On this particular afternoon, before her swim, she picked up a stick and began drawing in the sand. A sun. A bird. A horse. She thought of all the times she and her father had created whole murals across the beach, only to watch them erased by waves. On some days, the shore was filled with herds of horses, and others, undersea worlds of humpback whales and dolphins and tiger sharks. Don’t think too hard about it, her father would say. The drawings are already there in the sand. We just uncover them. Lord, she missed him, especially now. Having her father around for this war would change everything. He would make her feel safe, in that way that he always had.
Daisy let the stick work its magic, not really paying attention to what she was doing. Her mind was on Little Robert and the fire hose training they’d done earlier in the day. The damn thing had weighed more than all of the girls put together, but somehow they’d managed to hoist it on their shoulders and douse an imaginary fire. They had all danced around hugging each other when they succeeded. Even Daisy, who never hugged anyone.
When she looked down at her sand drawing, she was surprised to see a heart with the letters D and W inside. Had it been there all along? There was no point to dreaming about Walker, but lately he seemed to be hovering always at the edge of her mind.
In an act of rebellion, she stripped down naked and dived in. She usually waited until dusk for skinny-dipping, but the ocean never minded. Nor did the bats or the fish or the herons. With a strong but relaxed kick, she propelled herself to the beginning of the sandy rubble before coming up for air, lungs near bursting. Dense squalls of rain populated the horizon and she thought about how precipitation affects radar and can cause false readings. Were the girls in the Penthouse picking up this rain?
The rest of the way to the reef, she lay on her back, kicking lazily. Raindrops came down and she opened her mouth to catch them, tasting the sky. She made it to the reef, looked around for cowrie shells and eels, and then headed in at the same leisurely pace. All the tension and pressure and intense focus of the past weeks dissolved into the salt water and she began to feel more refreshed than she had in a long time.
As she neared the shore, she heard something, deep and low. She stood up and looked out to sea for planes, but soon realized the sound was coming from the beach. Coming from Mokul¯e‘ia, a dark horse galloped across the open sand. For a moment she thought it was Moon, but when the animal moved out of the shadows, she saw a rider in the saddle. As luck would have it, she’d left her suit hanging from a branch of driftwood. By all estimates, there wouldn’t be time to make it to shore and run up the beach without being seen. The alternative was to swim back out to sea or dive down and hold her breath while whoever it was passed. Thankfully, the water was dark enough to cover her.
She stayed in place and sank down with just her nose above water. Within a minute, she recognized both horse and rider. Wind and Walker. A shiver ran through her. Walker was not the kind of man who missed things. He’d probably spotted her already. Daisy disappeared beneath the surface anyway. Held her breath. One minute. Two minutes. Her lungs screamed for air and she finally had to come up. Wind stood on the beach right next to her suit. A dusting of rain came down, turning them both a glowing orange.
“Is that you, Wilder?” Walker called.
She realized she was backlit by a setting sun. “What are you doing here?” she asked, keeping low.
During the past ten years, Daisy had never seen Walker ride the beach in front of the house. He had when he was younger, but that stopped after her father died. Now, everyone left them alone. Mr. Silva said it was because of her mother, who for a while had taken up target practice with the coconuts out front. She had made Daisy do the same.
“Last I checked, the beach is public,” he said.
“The beach is off-limits now with martial law. You could be shot.”
Walker laughed. “I can see it’s stopped you.”
“Technically, I’m not on the beach.”
“But you had to walk down the beach to get in the water. So, you could be shot.”
“They seem to have forgotten this little stretch of beach.”
“Actually, I have orders to patrol it when I’m off duty. Me and a few of the guys out here. Keep an eye out for submarines or anything suspicious,” he said.
That would certainly put a damper on her naked swimming. “I’m always on the lookout.”
He glanced down at her suit.
“If you have the whole beach to patrol, you’d better get going,” she said.
In his faded jeans and blue plaid shirt, he looked every part the cowboy, molded by the wind against his face. He made the switch from flyboy well.
Walker nodded at her suit. “Do you always do this? Skinny-dip, I mean?”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“On my mood, and how calm the water is.”
She sometimes believed the mercurial nature of the sea mirrored her life.
“Not to ruin your fun, but with the new patrols, you may want to keep your suit on. I’d hate for any of the other boys to surprise you,” he said.
Here they were, having a perfectly normal conversation, and she was naked. Her bare shoulders cooled in the breeze and a line of goose bumps ran down her spine. Exposed as she may be, she sensed no threat. Then she spotted the heart she’d drawn in the sand just to his left and her breath stopped. A heart with their initials in it. She willed him to ride on. If he looked down, he would see it. If he saw that, her life would be over. Swim her out to sea, tie a rock to her foot and let her go.
“I’ll keep that in mind, thank you,” she managed to say.
She thought he was about to leave when he said, “Say, would you be willing to do a few patrols, too? On horseback? We could use the help.”
“I don’t have a horse.”
“I could bring you one. Any one you want, in fact. Now that polo is out, and you’re gone, they aren’t getting ridden half as much as they’re used to.”
