But when Maggie opened her mouth, she managed to blast away all goodwill with a single comment.
“Princess Pearl tell you she was jumping ship?”
Hot words in Pearl’s defense rose to Lottie’s lips.
But when she looked at Maggie’s face, she couldn’t bring herself to say any of them. Maggie was right. That was exactly what Pearl was doing.
Feeling defeated, Lottie stepped into their room.
“Whatcha got there?” Maggie asked, nodding at the paper with Lottie’s orders on it, which was still in her hand.
Lottie sat down on her bed.
“They find some palace good enough to send you to?” Maggie asked.
But even Maggie’s teasing couldn’t spoil the satisfaction Lottie felt in the place she’d earned for herself. “I’m going to be an airplane mechanic,” she said.
“Mechanic?” Maggie repeated, incredulous. “I never saw you pick up a wrench.”
“They never gave any of us a wrench in basic training,” Lottie pointed out.
Maggie raised her eyebrows, acknowledging the point.
“But I’ve got my own toolbox at home. I can fix just about anything that’s wrong with a car, if I’ve got enough time.”
“Car and plane engines, they a lot alike?” Maggie asked.
It could have been another one of her sarcastic comments, but this time the question seemed sincere. “I guess I’ll just have to get there to find out,” Lottie said.
Lottie took Maggie’s silence as a good sign. Maybe she’d finally earned some respect from Maggie. Or maybe it was just easier for both of them to get along, knowing that they’d never see each other again after the next few hours, since their orders would no doubt send them to opposite sides of the continent.
“What station did you get?” Lottie ventured. She was curious. And after she’d told Maggie all about her own orders, it seemed impolite not to ask.
“Yeoman,” Maggie said. Lottie nodded. That meant Maggie would be doing the administrative and communications work that kept the whole system running, making sure all the i’s were dotted and t’s were crossed, that everyone knew everything they should and nothing they shouldn’t, and that everything got where it was going.
“They assign you to a base?” Lottie asked. Not all of the women she’d talked to had been. One of them had even been assigned to support a university program in Boston that was doing work the Navy thought might help in the war effort.
But Maggie nodded. “San Diego,” she said.
“San Diego?” Lottie repeated. “In California?”
Maggie raised her eyebrows. “Is there more than one of them?” she asked sarcastically. “I hadn’t heard that.”
“I can’t believe it,” Lottie said, shaking her head.
“What?” Maggie asked, a challenge in her tone. “You don’t think I can handle it?”
Lottie lifted up the orders she had just been given, pointing at the block letters at the top: SAN DIEGO.
The two of them stared at each other.
Ten
AS SHE STEPPED OUT into the dazzling California morning, Lottie drew in a long breath of the sea air, scented with salt. All around her, other women streamed out of the barracks, laughing and talking as they headed to their posts in the big military office buildings.
For a few steps, Lottie walked along with them.
But then, at the rough path that led to the airfield and hangars, she turned from the main walkway and headed off by herself.
She was the only woman on the base who had shown enough mechanical know-how to qualify for classes as an aircraft mechanic.
That had been a source of a lot of teasing, because most of the women on base were in classes with other women, not with the enlisted men. “Leave one or two for us, will you?” they asked when they found out Lottie had been posted to the mechanic’s hangar.
But until this morning, her first day of classes, it hadn’t actually occurred to her what it would be like to walk into the training bay alone, as the only woman.
Lottie did some quick reconnaissance. The hangar itself was a giant cavern of a building, its gigantic bay door at least two stories high and already wide open to the breeze that swept in off the sea.
A few aircraft sat inside the bay, in shadows. Others had been parked nearby, in the sunshine. A few men were still walking in after her, but a good number were already at work. That came as a relief. She hadn’t wanted to arrive too early and stick out like a sore thumb. But she never wanted to be late, especially on the first day.
She seemed to have timed it just right. The little knot that had formed in her stomach when she’d first walked onto the airfield started to ease.
“Morning,” she said, nodding at the guard on duty as she passed through the airfield gate, then headed toward the repair hangar.
He nodded back without a flicker of friendliness on his face.
Lottie lifted her chin and tried to tell herself not to take it personally.
Not all men had been thrilled to see women join the Navy. Maybe this guy was one of the ones who wasn’t thrilled to see “a girl” on the job.
But she’d always gotten along well with men, Lottie reminded herself. At parties, when she wasn’t out on the dance floor, she was often in a corner with a bunch of stags, sipping whiskey and puffing cigars with the best of them.
It might take a little time, she told herself. But she was sure that—
“Missy!” someone shouted nearby, breaking into her thoughts. “Hey, missy!”
For an instant, every man in the vicinity of the hangar seemed to look up from his work, hoping for a glimpse of a pretty girl.
When they saw it was only Lottie, in her workman’s overalls, they turned back to their tinkering with a collective mutter of disappointment.
As they did, a short, skinny guy came striding up to Lottie, squinting at her from under a mop of greasy black hair.
“You got a message to deliver or something, missy?” he asked with an expression halfway between a leer and a sneer.
