Flygirl

by Sherri L. Smith

  The drive doesn’t take as long on the way back, which is good. Because no matter how much of it seems like it’s over, I’ve got my duty, and this is still a war. Whatever the future may bring, for the time being, I still get to fly.

  Epilogue

  In August 1945, a crew of American flyboys piloted the B-29 Superfortress over Hiroshima, Japan. A plane that, until Lily and I flew it, they were too scared to fly. The payload was something new, something called an atom bomb. Thomas heard from a friend that it blew down half the city like paper, men, women, children and all. Hitler dead in his bunker, and Japan brought to its knees like that . . . How something so awful can bring about peace, I’ll never know. Any more than I’ll ever figure out how the army disbanded the WASP. But here we are.

  I dropped a letter in the mail today, a letter to Walter Jenkins, formerly of the U.S. Army. The war is over. All of our boys can finally come home. Their girls are waiting. Right where they left us, with a whole lot of sky in between.

  Author’s Note

  Flygirl is a fictionalized account based on the true story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots and their heroic feats. While I took great license with events and names, here are a few factual notes.

  First of all, the acronym WASP is both singular and plural. Since it stands for “Women Airforce Service Pilots” with an s, to add another would be redundant!

  The WASP program was part of the United States Army, as was all other military aviation during the first two world wars. The United States Air Force, as we know it today, was not established as a separate branch of the military until 1947.

  The two WASP actually assigned to learn how to fly the B-29 were Dora Dougherty Strother and Dorothea Johnson Moorman. The plane they flew was dubbed Ladybird and they flew several trips, from Alabama to New Mexico, before the army put a stop to the “stunt.” In the story, when Lily and Ida overhear a soldier dub the B-29 “another Widowmaker,” he is referring to the accident-prone B-26 Marauder—another plane the WASP proved they could successfully fly.

  In 1941, Russian women began flying military missions for their country. By the end of the war, they had earned the name “Night Witches” for their nighttime bombing runs against the Nazis. The United States Air Force did not allow women to fly combat missions until the mid-1990s.

  Bessie Coleman, Jackie Cochran, Deatie Deaton, General Hap Arnold, Doc Monserud, and Nancy Love are all real people. Read more about them in Amy Nathan’s wonderful book, Yankee Doodle Girls, Marianne Verges’s On Silver Wings—to which I owe the wonderful WASP song the girls sing on the way to the airstrip—and many of the other reference books listed on my website, www.sherrilsmith.com. For more information on the true WASP, visit the WASP website, www.wingsacrossamerica.org, and the National WASP WWII Museum at www.waspmuseum.org.

  Hazel Ah Ying, the Chinese WASP who inspires Ida Mae to join, was one of two Asians accepted into the WASP program, Maggie Gee being the other. Hazel was killed in the line of duty. There is rumored to have been one Latina in the program as well, but I have found no name to put to the rumor. There is no evidence that any African-American women were a part of the WASP program, either by “passing” or being accepted regardless of their race.

  Janet Harmon Bragg is an African-American pilot who was rejected by the WASP program solely on the basis of race. She is the inspiration for the woman Ida Mae sees at the recruitment office. Mrs. Bragg learned to fly at Coffey School of Aeronautics in Chicago, where Ida Mae’s father attended. She went on to teach aviation to schoolchildren, but it was not her primary career.

  Of the women who flew in the WASP program, most went back to their lives on the ground—housewives, secretaries. A few found work as flight instructors, and some moved to Alaska, where the new frontier had room for female bush pilots.

  The WASP bill was finally passed in 1977, under President Jimmy Carter’s administration, officially militarizing the WASP. The women who had served their country more than thirty years before, who had been forced to pay for their own funerals when denied military benefits, were finally given honorable discharges and full veterans’ rights. At long last, the passing of the WASP bill paved the road the women of the WASP had forged years before, making way for the hundreds of female pilots of all races in the United States military today.

