Glory Boys Read Online Free PDF Page A

From the air, Abe had seen large white houses, big yards, motor cars, even a couple of swimming pools. The contrast with the sun-bleached timbers and dusty streets of Independence was even stronger when darkness fell. Whereas Independence couldn’t boast a single electric bulb, the town below had been a blaze of light. The thump of oil-fired generators had thudded softly through the night.
    Then there was the matter of where it was. Independence stood in a low range of hills on the edge of the Okefenokee swamps. Between Independence and Jacksonville there were salty marshes, mangrove swamps, a maze of creeks running out to the ocean. Independence was connected to the rest of the world only by a single-track unpaved road, plus the railway which ran just inland from the coast.
    Why on earth had a slice of the brash new America wound up in these back-of-beyond swamp lands? Where was the money coming from to finance those new houses, the big cars? And why was the kid Lundmark lying to him about having to hike in to Brunswick to find a telegraph?
    Abe could remember the view from the sky perfectly well. Marion, Independence’s mysterious new neighbour, had a line of telegraph wire running directly into it from the south. If Abe wanted to send a telegram, he only had to stroll a mile downhill.

6
    The cigar smoke hung blue-grey in the projector beam. The first reel snickered to an end and the screen filled with light. Willard jumped up to change the reel.
    ‘That dame,’ said Ted Powell, prodding the air with his cigar, looking every inch like the Wall Streeter that he was. ‘Is she meant to be the same as the first one?’
    ‘Brunhilde Schulz? O’Hara?’
    ‘Blondie back there. The one who just got kidnapped by the bank robbers.’
    ‘O’Hara quit on us. Right in the middle of filming. Breach of contract. We found a girl who looked OK from a distance, but all the close-ups are of O’Hara.’
    ‘Is that why the backgrounds are funny?’
    ‘They’re not that funny.’ Willard fiddled the second reel into place, poking the fragile celluloid through the little rollers. The lamp inside the projector was burning hot and the whole apparatus was scorching to the touch. ‘Ow! Here. You’ll like this next bit.’
    The next bit was the skyscraper scene.
    ‘That’s me in the plane. I did this stunt myself.’
    ‘Funny place to park an airplane.’
    Willard and the girl who really was O’Hara bounded out onto the roof. They looked dramatic – tragic – resolute. Then they bounded into the plane. The next shot had the propeller whirling and Willard clenching the muscles in his jaw.
    ‘Plane that starts itself,’ commented Powell. ‘Nice.’
    ‘She’s only a Gallaudet and she didn’t start herself. We’re doing things cheap here, Powell. Cheap as we can without … without…’
    ‘I was kidding, Will. And call me Ted.’
    The plane rolled to the edge of the building, then plunged out of view. The next shot, taken from a neighbouring rooftop, showed the little Gallaudet dive nose-first for the ground. After falling ten or twelve storeys, the nose had come up and levelled out. There was another close-up of the hero: resolute – victorious – defiant. Then a shot of the Gallaudet flying out of sight, while a group of hoodlums poured out onto the roof and began shaking their fists at the sky.
    ‘Jesus Christ!’ said Powell.
    ‘Pretty good stunt, isn’t it?’
    ‘Looks like you just fell clean off the edge.’
    ‘We did just fall.’
    ‘Something wrong with the airplane?’
    ‘No. It’s a question of air speed. You have to build speed before you can climb. And it was a dive, not a fall. Saying “fall” makes it sound bad.’
    ‘I saw a picture recently where they pulled a stunt like that.’
    ‘Breaking Free . They had it in Breaking Free.’
    ‘Yeah, maybe. Only there, the airplane flew, it didn’t just fall. You sure your plane was OK?’
    ‘They had a catapult. We thought about using a catapult, only