The Secrets of Flight

by Maggie Leffler

  “Mama, I know what I’m doing,” I say, and she is quiet for such a long moment that I wonder if we’ve been disconnected.

  “Finish the job you’ve committed to,” she finally says. “Then come home.”

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, MURPHEE AND I ARE AT THREE THOUsand feet, flying in formation toward an air base in Oklahoma, when a thick fog rolls in and completely shrouds the AT-6. I blame my mother for this sudden shift in the weather.

  Behind me, Murph studies the instrument panel, while I’m the “safety pilot”—the extra set of eyes up front to make sure we’re not following a false horizon. Except that in every direction, all I can see is white.

  “Let’s try to get underneath it,” Murph says, so we dip down five hundred feet, only to be met with endless, choppy white and more blindness.

  What if we collide with another aircraft—the one carrying Ana and Grace flying parallel to us only minutes ago? My gloved fingers are numb, and my heart surges as if I’m back in the dream, on the verge of falling to earth just by the realization of my own weightlessness.

  “The fuel gauge is dropping,” she adds, as the plane lurches violently in the wind. “There must be a leak.”

  She radios our coordinates, and as we wait for a reply through the static, Mama’s fears, Uncle Hyman’s disapproval, even Captain Babcock’s disgust floods the engine inside my chest. Suddenly, the fact that I am here at all, barreling above the earth at twenty-five hundred feet, seems like an audacity. Gravity has to catch up to me sometime.

  A voice comes over the radio, giving us the location of Altus Army Airfield, the nearest military base, one hundred miles north.

  I turn the mixture valve, hoping for that ideal fuel-to-air ratio that will make the gas last a little longer, when the engine starts to make an ominous rumbling sound.

  “Careful. You’re running it rough,” Murphee says. “We’re gonna stall out.”

  “There’s a storm from the east,” I hear Ana say over the radio from one of the other planes. “Visibility is zero.”

  At last, new coordinates arrive: a civilian airfield not twenty miles away, in Vernon, Texas. All three of our planes are instructed to land when able.

  As we level out at a thousand feet, the fog dissolves into gray pockets of heavy rain. Below us, the plains come into view and then at last, the grid of small-town streets.

  “There’s the strip,” Murph says from behind me.

  “That’s a road,” I say. “With cars on it.”

  “We’re nearly out of gas. If we stall out over a house—”

  “I can make it. Just—hold on,” I add, spying the airstrip to the west. I’m not sure if I’m coaching Murph, the plane, or my mother, whose voice keeps lingering in my mind like a curse: What if something happens to you?

  At five hundred feet, I lower the landing gear, lock the wheels, and give the throttle some juice until the air speed indicator reads 95 knots. If the fuel gauge is accurate, we could lose the engine at any moment. Beginning our cross over loop, perpendicular to the direction of the wind as well as the strip, I radio: “Aircraft 6537 on final, gear down and locked,” and we make our approach for that final turn that will put us in line with the runway. Except that I make the arc too shallow—or maybe I just haven’t accounted for the wind pushing us the opposite way and the fact that I can’t back off the throttle so quickly in a storm—but suddenly we’re flying off course.

  “You’re going wide!” Murph shouts, as I jam on the right rudder to yaw the nose back in the direction of the runway.

  “Come on, come on,” I mutter, clutching the stick in my sweaty palm as we descend. If I break the glide of the plane too low, we’ll hit hard and bounce, so I wait and wait and then right as we’re nearing touchdown, I pull back on the stick, hard and fast. Instead of landing, the plane lifts up, rising skyward like a doomed balloon.

  For a single moment, as the ground grows farther away, it’s silent in the cockpit, save the strain of the engine on empty, the patter of rain against the hood, and the buzz of my self-doubt. What if I can’t—I think and then stop, remembering Sarah. Now is not the time. There’s no choice but to fly higher and circle around again.

  “Steady!” Murph shouts over the engine. Between the whipping wind from the west and the diagonal sheets of water from the east, it’s hard to keep the wings level and maintain speed at 75 knots as we cross over for another pass. One hundred fifty feet below, the ground is green and lush, beckoning and dangerous; it can save us or take us.