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  at the next novel from

  Sherri L. Smith,

  ORLEANS

  OCTOBER 30, 2056

  1

  THERE BE SEAGULLS CATCHING THE BREEZE overhead. I sneeze and wipe my nose on the back of my bare brown arm.

  “That’s the batch of it, Miss de la Guerre. The two books, the formula, and the bottle, genuine glass.” The smuggler McCallan point his boot at the things spread out on my blanket over the broken ground.

  We be near the Market, where the old levee used to be, across from St. Louis Cathedral. What once been a green hill now be a beach dune made of debris—everything from washing machines to refrigerators and old cars been hauled and dumped here trying to shore up the levee. But the land gave way when the river rose, and the junk be left behind. Daddy used to say you could give a history of the place just by looking at those layers of trash.

  Beneath us, on the river side of the hill, be a dusty gray beach of pulverized concrete, ground thin by storms. “The fabled cement beaches of Orleans,” McCallan call them. “Finer than the black volcanic sand of Hawaii, or the pink sugar sand of the old Caribbean.” I don’t know about that. Nothing left of Hawaii or the Caribbean since the water rose and the storms grew heated. It’d take a deep-sea diver just to find them. But Orleans still be here.

  I snort at the blanket and give McCallan a hard look. “And the blood, old man? I done give you a good, solid downpay on it. What about that?”

  McCallan’s eyes crinkle like he be laughing at me. He should know better. Grinning like a fool only make me angry. “Sorry, sugar, they were out of both positive and negative at the banks. There’s a blood supply shortage out there.” He wave his gloved hand behind him, toward the wall and the Outer States. “I ain’t risking my neck and smuggling to the Delta when I’m about to retire, now am I?”

  I fold my arms. “We had a deal. I need that blood.”

  McCallan shake his head. “We could use more with your fire back home,” he say. “I’ll be missing you, Miss de la Guerre, that’s for sure.”

  I’ll be missing him, too, though I won’t say it. McCallan an old guy, almost forty, but he smart. He been smuggling for more than ten years. He know who to bribe, where to breach the Wall, how to get over while the guard be changing, how to avoid the sniffer drones. I ain’t the only one he doing trade with, neither. His regulars know his goods be clean and fresh. He don’t sell dirty blood or fake medicine. Even after the government closed the Delta, he kept working—trading with the tribes. Delta Fever be harder to kill than a swamp fox. It be always changing, the way those little buggers switch back on they own trails. But if it stay confined to a blood type, if folks keep to theyselves by type of blood, then it slow down somehow. And that why folks like McCallan be necessary. Tribes ain’t able to mix together long enough for real trade.

  “I did my best, Miss Fen,” he say and spread his fingers with a shrug.

  I spit in the gravel and hold out my hand. “I want a refund.”

  McCallan sigh. “D’you want the stuff I got or no? I’ve come a long way and I’m not so sure anybody else is keen enough to buy these damn books off me. Baby Naming and The Developing Years. What are you up to, Fen? You’re not knocked up now, are you?” he ask, eyeing my belly.

  Shoot, skinny as I be, I sure as hell ain’t pregnant. Lydia say I’d pass for a boy, if not for the braids she do for me, all wrapped in a topknot on my head to keep out of the way.

  “Man, will you stop staring and just make good?” I say.

  McCallan blush inside his encounter suit, one of the old kind w
ith thick, mucus-looking skin that turn orangey-yellow when the heat rise in his cheeks. I’d be like to suffocate in something so thick, hot as I already be in my cutoff shorts and tank top. My hiking boots be bugging me they so sweaty, but he be wearing that whole suit like a murky second skin.

  “Here, doll, take the books and the formula, the bottle.” He bend down to the blanket and roll it up for me. “And here’s your goods back.” He hand me back the little bag of gold I gave as down payment. Took a week to scrounge it all up from the teeth of the dead inside the Dome, while I been pretending to pray with the Ursulines.

  “I didn’t even melt it down yet, in case you weren’t pleased. Use it in the Market. Or better yet, find the O-Negs. They’ll charge high, but there’s blood to be bought and sold right here.”

