by Jill Barnett
There were wrought-iron entrance gates that always squeaked when you opened them and a Mexican-tiled courtyard with a huge lion’s head fountain that you had to walk around to reach the heavily carved front doors.
She closed the doors behind her, turned, and tossed her bag onto a nearby Spanish oak bench, then paused and listened. There was music playing from the radio in the kitchen. Unmistakable music: the jazzy sounds of Tommy Dorsey. She hunched down to look into a low, dark-framed mirror on the creamy plaster wall, humming and jiving a bit as she unpinned her straw hat.
She put the hat on her shopping bag. She turned and sashayed her way into the kitchen, singing, “Let’s catch a tuna, way out in Laguna. Let’s get away from it all . . . ”
The room was empty, no sounds in the place but her humming and the voices of that new crooner Frankie Sinatra and the Pied Pipers singing from the wooden Zenith on the sink. She turned down the music. “Pop?”
“I’m in the den!”
She waited a second, expecting him to ask her for a beer. When he didn’t, she shrugged, flicked the volume back up, and crossed the tiled floor. She grabbed the handle on the white Frigidaire and danced the swing with it.
“Charley?”
She stopped. “Yeah?”
“Bring me a beer, will you?”
“Sure!” She smiled to herself, already bent over, her head half inside the open door of the fridge.
It was always amazing to her how good her voice sounded in hollow places like the refrigerator and the shower. Sometimes, when she was flying high in the clouds with the cool clean air in her hair, looking out at that blue, blue sky above her or down at the green mosaic pattern of the land below, she would sing as loud as she could, sing her heart out, sing up toward heaven just to let them know she was almost there.
“Let’s get away from it all . . . ” She shoved aside a bottle of thick buttermilk and a jar of even thicker golden honey, then took out two long-necked icy cold beers, spun around, and closed the door with a Carmen Miranda flick of her hip. She pried up the teeth of the metal beer caps with a bottle opener on the corner of the Fridge, then left through the arched hallway toward the back of the house.
She stood against the open doorway to the den. It smelled of the rum pipe tobacco her father smoked, a scent that she had always loved. When she was a little girl, they had a ritual. He would let her fill his pipe and taught her how to pack the tobacco tightly. She would sit and wait until he lit it before she ran off to play in some aircraft hangar or in the brittle grass of the land used as an airfield, which was usually next to a place they used as their temporary home. Her childhood could have been as colorless as the places they lived in, as vacuous as that of those poor, ragged children who followed their parents from town to town after the fall in 1929.
But it wasn’t. Looking back on her childhood with older, wiser eyes, she realized she could easily have disappeared. Among local children who had bonded together in a classroom for year after year, the ones who’d played together and grew up together, she could have gone unnoticed, like faded white paint on the walls of a place you see day after day. It’s there, but who cares?
Instead, she was the girl who flew in airplanes, the one with the father everyone liked and accepted and who would fly right over the schoolhouse at lunchtime and wave his wings. On Fridays, without fail, he would give three of her classmates an airplane ride. So for a time, the kids would try to get to know her, until she flew off to a new place, a new classroom filled with new faces.
Eventually they had settled down in Santa Fe, and her father swiftly built an aircraft business and eventually this home, where the den also served as his office. Here, there were photographs of aircraft and air races, of celebrities and famous clients, displayed everywhere, on the walls, the tables, and the huge double-sided mahogany desk.
In a display case on the west wall were brightly painted models of her father’s modified Lilienthal aircraft, nicknamed Ottos. At Charley’s suggestion, he had named his company after Otto Lilienthal, a German scientist who made thousands of glider flights and whose experiments in flight gave both inspiration and airfoil data to the Wright brothers.
The room was thoroughly masculine, with plastered walls, thick dark wood moldings and beams, and the same tiles that covered all the floors of the house. The expensive handmade rug that dominated the center of the room was a hundred years old and the rich red color of Bordeaux wine. Dark velvet draperies framed the wide wood-and-glass doors that opened out to a patio, and the leather furniture was a similar oxblood color with deep tufts and nailhead trim.
The room was like her dad. Large and bold, yet comfortably warm.
“Hey, Pop.” She crossed the room.
Her father looked up and smiled at her from his leather chair behind the desk.
She handed him the beer.
“Thanks, kiddo.” He took a long swig. “How was town?”
“The same.”
“The same?”
“Durable.”
He laughed. “You must have been in the Five-and-Dime.”
“You know me too well.” She slid her arms over his shoulders from behind and gave him a quick hug.
“Not really. You’re wearing blue.”
“Sure am. Saved you a nickel, too.”
He laughed, then turned his head slightly so he could look at her. “So town disappointed you, did it?”
“It’s the same. Not just similar, but exactly the same.”
“Yes, it is. They work hard to keep things the way they like them here.”
“I didn’t mean anything derogatory. You know that. But I do wonder how a town, in this day and age, can feel so completely unchanged?”
