Becoming Clementine: A Novel

by Jennifer Niven

  I felt a poking and a pushing and there was Eleanor, and I found myself in the cockpit, which had two seats, one in front of the other—the pilot’s seat on the left side of the plane; the other seat, the one behind it, on the right side—and I was strapping myself in, running my hands over the controls and levers.

  The engine was off. It had just been running. The pilot must have shut it down before Johnny Clay got to him. Maybe he’d shut it down because he’d seen Johnny Clay and he knew he wanted the plane.

  I said, “The engine’s dead.” Johnny Clay’s dead or he might be dead. Velva Jean Hart is dead. Everything is dead.

  Eleanor sat behind me in the navigator’s seat. She said, “He’s still breathing. He’s alive.” I turned my head and Émile was bent over Johnny Clay, his black hair catching the daylight, which shone in through the hatch. Had he shut the hatch? Had I? I couldn’t remember, but somehow we were locked in. I could see the gold of my brother’s hair, the gold of his skin growing paler. Émile was working over him just as he’d worked over Captain Baskin all those weeks ago, when I was first flying to France.

  You are lost and gone forever,

  Dreadful sorry, Clementine.

  “Can you fly it?”

  The voice was coming from a long way away.

  “Clementine. Can you fly this plane?” I turned and Eleanor was staring at me, her face wet, blood on her cheek, on her hands. She rubbed at the blood, trying to get it off. Not her blood, I thought. The guard’s blood. My brother’s blood.

  I said, “Yes.” I didn’t know if this was true or not. I might not be able to get it started. The plane might not have enough gas. There might not be enough room to climb before they shot us down.

  Émile said, “Sing, Clementine.” It was a command, an order, but there was a gentleness behind the voice, and something else that seemed to wrap around me and let me know I was safe.

  I thought, Sing, Clementine. But I suddenly couldn’t remember any words. I thought: Sing, Velva Jean. Why is everyone always telling me to sing? I couldn’t remember the tunes. I sat there feeling like two people sewn up the middle, like one person cut into halves. I was Clementine Roux. I was Velva Jean Hart. I wasn’t Clementine Roux. I wasn’t Velva Jean Hart. I wasn’t anyone anymore. I was just some girl who’d lost herself. I was some girl whose mama had told her to live out there, and now I didn’t know who I was or where I fit in or if I’d ever fit in anywhere again.

  Émile began to sing, his voice rough but warm. It was an honest voice. It was a good voice. I didn’t recognize the song or the language. It sounded like the kind of song you would sing around a campfire or in a dark saloon that smelled of whiskey and cigarettes. A gypsy song.

  Eleanor leaned forward and laid a hand on my arm. “He will be fine,” she said. For a moment I thought she meant Émile—that Émile would be fine—and then I realized she meant Johnny Clay. It was the first moment I liked her.

  I stared hard at the controls and suddenly they came into focus. On the right side was a smooth panel and underneath this was a compartment. Inside there were a dozen or more switches and these looked like circuit breakers. I figured the Germans probably turned off all their breakers when they finished flying, so I reversed them all, thinking this would turn them on. The gauges lit up and we had power.

  “I need the starter,” I could hear myself saying. I said it over and over. Eleanor leaned forward and ran her eyes over the control panel, reading the words of each dial and lever. She pointed at a metal T-handle on the right side of the cockpit that had a word on it, written in German. Anlasser. I pulled it. Nothing happened.

  I could hear the voice of my first flying instructor, Duke Norris, the man who’d taught me to fly: If pulling the starter doesn’t work, push it.

  I pushed and I felt something catch, like something was winding up. I pulled the handle and the engine started up, low and throaty at first—kind of sputtering and muttering—and then it seemed to kick in and began to hum. I tried to find the gas gauge to see how much fuel we had, but I couldn’t figure out which one it was. There were five buttons behind the throttle, two in front and three in back. I pushed one of the front buttons and then another, but nothing happened.