  Sweat drips down the back of my flight suit. I think of the movie we watched in ground school, where cadets were advised to have a “light but firm touch” on the stick like “taking a pulse,” and realize I’m strangling the patient. Let go, Miriush, Papa says in my mind, and I ease up my grasp and exhale.

  This time when I make the turn parallel to the runway, I get the approach right, descending in a straight path for the wet, grassy landing strip. The front wheels and back tail of the plane are perfectly aligned on all three points, and my feet are stable on the deck. At the precise point of touch down, I cut the throttle, remembering the Ten Commandments for Safe Flying, specifically number five: Thou Shalt Maintain Thy Speed Lest the Earth Arise and Smite Thee. That’s what it feels like, too: an assault from the earth, as the right tire explodes and we find ourselves skidding in that direction. I jam hard on the left rudder but the tail wheel is already shooting out like a weathervane seeking the wind. My feet dance on the rudders, left and then right and then left, trying to compensate for the shifting tail, which sends us into a dizzying ground spin and makes my brain feel like its torqueing inside my skull. We skid one hundred and eighty degrees and then finish the length of the runway backward, as I ride the brakes with all my strength, despite how many times we’ve been told to go easy on them. Just before slamming into the hangar, the plane comes to rest.

  Toppling back in my seat, I gasp with relief. There’s a high-pitched ringing sound in my ears, along with rain quietly drizzling against the hood.

  “Well,” Murph says, peeling off her helmet. “That was fun.”

  ONCE THE OTHERS ARE SAFELY DOWN, WE USE THE AIRPORT phone to call back to base for instructions. Jackie Cochran gives us a name of a local hotel within walking distance and says she’ll send an army bus to pick us up in the morning. “You’ll get vouchers for the rooms and meals, and whatever you do, stick together and don’t tell anyone who you are.” We know the drill: women pilots are an experiment. There are no insignias on our flight jackets for a reason.

  After making sure the planes are securely chained down to the metal loops on the ground, we wait for the rain to let up and then walk back toward town, a conspicuous group of six women in pants. “What if we get picked up by the sheriff?” Grace asks. We’ve all heard the story of the women in a class ahead of ours who were arrested under similar circumstances for wandering out to look for dinner—arrested on charges of solicitation simply because they were wearing pants and there weren’t any men with them.

  “Fine by me—just as long as he drops us at the nearest restaurant,” Ana says. “I could eat a horse, and I’m sick of walking.”

  “To hell with ’em,” Murphee says. “If they arrest us for wearing pants, Cochran will bail us out.”

  We find the hotel easy enough, a narrow, three-story establishment on the main street of Vernon, which looks like a town from the set of an old western movie. Eyeing us nervously, the owner slips us the keys to our rooms, as if this is a holdup. I have a suspicion that he wouldn’t have let us check in at all if Jackie Cochran hadn’t called ahead. Ana asks him about where we might get some grub, and he points to a swinging wooden door—the entrance of the hotel restaurant. The moment we walk through it, wearing our pants and flight jackets, conversations trail off and utensils stop clanging against plates. I feel like we’re the six Lone Rangers.

  It’s a tiny, ten-table establishment with sprigs of flowers and flickering votive candles on the tables. Grace points to the s
ign, which says, SEAT YOURSELF, and so we do, taking it upon ourselves to push two tables together. I quickly rescue the centerpieces, as everyone continues to watch us.

  “Welcome to Vernon, ladies, what brings you to town?” the waitress asks, handing out menus once we’re seated.

  We glance at each other. “The storm,” Grace says.

  “I could sure use a drink,” Murph adds, and then orders a double. “What?” she says, after the waitress leaves. “It was dicey up there.”

  “Too dicey,” I mutter, feeling like Vera.

  “You sound like me after my first fight with Teddy,” Grace says, amused. “Spooked.”

  “I thought you two never fought,” Ana says.

  “Not with an ocean between us. But that’s how you get stronger,” Grace says, looking at me, and I glance up from my menu and exhale.

  “I just—hated to have to land.”

  “We all gotta come down sometime, somewhere, so why not here?” Murph asks, perking up as the waitress returns with a tray of drinks and a basket of rolls, still warm from the oven.

