Blue Gemini

by Mike Jenne

  “Uh, sounds like a good plan, sir,” replied Ourecky.

  “There’s more. You will meet me at the gym at six every morning, Monday through Friday, rain or shine. Sneakers and sweats. We’ll lift some weights, do some running, wind sprints, skip rope, calisthenics, and mix it up in the ring. Whatever it takes to toughen you up, Captain.”

  “Are you sure that’s necessary, Major? Uh, I think I’m in pretty good shape already, and I didn’t hear the general say anything about—”

  “You didn’t hear? You didn’t hear? Let me jog your memory,” interjected Carson. “What I heard was Virgil Wolcott putting me in charge of training you. I also heard, very recently, a promise coming out of your mouth that you would put forth your best effort and that you would do whatever I ask you to do. Does that sound even vaguely familiar, Captain?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Look, Ourecky, you’ve just dipped your toe in the water. You have absolutely no idea what you’re in for. Just wait until you’ve finally been in the Box for twenty-four hours straight and you’re completely wrung out and then you realize that you’ll eventually have to go twice as long before this ordeal is finally over.”

  Carson leaned forward. “Listen to me, Captain. The Box is brutal beyond belief, and if you’re not in top physical condition, it will destroy you. Agnew was a highly trained test pilot, and the Box reduced him to a blathering idiot, so you can just imagine what it can do to you if you’re not adequately prepared.”

  “The gym. Six o’clock. Monday through Friday,” noted Ourecky. “I’ll be there.”

  Wright Arms Apartments, Dayton, Ohio

  12:55 p.m., Friday, August 23, 1968

  As they had arranged, Jimmy Hara called him from a pay phone in a diner three blocks away from Bea’s apartment. The drive from his office had only taken twenty minutes. Tew glimpsed Hara parked on the street, and they acknowledged each other with a quick nod.

  He parked his car next to a dilapidated playground and then slowly trudged up the three flights of stairs to her floor. Pausing at the top of the stairs, he caught his breath and chewed on a chalky antacid tablet. A cat screeched from one of the nearby apartments.

  As he stood before Bea’s door, one of her neighbors—a frumpy middle-aged woman in curlers and a faded house coat—walked by with an overflowing laundry basket. Seeing Tew, she huffily stuck her nose in the air and cleared her throat, as if pronouncing judgment on him.

  With his stomach in knots, Tew verified the apartment number one more time before he knocked on the door. Number Thirty-Four. Finally, he gathered his composure and rapped lightly on the veneer door. He heard faint noises on the other side.

  Bea gradually opened the door until it was caught by the security chain, peered out, and then said, “Sorry, but I’m not interested in a vacuum cleaner if that’s what you’re selling. I don’t need encyclopedias or brushes, either.”

  “Beatrice Harper?” he asked. He immediately recognized her eyes; they were exactly the same shade and intensity as her mother’s.

  “Bea,” she declared. “No one calls me Beatrice.”

  “Your mother did. It was your grandmother’s name.”

  With her eyebrows arched quizzically, she looked at him. “Who are you? Do I know you?”

  “No, but I knew your father. I’m Mark Tew. I think you know Scott Ourecky. He works for me on the base.” Tew pulled out his identification card and held it out to her. She peered at it through the narrow gap between the door and the doorframe.

  Nodding as she unchained the door, she asked, “Why are you here?”

  “I want to talk with you,” he said. “Please.”

  “And Scott works for you?”

  “He does.”

  “Okay. Come in. Excuse the mess. I’ve been out of town all week and haven’t had much of an opportunity to pick up.” She waved a hand at the couch. “Have a seat.” The television was on; the words “like sands through the hourglass, so are the days . . .” were droning out of the speaker as she reached up to turn down the volume. “Can I bring you anything? Tab? Seven-Up? Coffee? I only have instant. Nescafe, if that’s okay. I’ll put the kettle on to boil some water.”

  He shook his head. “No, thank you.”

