Blue Skies Tomorrow

by Sarah Sundin

  Ray gave her an appreciative nod. At least his future sister-in-law wasn’t empty-headed like that girl Jack had dated in seminary.

  “So, Skipper, regret that transfer to the Pacific?” Charlie plucked a blade of grass and stuck it between his teeth.

  “You bet. First thing Monday, I’ll contact Colonel Dougher and cancel it.” He squeezed Ruth’s shoulder. “You’re engaged to the new air executive of the 94th Bombardment Group.”

  Ray hated to add tension to a joyful day, but he needed to bring this up now. He leaned forward, his hands clasped, his elbows pressed into his knees. “We’ll be spending lots of time together then.”

  Jack swung a grin to him. “You got your assignment.”

  “Your doing?” His voice came out tight.

  “Dead right. Dougher will treat you well.”

  Ray gave his brother a steady, firm gaze. “Promise me one thing—no special treatment. I expect to fly the dangerous missions, same as the other pilots.”

  Jack’s smile froze. “You realize we’ll assign you where you’ll serve best.”

  Ray pictured himself swimming leisurely laps in that cold lake. “If I wanted a noncombat position, I would have stayed stateside. I came here for one reason—to fly a combat tour.”

  “But you have skills and talents—”

  “If I weren’t your brother, what would you do? If you didn’t know me?”

  “But I do know you, and you’ll do best—”

  “I’m a qualified pilot. I’ve flown with the Army Air Force for four years, over a year and a half in a B-17, far more than those teenagers you send up every day without question. And I requested combat. Don’t stop me.”

  Charlie stretched stocky legs in front of him. “Watch it, Jack. You’re a changed man. Don’t start manipulating again.”

  Jack closed his eyes and sighed. “I don’t mean to manipulate. Really.”

  “So don’t,” Ray said. “I’d rather not talk to the CO about this.”

  Jack groaned and rolled his gaze away. “I won’t interfere.”

  “Good.” Ruth lifted her cast with a scribbled engagement ring on it. “I’d hate to return this, but I only agreed to marry the new, improved Jack Novak.”

  Laughter circled the group. Ray set his hands on the blanket behind him, leaned back, and gazed up through the branches. He’d won that battle.

  But that was a battle of words, his forte, and required only a bit more backbone than his usual negotiations. What would he do when bullets came his way?

  Ray chuckled. He couldn’t believe he’d fought for the right to fight.

  17

  Antioch

  Friday, June 30, 1944

  Vic opened the car door for Helen. “Why don’t you freshen up? Then we can get dinner, celebrate your first paycheck—and our engagement.”

  The only thing Helen wanted to celebrate was getting home at a decent hour. She raised a sweet smile. “Good night. See you Monday.”

  She headed up the walkway to the Carlisle home. In her last letter, Mama said the only way to deal with such persistence was to be firm and never encourage him.

  Mama gave the same advice about dealing with Jay-Jay’s temper—be firm and never give in, the way she’d dealt with Helen’s tantrums. Helen had learned to control her temper. Jim hadn’t.

  Mr. Carlisle sat in his armchair with the Ledger, its headlines declaring, “Progress on Saipan” and “Asparagus Season at an End.” He lowered the paper and smiled at Helen. “How was your day?”

  “Great. Got my first paycheck. Not much, but a start.” She headed for the kitchen and Jay-Jay’s sweet giggles. On the days Helen worked, Mrs. Carlisle now picked up Jay-Jay at Betty’s after the dress shop closed.

  “Well?” Mr. Carlisle said.

  “Well, what?”

  He held out his hand. “The paycheck.”

  Her fingers curled around the precious piece of paper. “I’ll open an account on Tuesday.”

  “You have Jim’s account.”

  A chill crept down Helen’s arms. “But he willed it to you. My name isn’t on it. I can’t even write a check.”

  “Yes, of course. A man should manage his family’s finances.”

  “I can handle my own account.”

  He set the newspaper on the end table and gave her a soft smile. “How would it look if the daughter-in-law of a bank director was reduced to handling her own finances? As if I couldn’t take care of you.”

  “But I—”

  “Why would you need it anyway? I’ve always given you a generous allowance.”