  “Here—keep this to yourselves,” she says quietly, releasing a tiny handful of cubes near the breadbasket.

  Vera gasps. “Is that—?”

  The waitress holds up a finger to her lips and then gives us a conspiratorial wink before she walks way. Grace tosses one foil pat of butter to each of us.

  With happy anticipation, I slather the rationed butter onto my roll, barely noticing that one of the patrons, portly and red-faced—reminiscent of my uncle Hyman—has approached the table.

  “Excuse me, ladies,” the man says, thick Texan accent, and we all look up. “Sorry to interrupt your meal. My wife and I have been taking bets, and I think I’m right. Are you a baseball team?”

  Murphee coughs so hard on her roll that Vera has to swat her on the back.

  “That’s right,” Ana says, “we’re a baseball team.”

  “Because my wife here thought you were German spies, and some other fellas over there thought you might be prisoners of war.” The man hitches his pants up, reminding me of Humpty Dumpty.

  “Nope. No, sir. We’re a baseball team. Here to entertain the troops.”

  “Isn’t that right? I knew it, honey!” he turns and calls over his shoulder.

  We are one of the best-kept secrets of the war, and we don’t even know it yet.

  LATER, I CURL UP ON CLEAN SHEETS AND USE SOME PAPER FROM the hotel nightstand to pen a letter to Sarah about the events of the day. I leave out the part about getting spooked in the storm, and how the whole plane could have flipped over and crushed us during the ground spin. Instead, I tell her about what happened after we landed and the goons in the restaurant who think we’re just here to entertain the troops.

  “You’re always writing,” Murph says, running a towel over her wet hair. “And you’re not even the one with the fiancé,” she adds, jerking her head toward Grace, who grins through a yawn in the comfy chair where she’s reading an actual book instead of an aviation manual.

  “I just want to remember it all,” I say, feeling sheepish, because when I’m not corresponding with Sarah, I’m writing letters to Sol. He writes me back, too, pages of longhand about his past and our future. I’ll set up a medical practice out of our home, so whenever you return from the sky, you’ll know that I’ll be there. I love that in Sol’s dreams I can still fly when the war ends, no matter what decision is reached at the hearing later this month. I can even envision our someday family: a little blond boy with his arms outstretched at the top of the steps waiting for me to scoop him up. Or in Sol’s arms beside the runway after the air show, waiting to greet me as I climb down from the cockpit.

  “What are you reading over there, Gracie-Grace?” Murph asks, combing her orange locks.

  “‘The Open Boat’?” Grace says, looking up from her pages. “Stephen Crane. I read it ages and ages ago, but I didn’t really appreciate it until now.”

  I think back to my high school English class. “Something about a captain, a cook, and a correspondent who are trapped out at sea?”

  Grace nods and smiles.

  “Sounds like flight school,” Ana says.

  I decide then that Murphee Sutherland would be the Captain, the way she barks at us to get cracking each morning—our beds made for inspection, our boots tied before we march out to formation. Meanwhile, Ana Santos is the cook, who keeps cheerfully bailing out the boat and asking about what we will eat when we make it to shore. And I am the correspondent.

  “Wasn’t there another guy? An oiler?” Murphee asks. Grace says the only thing she can remember about the oiler is that he ends up dead in the shallows.

  THREE DAYS LATER, BACK IN SWEETWATER, THERE ARE SIRENS ON the airfield in the evening, and I run out of the mess tent to see fire trucks and an ambulance screaming toward a plume of smoking metal hidden somewhere beyond the trees, several miles away. Dust and grit sting my eyes, and I can’t stop watching the commotion and panting with panic. When I finally get back to the bunk, Grace is already there, huddling on her cot. “Oh, thank God it wasn’t you!” she says, letting go of her knees when I walk through the door and rushing over to hug me. Her eyes are big and brown, matching the fear in my own.

  “Who was it?” I ask, but Grace doesn’t know, and so I take off my boots and zoot suit and slump on my own cot, my heart turning somersaults in my chest as we wait. One by one, pilots return from the field, ordered to ground by Captain Digby.

