Chad Thumann - The Undesirables

The recruiters obviously tried to do their job, admonishing the boy to join up by assuring him that it would be better than getting drafted. But they also both had grandmothers of their own, and they couldn’t resist helping her. So they looked up the grandson’s record. The hero, Petr, they sadly reported, was missing in action and presumed either dead or a prisoner of war, which, they seemed to think, was even worse than being dead.

The report had given Petr some comfort. He knew that no one would be hunting him now. He could escape with Karen and make a clean start. But he still hadn’t been sure what he should do. He’d spent the remainder of the evening walking aimlessly through Chelyabinsk’s streets, trying to decide.

When the time came to meet Karen, he still wasn’t sure. So he resolved to let a kiss decide. At his first opportunity, he would kiss her, and he’d know by how she responded whether she still loved him. If she did, he’d go with her to America. If she didn’t, he’d rejoin the army and help defend his homeland.

Petr looked away from the Skytrain and across the hangar at Karen. She was so beautiful. She’d long since recovered from the Nazi beating she’d received, and she was no longer the filthy, scrawny girl he’d first met outside Leningrad. She’d put on weight during their train trip so that her stomach even slightly swelled, pushing up against her tight, borrowed dress.

Petr stared at Karen’s tummy, finding it maddeningly erotic. He desperately wanted to rub his hands and lips over it. He had to look away, lest he cross the hangar once more and give in to those compulsions. He knew he’d made the right decision. After all, what difference could he, one person, make to the Russian war effort?

Despite the assurance of a Hollywood reporter, he was no John Wayne. He was a simple man, a simple kid, really, a Russian boy with simple desires and modest ambitions. Better to live than to die, better to love than to fight, and most of all, better to spend a long life with that gorgeous woman.

He gazed at Karen then, and she gazed back at him. “You would be blushing,” he told her.

“Why?” she asked, with a coy smile.

“If you knew what I wanted to do right now.”

And Karen did blush, because she was thinking something similar.

Right then the door unlocked, and Bobby entered. “You made it,” he said with relief.

“We made it,” Karen confirmed.

“Well, then, let’s do this. We don’t have much time.”

It had been awkward at first, climbing into Bobby’s lap—not because it put Karen in an uncomfortable physical position, but because it put her in an emotionally difficult one.

She had once yearned for Bobby’s touch. That yearning had helped her survive the dark days of Leningrad. But, she was ashamed to admit, since meeting Petr, that yearning had left her.

Now, as she leaned back against Bobby’s chest, it was as though her body was becoming reacquainted with a long-lost comfortable chair. Despite the growl and rumble of the Airacobra’s powerful engine, Karen felt Bobby’s heartbeat thump against her back. The pressure of his arm across her stomach was strong and reassuring.

She moved her fingers gently up his forearm and bicep, feeling the curve of his muscles under his shirt. He wasn’t wearing his flight jacket; he’d given it to her, and she’d pulled it over her simple, straight dress. She felt strangely proud to be wearing it, the way she’d seen those silly cheerleaders wearing their boyfriend’s letterman jackets. At the time she’d found the ritual vaguely demeaning, as if the boys were laying claim to the cheerleaders and confining them in a straitjacket. But now she understood the comfort it provided. It made her feel wanted. More than that, it made her feel protected.

Only a few months ago, Karen had felt neither. No one wanted her in Leningrad, and certainly no one had protected her. Even her own father seemed to care more about the symphony than about her. She now knew she was wrong in that perception; her father had loved her, but he was simply incapable of protecting her. She’d learned to forgive him for that.

Karen had been left on her own. And now she had two men protecting her. Two men, she knew, however, was one too many. She indulged herself, comparing the feel of Bobby to that of Petr. They were both long and lean, but Bobby’s skin was softer. She remembered that his chest had been smooth when she’d left New York, but that was a long time ago, and she wondered whether he’d grown the same coarse hair that bristled across Petr’s chest.

If Bobby had brown hair on his chest, Karen imagined it would be soft. She was tempted to push her hand between the buttons of his shirt and satisfy her curiosity. But she resisted that urge, not out of fear that he’d reject the gesture, but out of fear that he’d welcome it.