  The sun was rising, turning the sky a sleepy gold and pink, and I could see figures inside the control tower. They would be wondering why their pilot was starting the plane up again after he’d just landed, never thinking for a minute that it wasn’t their man at all but a girl.

  To the east, I could see the glow of the sun as it climbed up above the horizon, dulled behind heavy gray clouds. To the west there was nothing but the heavy, sprawling green of the forest. Because of the mountains, we would have to fly south and then west and then northwest.

  I taxied south, the woods on my right, the control tower on my left. I gave it more gas and pushed the throttle, and there was that moment, the one that happens just before a plane takes off when everything seems to drop into the feet—heart, stomach, knees. It’s the moment when anything can happen, when you feel as if you can do anything and everything and live forever. It’s the moment when I can suddenly hear all the songs there are to write in this world and see all the places there are to go. It is ceiling and visibility unlimited. It is beyond the keep.

  The moment only lasted seconds, and then we shot up into the air. I flew too high too soon and the plane started to shake and tug back toward the ground. I wrestled the throttle and the wheel until it evened out. I pushed the throttle full forward and cleared the meadow that surrounded the airfield and a fence that sat at the edge of it. I was fence-hopping again, like I’d done with Ty in Texas, back when I was training to be a WASP. Down on the ground, men ran out of the control tower.

  I pushed one of the three buttons and the flaps started coming down. I pushed the next button and they went back up again. Okay, I thought. I know what these do. But then I ran my eyes over the other controls—so many buttons and levers and knobs—and I thought about how much I didn’t know, which was almost everything.

  Over the engine, I shouted to Eleanor, “Tell me what you know about this plane.”

  She shouted back, “That’s all. It’s not used much anymore, just as a trainer and for mail delivery. They replaced it with the He 111.”

  “Miles per hour?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maximum range?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I thought, What do you know?

  “Well,” I shouted, “there’s only one way to find out.”

  I felt a tap on my arm, and there was a headset hanging in midair. I took it from Eleanor and fitted it as best I could around my head and over my mouth. “Can you hear me?”

  “I hear you.” In my headset, her voice was scratchy and too loud. “I’m studying the maps and trying to get you a distance.”

  I tried not to think of my brother lying in the belly of the plane bleeding to death. Instead I told myself I was Constance Kurridge. I was Flyin’ Jenny. I was Pancho Barnes, the fastest woman on earth. I kept thinking: I just stole an airplane. A plane I don’t know anything about. I don’t know how fast it can go or how far. We have to cross hundreds of miles of enemy territory in an enemy plane. Pilots like me are going to see this plane and try to shoot it down because it’s German, and there’s no way to tell them we’re on their side.

  Eleanor’s voice said, “Five hundred fifteen nautical miles. That’s how far we have to go. We head northwest over Germany, then Luxembourg, then Brussels, and then over the Channel to home.”

  Your home, I thought. But not my home. My home was so far away it would take three planes to get there.

  We didn’t know anything about the airspace over Germany, Luxembourg, and Brussels or what air battles might be going on. I said, “Is there a manual back there?” I knew by the size of the plane that it couldn’t have more than six hundred miles of range.

  “No. But I’m still looking.”

  I said, “Get Émile and tell him to dro
p some of the weight. The cartons in the crew compartment and the bombs, but make sure they’re not armed. Tell him to wait till we’re over the forest and the mountains. Tell him to get rid of them.”

  We needed to lighten our load if we were going to have enough gas to make it to England. We’d get there faster that way and be able to fly higher, which would keep us safe from ground patrols.

  I pointed the plane to the northwest. As we flew over the mountains, they looked so much like my mountains that my heart caught, but then I could see they weren’t as high or as far-reaching. The air above the mountains bounced the plane and I climbed higher to get past it. We flew like this for a good hour and I started to relax into the flight and into the plane. The throttle buzzed in my hand. The control panel was lit up like the Fourth of July. I looked around, out the window, and thought how beautiful it was up there, above the earth where men were shooting each other with guns and cannons and leaving each other for dead, above the clouds where you could actually see the sun and feel it on your face.

