Paper Doll by Jim Shepard

in Ireland, Bryant had felt completely happy in a world all those back home could never know. Below, everyone but pilots and navigator slept, deep in sheepskin jackets with collars up, curled around parachutes and duffels. Above, Bobby Bryant rode high in the cold dark air in his glass bubble under the stars and watched Paper Doll all around him sweeping toward Ireland, across the darkness, skimming the fluid and onrushing ceiling below, the smoothed and ever-changing clouds a ghostly topography.

They woke him with a flashlight, the glare harsh in the darkness. Men were making startled and angry sounds and the orderly on wake-up duty was going from bed to bed uncovering faces and giving blanketed legs a hard shove. He called the briefing time, 0330, in a clear and tired voice, without malice. The lights flicked on and off. Men cursed and thrashed under bedding and someone down the line of steel bunks, dreaming or awake, called Sylvie, Sylvie, don’t you go away now.
    Bryant stretched, miserable. Bean lay as if stunned. Lewis sat on the side of his bunk with his feet on the floor and his hands on his face. Bryant could feel the shock of the cold on Lewis’s soles. Metal lockers were slamming and johns flushing. Snowberry was calling, “Oh, Mama, can’t we fight in the daytime?”
    Piacenti went by with a towel over his head, fumbling with his kit. The far end of the hut remained dark and quiet, the other crew, not flying today, ordered and still, as if breathing or movement might give them away, children hoping the heavy snowfall has canceled school. The last time, too, this crew had not gone when they had, and Bryant remembered one of the guys off the hook guffawing like a loon in the dark.
    They were angry and quiet at the latrine, annoying one another in the limited space around the sinks. They stood in their underwear and flying boots, warming their feet in the sheepskin lining and shuffling from mirror to can. Only Snowberry was somewhat cheery, remarking on the cold. Bean blinked repeatedly and tottered around like someone coming out of anesthetic.
    Bryant dressed slowly, shivering, with razors still ringing faintly on the sinks in the uneven light. Beside him Bean was having trouble with the knot of his tie. When he finished, the knot was badly shaped and off-center and he pulled on a thick Army issue sweater, a dismal pea green in the electric light. Around his neck he crossed and recrossed a silk scarf—his lone Red Baron gesture—stitched from a salvaged parachute. He grinned.
    An Order of Dressing had been stenciled on the wall near them:
    1.Underclothing.
    2.   Uniform.
    3.   Trousers (folded inside boots).
    4.   Jacket (slightly open at top).
    5.   Boots (outside trousers).
    6.   Oxygen mask (lines clear).
    7.   Hood (skirt inside jacket).
    8.   Gloves.
    A number of parodies were outlined beneath it. Snowberry’s Order of Defecating was a general favorite, but Bryant did not resent any system of checks, however ridiculous. He patted the pockets of his overalls to reassure himself that what he had carefully packed the night before still remained, and joined the crowd shuffling outside to clamber onto the open backs of the trucks for the drive to the mess hall. They sat with legs hanging and swaying from the back, quieted by the hiss and spray of the mud from the trucks’ tires. It was misting and the mud seemed more difficult than usual for the trucks and drivers. Someone closer to the cab mentioned the possibility of a scrub, and Lewis told him to shut the fuck up. At this point going and not going were both miserable prospects; a scrub meant the long emotional unwinding, all of this for nothing, and no progress toward the magic total of twenty-five missions which established a tour. And speaking about a scrub was sure to produce one.
    At the extended breakfast tables they were served coffee which tasted faintly alkaline in warm, thick mugs. And toast and