  She sat on the opposite end of the small couch. Barefoot, she was wearing bell-bottomed blue jeans and a white cotton peasant blouse with tiny flowers embroidered on the shoulders. A white towel was wrapped around her damp hair, like she had just emerged from the shower. “I’m sorry. I can be so scatterbrained sometimes. What was your name again?”

  “Mark Tew,” he replied. “General Mark Tew.”

  “Mark Tew? I’m sorry, but I’m drawing a blank with your name. You knew my father?”

  “I did. I knew your mother, also. And your stepfather.”

  “Well, now,” she said. “I suppose we could just be a big happy family then.”

  He pulled a photograph from a manila envelope and held it out to her. It showed several pilots, most attired in flight gear, in front of an F-86 Sabrejet fighter. “I brought this for you.”

  “Thanks, but I already have that same picture.” She pointed at an identical photograph, mounted in a simple black frame, next to the portrait of her parents taken on their wedding day. “It’s the only picture I have of my dad and my stepfather together.” She studied the picture: all the men were young and vital, smiling with the confidence that they would live forever. “Tell me about my father. Was he a good pilot?”

  “He was definitely all that and more,” answered Tew. “I guess you know that this picture was taken in Korea, about a month before he was killed. I actually met your father . . . and your mother . . . during World War II, back in England.”

  “Really?”

  “Really, Bea,” he said. “And that’s part of the reason that I came to talk to you today. I need to apologize to you for some things that I’ve done. I feel like I owe you that.”

  “You really don’t owe me anything.”

  “Let me explain,” he answered. “Here’s how I met your father. I had been wounded on a mission over Bremen, and they made me the squadron maintenance officer after I was released from the hospital and still recuperating. Your father was an engine mechanic, so he worked for me, more or less. I remember when he met your mother, and I remember when they were married. And I’m sorry that your father wasn’t there when you were born. That was my fault.”

  Bea shook her head. “It wasn’t your fault. It was a war. I’m sure that thousands of fathers weren’t there for the birth of their children. I’m sure that there are thousands of men who never got to see their babies at all. Anyway, I’ve gotten over it. My mum did, too.”

  He nodded. “You’re right. But in your case, he could have been there for your mother. It was my fault that he wasn’t, and I want to apologize to you.”

  “If you insist, but how could it have been your fault?” she asked.

  “Your father was a mechanic,” he explained. “Mechanics didn’t fly on the missions because they were too valuable to lose. Your father always begged me to let him go up one time as a door gunner, just so he could know what it was like for the guys.”

  “Well, after I went back on flying status as a co-pilot, I snuck him aboard for one mission. Just one mission. Your mother was five months pregnant at the time, Bea. It looked like a safe flight, a milk run, so I let him hitch a ride with us.”

  “So now is the part where you tell me he was some kind of big hero back then?” she asked. “Just to make me feel better about him not being there for my mother? It’s really not necessary. It was enough for me that he was my father. You don’t have to make him out to be a hero.”

  Tew laughed quietly. “Hero? No, Bea. None of us were heroes. We all acted like brave warriors, but we were just a bunch of scared kids jammed together in that airplane, and we did our jobs because that’s what was expected of us. To your father’s credit, he stayed at his station until the very end, but I know he must have been frig
htened out of his wits. If anything, your father was a hero because he had the gumption to go up when he didn’t have to.”

  “What happened that day?” asked Bea.

  “Well, it definitely wasn’t a milk run after all. The squadron lost three bombers almost as soon as we crossed into Germany. We made it to the target, but we were chewed up by flak during the bomb run. Lost two engines and a big chunk of our right wing.

  “Our Fort was so damaged that we couldn’t keep pace with the formation. We started falling back, and then we were jumped by two German ME-109’s. Three men killed immediately. The plane was falling apart around us, so the pilot ordered us to hit the silk. Four of us made it out. We were all captured by the next morning. The Germans moved us around for a week, and then we landed up near Moosberg, close to Munich, in Stalag Seven-A.”

  “Was it bad? I don’t know much about the war. I’ve seen some movies and things on TV . . .”

