by Mike Jenne
“Hope you enjoyed that little jaunt, Ourecky. Maybe you should inform your stewardess girlfriend that I do know how to fly after all,” said Carson, chuckling. “And make sure you’ve got your puke bags sealed up good.”
“Uh, I didn’t need to use any bags, sir,” replied Ourecky.
“None?” asked Carson incredulously. That’s not possible. A newbie like Ourecky couldn’t possibly still be in possession of his breakfast. He unlatched his oxygen mask, drew in a deep breath from the cool flow and then swung the rubber mask to the side. Taking a slight sniff, he expected to gag; it was impossible to conceal the acrid smell of vomit in the close confines of the T-38. But there was nothing but the usual odors of a fighter cockpit. He sniffed again. Nothing. Then he quickly sucked in a whole breath. Still nothing. It just wasn’t possible.
“Everything okay, Major?” asked Ourecky.
“Yeah, it’s okay,” replied Carson, swinging his oxygen mask back into place. He dialed in the next checkpoint, quickly scanned his instruments, and verified the radio settings. “Look, Ourecky, we keep this dogfighting business to ourselves. Understood? Absolutely no mention to Virgil Wolcott or anyone else, or I crunch you. Got it?”
“Our secret, sir,” replied Ourecky from the back seat.
Wright Arms Apartments, Dayton, Ohio
9:00 p.m., Thursday, August 15, 1968
“Did you like the movie?” he asked.
“I guess,” she said, fumbling with her keys. “But I didn’t completely understand it. One minute, a monkey is throwing a bone in the air and the next thing you know, astronauts are walking on the moon. I have no idea what that black slab was supposed to represent, and why they kept finding it everywhere. And that spaceship just looked like a big sperm cell to me.”
Ourecky blushed. “Uh, I didn’t notice that,” he said.
“Really? I suppose it was some kind of metaphor or symbol,” she commented. “And that last part was just a little too crazy for me. It reminded me of an LSD trip, not that I’ve ever dropped any acid. And I didn’t understand about the baby at the end. Do you suppose that was meant to be that Dave Bowman guy? I guess it was all a little over my head.”
Bea’s apartment was tiny. The furnishings were sparse; besides a well-worn couch, there was a phonograph and a small television. To enhance reception, the television antenna’s rabbit ears were adorned with shiny clumps of aluminum foil. A coffee table held a small collection of fashion and Delta in-flight magazines. The other end of the room was a miniscule kitchenette.
“I need to wash up,” he said. He held out his hands and spread his fingers, as if presenting them for close order inspection; they were still greasy with popcorn butter.
She nodded, and pointed at her bedroom door. “Through there, on the right, just past my dresser,” she replied, sitting down on the couch and slipping out of her shoes. “Excuse the mess. It’s been a hectic week, and I haven’t had a chance to pick up.”
He navigated his way through the clutter of her bedroom and found the bathroom. It wasn’t much larger than a cramped lavatory on an airliner. There were nickel-sized spots of rust in the sink. On the glass shelf above the sink, a blue toothbrush with flayed bristles stood upright in a Delta coffee mug, next to a half-empty tube of Pepsodent wintergreen toothpaste. The shelf also was home to her make-up, a small atomizer of Houbigant Chantilly perfume, and a round plastic dispenser of birth control pills.
He turned on the tap, let the water run until it was warm, and washed his hands with Ivory soap. Shutting off the flow, he heard her muffled voice from the living room: “There’s a clean towel in that little cabinet over the toilet.”
He found the towel, dried his hands, and retraced his short route back to the living room. As he walked through the door, she struck a match and lit a pair of candles on an end table next to the couch. “Wine?” she asked, switching off the table lamp. “I think I still have some.”
“Uh, sure, Bea. That would be nice.”
Rummaging through the refrigerator, she found a bottle. Carrying a green bottle in one hand and two mismatched wine glasses in the other, she floated back to the couch on bare feet. “I’m going to put on a record. You like the Beatles? I think they’re really groovy.” She turned, knelt down, and flipped through a collection of LP albums in a wooden milk crate.