  “Yes, but I need to buy household goods so I can get my own place.”

  Mr. Carlisle walked over with the tall, lean frame he’d passed to Jim. “I’ll set aside a portion of your paycheck for that after you’ve settled your debt.”

  Her breath caught. “Debt?”

  “You burned down my house. It’ll cost a thousand dollars to rebuild. And I can’t use Jim’s money. There’s just enough to support the two of you until Jay-Jay turns eighteen. See? This is why I need to make the financial decisions.”

  “Didn’t the house insurance—”

  “Insurance? Insurance is a scam that preys on men who don’t trust God to provide.”

  Helen’s face grew as cold as her arms. Yes, the Lord would provide—with her paycheck.

  Mr. Carlisle plucked the check from her icicle fingers, and she turned to the kitchen. Vic paid her fifty dollars a month. How long would it take to pay off that debt? How long until she could get a place of her own? Almost two years. The thought suffocated her.

  In the kitchen, Mrs. Carlisle stood at the stove, and Jay-Jay sat behind her, swatting her calves with a wooden spoon. She winced at each stroke but said nothing.

  Helen gasped and dragged her son back. “Jay-Jay! Don’t hit your grandmother.”

  He screamed in protest.

  “He’s fine.” Mrs. Carlisle gave a limp smile. “He was playing drums, and I ran out of pans. It’s my fault.”

  “Your fault? He’s the one hitting.” Helen snatched the spoon from her son.

  “No! My poon.” Jay-Jay smacked her in the shoulder.

  Panic welled up, but she’d be firm and not give in. “No hitting.”

  Jay-Jay howled and flung himself to the floor.

  “Oh dear.” Mrs. Carlisle wrung her hands. “You’ll ruin his spirit.”

  Helen cared less about his spirit than his character, but what could she do with those flailing limbs? Mama said she mustn’t be afraid to discipline him. She was afraid, wasn’t she? Because of Jim. But if she didn’t overcome this fear, a greater fear would come to pass, and Jay-Jay would be as violent as his father.

  Helen pried her son from the floor, restrained him, and pushed open the door with her backside.

  “What are you doing with the boy?” Mr. Carlisle said.

  “I’m putting him in his room until dinner,” she said over her son’s screams, and she dodged a flying fist. She had lots of practice at that.

  “It’s dinnertime now.”

  “He can eat after he calms down.”

  “He needs dinner. He’s a growing boy.” Mr. Carlisle took away her son as easily as he’d taken her paycheck.

  Jay-Jay clutched his grandfather around the neck and scowled at Helen.

  She wrapped her arms around her middle to stop the queasiness. He was a growing boy, all right—growing to be like his father.

  Bury St. Edmunds Airfield, Suffolk

  Saturday, July 8, 1944

  Ray’s vision strained through the darkness down the partially lit runway. He kept his foot on the brakes of One O’Clock Jump, his B-17G. Jump had sixty-eight bomb symbols painted on her nose, one for each mission. Rookies never received brand-new Forts.

  Jump’s four Wright-Cyclone R-1820 engines ran against the brakes at full throttle, rumbling the length of the plane, and Ray’s heart throbbed in unison with the engines. He pulled a deep breath, expanding his chest under heavy laye
rs of flight gear—undershirt, wool shirt, Mae West life preserver, parachute harness, and a new alpaca-lined duck cloth flight jacket.

  “Tail wheel locked?” he asked.

  “Check.” Lt. Leo Goldman, the copilot, shot him a glance.

  Yep, Ray had already asked twice, but he couldn’t afford to have anything go wrong on his first mission, especially with his younger brother in the control tower.

  At 0337, thirty seconds after the previous plane took off, a green flare shot from the control van at the head of the runway.

  Ray’s heart slammed into his throat. When the Lord had sent Gideon to battle, he’d said, “Go in this thy might.” But was Ray’s might enough?

  He released the brakes, and the Flying Fortress lumbered down the runway, bouncing and shivering, heavy with a load of bombs for the German supply installation at Méry-sur-Oise in the northern outskirts of Paris.

  At 115 miles per hour, he eased back the control wheel, and Jump lifted from the ground. He gave the brakes a little press to stop the spin on the wheels. “Wheels up.”

