Red Pilot

It was an unusually warm day in early spring when René was sunning himself by the brook and it went sputtering overhead, smearing the clear sky with oily, brown smoke. A fiery, crumpled Icarus of sticks and scorched fabric fell out of the sun and met the earth, disappearing behind a slight hillock. Little René was on his parents’ farmstead because he had decided to skip school that afternoon, and it made sense to hide out there on the bank by the droopy willow tree. Aeroplanes flew overhead all the time, and sometimes the pilots waved, both Allemands and Anglais. Never had he ever seen one up close, though—even wrecked—and maybe there would see a dead man. He had not seen one of those, either. Though little René ran, it still seemed to him to take hours to reach the site of the crash. Soaked with sweat from the exertion and sheer boyish excitement, exhilaration overcame René when he found it in the field. The still-smoking remains had crushed the bright young alfalfa and the skin of the machine had mostly been sheared or burnt away. It was a confrontation with what appeared to be the skeletonized carcass of some terrifying, prehistoric aerial monstrosity. The pilot was still seated in the cockpit with bloodied, mustachioed face. René poked his head with a stick and it flopped over and a sticky, meaty mess under his jaw glared back at him, disturbed. The airman had shot himself with his revolver rather than burn on the way down, but the corpse was hardly singed… There was buzzing from behind the copse of trees and the child turned to see another plane flit across the fields like some predatory insect attracted to the smell of burning gasoline and red meat. It was a triplane stained bloody as his victim. The pilot put down by the crash and climbed out of his machine, the engine idling and prop spinning. His face was obscured by bug-eyed goggles and soot from machine gun smoke. Only his pale lips showed he was vulnerable flesh like the boy and not a droning war machine or giant nightmare insect. The airman pulled the goggles over his head and his cold Prussian eyes found René’s. He quickly glanced away, but René could do nothing but stare at him. The pilot went to his kill and considered the angles, admiring his handiwork with the care of a modiste before the wedding. When satisfied with the inspection, he took out a large hunting knife. Until then the boy was fascinated, not afraid. This was the first time he had seen a German after all, and he flew! His guts might be in danger, though. He stood still, not remembering to run, dazzled by the sunlit blade in the filthy hand, wondering if machine gun bullets burned when they hit the bone the way the sun did to his eyes.

Ignoring René, the pilot walked past and slashed at the last scraps of fabric at the end of the aeroplane’s wing and ripped off the charred red and blue bullseye. He rolled it up, tucked it inside his jacket, and glanced at the little boy one last time. He didn’t give a snappy salute the way the servicemen did in town. A dark look of triumph skipped behind his otherwise calm face. It was sport to him and he was the winner.

He flew off back to his unreachable eastern hideout and René stared at the wreckage, wondering if he would get in trouble when he got home. About a month later Mother showed him a name in the newspaper, precisely plotted amongst austere ticks of newsprint, was a pilot’s obituary: downed over Allied lines.