It seemed too good to be true.
“What would your father say?”
“My father has enough to worry about. He won’t know.”
“I would like that. Though in February we move into the new quarters at Shafter, so I’ll only be out on my days off.”
“I’ll let you know when we need you.”
“We don’t have a phone.”
“I know where you live.”
Riding the beach would be a dream come true, even if it meant being on watch for the enemy. Riding with Walker, complicated. But there was no way she could refuse him. “Perfect.”
He looked her in the eye. “You know what’s perfect?”
She could barely answer. “What?”
“All of this.” He swept his hand. “The shadows on the cliffs, the low tide, calm water, light rain.” With that, he kicked Wind and took off at a gallop.
She could have sworn she heard the words and you as he disappeared down the beach. But that was impossible.
* * *
The following day, during shift one, Lieutenant Dunn ran a training for the girls on aircraft types. Knowing flight speeds made all the difference in effective plotting, and was essential for filterers, he told them.
Dunn wore his uniform seemingly one size too small. He clearly spent time working on his physique, and made a point to flex his biceps every chance he got. You could tell he thought that having a captive audience of women was the best thing since the invention of jet engines. Being new to Little Robert, the women were still on their best behavior. Crammed into a small room off the main plotting room, they sat at full attention. Daisy felt claustrophobic without windows to look out, and reminded herself to breathe.
“Most importantly, we are here to prevent getting caught with our pants down again.” He looked around at all the powdered faces. “Or our skirts down, I guess you could s
ay.”
He cracked a smile and a few of the women laughed. Fluff, Lei, Betty, Thelma and Daisy sat up front. No matter how hard Daisy tried to avoid Thelma, the woman always managed to be near. Betty had said, “She’s keeping her enemies close.”
“Anything and everything that flies in these islands is now being tracked. You ladies need to know what it is you’re tracking, which is my job today. Now, can anyone tell me what kinds of aircraft we got flying around out there?”
A few names were thrown out. P-40s. B-17s. These were the planes most mentioned in the newspaper.
He scanned the room. “Anything else?”
Daisy wanted to answer, but looked around to see if anyone else had something to add. She hated to seem like a know-it-all. Then, Fluff surprised them all by saying, “A Hawk?”
Dunn stepped close and touched her shoulder. “The Curtiss P-36, you are correct.” His hand lingered a few seconds too long, but Fluff seemed too pleased with herself to notice. “Now, you got your bombers and your fighters, your reconnaissance planes and pursuit, and you’ll also be seeing some flying boats and transports. When the carriers are near, we also have the carrier-based naval bombers. There can be a lot of birds in the sky, and you need to stay on top of all of them,” he said.
He began to list the various aircraft on the chalkboard, giving basic descriptions and operational uses and speeds. “In general, a cruising aircraft flies at a constant airspeed in a constant direction. If you know the established flight patterns, then you can more easily determine if you’re looking at friend or foe. When something deviates from normal, that’s a red flag.”
Most of the women scribbled furiously in their notebooks. Daisy already knew the names of most of the planes, but enjoyed hearing technical details about each one. The Grumman F4F Wildcat, for one, was not as fast as a Zero, but sturdy as hell and equipped with a homing device that would help her pilots locate their carrier in poor visibility. It was exhilarating to put her once-useless knowledge to work.
Dunn sauntered back and forth as he spoke. “Now, the Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber, she’s a beauty. We lost a whole squadron of them at ‘Ewa on the seventh, but three days later, SBDs from the Enterprise took down a Japanese sub, bless their hearts.”
By the end of the morning, the women knew every possible plane in the blue Hawaiian sky. They knew the speed difference between a fighter and a transport, and they knew that air traffic was likely to increase whenever the carriers pulled in. And even though Dunn seemed full of himself, the man knew his stuff.
Just after sunset, when the shift was nearly over and the girls were all dragging from being there double time, a reading came in from the waters beyond Ka‘ena Point. Tippy Sondstrom, who had been hovering around the table like a nervous mother, gave it to Daisy to plot. Whatever kind of aircraft it was, it was moving fast. Daisy was certain it was a fighter. All the other plotters had an eye on her flag, which stood out because it was not in the usual flight corridor.
A few seconds later, another call came in. There were two more on its tail. Colonel Nixon requested coordinates and bearing and Captain Owens delivered them to the liaisons. All chatter ceased. While they waited, Nixon began to pace, his footsteps booming through the whole building.
The air force liaison finally received an answer, and said grim-faced, “Not ours.”
Then navy reported, “Not ours, either.”
It seemed like an hour passed before the marine liaison said, “Nope.”
All eyes were on the civil aeronautics guy, who looked ready to cry. “No one’s claiming them.”
Nixon turned to Owens. “Sound the alarm and send out the pursuit planes.” He addressed the Rascals. “Grab your helmets and gas masks and put them on. This could be the next wave.”
You could taste the fear in the room, and yet the women all stood, calm and orderly, and strapped their gear on. No one said a peep. The helmets were hard-shelled, but Daisy wondered what help they would be against an air raid. Maybe to keep off the ash, but that was about it. A moment later, the air-raid siren wailed from somewhere just outside the building, the uneven tone chilling.