  Goldman flipped the switch on the control panel. “Check.”

  Ray reduced the throttles until he reached a speed of 150 miles per hour and a rate of climb of 300 feet per minute.

  “Tail gunner to pilot. Can we go back?” Staff Sgt. Harland Burgess’s voice whined in Ray’s earphones. “I’ve gotta pee.”

  Ray smiled. He wasn’t alone in his fears. “Should have thought of that before we left.”

  “I did. I went eight times.”

  “Use the relief tube, but do it now, before it gets too cold.”

  Goldman laughed. “Yeah. I heard of a fellow got frozen to the tube. They had to amputate. Now he’s joining the WACs.”

  Ray tried to give his copilot a stern look, but he laughed. “Don’t believe him, Burgess. You know they tell those stories just to frighten us rookies.”

  Two minutes had passed since takeoff, so Ray made a half-needle-width turn to the left. He scanned the black sky for the Aldis lamps that flashed in each plane’s tail to aid in assembly. The night was clear over England, although the weather officer predicted clouds over France. If they couldn’t bomb visually, they’d go for a secondary target.

  By the time the sun rose, Ray would be over enemy territory. Would he live to see the sun set? He huffed into his oxygen mask. Lord, take away these thoughts.

  Over the next half hour, he climbed in a rectangular pattern. With each turn, the Forts closed ranks. First, Ray joined his V-shaped three-plane element, then the twelve-plane A group with Colonel Dougher in the lead, and finally the 36-plane combat box.

  The group made a dogleg turn and headed for the English coast. The forty bomb groups of the Eighth Air Force were dividing forces to hit multiple transportation and supply targets throughout France.

  “Ten thousand feet, Goldman,” Ray said. “Start oxygen checks every fifteen minutes.”

  The copilot called on the interphone to the ten crew members stationed throughout the plane. They’d been on oxygen the entire flight to improve night vision, but at higher altitudes it became essential for life.

  Ray gazed through the window in the ceiling of the cockpit. To his left above, Draco the dragon coiled his starry body. Today Ray would face the Nazi dragon belching fiery bullets and shells, but could he handle it? Could he bury his sword in the dragon of cowardice lurking in his heart? Did he even have a sword?

  “Tail gunner to pilot,” Burgess called on the interphone. “Pops, I don’t feel so good. I don’t think I’m getting enough oxygen.”

  The nickname had stuck, but Ray didn’t mind. Only one of these boys was over twenty-one. They weren’t even old enough to vote. “Did you get a good shave, Burge? Is your mask tight enough?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He shaved last week,” Goldman said. “He’s good till September.”

  Ray smiled. “Check the connection, the regulator.”

  “I did. Everything looks fine, but I feel woozy.”

  Classic case of nerves. “Take deep breaths, relax, and pray.”

  “Yes, sir. ‘Hail, Mary, full of grace—’ ”

  “Keep the interphone clear, please.”

  “That’s right, sir. No chatter.”

  Yes, they needed to keep the interphone clear, but prayer was more than chatter. As the corrugated hose on Ray’s mask connected him to oxygen, prayer connected him to the only source of life and power.

  He’d spent lots of time at the Lord’s feet in preparation for today. Was Helen finding comfort and strength in his presence as well?

  He couldn’t stop thinking about her and loving her. Had she received any of his letters yet? He planned to send one or two each week until she responded or until George said she didn’t welcome his correspondence.

  “ ‘There’ll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover,’ ” sang out Technical Sgt. Hank Hewett, the flight engineer, in the cockpit behind Ray.

  Yeah, those cliffs rose above the Channel fifteen thousand feet below, but it was still too dark to see them.

  “Tomorrow, cats and something orange,” Hewett sang. “Ooh, look at the pretty stars.”

  What on earth? Ray glanced behind him.

  Although they were over friendly territory, Hewett stood on the platform for the top gun turret, his forearms draped over the handles, and he spun the turret around. “Whee!”

  “Hewett?”

  “Stars, stars, so many stars.”