  “Who was it?” Vera asks, the moment she steps across the threshold of the barracks, her arms strangely empty without her behemoth binder.

  “Who was it?” Ana asks, forty minutes later, and we shake our heads.

  Another half hour goes by and still there’s no sign of Murphee.

  “Where the hell is she?” Ana says, pacing back and forth.

  “You know how she likes to talk to people—she’s probably getting the scoop,” I say, only I’m not quite confident. Murphee likes to take unnecessary chances and has already risked a pink slip for her wild abandonment of precision flying.

  “Did you see it?” Murphee asks, finally bursting into the room. Grace bounds up from the bed and hugs her, and tears of relief prick my eyes. “I watched it fall. The plane lost its engines and just dropped like a meteor—Louise Hayes,” Murphee adds, before we can ask again. “No survivors.”

  “Oh my God,” Vera breathes, and Ana starts pacing again.

  The falling feeling sweeps over me again. Louise, I just went dancing with you. You were a wallflower with me. How can you be dead?

  “But there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and her takeoff was perfect,” Grace says.

  “Sabotage,” Murphee says, slamming the door to her footlocker.

  I think of Louise warning me to carefully inspect my plane and doubting that the birds were responsible for my engine failure that day in the Stearman. “But . . . sabotage how?” I ask.

  “Sugar in the gas tank,” Murphee says. “The plane can still get up, until eventually the carburetor quits and the engine just conks out.”

  “Come on,” I say. “Who would do such a thing?”

  “You’d be surprised. Some men go crazy by the idea of women ‘invading the cockpit.’ Of course, the military will probably call it ‘pilot error.’”

  I think of the last crash investigation, for the WASP at Camp Davis whose plane went down when her engine was hit by a shell from the gun crew trying to qualify for overseas duty. Jackie Cochran had flown to that site, too, but left it to the military to sort out the paperwork. “Pilot error,” they claimed again, despite the fact that the pilot had radioed she’d been hit by the flak from the antiaircraft guns the guys were shooting during tow-target duty.

  “What’s Jackie Cochran going to do? Make a stink and have them scrub the whole program? We’re on thin ice as it is,” Vera says, reminding me that the congressional hearing to militarize the WASP is coming up at the end of this month.

  “Jesus,” Grace
says. “Someone should pay for this.”

  “No one will pay—and certainly not the goddamn government,” Murphee says, her voice bitter. “They won’t so much as give her a flag for her coffin. We’re just civilians, remember?”

  There’s a soft knock at the door, and Mildred Winter, another pilot, pops her head into our room. “Someone’s here for Miri. And Captain Digby wants us at the flagpole in ten.”

  No one asks who’s here for Miri. Nobody catcalls and tells me they’ll see me k-i-s-s-i-n-g in a tree; no one has the energy for that now. In the silence, I pull my boots back on and run outside and into the wind. Inside the gate, Sol is there. Just seeing him like that, clutching his fedora in his hands, makes my heart lurch with relief. Finally reaching him, I let him hold me for a long moment, thinking how strange it is that I was ever afraid to touch him.

  “I heard a plane went down,” he whispers into my hair, before kissing my forehead and then my cheeks. “I was afraid it was you.”

  “It was my friend Louise,” I say, the words choking in my throat, and he hugs me harder, for a long time. Engines are roaring, planes are landing, and the wind is still howling in my ears. “You came all the way from Abilene?” I finally say.

  “My father—he’s the one who heard someone talking about it at the shop. He gave me the keys to the truck and told me to go make sure you were all right.” I feel a swell of love rise up like a wave, and I don’t know if it’s for Sol or his father. “There’s something else . . .” Sol slowly adds, a flicker of worry crossing his face. “I got a call today from a school in New York. They accepted me for the fall class.”

  “Medical school?” I gasp and pull away. “You got in? Sol, that’s—wonderful.”

  “Sort of. Maybe. The timing is bad . . .”

  “You’ve been waiting for this your whole life!”

  “I know, it’s just . . .” His head sags, almost guiltily. “I don’t want to leave you.”

  I place my hands on his cheeks and tilt his head up until our eyes meet again. “This is your calling. You have to go.”