“I’m reporting for duty,” Lottie said, reading the name sewn on his overalls: Pickman. “I’m assigned to this team.”
Pickman raised his eyebrows. “A pretty girl like you?” he said. “Working in this dirty old repair bay?”
He let out a long, wondering whistle.
As he did, someone began to clap and shout over in the corner.
Lottie turned quickly, bracing herself to fend off the next insult or catcall. But instead, she saw a young man with a confident air waving his hands for attention, just outside the hangar. And all the dozens of other men were clustering around him.
“Who’s that?” she asked Pickman.
Pickman himself had straightened up and was headed over in that direction. “That’s Captain Woodward,” he said. “Our commander.”
Lottie trailed after him, taking up what she hoped was an inconspicuous spot near the back of the gathered crowd.
“Gentlemen,” Captain Woodward was shouting.
Around her, a couple of the men glanced at Lottie and snickered. Lottie felt a pinprick of irritation, both at them and at Captain Woodward, for ignoring the fact that she was there. Although a small part of her suspected her reaction would’ve been the same if Captain Woodward had singled her out.
As the men finally piped down, Lottie realized that there was something familiar about Captain Woodward. She felt like she’d met him before, but she wasn’t sure where. Had they crossed paths at some party in Detroit? Or somewhere else in her travels: New York? One of her European trips?
“Welcome back, Captain!” one of the men shouted.
Where had Captain Woodward been? His face was so tan, he looked like he had spent pretty much every day of the past year here in California. And the tan made his strong jawline even clearer and his blue eyes seem even more blue.
Captain Woodward didn’t answer. He just held his hands up, waiting for complete silence.
When
he finally got it, he dropped them.
“I see some new faces here,” he said, looking around the hangar. “And some of you who probably already forgot everything I ever said, even if you heard it a hundred times.”
Laughter rippled through the crowd.
From the looks on the men’s faces, Lottie could see that Captain Woodward was well liked. And he’d clearly been here for some time. So she probably hadn’t crossed paths with him in New York, at least not while she was at training.
“We’re going to get to work here in a minute,” Captain Woodward said. “But since it’s been a while, and since some of us don’t know each other yet,” he added, “I want to stress a point I don’t think we can ever stress too much.”
He looked around the gathering, and Lottie was both relieved and a little put out that his gaze didn’t even seem to flicker as it passed right over her.
“This shop is a good mechanic’s shop,” Captain Woodward said, to the rumble of cheers and approval from the crowd. But his own face stayed stony. “But that’s not enough,” he said. “We have to be the best in the world. We’re not just mechanics. We’re mechanics at war. So everything we do is a matter of life and death. We can’t be lazy, or careless, or just plain wrong. Because people are counting on us for their lives. Not just the men in the sky. The people they’re fighting for, all over the world.”
He glanced to the side, giving a clear view of his distinguished profile, and suddenly Lottie realized where she knew him from: the Navy WAVES newsreel. The one that she’d seen all those months ago, in the theater near the dress shop her mother had helped her escape from.
The recognition gave her a sense of vertigo, but it didn’t seem to affect anyone else in the hangar.
“You got that?” Captain Woodward said, scanning the crowd again.
Lottie glanced to her side. All the men were staring back at him, their faces just as determined as his.
Captain Woodward clapped his hands. “All right, then,” he said, finally breaking into a grin. “I know you’ve missed me.”
As the crowd laughed, Lottie asked the man next to her, “Where has he been?”
The man did a double take when he realized she was a woman. Then he laughed as if she’d just told him a joke. “I would have thought you knew, lady,” he said. “He’s been away getting some R & R. Helping set up the mechanic tests for the WAVES.”
“So,” Captain Woodward was saying from up front, “I’ve got a new challenge for you.” He pulled the corner of a large piece of tarp away from a mass of metal that Lottie quickly recognized as some kind of engine on a test stand.
It glinted in the sun.
“Who wants to take the first crack at this beauty?”
A murmur spread through the crowd.
The guy next to Lottie shook his head.
Lottie felt the same curiosity and determination she always did when presented with a broken engine. It felt like a thrilling puzzle. But the lines of this one were totally unfamiliar to her. And she wasn’t about to raise her hand in front of all those men during her first day on the job. She was going to take her time and prove her worth, not go down in flames on a problem the rest of them were clearly too scared to solve on their own.
She could tell this because not one of the men in the group had raised his hand, either.
“Really,” Captain Woodward said, a smile playing around his lips. “Not one of you boys thinks you’re up to the task?”
The men in the audience shuffled their feet, looking from side to side.
That meant that Pickman, who was standing beside Lottie, got a look at her while he was trying to avoid the captain’s gaze. And that, apparently, gave Pickman an idea.
“Hey, why don’t you try it, missy?” he asked, giving her a shove forward that almost sent her toppling into the guy in front of her.
As Lottie got her footing indignantly, Pickman had what he thought was an even better idea. “Ladies first!” he shouted, pointing at Lottie.
Lottie froze in place while the guys around her looked back, realized she was there, and began to chant. “Ladies first, ladies first!”
Lottie tried to keep her features steady, not to give away her anger at being singled out—or her fear.
