by Ella Carey
She threw a confused glance up at him. Because what she held in her hand was a small velvet box. She stared at the little thing.
But he swept off into the Los Angeles mist—his coat swinging behind.
“Evie?” Her dad stepped out from beside her mom, an endearing expression on his gentle face. “We’ll miss you something terrible, dearest.”
Eva threw her arms around his neck. “Bye, Dad.”
“Promise me you won’t take any risks.” His words were muffled yet crystal clear.
“Of course I won’t. I promise.” Eva clung to him for an instant. “Dad, you know Meg would want me to go.”
And for one moment, her dad held her gaze. And then he nodded. “She would.”
The train whistled again. Eva turned to the tall blond girl standing slightly apart from the rest of them.
“Goodbye, Rita.” Eva held her hands out to her friend. “You take care. And write us. Write as often as you like.”
“And you listen to me, Miss Evie. Promise me you’ll enjoy that handsome beau of yours. He sure is something else.” Rita held her at arm’s length. “And as for your Harry, well, I only hope he wakes up one day.”
Eva felt the little box in her pocket and bit her lip. “Not sure Jack’s my beau, and Harry is definitely not mine, but thank you for your thoughts. Rita, stay safe in those bombers, and whatever experiments they are doing, I know you’ll shine.”
“Oh, come here, you two.” Rita grabbed Nina as well and pulled her and Eva into a three-girl hug.
Eva tucked her arm into Nina’s and blew her parents a final goodbye kiss. She felt a tug of sadness while Rita headed off to her platform, her knapsack swinging by her side.
The corridor was crowded with troops, and the stench of cigarette smoke was laced with sweat. Eva followed Nina, but every carriage they looked into was full.
“We should have boarded earlier.” Nina’s voice was worn and thin. “You’re going to have to watch you don’t get too distracted with that man. He’s moving awful fast, Evie.”
Eva stopped for a moment. She opened her mouth to reply, but people were shuffling and pushing behind her. She had to keep moving. Ahead of her, Nina ducked her head into every compartment before continuing on.
“Here’s one with space.” Nina looked up at Eva, her face pale. “Two flyboys in here, that okay?”
“Sure.” She frowned at Nina’s washed-out countenance. “You okay?”
Nina wiped a hand across her brow. “It’s just the packing, and you know . . . saying goodbye to my mom.”
They hauled their kit bags up onto the overhead nets, and Nina sank down in her seat.
“You got water, Nina?”
Nina held up a canteen. She sat back in her seat and closed her eyes.
The platform was crowded with families—women and children reaching up to the train windows for a final touch of their loved ones’ hands. Eva glanced out the window and saw her dad in the crowd, standing tall above most folks. She pulled the window half-open.
“Dad! Bye!” She waved at him, frantic, suddenly wanting him to see.
He caught her eye, and his face split into a grin. He blew her a little kiss. Before long, the train kicked into motion, and they were off along the tracks. Eva sat down in her seat with a thump, the unfamiliar clatter of wheels on rails was something they were going to have to get used to again. Eva felt the stirrings of excitement, that soon she’d be in a plane, feeling no weight underneath her, only air.
Nina settled deeper into the seat. “I’m going to have a nap. You know, you’re right, Evie. I’m something awful beat.”
“Well, there’ll be plenty of time for napping on this journey.” Eva sat back, grateful for their seat. Groups of personnel still lined the corridors, eyeing their compartment and moving along.
Before five minutes were up, Nina was fast asleep.
Nina’s breathing was steady, and the men in the compartment talked quietly about aircraft carriers. Eva pulled out the little box that Jack had given her from the pocket of her cardigan and gasped at the sight of the exquisite bracelet of diamonds and silver that lay nestled inside.
“Someone’s got a rich beau.” The red-headed boy about Eva’s age sitting opposite her leaned forward and let out a low whistle.
Eva raised her head with a start.
“It’s gorgeous,” he said, his eyes crinkling into a smile. “For a gorgeous woman, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“If we have to share this carriage, I think we should keep the conversation proper.” But Eva did smile back at him.