  I shove the books into my pack and string the sack of gold around my neck to drop down my shirt. “We don’t do that,” I remind him.

  My tribe be O-Positive, or OP. And our chieftain, Lydia, don’t take kindly to the blood trade. O types don’t be needing transfusions like ABs do. The Fever be in us, but it ain’t eating O blood up from the inside like it do other types. So O types got to be extra careful of hunters and the farms where they be taking they kidnapped victims to drain them alive. O blood be the universal donor. If we give a drop, they be taking all of it. Lydia say that ain’t right. Only ones worse off than us be O-Negs.

  O-Negs don’t got the Rh, or Rhesus factor, that O-Positives do. Daddy use to say O positive be like coffee and O neg be like water. You can add water to coffee and it still be coffee, but you add coffee to water and it ain’t water no more. Everybody drink water, so O-Negs be used by everyone. Like the rhyme the nuns taught us about the Rules of Blood:

  Types AB, B, and A

  Need to stay away

  From O and from each other,

  Plus from minus, sister from brother.

  O positive can feed

  All positives in need,

  But O neg is the one

  For all tribes beneath the sun.

  I feel McCallan’s eyes on my arms as I pack up. He be looking at the shiny scars there along the insides of my arms, wrists to elbows and then some. Burn marks so thick, ain’t nobody ever gonna get a needle in the easy way. Not everybody got scars like me. But then again, not everybody willing to die. Somebody want to take my blood, they got to go through the veins in my neck or thigh. They can only bleed me once and I be dead. But that better than being a blood slave.

  McCallan shrug. “Best I could do,” he say.

  If I hadn’t burnt myself up like that, I could give my own blood to Lydia. If she bleed too much while birthing and need it, I’d do it without being asked. But I can’t or I be dead and she get no help from me after that.

  So I nod. “Fair enough.” Some choices, once you make them, they stay made. And I had my reasons.

  “You know, there used to be music here all the time,” McCallan say. He looking out across the city like he see someone he used to know and like. “Jazz and blues, zydeco. The kind of songs that made your heart sing.”

  It be my turn to shrug. “Not anymore,” I tell him. Music be a surefire way to bring the hunters down on you, or any other kind of trouble you don’t want.

  With a final nod, I hitch up my shorts, raggedy edges tickling at the tops of my thighs, and walk away. My old army pack be slung across my shoulders, and my work boots scatter little rocks as I pick my way down the trash heap, past the ruins of Café Du Monde, toward the bright blue tarps of the marketplace.

  • • •

  The Market be bubbling with people today. It hot for October, and folks be all about, trading and swapping this for that. There be food vendors selling fruits and vegetables, fish, and sometimes wild pig, or stewing it up in big pots over wood fires. I can smell the cooking and hear the clamor, but most of it be hidden by the roof tarps, bright blue in the afternoon sun. The Market be right at the edge of the Mississippi, with her back up against the Old French Quarter. The streets behind us belong to the A-Positives now, but the Market been here in one way or another since before Orleans been Orleans, and it be for everyone.

  From the early days before the Wall, they been rotating security, this tribe one day, that tribe the next, keeping it fair and safe. Back when the Fever started, that the only way Os, As, Bs, and ABs could shop without catching they death from Fever. Shop on the day your tribe be guarding—if not your own tribe, then another of your type—and you be okay. Us O types, we can shop any day. Fever don’t run through us quite so bad as it do the rest of them.

  It be an AB day, and I see Harney and his boys messing with them AB girls like they got a chance. Harney be an OP like me, but that where the comparison end. He fifteen and brawny everywhere except the head. Them girls got tattoos, which mean they tribe with La Bête Sauvage. Only thing dumber than making trouble around one of La Bête’s girls be making one pregnant. ABs and Os make A or B babies. That just giving La Bête more children for his tribe, and that ain’t a good idea for us Os.

  “Harney,” I call him off. He come over reluctantly, long legs and arms shining with sweat in the sun. He only a year younger than me, but he listen when I call. That be the benefit of my experience. “Where Lydia at?” I ask.

