B for Buster Read Online Free PDF Page A

silver of the moonlight, the blackness of the shadows. He was a collection of shapes. But I saw the leather on his helmet and the sheepskin at his collar. I saw the light shining on his rubber mask as he slowly turned his head.
    I bounded from the chair and went clanging through the bus, nearly panicked by the noise I made. What sounds were hidden in my thudding and my banging? Was the navigator clomping up the steps? Were the buckles jangling on his boots? Was he shouting at me in his ghostly voice, “Where the devil are we?”
    I reeled from wall to wall, half crouched, half running past the struts and past the beds. I tumbled through the door. I fell, got up, and fell again. Then I scrambled away like an animal, my hands just paws on the ground. But fifty feet from
Buster,
I stopped and pulled myself together. Sounds and moonlight; that was all that had scared me. I had heard creaks of metal, maybe crows on the roof. I hadn’t heard voices, and I hadn’t seen people at all.
    It was easy to tell myself that, but harder to believe it. Crows didn’t fly at night. But I had never doubted that ghosts were real.
    I made myself turn back and look at
Buster.
I half expected to see the gunner in his upper turret, the bomb aimer peering out, white-faced, from his bubble. But there was only the machine, huge and empty.
Nothing
there,
I told myself.
Nothing there.
    I backed away from
Buster,
then turned around and ran across the field. I never stopped until I reached the huts.
    Ratty and Buzz looked up as I stumbled in, but only for a moment. They were used to seeing me running places, barging in through doors.
    â€œHe’s terrified,” said Buzz.
    â€œWho?” I said.
    â€œThe Southern Canadian,” said Buzz. “I bet that’s important. Hey, Kak, what’s a six-letter word for
terrified
?”
    They were still at their crossword; they were still on the same clue. But the sofa was empty.
    â€œWhere’s Pop?” I asked.
    â€œHe just
popped
out,” said Buzz. He shook with his horsey laugh.
    I stretched out on the sofa, trembling inside, wishing I had never gone to see stupid
B for Buster.
I heard my mother’s nagging voice:
“Well, you got just
what you deserved. That should teach you,”
Mother always said.
    I stared around the walls, at the painting of King George VI, at the dartboard on a wall riddled with tiny holes. The dance music ended on the wireless, and a posh sort of voice started reading the news. Back home in Canada, the government was rationing meat. The American army was beating the Japs on Attu Island, way far away in Alaska. I couldn’t have cared less.
    I rolled on my back and looked at the curved ceiling, then down along the blackened pipe that twisted toward the coal stove. I saw the light shining on it, and it looked like an arm, like a tentacle, groping toward the ceiling.
Buster
was jammed with pipes like that, with hoses that snaked in every direction. That was all I’d seen, just a bunch of wires and pipes and hoses. I laughed from relief.
    â€œWhat’s so funny?” asked Ratty.
    â€œNothing,” I said.
    â€œPopped out,” said Buzz, without looking away from his crossword. “He just got the joke.”
    He made me think now, with that stupid joke. I lay on the sofa where Pop had been and wondered if there wasn’t another explanation for what I’d seen. Maybe there really had been a person in
Buster
’s dark nose. “Where did he go?” I asked Ratty. “The old guy?”
    â€œWheezy jeezy, I don’t know.”
    â€œYou think he went out to see
Buster
?”
    â€œWhy?”
    I shrugged, as though I had no idea why
anyone
would do that.
    â€œMaybe he’s pretending to fly,” said Buzz. “Bet he is. I bet he’s sitting in Lofty’s seat, pretending to fly the crate. He’s crazy, that guy. Just like a kid sometimes.”
    I was sure I was right. He was