  That little plane soared along like a racehorse. I opened her up and my speed climbed to 241, 289, 321, 354 kilometers per hour. Maybe it was going to be okay. Maybe no one was going to come after us or try to shoot us down, and maybe we were going to get back to England without a hitch. I thought that whatever happened to me or Johnny Clay or Émile or Eleanor or this Heinkel He 70, it was good to be flying again.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Ten minutes later, I heard Émile’s voice on the headset. He said, “We are not alone.”

  At first I wasn’t sure what he meant. I said, “Where are you?”

  “The machine gunner’s station. There’s an MG 15 machine gun here.”

  “Are they Allied?”

  “German. Three in all. Focke-Wulf 190’s. Maybe just scouting right now, trying to get a read on us.” There was a blast of static and then nothing.

  From behind me, Eleanor said, “That’s not right. There should be four of them, unless one got shot down. The German formation is four. They call it the swarm.”

  “Émile... Émile!” It sounded like I was talking into a box, like my words were bouncing back to me.

  Eleanor said, “The intercom’s dead.” She shouted it. I pushed my headset off so it fell around my neck and hung there like a necklace. Without Émile, I couldn’t know what was happening around us. I couldn’t see the bandits, and the thought that kept going round in my mind was that we were a flying time bomb. If the Germans didn’t get us, the Allies would, as soon as they spotted us. And if they didn’t go after us over Germany or Belgium they’d go after us as we were crossing the Channel.

  I thought through everything I could be doing that I wasn’t doing. Maybe if we lightened the load even more. The He 70 was fast, but it wasn’t as fast as the Fw 190. Maybe if we tried the radio, but then the Germans would only intercept us and that might bring more after us, and we had too many after us now.

  I shouted to Eleanor, “Can you see them?”

  “No!”

  The sky was empty and this made me more jittery than if I could see what was going on. They must have been coming at us from the rear.

  Think, Velva Jean. Think, Clementine. Think, both of you.

  I thought we must be at least over Luxembourg by now. If only I knew where the Allies were and what the airspace was like over these places. I might be flying us right into the middle of a battle zone.

  I tried to take stock of where we were, watching the ground for landmarks, for forests or rivers that might tell us how far we’d gone, how far we still had to go. From up there, everything looked the same—forest, field, farm, cows, trees, houses, what was left of a village here or there.

  Eleanor shouted, “We’ve got company. Under the wing.”

  I turned my head in her direction, and I could see she had the map spread across her lap. I turned my head to the left and there, under the wing, was an Fw 190. The fourth one. He was cruising along beside us, matching our speed. He was so close that I could almost read the instruments in his cockpit. We couldn’t touch him under our wing like that, and he knew it, because the only gun we had was in the middle under the canopy.

  I thought, Please don’t let him look over here. I reached up to touch my bare head. I wasn’t wearing a helmet, which meant he would see I was a girl, and he would know I wasn’t supposed to be flying this plane. I stared ahead, as if this would keep him from doing anything but staring ahead. I thought of taking the plane up or down or veering away from him, but he made me nervous being so close, right under the wing.

  Suddenly I couldn’t help it—even though I knew I shouldn’t look, I did. The first thing I saw was his oxygen mask, then the goggles sitting on top of the black helmet, and then his eyes, staring out at me. I heard Eleanor say, “Damn.”

  Without thinking, I reached for the autopilot aileron control, or where it would have been on a B-17 or an AT-6 or an Aeronca. At the same time, I lowered the left wing toward the Fw 190, bracing myself for the jolt of metal on metal. The 190 shot away, like out of a cannon, and I felt a shudder go through the He 70, which meant Émile had started firing.

  The plane dropped out of my sight, and then it was back again, the engine smoking, the canopy torn off. The cockpit was empty and the plane started spiraling, and I saw a blur of color, and there was the pilot, dropping fast, his chute opening above him like a mushroom. Beyond him, I could see two more planes, both smoking, both heading for the ground.