“They’re okay,” he said, admiring the small of her back as he poured the wine.
Bea placed the album on the spindle and switched on the phonograph. She watched as the black disk dropped and the arm swung over. “I’m saving my pennies to buy a new record player,” she observed, sitting down next to him on the couch. “I’ve just about worn out this one.”
He tried not to stare at her. She seemed even more beautiful in the flickering light of the candles. Her perfume smelled vaguely like flowers. He was physically drawn to her, but beyond that, she was an enigma. He had yet to comprehend why she would be attracted to him. “I hardly know anything about you, Bea,” he commented.
“There’s not much to know,” she replied. She took a sip of the wine and set the glass on the coffee table. “You’ve seen enough of my life to know what it’s like. I fly five days a week. Same route, mostly the same people every time. It used to be exciting, but now it’s just another job.”
“But that’s just what you do for a living. There has to be more. How about your family? Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
Closing her eyes, she slowly shook her head and murmured, “No. Just little old me.”
“How about your parents? Do they live here in Dayton?”
“No, they’re gone now. My dad was killed in Korea. My mum remarried after that, but then my stepfather died in ’62. Mum passed away three years ago.” She sniffed and reached for a Kleenex, but the cardboard box on the coffee table was empty. She reached into her purse and found a tissue. “I really miss my mum and dad.”
“Tell me about them,” he said. “Please.”
“My parents met in England during the War,” she said, daubing her eyes before wiping her nose. “He was in the Army Air Corps. He met my mum at a dance on the base, and they were married a few weeks later. He was twenty and she was seventeen.”
“Sounds nice. Very romantic.”
The record skipped. The words “Roll up for the mystery tour . . .” droned over and over. Bea stood up to fix it. “Yeah, I suppose it would have been endless days of bliss and rose petals if he hadn’t been shot down a few weeks before I was born. He ended up in a German POW camp.”
Bea continued. “He came back to Molesworth after he was released, and then he rotated back here, to Wright Field. My mum and me weren’t able to ship over for another year. He stayed in the Army for a couple of years after the war and then went to college on the GI Bill.”
“What did he study?” asked Ourecky, gently swirling the wine in his glass.
“Engineering. Same as you.”
“So your dad was an engineer? That’s ironic.”`
She closed her eyes, sighed, and leaned her head against his shoulder. “That’s what he went to college to be, anyway. Scott, those four years were the best time in my life. My dad would come home from class and spread out his books on the kitchen table. Sometimes, I would sit on the floor and play with my dolls, but mostly I would just watch him study. I was very young, but I remember that he had a slide rule, just like yours, because I used to believe it was a magic ruler. And he always had this really serious, focused look on his face while he was studying, but every once in a while he would look up at me and smile. I really miss that smile.”
“Where was your mother?” asked Ourecky.
“She took in ironing and kept me during the day until my dad came home from classes, and then she went to her job taking tickets at the theater. I used to struggle to stay awake until Mum came home, and then the three of us would spend time together before they put me to bed. We were a real family, at least for a while. That’s what I miss most. Does that make any sense?”
She sat up and ran her fingers through her hair. “But then Dad went back into the military right after he graduated. Not the Army; it was the Air Force by then. He went to OCS, then straight to flight school, and right after that he went to Korea.”
“What happened to him?”
“He was shot down on my eighth birthday, 1952. That’s why I don’t celebrate it anymore.”
“So you stayed here in Ohio?”
“I wish. My mum didn’t have her citizenship yet, and we were packing up to move back to Molesworth when Dad’s wingman showed up.” Bea closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. “Captain Ted Andersen. Actually came to the door with flowers, no less. He acted like he was on some sort of mission, like he was duty-bound to take care of me and Mum. My mum was in a fragile state emotionally, so it didn’t take much effort for Ted to sweep her off her feet.”
“So you think he felt obligated to marry your mother?”
