The dream was always the same. He’s sitting in the pilot’s seat of an old Lancaster bomber in full kit, flying at 18,000 feet in formation with 20 other planes. He crosses the coast and below, lies the chequered green and yellow fields of Holland. The cockpit smells of oil and fuel. He scans the sky below and above for enemy fighters, like he has done many times before. Then the flak starts. The explosions sound like a whip cracking inches from his ear. Tiny clouds of grey cordite hang in the air. Past the flak, lies the target. He’s alone and at 12 years of age, is about to bomb Hamburg.

The dream started when James was nine years old. Grandpa MacDonald flew Lancaster’s in the war and told him how the German fighters would come from behind and fire into the wings and fuselage. The old man threw his scrawny arms out wide like an attacking Messerschmitt and spat bullet sounds in his face. James saw the bombers explode in mid-air or bank on to their sides and fall slowly from the sky.

The dream followed him as he married his teenage sweetheart and opened a legal office in a small seaside town. But there were changes. While the German radar-controlled anti-aircraft fire got closer, his wife of eight years grew more distant, until she left him when his drinking spiralled out of control. His wife’s perfume filled the cockpit and he’d wake up crying.

His law practice dealt with a litigious cluster of small town complaints and rivalries; of contested wills, property disputes and divorce settlements. His latest client wanted to sue an organisation which saved whales, for using his name. Everyone called Christopher Shepherd, C.Shepherd. Even the cops who slapped domestic violence orders on him every few months.

James’ patience was short and his blood pressure was high. Every morning he stood in front of the mirror and sucked his gut in. The dream had become boring and predicable. He always awoke before the target with the leaden taste of the oxygen mask in his mouth.

One night as the dream spooled out, he grabs the steering column and banks the plane hard to port. He pushes the throttle forward and out of the window, he sees the the Japanese whaling fleet refuelling in the port of Shimonoseki.

He climbs down to the bomb aimers position and opens the bomb bay doors. Supply trucks line the wharfs. A group of men in overalls shield their eyes and wave at him as he drops a cluster of 300 pound bombs and incendiaries over the fleet from 3000 feet. He crawls back to the pilot’s seat and banks the Lancaster hard to starboard. The first 10 whaling boats disintegrate and the rest are engulfed in fire.

James wakes with the rising sun pouring through the Venetian blinds. He looks in the shaving mirror and his face is covered in grime, except around his eyes, where the goggles sat. In the shower he does something he hasn’t done for a long time. He starts singing. With the scrubbing brush as a microphone he belts out Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York, “these little town blues, are melting away…” and goes up half an octave as he soaps his groin.

xxxxxxx

Paula was his third legal secretary in two years but she’d stuck. He threw his hat on the desk. She had a new hairstyle.

“Very fetching,” he said. “Early 1940s Hollywood. A bit Hedy Lamarr”

“Thank you. I got it done last night”

She made a mental note to buy James a coffee and donut at lunchtime.

“Some good news, boss” she said, barely containing her glee. “Mr Shepherd died in a house fire last night. The old buzzard fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand. Happy days are here again – especially for his wife”

“Praise the Lord,” says James, holding his hands in prayer. “Paula, please shred the Shepherd file and get call Mrs Shepherd. See if there’s anything we can do, especially with house insurance”

He called her ‘Paula’ and used the word, ‘please’. Maybe two donuts.

xxxxxxx

His old leather jacket hung in the cupboard, next to the skirts his wife left. The jacket still fitted although he’d put on weight. He wore it on the night of the crash. He’d just got back from his Honeymoon in Bali, when his best friend Tim and his girlfriend, Angie called around. Did he want to shoot some pool and sink a few beers at Hamad’s Bar? His wife was at her parents. He jumped in to the back seat of the old Ford and Angie sat in the passenger seat. A light rain fell as they cracked a six pack of beer. The interstate was bumper to bumper so they took a side road, through the industrial estate.

“If Nathaniel West hadn’t died,” Tim yelled as he dodged a cat, “what do you reckon the title of his next book would have been?”

“The Day of the Grasshopper?” Angie said.

“Miss Lonely Hearts Does Reality TV,” James said.

Tim snorted beer through his nose and accidentally turned off the windscreen wipers, just as a B-double Mack truck travelling at 60 miles an hour, edged over the double white lines. The smash sent the Ford spinning like a top in to a power pole, killing Tim instantly. Angie died at the scene. They cut James out of the back seat without a scratch.

Something broke inside him. He’d seen tragedy before. His upbringing was ‘unconventional’ as the social workers said. Now he crossed the road when he saw people who knew Tim and Angie coming his way. They’d ask, “how you doin’?” He was doing hard time.

xxxxxxxx

Instead of bombing Hamburg, he swung the plane towards his home town. The sun was setting and a light rain fell. His old leather jacket was a snug fit but felt good. Below was the lake he used to swim in with Tim. There was his old school before they built the new science block. He dropped the Lancaster to 2000 feet, opened the bomb bay doors and put his eye over the bomb sight. The car plant was still running. He lined the Lancaster up over the side road, and dropped a full load of 500 pound bombs for two miles. He could hear the crump, crump, crump of the bombs exploding behind him.