“What happened to, ‘Oh, Pop, are we ever going to have a real hometown? Someplace cozy and warm, like real people?’’
“I was twelve.”
“You were Joan Crawford.”
She laughed and walked around the desk. “You are awful, you know that? Besides, we were barely staying in one place for more than a couple of months. I was a sensitive child,” she said airily, waving a hand in the air. “One who needed stability.”
“Stability? I guess that’s why now you’re flying all over the country.”
“I inherited your wanderlust.”
“You’ve lived in eight places in the last three years.”
“Little girls do grow up.” She paused, then grinned. “Unlike Santa Fe, people change.”
“I think I know one little girl who has gotten too big for her britches.”
“I’m six foot one. I’ve always been too big for my britches.”
He gave a shake of his silvery head and relented. In those years when her life had been so migratory, there hadn’t been time to form close friendships with other children. But she had Pop.
Now they were like twin legs on a compass. He could go off in one direction, she on to another, but they always came back together again. They were joined by something stronger than their mutual love of flying, something different than the love between father and daughter, different than blood ties or family or all of those naturally accepted bonds.
They genuinely liked and respected each other. He was her best friend.
She hitched her hip on the corner of the desk and glanced down at the papers scattered all over the tooled-leather blotter she’d bought him last Christmas. “Whatchadoing?”
“Reading this letter from Maggie.”
“Maggie Caldwell?” Margaret Caldwell was an infamous flyer, an attractive blonde with sharp eyes to the future, a woman who felt strongly that she should be Amelia Earhart’s successor.
Maggie was one of those people whom you knew, the moment you met them, would someday make their mark in the world. Charley had met Maggie through her dad, on a trip to Florida. At the time, Maggie had just broken Howard Hughes’s New York to Miami speed record and had already twice won the Bendix Trophy, the penultimate in American air races. She also had several Harmon Intern
ational Trophies to her credit, distinguishing Maggie Caldwell as the outstanding woman aviator in the world. The amazing thing was, she had only been flying for five years. “So. How is Maggie?”
“Fine. Busy. She has her usual five irons in the fire. But she’s now Mrs. Cooper Crosby.”
“She and Coop got married? Good.”
“You sound relieved. Afraid she might have been your stepmother?”
“Let’s just say Maggie is a woman who knows her mind, and expects you to know it, too.” Charley took a drink of her beer.
She knew her father liked Maggie’s spunk and drive. She was a strong, forceful woman. Pop and Maggie had become friends from the first time they’d met, at an air race in California where one of his modified racing planes was performing, outperforming actually, and ultimately won. Pop had mentioned Maggie often enough that Charley thought perhaps he might have finally found a woman to share his life.
But any hope her father might have had for some kind of relationship with Maggie was all fairy tale. She already had a man in her life. Cooper Crosby was a wealthy financier, a man who gave his first wife Bonwit Teller as a divorce settlement. He adored Maggie.
Charley looked at her father for a moment. His expression was a little empty, as if he had lost something. She instantly felt bad about what she’d just said. He could be in love with Maggie and completely heartbroken. “Are you truly sorry, Pop?”
“Sorry that Maggie and Coop got married? No.”
“Actually, I was thinking that you might be sorry that Coop found her first.” She paused. “Don’t look at me that way.”
“Which way?”
“With your forehead all scrunched up and your mouth in such a thin line it looks like a landing strip from ten thousand feet. I know that look. It means you think I’m out of line.”
“What it means is I think you need a man to keep you busy so you’ll stop meddling in my life.”
“I can keep myself busy without a man, thank you.”
He gave her one of those parental looks, the kind that made you feel as if you were six and had just told a huge lie.
“Men don’t find me attractive.”
“Then they must be blind . . . or you are.”
“Spoken like a true doting father.”
He just looked at her.
“Look, Pop, it’s okay. I’m happy the way things are. Really. I am. Most men want petite little women they can throw around the dance floor. It’s part of their masculine psyche. Men want women who make them feel big and strong and protective.”
“So find a little guy who needs you to protect him.”
Charley burst out laughing. “You are funny. Now, since we’re speaking of men . . . I ran into the Ledbetter sisters in town. Dot said there was someone who came through here looking for me and they gave him directions here.”
“Him? Have you been keeping someone secret from your old pop?”
“No.”
“Who was it?”
“I think it was Red Walker.”
“Who is Red Walker?”
“I told you about him. The nice young man from the Texaco station.”
“The tornado watcher?”
She nodded. “That’s him.”
“No one came by here that I know of. When was this?”
“Dot said she thought it was before Thanksgiving.”
“I wasn’t home in November. We took the planes to the races in Arizona. If he came by here then, there wouldn’t have been anyone here.”
So Pop had been gone. For a moment she felt a stab of disappointment. She wondered what Red had wanted. If he wanted to learn to fly, she could teach him in Odessa or even in Dallas when she moved there.
“Do you think it was important?”