  “Well, it definitely wasn’t Hogan’s Heroes,” he replied. “By then, the guards knew that the game was all but over, and they knew the clock was just ticking down to the end.”

  Tew frowned. “I think we were more a nuisance than anything else, but they were obligated to at least keep us alive. The camp was jammed with Allied prisoners. Everyone was crawling with lice. It was always miserably cold and there was never enough to eat. I didn’t see your father very often in the camp because they tried to keep the officers segregated from the enlisted men, but I knew that he was always thinking about your mother and you.”

  She smiled.

  “He made that birth cup for you there in Moosberg,” he said, pointing at a crude metal cup on a shelf by the television. “He made it out of a Klim can. Klim was powdered milk that came in the Red Cross ration packages. Empty Klim cans were like gold, because they were so useful. Lord only knows what he traded to land that one, or what he sacrificed to keep it.”

  Tew picked up the keepsake. Examining it, he saw her name—Beatrice Anne Harper—painstakingly stippled with the point of a nail; on the other side, there was another name inscribed: Charles Jacob Harper. “So, Bea, do you know why there are two names on this cup?”

  “I do,” she answered. “My mum told me after my dad was killed in Korea. Long before he was shot down, they had already decided to name me after her mother if I was a girl, and name me after his father if I was a boy. When he made that cup, he didn’t know whether I came into the world as Bea or Charlie, so he put both names on there to be sure.”

  He smiled. “That’s right. But look, Bea, there’s more. I still feel that I owe you.”

  “And I told you: you owe me nothing,” she replied, staring at the picture from Korea, focusing her attention on her stepfather. “My life has been complicated enough by men who showed up at the doorstep thinking that they owed me something.”

  “Listen to me,” he pleaded. “After your father went to college, I convinced him to come back into the Air Force and I pulled the strings that got him into flight school.”

  She closed her eyes and rocked slowly back and forth.

  “And, Bea, I pulled more strings to bring him over to Korea. All my life, I’ve pulled strings to move people around, like they were marionettes in a show I was staging, and I pulled your father’s strings until it finally killed him. If it weren’t for me, he would have been there for you and your mother all these years. He loved her so. He loved you both.”

  She shook her head. “It was his choice. That’s how it was meant to be.” She handed the picture back to him. “I think we’ve talked enough. You should go now.”

  “Bea, I didn’t come here to talk about your parents. I came to talk to you about Scott.”

  “Scott? What about him?”

  “I know that the two of you are dating.”

  “And how you would know that?” she demanded.

  “I know a lot of things,” he replied. “But that doesn’t matter. What do you know about Scott? Has he told you very much about what he does?”

  “Honestly? Not much. I know he’s really smart, and I know he’s an engineer.”

  Tew smiled. “Scott’s smart, all right. He’s far beyond smart. He’s just plain brilliant.”

  “I know,” she said. “I also know he’s kind, gentle, and polite. I like him, a lot, especially since he’s not like other guys I’ve been with. Most men are just in a hurry to get what they want, and when they’ve got it, they’re in a hurry to leave.”

  Bea continued. “Scott’s not like that at all. Now, if you’re trying to determine if he gabs about his job, then I can tell you that he doesn’t. I have no idea what he does on the base and I have no idea what he does in Florida, either. He just doesn’t talk about it at all. I’ve asked him about it, but he just kind of hints that it’s too boring to talk about.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “But I wouldn’t expect anything different from him.”

  “Yeah, he keeps his mouth shut. Now I have a question for you.”

  “Yes?”

  “So, General Tew, does Captain Ourecky require your approval to date someone?”

  “No,” he said. “You know, Bea, it’s really ironic that we’re talking about this, because back during the war, your father needed my official approval to marry your mother.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not. Because he wanted to marry an English citizen, your father had to come to me first to secure my permission, and then the squadron commander’s, and then the wing commander’s. The three of us had to sign a form so your parents could be hitched.”