“Sorry if I’ve caused offense,” he said, his eyes still bold.
“I’m not offended.” Eva held his gaze.
The second man in the compartment reached out a hand. “I’m Walter, and this clown here is my friend Samuel. We’re headed for Camp Davis. Where are you girls going?”
Eva sighed. “I’m Eva, and this here is my friend Nina. And we’re going all the way to North Carolina as well.”
“Your friend here looks out for the count.” Samuel folded his arms. “I, for one, can never sleep on a train.”
“Oh, well, I hope you like reading and card games, ’cause you have an awful long time to stay awake,” Eva said.
“You girls WASP?” Walter eyed Eva.
“We are. Going to tow targets for you, I presume, while you shoot at us from the ground.”
“Well, it’s nice to know who we’ll be shooting.” Samuel sent her a mischievous grin. “Tell me, I’m intrigued to know why a beautiful girl like you would want to don a flight suit and fly our ugly airplanes?”
“Sam,” Walter warned. “Leave her alone.”
Eva placed the jewelry box inside her handbag and clipped it tight. “Same reasons you do, I suppose.”
Sam chuckled. He held out a packet of cigarettes. “Cigarette, Eva?”
“No, thanks,” Eva said.
The men lit up, their cigarette smoke filling the air with a haze. The train swept past the suburbs of LA. Every now and then, Nina’s eyes flickered. A line of sweat trickled across her forehead.
Eva reached across and touched her on the arm. “Nina? You like some water?”
But Nina didn’t stir.
After they’d wound their way out of LA, the train snaking through the desert, Sam pulled out the table between them and laid down a pack of cards. Eva played a few games of gin rummy with him.
The train rolled along into Arizona, daylight giving way to an endless pool of dark, no lights showing the way, with the blackout on in full force. Eva struggled to find a comfortable resting place for her head. So far, Nina had woken only once, padded to the restroom, and returned. Refusing food, she’d fallen fast asleep again.
Fingers of pink light stretched across the horizon the next morning, the train still moving across arid plains. Eva opened her eyes, only to be hit with shock. Nina’s breathing was labored, and the dark circles around her eyes had swelled into purple blooms. Eva reached out to touch her friend’s hand. It was hotter than one of her mom’s saucepans on the boil.
Eva pulled back in alarm.
“Nina!”
No response.
Eva stood up, her body stiff. She cast about wildly in the cabin for water. Nina’s canteen sat next to her, hardly touched. Eva panicked that her friend had slept through the journey, and Eva had failed to make sure Nina had been given a drink.
Gently, she propped Nina’s lolling head up against the back of the seat.
“Eva, is there anything I can do to help you there?” Walter’s voice was soft in the otherwise quiet train.
“She’s feverish.”
Eva turned to look up at the slim, neat-looking man. In spite of the fact that they’d been traveling for twenty-four hours, he looked and smelled as clean as he had when they’d boarded the train.
For the next day and a half, Walter held Nina in his arms. He made a makeshift bed for her, pulling the armrests down so that she could lie flat with her h
ead in his lap, and while Samuel and Eva took turns alternating between lying and sitting up on the seats opposite, Walter insisted on sitting up and cradling Nina himself.
“It’s what I’d expect anyone in my circumstances to do for my own sister,” he said.
Nina’s fever worsened as the journey wore on. Sweat poured down her face. She was unable to maintain coherent conversation. Eva bathed Nina’s forehead and held her hand, talking to her, although she couldn’t hear a thing. She found a group of officers in a carriage and asked for a doctor, but there was not one on the train.
They heaved their way into New Orleans, and Walter eased Nina up to a seated position. They had an hour stop. No time to find a doctor. The train was not going to wait for Nina. The thing was to keep her fluids up until they arrived in North Carolina.
“All I want is an infirmary and to get there,” Eva said, the sound of the train against the tracks starting up again.
“I’ll get her to the infirmary for you,” Walter said.