She began to wonder whether that would be such a bad thing. Somehow, unconsciously, she’d found a way to turn in his lap so that she could twist her neck and look at his face. It was long, angular, even slightly patrician. Yet it was simultaneously trustworthy and trusting. Bobby’s lips were full, and they were perpetually curled at the corners into a dimpled smile.

It was an inviting face, and a familiar one, but there was something new there, too. Karen could detect a darker quality behind Bobby’s eyes that she’d never sensed before. They were not as dark and brooding as Petr’s eyes, but they’d lost the playful twinkle she remembered.

“What are you staring at?” Bobby asked, glancing away from the sky and up at her face.

“You,” Karen answered. “You’ve changed.”

“So have you,” Bobby acknowledged.

Karen nodded and turned back forward, breaking eye contact with her fiancé and staring once more through the cockpit window. She didn’t want to think about how she’d changed. She knew she wasn’t the same person who’d left New York, and she wasn’t sure she liked the person she’d become. She felt selfish for what she’d put Bobby through, and what she was currently putting Petr through. She tried to tell herself that it was all for Petr’s own good, that her actions were a necessary evil to rescue him from certain death.

But was that just an excuse to keep him close? And if she loved Petr, wasn’t she just using Bobby? Who else had she simply used to survive? Inna? Sasha? Could it be that she felt compelled to save Petr not because she loved him, but because she felt guilty about her dead father and dead friends, and she needed to somehow redeem herself?

She honestly didn’t know. Her brain and emotions both seemed to be betraying her.

“So what do you think?” Bobby asked her.

“About what?”

“About this…”

Bobby twisted the aircraft into a roll and a dive. Karen smiled as her stomach climbed up into her chest and Siberia’s treetops revolved over her head. “It’s incredible!” she yelled, exhilarated.

“Lieutenant Campbell, are we under attack?” It was the voice of Captain Hart coming over the radio. As General Marshall’s personal pilot, the captain was their squadron’s tactical commander. He knew they weren’t under attack, and his sarcastic tone was his way of reprimanding Bobby for breaking formation.

“No, Commander,” Bobby responded. “I thought I saw an antiaircraft emplacement and wanted to take a closer look.”

All the pilots had been briefed on the secret objective of their mission, so Bobby knew he could get away with insubordination by claiming it was to scout Russian air defenses. He’d volunteered to fly in the rear of the formation so that no one would see Karen in his cockpit. Only Jack knew the truth, and Bobby intended to keep it a secret until they all landed in Krasnoyarsk and it was too late for them to forbid bringing Karen home.

“Machine gun or flak?” Captain Hart asked, all sarcasm suddenly absent from his tone.

“Neither. Just an abandoned tractor,” Bobby reassured him, twisting and climbing back into formation.

“Do you ever get used to it?” Karen asked after Bobby quieted his radio.

“Get used to what?”

“That feeling in your stomach. It’s like the roller coaster at Coney Island, but a hundred times more intense.”

Bobby laughed. “Yeah, they call it g-force. You gotta get used to it, some, but not too much. Get used to it too much, and it could be dangerous.”

“Dangerous? Why?”

“That sensation you feel, it’s your equilibrium warning you to cool it. You press the g-forces too hard, you can black out.”

“That’s possible?”

“Not flying like this, but in combat, with a Zeke on your tail, yeah, you could start to lose your vision and then fall unconscious before he even shoots you down.”

Karen suddenly felt cold. She hadn’t ever considered Bobby fighting in combat. But he was an Army Air Forces pilot; that’s what they did, what they were trained for—to fight, to kill. Just like Petr. The whole reason she was doing this was to save Petr, and now she realized Bobby was in just as much danger. Why wasn’t she trying to save him? “Have you… have you fought yet?”

“Yeah, I’ve fought,” Bobby replied, without a trace of bravado.

“Have you killed?” Karen asked with trepidation.

“No, not yet,” Bobby admitted. “But not from lack of trying.”

“But you survived, anyway,” Karen said, as if to reassure herself.

“You don’t have to worry about me.”

But Karen was worried, suddenly. She’d been so stupid, so shortsighted, and she now understood why his eyes looked haunted. She wrapped both her hands around his arm and squeezed. “Don’t try too hard,” she said.