She looked up at Captain Woodward. For the first time, their eyes met. But she didn’t see any of the mockery or suspicion in them that she saw in the eyes of the other men. Instead, she thought she saw concern, and calculation, as he quickly ran through his options.
Before he could decide, she began to push her way through the crowd. “All right,” she said as the men parted around her on either side. “Let me through. I’ll do it.”
By the time she reached the front of the group and was face-to-face with the engine, Captain Woodward’s expression had turned impassive. “Name?” he asked.
“Palmer,” Lottie said.
Captain Woodward nodded at the engine. “You’ll find tools in that box,” he said, pointing to a nearby kit. “Go ahead. Get started.”
Lottie took a step toward the box, trying not to show how self-conscious she felt in front of all those men. But before she took another one, Captain Woodward clapped his hands again.
“All right,” he said. “Get to work.”
A chorus of complaints and boos bubbled up as the men began to disperse to their various posts. “You didn’t think we were all going to stand around and watch one person work all day, did you?” he called after them.
Lottie knelt down, opened the tool kit, and pulled out a wrench so she would look like she was working, even though she had no idea yet if she was going to need a wrench or not.
When she stood back up, Captain Woodward was standing next to her.
“It’s a Merlin engine,” he said to her. “You think you can handle that?”
With gratitude, Lottie realized he’d just given her a huge clue. Before this, she’d had no idea what she was looking at. But from his expression, she couldn’t tell if he’d meant it as a favor or a challenge.
“A Merlin’s nothing more than a big old Packard block,” Lottie said over her shoulder as she turned back to the engine. “And I learned how to fix one of those when I was seven years old.”
This wasn’t quite true. The Packard auto company had started manufacturing the Merlin engines after the Brits invented them. And she knew Packards because her father’s buddy, who owned the company, had given one to her family as a gift. The thing broke down all the time, which was how she had learned the basics of the engine, looking over Gus’s shoulder as he tinkered to get it running again. Her father had never been upset when the Packard broke down, though. Every time the car his friend manufactured failed, he just took it as a victory, with competitive glee.
No aircraft engine, Lottie knew, was remotely as simple as an automobile’s. And she knew enough about Navy engines already to know that a Merlin wasn’t standard in the Navy. It was water-cooled, unlike the air-cooled engines she’d been trained on, so one of the first things she’d need to do would be rig up a makeshift cooling system, to even test it. But she wasn’t about to let him see her sweat.
Captain Woodward just raised his eyebrows. Then he turned around and walked off, without another word or a backward glance, leaving her alone to begin to test the shafts and pistons.
As she jerry-rigged a cooling system and caught on to the ins and outs of the engine, she began to seethe.
This was a job for an experienced mechanic. No one should have been asked to do it alone. Let alone someone who was brand new to the class. She knew unfairness when she saw it. It always made her blood boil. And this was no exception.
She pulled the whole thing apart, trying every trick she knew. But an hour later, all she could do was get it to cough.
That was enough to get Captain Woodward’s attention. “What have you got here?” he asked as a group of other men drifted over to see what kind of progress she’d made.
“Same thing I had an hour ago,” Lottie said. “B
usted engine.”
The nearby men laughed, but she wasn’t sure if they were laughing with her or at her.
“All right,” Woodward said. “Nice work. Come on and join one of these other teams. You might learn something.”
“I can get it,” Lottie protested, looking around at the smug faces of the surrounding men. None of them had even been willing to take the chance. But now they were all looking at her as if they would have known how to do it better than she did. “Just give me another few minutes.”
“No,” Captain Woodward said firmly. “Head over there. Rick’s showing some guys how to repair a broken propeller.”
“But—” Lottie tried again.
“Palmer,” Captain Woodward interrupted. “Didn’t they teach you how to follow orders in basic training?”
“Aye aye, sir,” she said.
Exasperated, Lottie dropped the greasy wrench she had been holding back into the toolbox and stalked off in the direction in which he had pointed.
For the rest of the day, she did her best to put a good face on it. She even managed to learn a thing or two about the differences between a car engine and a plane engine: the way they were configured differently to fit in the different spaces; the fact that plane engines typically ran at a lower rpm than car engines, even though planes traveled so much faster than cars did.
But all the while, she was struggling to fend off feelings of humiliation. She felt like every time anyone looked at her, they just saw the girl who had made a big fuss about how she was going to solve the tough challenge—and then failed, in front of everyone.
It didn’t help that it seemed like every time she turned around, someone was staring at her—or refusing to look at her, as if she weren’t even there at all.
Or that Captain Woodward didn’t give any other sign that he knew she even existed, for the entire rest of the day.
She kept a brave face on when she walked out of the hangar and all the way back to the women’s barracks. But when she got to her bunk, she couldn’t keep it up any longer. She threw herself down on her bed and burst into tears.
She’d never cried like this before. The deep, wracking sobs shook her to the core of her being. She longed for her mother’s embrace. And with a deep ache, she missed Eugene. What if she just went back? she wondered. Would there still be any room for her there? Not just in her home, but in his heart?
For Love and Country Page 8