“Oh, maybe. But I think it’s likely that he saw it more as an opportunity than an obligation. He roomed with my father in Korea. I’m sure that my dad had that picture up somewhere,” she said, gesturing at a sepia-toned photograph hanging on the wall behind the couch. “It was my dad’s favorite picture of her. And I’m sure Ted probably drooled over it every day.”
Ourecky turned to look at the picture of Bea’s parents, obviously taken on their wedding day. “She’s beautiful,” he declared. “I mean, she was beautiful. You look exactly like her.”
Bea smiled at him. “Thank you. Anyway, dear old Ted Andersen, my dad’s best buddy, married my mother on Christmas day that year, and then our lives left on a conveyor belt. We were like nomads. We lived everywhere: Germany twice, Okinawa, Italy, Hawaii, the Azores, and Spain. We were only in the States twice, one year in California and one year in Alabama.”
Ourecky could hardly imagine growing up in such exotic locales. In his Nebraska childhood, the only changes in the scenery came with the seasons. “Wow. That must have been exciting.”
“Exciting?” she asked, laughing. “Oh yeah, Scott, it was just groovy. Hunky dory wonderful. We rarely spent much more than a year anywhere, and somehow the Air Force always managed to transfer my stepdad right in the middle of the school year.”
“School? I hadn’t even considered that. Where did you go to school?”
“There was always a government issue school for Air Force brats wherever we happened to land. I thought it was a great life, right up until I was in the sixth grade in Montgomery, and I went to a regular school. I was mixed in with normal kids, and I realized that I didn’t have any real friends like they had. I guess that with all the moving, I had just never learned how to make friends. And I think as I started getting older, I learned to intentionally not make friends, because it was always so painful to say goodbye and leave them behind.
“Anyway, the whole time we were moving around, it was just my mum and me,” she said. “It seemed like Ted was always off on a temporary duty assignment somewhere. If he was home, he spent every waking hour at work, flying, or at the officer’s club. My mum used to go to the club with him, but she got tired of that and stayed home with me instead. And to make matters worse, he would chase anything with a skirt. It was pretty obvious, and he and my mum used to have such horrible fights about it, but she wouldn’t leave him.”
Bea took a sip of her wine. “We were stationed in Spain when he died. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was prom night. Boy, was that pathetic. Nine girls and five boys in our senior class. Definitely the offspring of fighter pilots.”
“Huh?”
Bea grinned. “For some reason, fighter pilots seem to have more girls than boys. I’m sure that it’s never been scientifically proven and no one seems to know why, but it’s definitely what I saw growing up. Always more girls than boys. What a pain. I didn’t have a date for the prom, but my mum insisted that I go anyway. She was pinning on my corsage when the squadron commander and chaplain showed up at the door.”
“What happened?”
“Dear old Ted suffered an engine flame-out out over the Med, near Gibraltar. He ejected, but his parachute didn’t open. It was really hard for me to act sad when they gave us the news. I had to hold back the urge to break out laughing. There I was, with my hair all done up, standing there in my hand-me-down pink chiffon dress and my mum was in her old flannel housecoat. We gripped each other tight, and I pretended to be overcome with grief, but I could tell that she wanted to laugh also. Isn’t that sad, that we could be so overjoyed at something so tragic?”
“Well, if he was that bad a guy and was so hurtful to your mother, then maybe it wasn’t that tragic after all,” he observed.
“I suppose. I just wish that he had never shown up on our doorstep.”
“So you came back here after your stepfather was killed?”
She nodded. “Dayton was the closest thing we ever had to a home. My grandfather was killed in the War, and my grandmother passed away in ’57, so there wasn’t much sense in me and my mum going back to England. So we came back here.”
“Bea, what happened to your mother?”
“Breast cancer,” she replied, staring at the picture of her parents. “What a horrible way to die. It took a over a year, and she suffered so.” The record ended, and the room was filled with uncomfortable silence. One of the candles sputtered and then slowly flickered out. Minutes passed before she quietly spoke. “And here we are, Scott. That’s my life.”
“Well, here we are,” he echoed. He summoned his courage and kissed her lightly on the lips. He sensed that she was on the verge of crying and held her close until the tears came.