“I’ll be right alongside you, Walter.” She was only thankful for this quiet, calm man.
The Deep South gave way to the jungle and swamplands of North Carolina, and Eva was rocked with exhaustion and increasing panic. Nina slipped in and out of consciousness. When she was sleeping, she muttered incoherent words.
Two of the officers checked on her regularly but decided that since she was not worsening, her condition largely remaining the same, the best thing was to get her to the base and to urgent medical care. Eva started counting the hours until they’d transfer to the bus that would take them to Camp Davis. The very least she hoped for was a warm welcome, a hospital bed for Nina, and a hug in Helena’s capable arms.
The cold at Camp Davis was as still and icy as the greeting in Sweetwater had been warm. Eva almost fell off the bus from Jacksonville onto the bleak-looking base. Rows of dank wooden huts sat in the sand. A narrow runway ran alongside.
No one greeted them; no one said hello. Eva pushed aside memories of Helena and Nancy meeting them at Sweetwater. She walked straight past airmen who only looked her up and down.
Walter carried the desperately ill Nina in his arms, and Eva trudged along next to them, carting both her kit bag and Nina’s while Samuel took Walter’s and his own luggage to their bay.
“Excuse me.” Eva stopped a trainee outside one of the long lines of makeshift barracks. “We need directions, if you please, to the infirmary.”
“Straight in the direction you’re goin’.” The boy looked down at Nina, made a face, pulled his cap down, and moved on.
Eva marched on next to Walter.
“I see it,” he said. He stepped up his pace. “Thank goodness.”
Eva walked on, her head held high. They passed groups of airmen lounging on the front porches of their bays. Eva swore she heard a couple of sneers at the sight of Nina.
The worrisome stories Eva had heard about this place seemed startlingly real right now. She’d heard of women here being derided as powder-puff pilots and how the WASP at Camp Davis had been restricted to flying tiny planes—the two-seater single-engine Piper Cubs. But Jacqueline Cochran would not want them to be intimidated by that. They had not trained for five months to be put off by a place with a bad attitude. They were here to do their job.
Sand blew in isolated flurries around them on the dusty pathway between the barracks. Through the gaps between buildings, Eva caught glimpses of airplanes lined up on the runway, all painted the same color—army green for aircraft that were out of action, planes that were only to be used for gunnery practice.
Eva held open the door to the infirmary. A middle-aged nurse took one look at Nina and asked Eva and Walter to leave Nina and her kitbag in the infirmary until further notice.
“I’ll come back tonight to check on her,” Walter said. Even through the filter of exhaustion, his brown eyes were sincere.
“Thank you,” Eva managed. She was swaying on the spot. Despite the bleakness of this place, surrounded by jungle and blown by the sea winds, she was grateful to be off the train and, through her fatigue, only felt immense relief that Nina would finally get the care she needed.
Walter laid a hand on her shoulder, then turned to go away.
Eva huddled her leather WASP jacket around her. Marching on, she swore she’d find the women’s barracks alone after two airmen whistled at her when she was about to approach them for directions.
“Prettiest clay pigeon an ack-ack ever saw,” one of them jeered.
Eva held her head high and decided to continue straight ahead.
“Hey, why don’t you stop and talk to us? You stuck up like the rest of the women out here?”
Eva marched so that Jacqueline would be proud of her, and in her head, she hummed an old WASP song, “Goin’ Back to Where I Come From,” while working her way logically around the huge base, with its rows and rows of identical structures, until she found the administration building.
Reaching up to open the wooden door, she went inside. A small office was furnished with two desks and a typewriter. A man in his sixties sat at one desk, and a woman who looked to be in her forties stood up to greet Eva.
“Yes?”
“Eva Scott, reporting for duty, ma’am. I’m a WASP.”
“I would assume as much.” The woman turned her back to Eva, leaving her standing there.
After ruffling around in a filing cabinet, she pulled out a form, attached it to a clipboard, and handed it to Eva. “Check these details are correct, miss.”