  Was he hysterical, or was this the first sign of anoxia? “Goldman, get him down before he shoots somebody. Hook him up to a portable oxygen bottle. Buffo, do an oxygen check,” Ray called to the bombardier down in the nose section. “Buffo?”

  Ray and Goldman exchanged a worried glance. “Radovich, what’s Buffo doing?” he asked the navigator.

  “Something’s wrong. He’s staring into space.”

  “Get him on oxygen. Burgess, how are you doing?”

  “My lips are tingling, Pops.”

  “Get on oxygen.” Feeling light-headed himself, he flipped the radio switch overhead to command mode and informed Dougher he was turning back.

  Ray put the Fort into a gentle dive and glanced up to Draco with a sick feeling in his stomach. His dragon would live to see another day, but what choice did Ray have? At twenty thousand feet without oxygen, a man could pass out in three minutes and die in twenty, and the portable bottles held only a fifteen-minute supply.

  Once clear of the formation, he throttled back and pushed the control wheel forward so he could get below ten thousand feet as soon as possible.

  Facing combat might be easier than returning to base. An abort on his first mission would look bad. Especially to Jack.

  “Nothing wrong with this bird.” Technical Sergeant Bodey, Ray’s ground crew chief, dropped to the ground from Jump’s nose hatch.

  Ray groaned. “The regulator? The valves? The tanks?”

  Bodey bowed his head of silver hair and rubbed his chin with the blackened fingers of a lifelong mechanic. “Listen, son. The B-17 has eighteen G-1 cylinders in four separate systems to limit the effects of battle damage. What you described would be the failure of three of these systems without a single bullet hitting her.”

  Ray’s gaze flicked to his brother, who leaned on crutches beside him. “All I know is three of my crewmembers showed signs of anoxia, and several others felt light-headed or nauseated.”

  Bodey ambled past Jack and toward the ground crew’s repair shack. “First mission.”

  “Yep,” Jack said in a clipped voice.

  Ray blew out a puff of air. Did they think his crew suffered mass hysteria? Mass cowardice?

  “Changed your mind about flying combat?”

  “Of course not. There must be something he didn’t check.”

  “Bodey’s our most experienced chief. He’s been working with planes since before I was born. Besides, One O’Clock Jump just came back from a complete overhaul at the Strategic Air Depot at Troston. Sh
e’s in A-1 shape.”

  Ray gazed down the length of the plane, from her Plexiglas-capped nose to her bell-shaped tail fin. “I didn’t chicken out. I was ready.”

  Jack’s crutches shuffled on the tarmac. “We could use a good instructor here. Fellows always need brushing up—”

  “I’ll do fine next time, I promise.”

  “There won’t be a next time.”

  “Jack—”

  “Do you know how much an abort costs? Not just fuel and time and effort, but the cost to the group? The 94th went to enemy territory without your bombs, without your defensive firepower, and with a dangerous hole in the formation.”

  “It won’t happen again.”

  Jack glanced toward the control tower. “Don’t you see? If I let you fly, they’ll think I gave you leeway because you’re my brother.”

  Ray waited, his chest tight, until Jack looked him in the eye. “What would you do if another pilot aborted?”

  “It was your first mission.”

  “Exactly. Would you pull a pilot for a single aborted mission after all the Army Air Force invested in training?”

  Jack let out a long, low sigh.

  “One more chance, Jack. One more. If I abort again, I’ll pull myself.”

  He hobbled away on his crutches. “Fine. But this isn’t some baseball game. This is war.”

  Ray nodded. Some wars were internal.

  18

  Antioch

  Tuesday, July 11, 1944

  Her throat tight, Helen examined the letter under the lamp on her nightstand. Ray was the sweetest man she knew, and she’d shoved him away.

  When George handed her the sheet of airmail stationery after work the night before, she couldn’t believe Ray had written her. But that was her name in the salutation.

  Helen ran her finger over the ink. He must have gotten excellent marks in penmanship—so handsome, with a neat slant and even loops. She liked the way her name looked in his hand.

  A breeze fluttered the curtains, but too warm to cool down her room. She sat on her bed in a cotton nightgown with her hair piled up, the pillow hot behind her back. Perspiration prickled her neck and sides, and dampness clung to her eyes as she studied Ray’s letter.