Silver Wings, Santiago Blue

by Janet Dailey

  His low voice intruded. “Are you through showing off?”

  “Are you still here?” she returned mockingly.

  “Yes. And it’s my turn,” he announced.

  Grudgingly, she surrendered the controls to him. Seconds later, she was treated to an exhibition of flying skill such as she had never seen. Walker more than matched her level of excellence. A lesser pilot would have felt like a rank amateur in his shadow.

  After they landed back at Long Beach, Marty lowered herself out of the belly hatch and turned to wait for Walker. As he joined her on the ground, she studied him with a keen respect, however reluctantly given.

  “You’re a helluva pilot,” she admitted, even though she loathed finding something to admire about him.

  “So are you.” He returned the compliment in the same reserved tone. “Funny, isn’t it?”

  “What?” Marty stiffened.

  “We both love the same things—those big bombers and Mary Lynn—but we can’t stand each other,” Walker stated.

  “Yeah. That’s true,” she admitted. She started to swing away, then hesitated. “That was some ride up there.”

  “It was.”

  Her hand lifted in a kind of acknowledging salute, which Walker returned. With her hands shoved into the side pockets of her blue uniform slacks, Marty walked away from the big plane and the Army captain standing in its shadow.

  Chapter XXIX

  THE MIMEOGRAPHED LETTERS swept through the barracks like a shock wave on that first Tuesday in October. The first was from the Director of Women Pilots. After Marty had opened the official-looking envelope from the Army Air Force Headquarters in Washington, she didn’t get beyond the cold, impersonal first lines.

  To all WASP: General Arnold has directed that the WASP Program be deactivated on 20 December 1944. Attached is a letter from him to each of you and it explains the circumstances …

  There was more, but Marty didn’t bother reading it. She bolted from her room, the letters half-crumpled in her hand, and charged down the hall, coming to Eden’s door first. Without knocking she swept inside.

  “Have you—” Marty didn’t have to say any more.

  The redhead’s posture as she sat on the cot and the stunned look on her face were all the answer Marty needed. Slowly, Eden looked up. Her reaction bordered on outrage. “How can they do this?”

  Mary Lynn appeared in the door opening, the letters drooping from her hand and tears making a black shimmer of her eyes. “You got yours, too,” she said.

  “Yes.” Eden stared again at the typewritten words that signaled the beginning of the end.

  “Surely there’s something we can do,” Marty protested, goaded by the way they seemed to accept the decision as final. “Are we just going to let them pat us on the head and send us home? ‘Be a good girl and run along—we don’t need you anymore.’ That’s what they’re saying!”

  “If it’s the money, I’ll fly for nothing,” Eden stated.

  “Their minds are made up,” Mary Lynn interjected to end their windmill-tilting. “You aren’t going to change them. The letters were very clear.” She looked down to hide the thickening tears in her eyes. “We really should be glad the war is being won. The middle of December, Beau might be coming home with some of the pilots they expect to release from combat duty.”

  One of the prime reasons they had gone to Sweetwater over a year and a half before was the desire to contribute to the war effort. But a subtle change had taken place.

  Now that seemed of secondary importance. More than anything, they wanted to fly.

  “Hey, van Valkenburg.” A head was stuck inside her room long enough for the woman to relay the message. “You’ve got a visitor at the gate.”

  “Tell whoever it is to go away!” Eden snapped.

  “Tell ’em yourself.” And she was gone.

  “I might as well go,” she muttered, rising from her cot. As she turned to drop the letters atop the Army blanket, Eden wondered aloud, “Do you suppose Cappy has heard?” She’d left the week before on a ferry assignment and hadn’t returned to Long Beach yet.

  “Cappy knows everything,” Marty responded. “She probably knew what the Army planned to do with us long before these letters were written.”

  “She would have said something to me.” Eden dismissed the notion as she grabbed up her uniform jacket and slipped it on.