  “That’s funny,” she said. “Now that you mention it, I have seen that form, but I didn’t know what it meant at the time. My mother showed it to me before she died. She kept it in a scrapbook with their marriage license. So, they had to ask your blessings to be wed, oh Great and Powerful Oz. Thank you for my life, as it is. But what does this have to do with Scott and me?”

  “Nothing, really. But I’m really curious how serious you are about Scott. I know you two have been seeing each other for several weeks. Do you love him?”

  “What a funny question,” she replied. “Like that’s any of your business. Well, if you really must know, I’m not sure yet. I like him. I enjoy being around him. I think he’s someone I could fall in love with, but I’m not there yet. Is that a good enough answer for you, General?”

  He nodded. “Bea, Scott’s a good man, and I don’t want to see him hurt. I’m not implying that you intend to do that. In a way, I have a selfish motive. What he’s working on is extremely important, and I would really prefer that he was able to focus on it without distractions.”

  “So you would rather just lock him in a closet somewhere?”

  “I didn’t say that. Bea, trust me, if I wanted to isolate him from any distractions, I could. That would be simple, but I’m not going to stand in the way of you and Scott seeing each other. All I ask is that you remember that Scott is working on something very special and very important, and he won’t be able to talk to you about it. That might not seem meaningful now, but I can tell you from my own experience, it can really wear on a relationship.”

  “So, he’s working on something secret? Something classified?”

  Tew nodded, and then added, “Just because something is classified doesn’t mean that it’s particularly interesting or exciting. It’s just something that we can’t talk about.”

  “I think I can live with that,” she said. “But tell me: Does Scott fly?”

  “No, he’s an engineer. Most of his work is purely theoretical.”

  “Oh, really? I assumed that if he was working with Drew Carson, then there must be some flying involved.”

  “You know Major Carson?”

  “I know of him,” answered Bea. “I know enough to steer clear of him. I only wish that my friend Jill had known to do that.”

  “Well, yes, Carson is assigned to our project,” confirmed Tew. “We have some other pilots as well. They’re involved in flight-testing
the systems and equipment that we’re working on. Look, Bea, if you’re going to be involved with Scott, then you should know that we have to test systems in all sorts of conditions, so you shouldn’t be surprised if he has to travel a lot. We expect our engineers to be hands-on, to solve problems immediately as they happen.”

  Bea nodded. “Well, since you’ve been so kind as to come here to talk, I can hold up my end of the bargain. Whatever Scott’s involved with can stay behind the gates at the base; no matter how curious I become, I won’t pester him about it. But can you promise me that you won’t make a pilot out of him? I’ve promised myself that I wouldn’t allow another pilot to break my heart.”

  “I don’t see that happening, Bea,” said Tew. “Scott’s a good engineer, and he’s content with what he does.” He started to check his watch and then felt a momentary stabbing sensation in his chest. “Bea, I had better head back to the base before they miss me. Thanks for taking the time to talk. And listen, Scott doesn’t need to know that we’ve talked. Agreed?”

  “Cross my heart,” she said, escorting him to the door.

  As he drove back to the base, Tew thought of what he could not bear to tell Bea. More so than anyone else in the world, except possibly the MIG pilot who pulled the trigger on him, Tew was responsible for her father’s death.

  The events of that day stood out starkly in his memory. Harper and Andersen were on strip alert at Suwon on a scorching hot July morning, suited up, sitting in their planes, anxiously waiting a call to action. And Tew brought it to them. There was an urgent request to provide cover for a crippled F-86 struggling to return to base; the Sabrejet was being dogged by three MIGs, and the rest of the squadron was fully engaged further north.

  Tew recalled sprinting from the Operations Quonset hut to the gravel alert strip, frantically giving the two pilots the spin-up signal with his finger. Harper’s engine started right on cue; Andersen’s engine just refused to turn over. Even though it was near homicide to scramble a fighter without a wingman, especially against three MIGs, he ordered Harper to launch anyway. He remembered Harper taxiing for takeoff, grinning at him from the cockpit. A cheerful smile, a quick salute, a playful wave and Harper was gone . . . forever.