  I sped away from them, scanning the sky for the other plane, for new planes, but there was nothing but clouds and sun and a faint trail of smoke. I decided from then on to fly low so we’d make a more difficult target.

  Twenty minutes later, I could see the choppy blue-black of water, wide as an ocean. The English Channel. As soon as I saw it, I thought: We’re almost home. We’re almost there. Hang on, Johnny Clay. Hang on, little plane.

  We only had to cross the Channel and fly to Harrington, about 230 nautical miles. I turned to Eleanor. I said, “My brother...”

  Before I could finish, she unlatched her safety belt and felt her way to the belly of the plane. I concentrated on flying and on counting each second. I wouldn’t let myself think about anything more than that. One minute ticked by, and then two minutes, three minutes, four minutes, five. I wanted to leave the wheel and climb back there to see what was going on, but instead I made myself stare straight ahead and keep counting.

  Two minutes later, Eleanor returned. In my ear she said, “He’s holding on,” and then she took her seat, strapping herself in again.

  “Thank you,” I said. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

  And then I saw them—three airplanes flying in formation, heading right for us. They weren’t just planes; they were B-17 bombers. That’s my plane, I thought. That’s the one I flew across the Atlantic. They were probably on their way home when they saw us. They’ve come to bring us in. They’re making sure we get back safely.

  The bombers split off and surrounded us. Suddenly the controls went slack and I knew we’d been hit, and that’s when it struck me: They think we’re the enemy and they’re going to shoot us down.

  I waited for the fire or some sort of explosion, but instead we kept right on flying, although the engine began to chug like it was trying to get its breath. The oxygen pressure dropped by nearly half, and I increased the rpm and boost. I shouted at Eleanor to find Johnny Clay and put an oxygen mask on him, and then I grabbed for my own mask and pulled it on. “And tell Émile to hold his fire! Tell him not to shoot! I’m not going to kill our own men if I can help it.”

  I turned to make sure she’d heard me, and I saw her scrambling away toward the belly of the plane again. I turned back and thought about how I’d been in worse situations—like having to crash-land a B-29, the largest bomber in the war, over my very own mountains. I told myself if I was able to survive that, I’d be able to survive this.

  The sky was filled with the flak that comes from ground fire. As I dodge
d the plane left and right, up and down, I thought the flak looked like large gray snowflakes. I didn’t want to do too much dodging because what if I flew into the bullets instead of around them?

  One of the planes rolled toward us head on, firing away. The B-17 was only a little faster than the He 70, but it had a service ceiling of thirty-five thousand feet and a rate of climb of nine hundred feet per minute. There would be more of them somewhere. Even if they were flying in Tail-end Charlie formation, which was three squadrons of three flying lead, high, and low, there should be at least nine or ten other bombers with them.

  I remembered what Second Lieutenant Glenn had said about our flight from Harrington to France: The trick is to fly in a dogleg pattern, which means you never fly a direct course for longer than thirty miles. I went back in my mind, not to Camp Davis or Avenger Field, but to a little farm in Nashville where a man named Duke Norris taught my brother and me to fly. I remembered the spins and dives and stalls that Johnny Clay had done and that I’d done too. I remembered the ones I’d learned from Puck when I was training to be a WASP.

  Okay, little plane, I thought. Let’s see what you’ve got.

  I went into a break first, which meant I tipped the plane sideways and applied the rudder to make a fast turn. The B-17s were faster but heavier, and they kept on going straight away from me. I pushed the plane on, and minutes later the bombers were heading back toward me. This time I did a barrel roll, breaking to the right and rolling away while the Allies rolled to the left. I did a high barrel roll and then a low barrel roll, rollaways and scissors and yo-yos. I pushed the oxygen mask off my face so I could see, and then I sent the plane into a dive and hoped the Allies would think I’d been hit and was going down. Maybe they would leave us alone. We went down, down, down like a meteor, and when we were eye to eye with the treetops, I righted the nose and brought us level.