Little Boy by Anthony Prato Read Free Book Online

They reminded me of the eyes of this
cartoon dog I used to watch when I was a kid, the way they
drooped.
     
    On the surface, she was just another slutty
Guidette at the dance. But despite her tight, stylish clothing, she
looked somewhat conservative that night. Any clothes covering
Maria’s fabulous body at all made her look like a virtuous lady
rather than a bimbo, just as a snow-white wedding dress turns a
whore into a princess.
     
    After she relaxed a bit, when she finally
understood what I was saying about Zachary, Maria gazed up at me
with her tremendous eyes like a little girl lost in a big mall who
had just located her daddy. She pulled away from me briskly, and,
in a frighteningly monotonous voice, said:
     
    “Christ, you’re a maniac.”
    ***
    I remember the exact thought penetrating my
cranium as Maria said that to me: jet airplanes piercing the night
sky. When I get excited to the point of bliss I always think about
jets. Not commercial airliners like Boeing 747s. I mean real jets,
the kind used in war.
     
    I’ve always loved jets, probably because you,
Dad, were an awesome pilot in Vietnam. You got me into aircraft
when I was very young. I still remember everything you told me
about your career. You flew the B-52D Stratofortress. It was used
to bomb Communist strongholds in Southeast Asia and enemy supply
lines. It had only four small tail guns but could go almost as fast
as the speed of sound, about 600 miles-per-hour, and could fly
halfway around the world non-stop at an altitude of 30,000 feet.
Its ability to avoid the enemy at such speeds and altitudes made it
an invaluable weapon in the war.
     
    I used to write away to NASA and the
Department of Defense when I was a kid asking for photographs of
the B-52D Stratofortress and all the modern jets. I wrote to all
the space centers, like Kennedy in Florida, LBJ in Texas, and the
Jet Propulsion Lab in California. I also wrote to the Air Force,
and they always sent me tons of pictures and aerial maps and other
intelligence. Well, okay, “intelligence” is a bit of an
exaggeration. But whatever they sent me, it was all so cool. And
there were a lot more air bases and space centers I wrote to, a lot
that most people haven’t even heard of.
     
    As a kid, every few weeks I received a
package in the mail, filled with colorful photos of all these jets.
I loved naming them after people I knew. Different people reminded
me of different aircraft. Dad, you never reminded me of the B-52 at
all. You’re more like the B-1 bomber, which, you told me, replaced
the B-52. The B-1 can carry more armament than any other combat
aircraft. It has a variable wing, which means it can be pushed
forward for subsonic flight and pushed back for supersonic flight.
Remember when you told me that?
     
    You don’t look like the B-1; you resemble it
in more significant ways. What I mean is that all the B-1’s
subsystems are duplicated. If a subsystem has one failure, the
mission can be completed by using the back-up. And if the back-up
fails, then the mission can still be safely aborted with the bomber
returning to base. You’re just like that, only you have an endless
back-up system. It’s almost like you have an infinite number,
because no matter what happens to you, you always makes it
through.
     
    But when I was first alone with Maria, the
jet I thought of that night was the Curtiss P-40B, the first
American monoplane fighter. It was used by the Flying Tigers, the
American volunteer group that helped China defend its Burma Road
supply line against the Japanese from 1941 to 1942. Most people
have seen the P-40B, even though they probably didn’t know it at
the time. It’s a small plane that always has mean-looking shark’s
teeth painted on the front. I don’t know why they painted those
teeth on there, but it looked really cool. Since I was young, I’ve
fallen in love with a lot of jets and planes. But that P-40B is
still my favorite.
     
    Maria didn’t exactly growl like