Eva scanned the form, forcing herself not to take any of this personally, forcing herself to view this as exactly what it was—a base.
Eva handed the form back. “It’s all correct,” she said.
The woman looked down at it. “Report for dinner in the mess hall at seventeen thirty. Breakfast at six fifteen. After that, you’ll see your flight assignments for the day posted in the women’s anteroom. You’ve been assigned to bay one hundred thirty-one. It’s empty.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The woman took a step closer to her and sent a glance to the older man. “I would suggest you watch yourself. Pretty girl like you. Stick to your fellow WASP, and check all your planes, every time you go up. There’s an awful lot of different types here, if you know what I mean.”
“Different characters, you mean?” Surely the woman was not referring to color or background.
Something flinty passed across her face. “Well. You can take my warning as you see fit. I was only trying to help.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Eva said.
“That will be all, miss.”
Eva heaved her kit bag back up onto her shoulder and went off outside again.
The wind whipped up her hair. Standing still as if she were lost seemed like the worst of a bunch of bad ideas. Eva moved with purpose, glancing at the bay numbers. She’d walk all over base if she had to, until she found her sleeping quarters.
After twenty minutes, she’d passed scores of tents and buildings and located the mess hall and the WASP anteroom. Both were clearly marked. Finally, she stopped outside a forlorn-looking bay marked 131 on the far row of the camp. Beyond her building, a barbed-wire fence ran the length of a thick forest. That must be the edge of Dismal Swamp.
Eva pushed back memories of that night when she’d scaled the fence with poor Dan, Rita, John, and Frances. There sure weren’t going to be any parties or late-night forays with all the quicksand out here.
Her heart heavy, Eva pushed open the door to the windswept bay.
A hush hung over the empty, silent room. Even in the late afternoon, it was dark. Dust motes floated in the hazy air. Four beds lined the walls, and the wooden floorboards were bare and dirty. Eva threw her bag on a bed. She needed to find the showers. And once she’d washed up, she’d unpack and prepare for what she’d come here to do. She’d simply get on with the job.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE COMMITTEE: Mrs. Forrest, while you give some stirring reasons for
militarization, you are missing the point. The WASP were never intended to be military. They were regarded as an experiment.
EVA FORREST: The families of the thirty-eight women who died for our country may have a different view of that.
On her first morning at base, Eva wrapped her leather flying jacket tight against the freezing wind, trusting her instincts and memory to get her to the infirmary. She had a half hour to visit Nina before breakfast, and she was not leaving her friend unseen before she went up flying on her first day. Her boots trudged up the dirt road, sinking into the soft pools of mud leftover from recent rains. This was nothing compared to what lay beyond the barbed-wire fence, out in the swamps. Finally, she came to the base hospital, pushing the door open and entering the small reception area.
Another middle-aged nurse was on duty, her head bent over a form.
“Good morning.” Eva wasn’t going to wait like she did in the administration building. She was going to spend whatever precious minutes she could with Nina.
The nurse’s head popped up as if in surprise at Eva’s audacity to speak first. “Yes?”
“Excuse me, ma’am, but I was wondering if there was any news on my friend Nina Rogers.”
The woman pulled out a file from a stack on her desk and glanced through its contents. Eva scanned every expression on the nurse’s face. Eva dragged her hand up to wipe her tired forehead. She’d not slept much in the cold bay, huddled up with her one gray blanket, worrying about Nina and Harry. She desperately wanted news of his mission.
“You are a friend of hers?” The nurse didn’t raise her head.
“Yes. I’m her . . . best friend.” Eva bit her lip after pronouncing the childish words. But she was. And she needed to show these people that Nina had family out here, that she wasn’t alone. “I’ve known her since I was five years old. Please. If you can give me any news of her, I’d be more than appreciative.”
The nurse looked up then, scanning Eva’s face from under her white cap. “Miss Rogers has a fever. A bad one, mind you. At this stage, we think it is influenza, and we hope she will recover from the fever in a few days’ time. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.”