his oxygen hose. Lewis went off into the mist a few feet and urinated through the circle of his thumb and forefinger.
    Gabriel arrived with everyone else and gathered the group in a circle for some final instructions. He talked about the need to communicate on the bogies but to otherwise stay off the interphone. He cautioned Snowberry and Bryant to keep alert for fighters at twelve o’clock high and low, and said some of the scuttlebutt was there’d be a big diversionary raid which might tie up a lot of interceptors to the south. Snowberry was wearing a button he’d gotten from the New York World’s Fair, which read I Have Seen the Future. Gabriel peered at it, and asked if there were any questions. His cap had been pummeled and soaked in water to affect the fifty-mission crush, and when he moved, his unconnected oxygen hose and interphone cable flapped and gestured.
    No one else spoke. They lined up to enplane.
    â€œDo the bear dance, Bean,” Snowberry said, and Bean startled Bryant by hopping from one foot to another, back and forth, looking for all the world in his heavy gear and flight suit like a dancing bear. They had all seen this before, and laughed affectionately. Bryant had not. He felt suddenly he was outside even this group. When had Bean started a bear routine? Who had encouraged it?
    Piacenti, climbing in ahead of him, turned and displayed an old orange warning tag from the Norden bombsight, and grinned. He slipped it inside his flight jacket and clambered up into the hatch.
    Bryant hesitated before the opening, having missed the point.
    â€œDo-it-yourself superstition,” Lambert Ball said behind him. “Can’t beat it.”
    They individually ran their preflight checklists from their dark stations, calling in over the interphone. Bryant stood at the flight engineer’s panel and then at Gabriel and Cooper’s shoulders, double-checking their run-through.
    They waited. A full hour passed. Bryant felt as if he were wearing a constricting and damp pile of laundry. “Stormy, if you’re wrong, we’re gonna kick your fucking ass,” Lewis murmured over the interphone. They heard rain patter lightly on the fuselage and everybody