Free Establishment by Howard Fast

faucet. “Get him a towel.”
    â€œMotherfuckingjew bastard,” White said as he wiped his face.
    â€œYou a pilot?” Bernie asked.
    â€œI’ll fly your ass off, you lousy, oversized pile of turd.”
    â€œGood enough,” Bernie agreed.
    That night at ten o’clock, the pilots, navigators, and five radio operators whom Goodman had recruited in Los Angeles gathered in what the Hotel Marypol was pleased to call its banquet room. Not having been rented for a banquet these past ten years, the room was half filled with old beds, mattresses, broken chairs, and one-time banquet tables. Three dollars purchased it for two hours. The volunteers sat facing Bernie and Brodsky.
    The only thing they had in common was that they were all veterans of World War II. Their ages ranged from the middle twenties to the middle thirties. Of the pilots, seven were Jewish, two were Catholic, and one was a Baptist. Two of the navigators and one of the radio operators were not Jewish. What forces impelled them, Bernie did not know. Possibly they bore some of the guilt for the Holocaust; possibly they wanted a break in the dullness of postwar life, a chance to travel, an opportunity to put their hands on the controls of a four-motor plane again. Or possibly the motives of the non-Jews were as deeply buried and entangled as those of the Jews. None of them were in it for the money, because no one was being paid; they were guaranteed food and lodging, such as it was, and passage home from Palestine, though neither Brodsky nor anyone else appeared to know just how that would be managed. Three of them were unemployed; one was a film director who had just had a notable success, two were actors, one was a carpenter, one had quit the Los Angeles Police Force, four were students, two were selling insurance, and two others had taken a leave from jobs as pilots for large corporations. Two of the radio operators worked as television repair men. Oddly enough, nine of the group were married, and with this information, Bernie wondered how many of them, like himself, had used this as an escape hatch, a way to flee, a way to “bug out,” as he put it to himself, of real life. Or was this real life? Or was anything real life? What had Barbara said to him once, that no male of the species ever reaches maturity? Wars were games, politics were games—deadly, senseless murderous games of children in adult bodies. Glory, idealism, and courage were the three mindless labels. Still and all , he told himself, someone has to do it .
    Aloud, he said to them, “My name is Bernie Cohen. As much as anyone is in charge of this operation, I am, and I intend to see it through. So if any of you have any second thoughts, doubts, or misgivings, now’s the time to speak up and get out.” He waited, but no one spoke. “All right. We’re going to leave here at five a.m. and drive to Barstow. I say five a.m. because we’ll take off if all goes well at five the following morning, and I want the lot of you dog-tired so you’ll sleep. I don’t care if you don’t sleep tonight as long as you get a good night’s sleep tomorrow. That will give us a whole day to work on the planes.
    â€œWe’re flying into a field at Melville, New Jersey, and the weather conditions look good. We’ve got maps, and we’ll lay out our flight plans tonight. Now, how many of you were trained as mechanics?” Eight hands went up. “Good. There is no rank here. Tomorrow, everyone pitches in and works with the mechanics. Tonight, I want you to throw out every question you can think of. Let’s have no loose ends.”
    ***
    Tom Lavette, two years older than Barbara, was Dan Lavette’s first child. It was common gossip in certain San Francisco circles that the two Lavettes, father and son, had not spoken to each other in almost twenty years. Since San Francisco is not a very large city, and since the group of men who