FRED'S REVENGE- A short story by Don Edmiston

Arnold and Thelma had just emerged from the clubhouse and were preparing to spend a leisurely afternoon beside the pool when two World War II aircraft buzzed the campground. Since it was the weekend of the annual air show, this wasn’t unexpected. Although Arnold had only seen pictures of them, it seemed clear to him the planes had been Spitfires and he said so to Thelma. Harold, who had joined them, confirmed his judgement. Since Harold is a man who seldom makes absurd statements, I was surprised to hear him declare that even without his glasses he could see they were Spitfires. Without his glasses on, I wouldn’t have accepted his identification on a whole stack of R.A.F. flight manuals. Nor would Ernie, who came strutting by just as they were discussing the merits of that particular breed of fighter aircraft. If the Spitfires had proven to be Snoopy flying an inverted Sopwith Camel, it wouldn’t have made any difference to me, but it seemed important to Ernie to inform the boys they were mistaken. “I flew Spitfires with the R.A.F.,” he announced. “And I certainly know one when I see it.”

I don’t know what the club would do without Ernie. How one man could accumulate such a vast store of information and compress it into one skull without suffering some sort of mental aberration is beyond me. The immensity of his knowledge is a constant amazement to all of us. As if this was not enough, his expertise even extends into the field of sports. He throws the discuss just as well as he throws the javelin and he shoots the put nearly as well as he shoots the bull. Volleyball and badminton are child’s play for him. The first person to get a hole-in-one on our new Frisbee golf course was Ernie. In short, what he can’t do, or doesn’t know, isn’t worth doing, or knowing. We would all have a better chance of swimming the Atlantic Ocean than beating Ernie at anything.

Since Harold, or Arnold were too young to have even been in the war, and since they weren’t accustomed to flying in the face of such authority anyway, they decided to let the matter drop. I really don’t think the identity of those planes meant any more to them than it did to me. Normally, that’s where it would have ended, but unknown to the group, Fred had been lying in the sun not ten feet from them the whole time and had overheard the entire conversation.

Fun Loving, Fearless Fred, a trouble maker from birth, who, as a youth, had absolutely no respect for his elders and grew up to be an impudent agitator without any respect for anyone. Because of this profound disrespect for authority of any kind, he began planning –although he had always thought a Spitfire was a sports car –to have a little fun at Ernie’s expense.

I think it was about three weeks later that he finally pulled it off. On the day it happened, he was occupying his usual horizontal position beside the pool, apparently sleeping. I say apparently, because with Fred you never know for certain. Even when he’s vertical, you can’t be sure. Only two words in the English language can guarantee a reaction from him. One is work and the other is beer. I won’t try to describe these reactions here except to say they are equal, but opposite.

Before long, Ernie came swaggering across the lawn and lay down near him. He said nothing to him, of course, because he thought he was asleep. But, Fred was not asleep. In fact, he was wide-awake, his mind as alert and sharp as it ever gets. Ernie had lain there just long enough to doze off when he was rudely shaken from his slumber. “So Ernie,” said Fred. “I hear you were a Spitfire pilot with the R.A.F. Is that true?”

“What the hell was that!” Cried Ernie in alarm as he jerked upright on the lawn. Fred’s voice has a peculiar other world quality to it that many people find disturbing. Being awaked by him is an eerie experience. This was particularly true in Ernie’s case. As a child he had been told a tale about one of his distant relatives in the old country that had upset him a great deal. While drowsing in the Tower of London in broad daylight, this relative had encountered Anne Boleyn with her head under her arm. The man had never recovered from the experience and Ernie has always expected to see a similar spectre himself. As a result, Ernie is seldom caught sleeping in daylight; so on this rare occasion when he did slip off, he was understandably started by the apparitional resonance of Fred’s voice.

Nothing in this world –or any other one either, for that matter –can prevent Ernie from holding forth on his favourite subject, namely Ernie, and as soon as he realized it was not Anne, he replied.

“Yes I was. I got in three tours before they made me an instructor.”

“Do you ever wish you could get back up there,” asked Fred casually.