Dunn yelled, “Be ready for anything.”
The whole scene took on a feeling of being in an outer space movie, with alien creatures sitting around a table holding poles with funny tips. Only Nixon and a few others kept their gas masks off. Daisy wasn’t sure if she’d rather be here in the midst of it, knowing what was possibly coming down on them, or at home, blissfully ignorant. Good thing Louise was away.
Plotters around the room kept their cool. More calls came in, while the men conversed in hushed tones. When the next reading came in, the objects in question had made a sharp turn to the east, bringing them closer to the coastline.
“I got a bad feeling about this, boss. Someone shoot the buggers down already,” one young man said.
Nixon glared at him. “And what if they’re ours? Keep your mouth shut if you don’t have anything useful to say.”
Dunn circled around the table, helping the girls adjust their masks and tighten their helmets. When he got to Daisy, his hip pressed into her back. He cinched her straps so tight the mask sucked at her face, then bent down so he was two inches away.
“There you go, doll, a perfect fit,” he said.
He did the same to a few others, mainly the young ones, including Fluff. Each time, using a different name. Sugar, Hon, Doll.
Daisy scanned the board, looking for some kind of answer to the unknown bogies. Betty had just begun to plot the Enterprise, where the aircraft carrier had been picked up by Opana.
“What if they’re from the carrier?” Daisy asked.
“Navy denied that,” Nixon said.
The location made sense, but she didn’t push it. She was having trouble breathing and felt light-headed and tingly. More than anything, she wanted to rip off her mask and take a deep breath, to run out the door and head for the ocean. She hated the feeling. Stay calm, she ordered herself. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get a full breath. Her heart took off racing. Finally, she pulled the mask down and fanned her face with a code card.
“Rascal, put that gas mask back on. That’s an order,” Nixon said in a steely voice.
Betty reached out and placed a hand on her arm and kept it there. “We’re going to be okay. Trust me on this.”
The warm touch was a soothing balm.
Lei, who sat on her other side, whispered, “You can do it.”
Daisy slipped her mask back on. The rubber smelled like chemicals and the tinted glass made it hard to see, but more than anything, she felt a rush of affection for these two friends who were rooting for her.
Five minutes passed, then ten. She was able to control her breathing just enough to not fall apart again. Over the years, Daisy had paid close attention to any weakness or sign that she could have inherited her mother’s frail mind and unstable temperament. So far, so good. There had been the usual worries and fears, but nothing that screamed hysteria. Now she began to wonder. And then a call came in. Nixon picked up faster than she’d ever seen anyone lift a receiver. Sweat matted the front of his shirt, even though it was cold in the room. He nodded a few times and then slammed it down.
“Turns out they were navy after all. For some reason they had their fighters all marked as landed. Damn left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing,” he said, never once looking Daisy’s way or acknowledging she’d been correct. Then the all clear sounded, sweet and loud, and nothing else mattered.
10
THE OPERATION
After four evening shifts in a row, Daisy slept in until noon. During that time, she had stayed with Lei in her two-story home in Nu‘uanu. The house was far nicer than any house she’d been in, other than the Montgomerys’. Tall ceilings, koa wood floors and a massive stone patio that spanned the whole front of the house. The best par
t, though, was that the maid, Asuka, always kept snacks on the table and set a tall glass of cool and pulpy orange juice on Daisy’s bedside table in the morning.
Waking up in her own shack to the roar of the sea was nice, but she already missed Asuka. She went to the post office hoping for a letter from her mother. It had been over three weeks since she’d left and Daisy had begun to worry, even though the mail was unreliable these days. When she saw the envelope addressed in Louise’s slanted script, she tore it open immediately.
Dear Daisy,
I hope to God that you are safe and well. As you can imagine, our boat ride was not the luxury trip people dream of. We were stuffed into crowded rooms and kept below deck most of the time. I nearly suffocated. Even worse, the captain swerved all over the ocean as though he were drunk. They said it was to keep us alive, which I guess is a good thing. I’m surviving California, but barely. It’s damn near freezing here and your aunt keeps the windows open for fresh air. Aside from that, things are fine. I read the newspapers every day, praying for no more attacks and that those submarines go back to where they are from. I trust you are in good hands and am proud of you for staying and doing your part.
Love always, Your Mother
She never got personal mail, so this felt special. No postcards from long-lost friends or loving grandparents. Only bills. Daisy read the letter three times. Yes, her mother was grumbling, but grumbling was better than silence. And she was reading the newspaper and praying! She sounded like a regular person. Maybe the war would be enough of a shock to Louise’s system to wake her up to the world around her.
For the first time in weeks, the sun shone in full winter glory, turning the greens greener and the blues bluer—one of the things Daisy loved most about December and January. These were the moody months, where the weather flip-flopped on a whim. With all that rain, golden mushrooms had popped up all over the yard, too. Fairy stools, Louise used called them. Daisy sat in the overgrown grass, leaned against a tree and took it all in.
Radar Girls Page 9