She shook her head. “Probably not, or else he’d have come back or contacted you by now.” She walked around the desk, then leaned down and rested her arms on her father’s shoulder, reading the letter from Maggie, figuring it was just a chatty letter between two old friends . . . until she spotted her name. “She’s talking about me in this letter.”
“Yep.”
“Let me see that, you old devil.” She straightened and held out her hand.
He handed her the letter over his shoulder, and Charley began to read as she paced the room.
Dear Bob,
I hope this finds you healthy and happily flying those Ottos of yours all over the Southwest. Coop and I got hitched a while back. He sends his best. As you probably know, he was a major contributor in the Roosevelt campaign, which means that we frequent the social events at the White House, where I have been on a new campaign of my own. And now the most wonderful thing has happened. Eleanor Roosevelt has given my plan her complete support.
We are campaigning for a women’s air corps, Bob.
A separate women’s air corps. I feel so strongly that women pilots can handle noncombat jobs and free up the men for duties overseas. Coop is certain we will be at war before the year is out. I suspect you know that as well.
A few months back, Eleanor told the nation about my plan on her My Day radio broadcast. Did you by chance hear it? The response has been overwhelming.
The best news is now General Arnold is on my side, too. But things in DC are at a standstill, stuck in the bureaucratic BS that is Washington these days.
However, on the General’s recommendation, I have written to the head of Britain’s Air Transit Auxiliary, Lord Beaverbrook. The British are using women, as test pilots, for ferrying planes and airmarking.
Charley read the next paragraph and she couldn’t believe what she was reading. “Pop . . . ” she looked up. “Did you read this?” He nodded.
With Charley’s experience and her qualifications, I feel strongly that she should have the opportunity to join a small test group of American women who I hope will be working with the ATA in Great Britain. If she’s interested . . .
“If I’m interested?” She laughed. “I don’t know a female pilot who wouldn’t be.”
Please have her fill out the enclosed application. In all truth, it might be months before I hear back from Lord Beaverbrook and the answer could be a resounding no. But General Arnold sent a recommendation and notice of his support. So just in case it isn’t, tell her to make certain her passport is updated and ready.
“Is my passport still in the safe?”
“I take it that’s a yes. You want to go?”
“Of course it’s a yes. Where’s the application?”
He handed her a few sheets of paper. She snatched them up and began to read them as she crossed the room, then opened a door that revealed a wall safe. She opened it, rummaged through, and took out her passport, then locked the safe and checked the passport expiration date. “It’s still good for three more years.”
“You want me to get up so you can sit down and fill those out now? She says she needs it back in a month.”
She cast a glance over her shoulder. “Are you being sarcastic?” But then she caught that emptiness in his expression again. She had a sudden, sick feeling that she was the cause. “Pop? What’s wrong?”
“There is a war on.”
“Yes, there is.”
“People are dying over there.”
“Would that stop you from going?”
“You know it wouldn’t.”
She crossed the room and set her passport and the application papers on the desk, then squatted down and rested her arms on the rim of the desk and her chin on her arms. She looked her father in the eye. “You have never stopped me from doing anything, Pop. You always said there wasn’t a thing in this world I couldn’t do if I set my mind to it. You’ve never once treated me differently because I’m a woman. In fact, you’re the one who taught me to go after what I want.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Tell me something, Pop. If I were a man, your son instead of your daughter, and I wanted to join the Army or better yet, say, the Army Air Corps, would you try to stop me?”
He was quiet for a long time. Finally he said quietly, “I would still worry.”
“That wasn’t what I asked you.”
“Do you know that when you look at me like that you look just like your mother.”
“Stop changing the subject.”
“Hell . . . ” he grumbled. “I’d join up myself if I wasn’t so damn old.”
“Fifty-three isn’t old. It’s seasoned.” She paused, then went in for the kill. “Surely you aren’t being like this because I’m a woman.”
“If I were, I would never admit it to you. I’d have to run for cover.”
She laughed softly. “I always said you were the smartest man I know.”
“I don’t know how smart it is to let you wrap me around your little finger.”
“Pop, look here.” She pointed to a paragraph of Maggie’s letter. “It says we’ll be air-mapping for the British—which I’ve already done— and ferrying planes and pilots.”
“In a country that’s being barraged with bombs and under attack from the Luftwaffe.”
“I’ll duck first if I see any MEs, okay?”
He gave her a hard look.
“I don’t mean to be flip. I just want you to know I will be so very careful. I swear I will.”
“Part of me understands why you want to do this, kiddo, but you’re all I’ve got. For a few minutes let me be a normal father.”
“You’ve never been a normal father in your life, and please don’t start now. It’s one of the things I love most about you.”
Even he had to laugh.
Her childhood had been anything but normal. Despite the fact that they’d settled in Santa Fe, he had still taken Charley to air races and on business trips, where she met people like Lindbergh and Earhart. One sunny afternoon when she was about fourteen, she had come home to find Will Rogers sitting in this very room, and for her birthday one year, Pop took her on a special flight to Dayton, where they visited Hawthorne Hill and had dinner with Orville Wright.