“Sometimes.” Ernie was really warming up to his subject by this time. “The way some of these guys fly today they could sure use some advise. Once in a while I get the urge to get up there and show them how we did it when flying really meant something.”

“Not me,” said Fred. “I had all the flying I want during the war.”

“Oh! You were in the Air Force too! What did you fly?”

Fred’s lips barely moved, but his words were like rifle shots to Ernie. “Messerschmitt ME109’s mostly.”

Although the conversation had not been overly stimulating to this point, a large crowd of curious people had gathered on the surrounding lawn. It was apparent to everyone, a significant, historical event was unfolding. Someone mentioned that he had never seen Fred more than four feet from his beer before. It was a fact; he had been lying there without a beer in sight for almost half an hour. We all gained a great deal of respect for Fred that day. If he was suffering any stress because of his low blood alcohol count, he certainly didn’t show it.

I suppose it was his love of practical jokes that made him forget his beer that day. Ruining someone’s day seems to be one of his main joys in life. One evening in the clubhouse, some of the older members were reminiscing about their early days in the club. Fred had only been a member for a short time, so he was only listening. It was a pleasant conversation, most of the members had very fond memories of past events and they were looking forward to many more in the future. For Ted, the park owner, the first few years had been rather difficult. During the conversation he happened to make a casual remark about how he had always bent over backward to please the members. Everyone had forgotten that Fred was in the room, but it only took him twenty seconds to end the conversation. “Well there you go!” Said he. “There’s your problem! I don’t see how anybody could get anything done in that position. Hell, all you can see are treetops and airplanes! Look at all you’ve accomplished in ten years! Think of what you could have done if you’d straightened up!” Ted wasn’t seen around camp for several days after that.

A pleasant, almost carnival atmosphere was spreading throughout the camp. “I have to get my camera!” Shouted Nell, as she ran to her cottage. “If I don’t get a picture of this, no one will believe that I actually saw Fred with the fingers of his right hand and his right elbow straight at the same time!”

Lloyd was giving eight to five odds Fred could lay there for ten more minutes without his beer and members were lined up half way to the clubhouse with their money in their hands. His preliminary calculations had shown, if Fred could hold out, his winnings would pay for his new fireplace chimney, buy two spare chains for his chainsaw and still have enough left over for six cases of Blue. Even if Fred drank half the beer, which was likely, he was convinced he had a good thing going.

Ted was pleased with all the activity, but someone heard him muttering; “If I’d known this was going to happen, I would have invited the public, sold tickets and opened the bar.”

In all fairness to Fred, he did look magnificent lying there with his Horn of Plenty around his neck and his medical bracelet glistening against the background of his golden tan. The bracelet was a gift. Several weeks previously, some of the boys had become concerned about him. They felt that people should know what to do if he was ever found sober and unable to function, so they took up a collection and bought him the bracelet. It reads; “In case of emergency, administer 48 ounces of cold Labatt’s Blue orally and shake well.”

Ernie’s initial reaction on learning Fred had been a Messerschmitt pilot was astonished outrage, followed closely by utter disbelief. He was sure that Fred was too young to have been in the war, but the more he thought about it, the less sure he was. He thought about Fred’s wife and wondered why an attractive young woman like Sandy would marry a man that old, but he had learned from experience that you can never tell what a woman might do. Besides, he had known men before who looked younger than their years and considered himself a good example of this.

His confusion was not unreasonable. Years of riotous living and dissipation have aged Fred considerably. It’s difficult for a stranger to know if he is a young fifty-five, or an old thirty-one. When reminded that he looks older than Sandy he says it’s because she was born quite late in life, while he was born at a very early age. Many things Fred says don’t make any more sense than that, but we love him anyway. That may be a bit of a stretch, but at least we accept him.

Be that as it may, one thing is certain, Ernie didn’t love him. As far as he was concerned, he was lying only three feet from the enemy.