  She was not interested in seeing any visitors, especially at this particular time. Eden had many “acceptable” acquaintances in southern California, who thought it was a “kick” that one of their own actually flew planes for the war effort. She supposed it was one of them wanting her to attend some social event.

  At a distance, Eden saw the man standing with his hands folded behind him. It was obvious from his dress that he wasn’t a Californian, accustomed to warm, sunny weather virtually year round. In addition to a dark suit, he wore a vest and tie—none of the open-collared, ascot-scarfed look for him. Sunlight flashed a reflection off his glasses.

  “Ham!” Eden cried in surprise and rushed to greet him. “What are you doing here?” She grabbed his hands. Suddenly, she was glad he had come. She needed the support and comfort he always gave her. In a rare demonstration of sincere affection toward him, Eden let go of his hands to wrap her arms around him and hug him tight while she pressed her cheek against his. “It’s good to see you.”

  For a second, conservative Hamilton Steele was too startled to respond, then his arms loosely embraced her. “If I’d known I would receive such a warm welcome, I would have come sooner.” His attempt at levity made Eden wonder if she was embarrassing him.

  She pulled back, her head hanging slightly. “Your timing couldn’t have been better—or worse, depending on how you look at it.” A short sigh ran from her. “The notice came today that we’re being disbanded … as of December twentieth.”

  “That’s it.” Hamilton kept his disappointment to himself. “In the face of that bad news, you need some cheering up. I recommend dinner at the Brown Derby … with me, of course.”

  “And lots of Scotch so I can drown my sorrows.” A smile tugged wryly at her mouth. “Dear Ham, you always know what I need.”

  At the famed Hollywood club, over drinks and dinner, he told her about the business trip that had brought him to the West Coast. Eden listened, admittedly inattentively, although she knew he was trying to distract her from the unpleasant news. Her gaze wandered around the club’s plush interior, the walls festooned with celebrity caricatures, but Eden was unable to rise to its atmosphere of sparkling sophistication.

  “Would you care to talk about it?” he invited gently.

  A second’s pause, then she shook her head. “It wouldn’t do anything but make me more angry and depressed.” She held her after-dinner drink of Cointreau by the top of the glass as she swirled the liqueur and watched its play of amber and brown.

  “Maybe this will help,” he suggested mysteriously, and he reached in his pocket to take something from it and lay it on the table in front of her.

  When his hand came away, Eden saw bright, burning lights reflected off thousands of diamond facets. The brilliant in the center of the ring was a large carat-and-a-half American-cut diamond, surrounded by baguette diamonds to create a star-shaped design.

  “I picked that up in Tiffany’s the other day,” Ham said in the most casual manner. “I thought you might like it.”

  “It’s stunning,” Eden admitted. But the proposal the diamond ring implied made her response reserved. “Ham, I—”

  He lifted a silencing hand. “Don’t say anything yet,” he requested. “It comes as no surprise, I’m sure, that I would like to marry you. I believe I have mentioned it innumerable times in the past. I thought on this occasion I should make my presentation to you before that … uh … mechanic whisks you away.”

  “But—”

  “Eden.” Hamilton reached across the table to take her hand. “You know I can give you the kind of life you want. You woul
d be happy with me … perhaps never deliriously so … but you would be happy. The way I see it, your mechanic and I are playing for very high stakes—you.” He paused to smile faintly. “It’s my opinion that you are too rich for his blood.”

  “I wish you hadn’t done this,” Eden protested mildly.

  “I don’t want you to give me an answer now.” He went on as calmly as if he were discussing a business deal. “I want you to regard this as one of the options available to you when you decide what you’re going to do with your future. After all, the Army isn’t going to let you fly for them after December, so you’ll have to find something to keep you occupied.”

  “True.” She couldn’t help smiling at his dry wit. He made a practical appeal rather than a passionate one, which, coming from him, would have seemed ludicrous.

