The radio is trying to kill you!

Benny wakes up in a cold sweat. Is he hyperventilating? He reaches over the narrow bed to grab a glass of water he had placed on the nightstand after one a.m. What time is it now?

Three-twelve in the morning. So that means, what, less than two hours of sleep? No rest for the weary.

Benny pulls his six-foot four farmer's body out of bed, a herculean task considering the three nights lacking in genuine sleep. He passes the huge oak Admiral radio on his way to the water closet, turning it on to the sweet sound of a war report.

...Allies continue push into Germany...

...race to reach Berlin before the Communist Army...

News of the day goes in one ear and out the other. Benny washes his face and relieves himself at the same time, wishing he was snoring. He scratches, yawns like a bear of a man and brushes his teeth better than any dentist, a fine-toothed combing.

The room is cold and the radiator refuses to compromise, so Haskins pulls on the thermal underwear before layering with a flannel dress shirt and gray trousers. He combs back and lightly greases brown hair tinged gray from one part age, two parts stress. A weary old bugger turns into a handsome middle-aged man for another day.

Out the creaky door he strides, long skinny legs moving a powerful upper body forward and to the double door outside. He grabs a long wool pea coat, borrowed from a kind fellow when they hit town three days back, and gallops out into the world.

The world he exists in at this point is Salem City, a corner of Americana nestled in the cow fields and corn rows of Salem County, New Jersey. Benny and his family still call it Down Jersey, a place much better than the northern part of the state due to its more down-to-earth people. They can have their cities; country air is what I need, even if it is cold and heavy.

He considers this with a great deal of self-denial, because Salem represents a foul memory in Benny's mind. He woke up here after the war, the first one to rock the globe, after a long sea voyage, a pilot suffering severe burns and broken bones at war's end. He came out of delirium to find he was no longer in Europe, but in Down Jersey, the Ford Hotel on Market converted to a hospital for returning soldiers. A colonial town with some pretty fine nurses, bricks and bombshells. Then the hell began, and dragged on forever.

But, that was the last war, twenty-five years ago. The boy had become a man since then. He could walk these streets again, no problem. After all, there was work to be done. His piloting skills were in dire need. The country had been invaded, and its citizens were completely unaware. Heck, even Benny couldn't believe the mess he was in, and he had seen it up close.

He had purpose again, one beyond raising poultry on Mister Harmon's farm. The sky was his real home, soaring in a metal bird spitting bullets at bad men, and now bad things. A few days ago, an Italian woman literally kicked in his front door, screamed for a pilot, and carted him away in her souped up Chevy Stylemaster. The kid's only good quality being she suffers from remarkable cuteness (well, okay, she's a mean mechanic too). At first, Benny was averse to the whole thing, until his eyes saw a new and terrible reality.

So, given three days to rest by the new group he had been inducted into, Special Technologies (with some military connections he deemed suspicious, but vital to the current situation), Benjamin Haskins tried to acclimate to Salem, to get rid of the demon that has rested on his shoulders for more than two decades.

He spent those first three days locked in his hotel room.

Today he finally broke free, more from agitation than bravery. The city is bustling with folks going their way to work, to gossip, to eat. Eating is on Benny's mind. Three days of confinement meant he ate nothing, and now the stomach roared. His old brown shoes clip down the notched red brick sidewalk that gives the city a modern Revolutionary War atmosphere. He half feels the Redcoats ready to jump out from the County Courthouse to nab him.

The pea coat, though a short fit in the sleeves, keeps out the cold as Benny marches into the diner. Warmth greets him like a loving mother, even if the locals gawk at this outsider with suspicion. He doesn't care, for his gut overrides his brain. His nose interrogates the smell of sizzling meat and baking pies.

Taking a seat at a corner table, the huge man is soon snuggled by an overtly friendly waitress. A solid woman sporting her blond hair long with straight cut bangs, she leans in close to Benny while placing her left hand affectionately on his shoulder.

"What can I get you today, Honey?" she offers with a pleasing flash of white teeth.

"Do you have asparagus and eggs? Like, a lot of asparagus and eggs?"

"Yes we do! One healthy plate of asparagus and eggs. Anything else?"

"Scrapple. Two slices, thick cut and crispy!"

"Oh, my Honey has an appetite today, doesn't he? And what do you want to drink?"

"Coffee, please."

The waitress repeats Benny's order in full, squeezes his shoulder twice, and gets to work. In less than ten minutes, Benny has his face in a plate of food, slurping like a dry horse at a trough. Many Salemites take note of the noise, but Benny Haskins is starving.

It is when he finishes the meal that all is right with the world. Benny feels fully satisfied. He can take on anything, go down to the dock at Barber's Basin, help to fit the new machine he and his anxious partner acquired in Millville days before, and dig into this secret war within a war. Bring on the machines. Let slip the Slicks of war!

"You okay, Honey?" the frisky waitress asks. Her tone changes, altering into one of concern.

"What? Oh, yeah. I'm fit as a fiddle now. Why?" Benny grins at her like a sheepish child. He has always managed to keep hold of the boyish facial expressions.

"You're hands are shaking terribly," and she even reaches out to take hold of his right. The lady knows  what she's talking about.

Both of Haskins' hands tremble like dead leaves in an autumn wind.

Benny tosses money on the table. "Keep the change," he whimpers. He shoots out of the seat and gallops out the door, hands shoved into the pockets of the pea coat.

Benny stares at anyone who passes him on the street as if they were eyeing him, as if each one was just itching to make a crack about his hidden fragility. Out of the blue, the frigid wind whips up a case of memory loss for the middle-aged pilot. Its bitter sting to his face makes Haskins forget for a time about his hands, about the scars they revive in his mind of hospitals and screaming, of torture.