  He shrug and look around like he nervous or something. “You know. Where she ever at on Market Day?”

  I swear under my breath. Lydia can’t be messing with folks like that. “Get ready to go,” I tell him. “I be right back.”

  I walk past the nods of ABs guarding the entrance to the market. These fools got tattoos, too, so you know they all La Bête’s people. Most folks ain’t dumb enough to risk blood poisoning or tetanus by sticking theyselves with a needle. But La Bête’s tribe be big, strong, and crazy. At least today they here to keep the peace.

  The market be big, a whole rabbits’ warren of stalls, but I know where to go. Last one on the first row. Ain’t nobody selling nothing nearby, not food, not clothing, not even rope to tie your tent to the trees. Nobody want to set up shop next to the nuns and they hospital tent. You could sell shovels, though, so the folks inside can dig they own graves.

  The hospital be made of sheets of wood and rusted metal, like everything else in the Market, but it got a different roof. Instead of blue plastic tarping, it made of clean white canvas. Don’t know where the nuns be getting the stuff, but it let in the light so they can see.

  The Ursuline Sisters been taking care of folks in Orleans since before the Civil War. Even before the city been part of the old United States, they been running that old girls’ school out of the same building they shut theyselves up in today. They spend turns nursing them that’s too far gone to be cared for by they own tribes, folks that be nothing but a burden with nowhere to go but in the ground.

  I don’t like this place. It smell like death. I stand outside a minute to take my last few good breaths, then I head inside to find the pregnant woman among the dying.

  • • •

  Inside the tent, row after row of straw pallets covered in bodies line the floor, some living, some not. Nuns and novices be drifting about like ghosts in them white shift dresses they wear. The nuns cover they heads with pieces of cloth, but the girls go bareheaded, young as can be. I’d worry about young ones like that out in the Market, out in the city, but they ain’t my tribe, so I don’t.

  A man moan on the pallet next to me. Fool look like he been gored by a wild boar. Just a freesteader by the look of him, no tribe to help him with the hunt. Lady next to him look like she dying from tetanus, the way her jaw be all rigid and she missing a leg. She be wasting away, can’t even open her mouth to eat. One of the nuns look up at me from the lady’s side. I mouth Lydia, and she point me to the back of the tent.

  My eyes follow her finger. Lord have mercy. The last row of the hospital, the one closest to the concrete hill b
eside the Market. That where the Fever victims go, the ones nobody can help. A black curtain hide it from view. I brace myself and make my way to the back.

  “Shh,” Lydia hush me when I push the curtain aside. She be sitting in that little room with the walls covered in blue tarps because they easy to throw out: Just roll up the bodies and carry them out back before lining the room again.

  Not so many people dying of Fever these days, what with the Rules of Blood telling tribes to keep apart and stay healthy. The Fever ain’t what it used to be. But sometimes there be an outlander, a smuggler from over the Wall, or a freesteader without a tribe, and he get sick and it be as bad as it been fifty years ago when they built the Wall in the first place.

  Fever make you weak at first, tired and confused. That be the disease eating up your red blood cells. Then it make it so you can’t sleep and you start seeing things. Crazy things. And skin that be black or brown or white all turn the same color—chalky yellow. That be your blood failing and your liver giving up. Bruises come up on the skin then, like something inside you trying to beat its way out. Then come cramps that knot a body up from the inside out, and the weird shifting walk of somebody whose joints ain’t working right no more. Your lips crack, your mind go, and you start seeing more things that ain’t there, knowing they be coming to get you. At the worst, when pain ain’t doubling them over, folks with Fever be screaming nonsense and scrabbling with they hands, shoveling they mouths full of dirt. My daddy once told me they be looking for iron to replenish they blood. That be why some ABs drink blood when they ain’t satisfied with just injecting it. Either way it goes in, it can cause more trouble, make you even crazier. And when you all used up and ain’t got no more fight in you, you be like this boy in this dark little room.