  “In any event, I wish you to keep the ring.” He folded it into the palm of her hand and closed her fingers tightly around it. “It’s yours … as an engagement ring or a dowry for your marriage to someone else … or merely a pretty bauble for your finger.”

  Subdued, Eden looked at the sparkling brilliance of the ring. “Sometimes, Ham, I think you’re too good for me.”

  The deactivation notice started the base commanders scrambling to find male pilots and train them to fill the roles the women were being forced to vacate. Qualified pursuit pilots were in particularly short supply while the number of planes to be delivered to embarkation points hadn’t dwindled. The WASP squadron at Long Beach sent telegrams to President Roosevelt, General Arnold, and others, volunteering to fly for the annual salary of one dollar to alleviate the problem. But their offer was politely turned down.

  It left a bitter aftertaste as far as Marty and the others were concerned. Their skills were still needed, but they were being dismissed just because they were women. The war wasn’t even over. By the end of October 1944, France was liberated, MacArthur had returned to the Philippines, and Russia was in Norway; but they were getting cheated out of being there at the end, when victory came. After the war was over, everyone would have to go home, but they had to go now—before the job was finished.

  When they finally accepted the inevitable, they started to look for jobs. With their training, flying time, and experience in a variety of aircraft, they were uniquely qualified. Most combat pilots had flown one basic type of aircraft, and sometimes logging most of their hours in one individual plane, knowing every groan and cough it made like an old friend, while Marty had flown everything from a B-17 and a Mustang to a red-lined Dauntless dive-bomber, hopping from one strange plane to another, never knowing its idiosyncrasies.

  In southern California, Lockheed, Douglas, North American, and Consolidated-Vultee all had aircraft plants. Marty applied for a flying job at each of them, but she was turned down cold. They didn’t need pilots. Others received similar answers. It was the same all across the country.

  All four of them—Marty, Cappy, Eden, and Mary Lynn—were crowded into Cappy’s room, straining to read the job opportunities listed in a newsletter put together by some WASPs stationed in Alabama. Marty was the first to pull away.

  “Nobody is going to hire us—not to fly,” she declared. “The airlines have invited us to come to work for them—as stewardesses. The Civil Aeronautics Administration needs control tower operators. Or we could work as aircraft accident analysts or Link training instructors.”

  “It doesn’t look very promising, does it,” Cappy murmured.

  “Maybe you can trade that Air Medal they’re going to award you in for a flying job,” Marty suggested caustically.

  “It would be more useful.”

  Supposedly the Air Medal was being given to her in recognition of the feat she performed when she ferried a P-51, two P-47S, and a C-47 Skytrain to their destinations over a five-day period, forty hours of flying, covering eight thousand miles. Although she had been singled out, Cappy regarded it as a gesture of recognition for all the women pilots. The medal was to be presented to her at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, she’d been told, in conjunction with the graduation of the last class of trainees, 44-W-10 … a visible sign of praise, a last pat on the head.

  “The only thing I see interesting in this newsletter is the list of aviation companies in Alaska,” Eden remarked, then jested dryly, “At least it would give me an excuse to buy a bunch of furs.”

  “I didn’t know you needed an excuse,” Marty countered.

  “Do you think you could live in Alaska?” Mary Lynn sounded skeptical.

  Eden shrugged. “I haven’t decided if I could live in Texas yet,” she said. “Which reminds me—did I mention that Bubba’s in Texas on furlough? I’ve got a job interview for a flight instructor’s position in San Antonio. Command is letting me have a plane and three days’ leave. Regardless of how the job turns out, I figured Bubba and I could at least have a day sunning on Padre Island.”

  South of San Antonio, the countryside turned flat, studded with mesquite and prickly pear, thick brush-covered scrubland, good for a rangy bunch of cattle and little else—in Eden’s opinion. They’d driven for miles along dusty roads, through half-deserted little towns and lonely junctions.