Aerospace Support Project; 10:00 a.m., Monday, August 19, 1968
“We’re short on time,” said Mark Tew. “So we’ll just stick to what’s really pertinent. Personnel?”
Thompson, the personnel officer, stood out of his chair. “All of our head counts remain the same as last briefed. Sir, I’ve also inquired about a replacement for Major Agnew. The bottom line is that we won’t be allocated any pilot replacements for at least another year.”
Tew grimaced, slumped over in his chair, and grabbed his stomach.
“You okay, Mark?” asked Wolcott. “Do we need to stop now?” He had never seen Tew look so bad; the general’s eyes were bloodshot, and he was sweating profusely.
Tew painfully shook his head. “I’m okay,” he croaked. Looking up, he gestured at a man standing by the bookshelves behind his desk. “Sergeant, look in my top right drawer and fetch that bottle to me. There’s a glass, also. Bring that as well.”
The sergeant retrieved a blue medicine bottle and a shot glass. Tew filled the glass with milk of magnesia, brought it to his lips and quickly gulped down the white liquid. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Intelligence?” he asked. “Colonel Seibert?”
“Not much to report,” replied Seibert. “We’re seeing clues that the Soviets are preparing to launch a Zond probe to the moon. All indications are that it’s a lead-up to a manned flight, possibly early next year. I really don’t think that the Russians are going to lie down and let us beat them to the moon. That’s all, sir.”
Tew nodded. “Operations and training?”
“On track,” declared Wolcott. “Nothing significant to report.”
“Logistics?”
Rhodes, the portly logistics officer, leaned forward and spoke. “Construction and preparation of the Pacific Departure Facility is now back on schedule. The dredging is complete for the approach channel. As a fortuitous development, we were able to use our scrap concrete to complete a breakwater and pier shoring for the channel. The Navy is bringing in their LSTs for a test run next week.”
“Good,” noted Tew. He held his stomach and quietly
groaned.
“Are you sure you’re going to be all right, Mark?” asked Wolcott. “There ain’t nothin’ so pressin’ that we can’t hold off until tomorrow.”
Tew shook his head. “Anything else?” he asked.
Russo cleared his throat and said, “General, we’re hearing rumblings that the Space Task Group is considering shutting down the MOL.” The Space Task Group was an interagency oversight committee that ensured the nation’s money was effectively spent on space efforts.
“I’ve heard,” said Tew. “Gentlemen, I can tell you that I don’t feel overly confident about the future. If Hubert Humphrey grabs the Democratic nomination and wins in November, I don’t think that we’ll ever fly. I think we stood a better chance if Bobby Kennedy had lived to be on the Democratic ticket, but Humphrey will likely let NASA go to the moon a few times and then all but shut down the space program after that. I’m sure he won’t be supportive of what we’re doing.”
“And Nixon, sir? What if he runs on the GOP ticket?” asked Seibert.
“Dick Nixon will fall in with us, pardner. He’s a smart guy, and he knows what’s at stake,” observed Wolcott. “Now, hombres, unless someone has anything really earth-shattering to discuss, why don’t we lend General Tew a break?”
“Okay, any other pressing issues?” asked Tew. No one replied. “Good. Gunter, Virgil, stay behind for a minute. The rest of you are released.”
Wolcott waited for the others to disperse before lighting a cigarette. Tew weakly shook his head. Wolcott snuffed out the cigarette in the ashtray and asked, “What’s on your mind, Mark?”
Tew filled another shot glass with milk of magnesia. Closing his eyes and gritting his teeth, he slugged down the chalky liquid. “In January, we go to Washington to present a decision brief to Hugh Kittredge and his key staff,” he said. “If we haven’t met our key milestones by then, it’s almost a certainty that they will shut us down. Between the three of us, I need to know whether we’ll be ready or not. I can’t tell Kittredge that we’re confident of success if we haven’t proven the concept. Without the Block Two computer, we’re asking these boys to fly up to forty-eight hours unassisted, and we’re not even sure we can break the twenty-four hour mark.”