But he strides on through the bad weather, never hailing a cab or calling his friend at the Basin for a lift. No. He feels the walk, the weather, will get his nerves aligned somehow. Benny does this whenever the stress becomes real, when it sneaks up on him like a thief with a sap. Yeah, let the wind take it away from me. Please take it away...

                                                    _____________________________________

You have to walk down West Broadway, past some scenic Victorian homes and ages old Friends Cemetery on the right by the Salem Free Public Library, to get to the west side of Salem. Farther down, you hang a left at the edge of town on Front Street and let it take you down and to the right on Tilbury Road, where the city dies and reed-filled pastures thrive. After that jaunt on foot, in high wind, you come to Barber's Basin, and a newly constructed hangar full of OFF LIMITS signs. It's not the longest walk in the world, but in the freezing cold, it classifies the walker as a bold adventurer.

Benjamin Haskins enters the newly built lair of Special Technologies like a human ice block. He shivers now from head to toe, and not from old war wounds. He shuts the door in a loud way, making a banging echo across the hangar. Anyone working stops to see who let in the draft. Jazz music roars from a record player. He tries to ignore the crazy sound.

"Hey! Who's letting out my heat! Oh! Hey, Benny! Did you finally get some sleep?" Crank yells from the driver seat of her scarab green Stylemaster. Her long, tar black hair hangs half over her pale face and pink lips. Only one dark eye actually looks Benny's way that he can see. She remains with the deep rings under her eyes, the kind that make a person look eerie under low light. He hoped they would have gone away when she slept. Wrong.

She gets up, making her way to the door. Crank, Frederica is her real name, moves like a cat, all grace and quiet. She's a slender, short young woman, half his age, with tiny hands and feet slipped into men's black Army boots, black work pants, and a purple, tight-fitting sweater bearing a black kitty cat over the left breast. The policeman style 'ST' cap sits snug on her head, and for some insane reason, Crank wears black lace gloves, even while working as a mechanic.

Gal must buy them in bulk.

This was the lady who kicked down his door, the little miss who drove him across Down Jersey to the Millville Army Airfield to procure a unique piece of warfare. Now, they were partners under Crank's motto: "I keep it flying and you keep it fighting."

"You ready to work?" she asks. Crank smiles. He likes when Crank smiles. It means she no longer blames him for the cosmetic damage to her car, La Donna, during the Millville tussle.

"Yeah. Lead the way."

She leads, Benny follows. Milkman awaits.

The new concoction stands tall and lean on its birdy legs and arrow feet. Benny loves the thick body, but remains uncertain about the propeller being situated at the plane's rear, even though it rests in a sturdy steel circle like an industrial fan. However, he had flown this baby, and on that morning, they became inseparable. Already, Haskins notes mechanics have removed the machinegun rounds the Slicks had plugged into Milkman, added new paneling and...

Wait a minute!

"What...is that!" Benny yells more than asks. He waves his long arms up in the air to clutch his head as if it were sure to take flight.

"What's what?" Crank asks. When she understands what has brought him to the edge of madness, she beams with pride. "Oh, that! Isn't it great!" She proceeds to turn up the volume on the record player.

What would be the object of Benny's disdain? A hand-painted image along the S-47E's fuselage, of course. This is not a rare thing, for pilots often place encouraging artwork on their babies. You know, gals riding bombs, notches counting off kills and all that? But the pilot typically picks the symbol. Here, one had been chosen for him, and he didn't like it. Right before his eyes, a man (Winking! Smiling?) in a milkman's white uniform skipped about, holding a steel basket loaded for bear with six gray bombs. Below the man's black shoes, a jocular statement:

'...and I always deliver!'

"A milkman? A milkman on my plane?" Young technicians working on Crank's car and other secret projects roll their eyes upon hearing the 'old guy' groaning.

"So? What's wrong with it?" asks an irritated Crank. Her accent starts to pick up steam, a Bugatti engine pouring on added cylinders.

"That's not threatening at all! I thought she'd be good for a screaming Indian, or a spade. You know? Death coming your way and all that? But this - - this is almost quaint."

The jazz ain't loud enough to drown out Benny's whining. Frederica leaves her beloved La Donna again to tend to her other baby. "Hey! Vecchio! This is not the Great War, okay? They don't do the obvious death from above pictures nowadays! It's, ah, more like...how would you say it?"

"Sarcastic," yells Bobby Meyer, a slickster under the hood of the Stylemaster.

"Yes! Things are more sarcastic now, more of a mind game."

"So?" says Benny in a huff, towering over his tiny partner. "Do robots, or whatever Slicks really are, fall prey to mind games?"

Crank's white face shifts gears from Angry Mama to Pouty Princess. "It's my design. Besides, how can we put another image on it when it's called Milkman? What better image is there for something called Milkman than a milkman with bombs?" She stomps her left boot hard, hands dipping up and down in the air during the explanation.

She runs to the other end of the hangar, passing every young boy while keeping up a brave face. There, in a corner behind some fuel barrels, she allows herself time to cry.

Benny feels the urge to renew his head shaking. "Really? I didn't mean to - -! Aw, c'mon Crank! Hey! You there!"

Bobby launches up from under the hood, almost losing his smoke. He slicks back his greased hair in an effort to hide the fear. "Yeah, Dad?"

"Is Milkman operational?"

"Sure, Dad, sure."

"I'm taking her out! Got to accomplish something today! Open the hangar doors, and stop calling me Dad!"

Benny climbs into the cockpit, and prays for a swift, life ending heart attack. Life goes on, so he begrudgingly fits the wired helmet to his head, and begins ignition.

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