On that rainy afternoon, Tim sped past the ‘Road Closed’ signs and stayed on the interstate. A Mack truck going the other way and two hours behind schedule, blew its horn as Angela said with a smug smile, “All women are Miss Lonely Hearts because the quality of the men is so bloody low.”

James awoke with the taste of Bourbon in his mouth. Tim had left a message on his phone thanking him for being his best man at the wedding. Hell of a night, he said. Angie says the casserole dish was the worst fucking wedding present in the world but says she loves you anyway.

xxxxxxxx

He threw the divorce letter from his wife’s solicitor on the kitchen table and poured a full glass of Jack Daniels easy on the ice and sat on the porch. Young kids across the road were throwing baskets. They were about his age, maybe 12 or 13, when his Mum met Spencer. Just after Grandpa MacDonald sorted out his real father by ramming a shot gun in his mouth, saying that if he ever laid a hand on his daughter again, he’d blow his fucking head off. Grandpa died soon after that.

Spencer’s white Mustang was riddled with rust. His wispy blonde hair and a pencil moustache made him look like a pimp. He used to work as a forklift driver at the car plant but lost his job when they started laying people off. James and his Mum moved in to his run down farm house about 12 miles out of town. It only grew one crop, hidden in the glass houses out the back.

Spencer got him to help harvest the dope. It took a week, working all night. His Mum had inherited Grandpa’s temper and one day, just before Spencer was going to sell it to some thugs from the city, she tells him he’s a scum sucking piece of shit and unless he gets his act together, she’s calling the cops. He stares at her for a moment, takes one step forward and hits her hard in the stomach.

James tore across the room and rammed his thumbs in to Spencer’s eyes, grabbed the car keys while Spencer was staggering around the kitchen looking for the carving knife, and hauled his Mum in to the passenger seat. They got as far as the next town before the cops pulled them over. A pack of social workers arrived at the police station. He did two years in an orphanage before his Mum got her shit together and broke him out.

xxxxxxx

James awakes in the pilot’s seat as machine gun fire rakes the fuselage. Two Messerschmitts blew the Lancaster on his starboard side out of the air. He looks in the small rear view mirror attached to the pilot’s window and there, as big as a Mack truck sits a German fighter. He hurls the plane to port and dives. The outer starboard engine explodes. James pulls back on the column as the cockpit fills with a brilliant light. Below is his home town. Through the headphones he hears, “This is Casey Kasem in Hollywood with the American Top 40 and coming right up, we have The Doors”.

The Lancaster is losing altitude. He follows the interstate and there’s Spencer’s farm. His Mustang is parked by the glasshouses. He’s still courting his Mum. There’s Spencer leaning on his car smoking a Marlboro. He’s looking cool in his 501’s black denim jacket and boots. Maybe he’s figuring how much he’s going to get for the crop. Figuring it would be good to have a woman around to do the house work.

Spencer sees an old World War Two British Bomber plane circle around to the south west, with smoke streaming from one of its engines. James lines the plane up, opens the bomb bay doors and puts his eye over the bomb sight. He presses the release button and a load of 500 pound bombs and incendiaries, fall in a neat line over the house, the garage, the glasshouses and Spencer and his Mustang. There’s no time to fly around and look at the destruction as the plane banks dangerously to starboard.

James has never landed the Lancaster. He’s always woken up. Fear plays Chopin on his spine. He’s still that 12 year old kid, frightened of his own shadow. Who shored up his confidence as an adult by getting smashed. The kid who took two years to ask the woman he loved out on a date. Two years.

Grandpa’s voice comes over the headphones. It’s old and gnarly, like he got in the retirement home.

“Put the wheels down dip shit”

James hit the ‘wheels down’ button but they stay retracted.

“Tough shit boy. You’re also out of fuel”

“Grandpa, what do I do, for Christ’s sake help me!”

“You’re on your own, kiddo,” he says with a chuckle. “One bit of advice. Keep the plane straight and let the tail land before the rest of this hunk of shit. Might help. Might not.”

He was alone as the engines cut out. The wind whistles past the window as the plane falls from the sky. In the distance, there’s the old deserted petrol station where Tim smashed the windows. At 100 feet he gently pulls back on the control column and the nose rises. The tail hits the tarmac and the rest of the fuselage smacks down on the broken bitumen and corkscrews down the road for 500 yards. The propellers twist and sheer off as oil pours from the damaged starboard motor. The Lancaster comes to a halt by a dam. He opens the rear door and jumps but keeps falling as the ground is replaced by a black void where he wakes in bed with a start. His heart’s beating hard and he’s covered in sweat.

It’s 5.00am. He turns over and his wife is lying asleep next to him. She’s making that little clicking sound with her lips. The wardrobe is full of her clothes. The first rays of a Saturday morning hit the top of the bedroom window. He puts the kettle on, goes back to bed and lies next to his wife and smells her hair.