  “If you don’t want to stop and meet my folks, it’s okay,” Bubba was yelling over the noise of the wind blowing through the open car windows, letting in the choking dust and a blessed stir of air. “We’ll go straight on to Padre.”

  “I’d like to meet them,” Eden insisted, and tried to hide the reluctance she was actually feeling. “What’s Refugio like? That is the name of your home town, isn’t it?”

  “Yep.” A smile edged his wide mouth as he took his gaze from the long, straight road to glance at her. “It’s a small place … not much different from some of these towns we’ve gone through. Pretty quiet most of the time. ‘Course, Saturday night is the big night in town.”

  The wind blew her hair across her face and she turned into the fast rush of air while she lifted it away and held it aside. With a heaviness of spirit, Eden stared down the road, not speaking.

  “You never did say how that interview turned out,” Bubba prompted after a silence had run long.

  “It didn’t.” But that wasn’t what was weighing her down. “They thought by hiring a female instructor they might attract more women to learn to fly, but it seems female students have more faith in male instructors. So they’d already hired a man for the position, and simply neglected to notify me that it had been filled.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Bubba.” She dragged her gaze from the empty road ahead of them and the equally empty landscape around them to look at him. “Were you planning to come back here to Texas after the war?”

  “It’s my home.”

  Again Eden stared absently out the window, searching for something that she couldn’t find. Finally, she sighed in defeat. “I think you’d better stop the car, Bubba. It’s time we stopped kidding ourselves.”

  After one look at her very sober expression, Bubba pulled the car off to the side of the road. The trailing dust cloud caught up with them and swirled around the car before settling on a cactus bush. For a long second, he looked at her, then he ran his hands up the steering wheel, pulling his feelings inside.

  “Yeah, I reckon you’re right,” he said finally while the narrowed pinpoints of his eyes examined the rough land beyond the windshield. “You don’t belong here … and I don’t fit in your world.”

  “I love you, Bubba.” Pain and frustration vibrated through her voice.

  “You know I love you,” he said and pulled in a deep breath, releasing it on a laughing note. “I guess the poets were wrong when they said love conquers all.” He reached for the ignition key to start the car motor again. “I’ll drive you back to San Antonio.”

  Eden wanted to stop him—to have these last two days with him, but what would they bring? Only more heartaches and regret. So she said nothing as he reversed the car to turn around in the middle of the road and go back the way they came.
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br />   At the airport, he carried her bag to the plane and loaded it aboard. They stood awkwardly in front of each other. Eden had tears in her eyes.

  “My daddy is probably going to have to buy an airline so I can get a job flying from him,” she joked weakly. “If he does, you can be the maintenance chief.”

  “Yeah, sure.” But they both knew it would never come to pass.

  “I’ll never forget you, Bubba.” Her voice started shaking. “I wish—”

  “No.”

  His hands touched her and she went into his arms. They kissed fiercely, aching with all the tomorrows that would never be for them. Then Eden pulled away and climbed into her plane. Bubba stood on the ground and watched her take off for the last time.

  The new gymnasium at Avenger Field was crowded with Army officers, families, and friends, there to witness the pomp and ceremony of the graduation exercises for the last class of WASPs. While the sixty-eight graduates marched into the gym, the Big Spring Bombardier School Band played the “Air Corps Song.” Cappy thought they played better at the graduation of her class, but perhaps the tune had been stronger, more inspiring then. “Off we go into the wild blue yonder, climbing high into the sun …” With the end near, the words had a poignancy they had not had previously.

  The brass had turned out in force for this occasion. An array of generals was present, as well as the WASP Director, Jacqueline Cochran, and General H. H. Arnold himself. Mitch was here, too. Cappy had caught sight of him earlier when the Commanding General of the Army Air Force arrived. Somewhere in the audience, her parents were seated, on hand to see their daughter awarded the flying medal. Naturally, the Army had notified them of the occasion, and Cappy had written her mother about it as well. She wasn’t sure that her father would come but she’d seen both her parents at a distance before the ceremonies started.