“Those Spitfires were quite the airplane,” continued Fred. “Out of 267 planes I was lucky enough to shoot down, only 116 were Spitfires. I was shot down fifteen times by Spitfires and only managed to get three of those Messerschmitts back in one piece. We could all see that the war wasn’t going the way Adolph had promised us it would. We had Spitfires and Hurricanes around there thicker than fleas on a camel’s ass and I was fed up to my false teeth with all that falling out of the sky. Finally, I applied for a transfer to the rocket Corps.”

“’Do you realize how much those planes I’m losing cost’, I said as I handed the application to the Commander. ‘Not to mention all those damn parachutes. I’ve gone through enough parachute silk to build tents for every Bedouin in North Africa’”

“’ You’re too late,’ he said, tearing up the application. ‘All the rocket bases are gone and I don’t care how many planes you’ve lost, Messerschmitt pilots are scarce- even bad ones.’”

“When I heard Adolph and Eva had taken the short way out, I knew it was all over. I grabbed the first Messerschmitt that would fly and headed for Spain. My usual luck held up, of course, and I ran out of gas over France. I bailed out- which was something I had gotten rather good at by then- and spent three weeks hiding out in a haystack.”

Ernie would have run and hid if he hadn’t been suffering from that state of inertia that occurs only in the nonplussed. Although the number of allied planes shot down by German pilots during the war has been well documented; Ernie had never been able to accept the totals. He wasn’t prepared to accept Fred’s totals either. “You don’t even sound German to me,” he finally muttered.

“That’s because I was born in Australia. My father went there in 1913 to look for opals. That’s where he met my mother and they didn’t return to Germany until 1938. By that time I was 20 years old. Naturally, I didn’t speak German very well. Can you imagine all the trouble that got me into? Nobody ever got used to hearing a Luftwaffe pilot speaking German with an Australian accent. I was almost shot down four times by my own side. I spent as much time in Gestapo interrogation rooms as I did in airplanes. The war wasn’t a total loss though- I met Sandy in that haystack. She had been a collaborator and was hiding out from the French too. Gradually, a herd of cows ate the haystack and we both ended up on the end of a French farmer’s pitchfork.”

“Wait- wait just a minute,” croaked Ernie. “I don’t believe a word of this.” His face was only three shades lighter than a mulberry, his throat was making strange bulging motions and big veins were standing out on his temples. I thought he was hyperventilating, but Hilda, who seems to know about such things, exclaimed, “I think he’s having a stroke!” Most of the members usually accept Hilda’s advise on medical matters, except for Fred. He hasn’t spoken to her since the day she told him a good cure for his ingrown toenail was limping.

Ernie may not have been having a stroke, but he was in bad shape nevertheless. His voice was quivering and barely audible as he continued. “I don’t believe you ever were a pilot and I don’t believe you met Sandy in any damn haystack either.”

Fred had done his homework well. At least, he no longer thought a Messerschmitt was a new German cocktail, but he was afraid he had gone too far with the haystack. “Well,” he admitted. “The part about the haystack isn’t true. I was just having a little fun with you. Actually, I met Sandy in a concentration camp. She had shacked up with an SS Colonel during the war and the French were pretty upset about it. The first time I saw her, her head was shaved and she had this big ugly letter C tattooed on her forehead. I married her out of pure pity. Can you imagine anything more pathetic than a bald-headed, tattooed, ex-collaborator?”

Ernie thought he had Fred there and cried out triumphantly. “There’s no tattoo on Sandy’s forehead!”

“I know,” answered Fred calmly. “It cost me a fortune to have that thing removed. They did a pretty good job of it, but if you look closely, you can see it every time she passes a Frenchman.”

This was too much for Ernie. He could see the whole thing was a fabrication and Fred could see the fun was over. Just as Ernie was about to tell Fred what he thought of his little joke, Fred interrupted.

“Actually Ernie, I was just a little kid during the Second World War, but I’ve admired Spitfire pilots most of my life. My fondest hope has always been that some day I would meet one. I can’t begin to tell you how happy I am it finally happened. My pleasure isn’t even diminished by the fact that even if you were born in the cockpit of one of the snarling bastards, ten thousand feet in the air in the middle of a dog-fight, those two aircraft Arnold and Harold saw were Spitfires.”