A Distant Melody (6 page)

“I won’t—”

“But darling, the Army calls it hazardous for a reason. Please, not today.”

George sighed and took Betty in his arms. “All right. Just this once.”

Oh brother. Walt wanted one more ride, but Grandpa was busy with chores, Dorothy had never gone up, and Allie was too proper for an adventure. Or was she?

Allie hadn’t taken her eyes off the plane. Walt recognized that look. He’d seen it on the faces of his fellow cadets the first day of flight school. He stepped in front of her. “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”

Allie’s eyes widened, green as those cadets. “I’ve never flown before.”

“Want to?”

“Maybe.” Her lips barely moved.

He grinned. Yep, she might be the one for him.

Betty let out a scream. “No, Allie. I need you in the wedding.”

Despite Betty yanking her arm, Allie didn’t break her gaze with Walt. “Would it be like Art’s flight? No aerobatics?”

“No loops, no snap rolls, no dives, I promise.”

Betty hugged Allie’s arm. “Don’t believe him. He did it to George.”

“Just once,” George said, “and I asked for it.”

Walt shuddered. “Yeah, and I had to clean out the plane afterward. Never again. Only when I’m alone.”

“All right,” Allie said.

Walt stared at her. “You’ll go? Wow. Come on, let’s get you suited up before this whiner changes your mind.”

Her eager smile told him the whiner wouldn’t win. Good. The woman had some spirit. He took off his flight jacket and handed it to her.

“Don’t you need it?”

“Nah. Gotta get used to the cold. B-17s fly at over twenty thousand feet. Minus twenty degrees up there, sometimes colder.”

He helped her with the leather flight helmet, careful to concentrate on the buckle, not on the soft skin under her chin. Then he stepped back to inspect his work. His jacket hung over her hips, the goggles covered her gorgeous eyes, and curls stuck out under the helmet. Cutest copilot he’d ever had.

“Okay, Allie, up you go.” He laced his fingers together to brace her foot. “Is that ‘Allie up’ or ‘Allie oop’?”

She laughed and climbed into the front cockpit. “If I slip, it’ll be ‘Allie oops.’”

Boy, did he like her. He climbed into the rear cockpit, nudged the plane across the golden pasture, and released her into the air. Allie’s hands clamped the rim of the cockpit, and her curls whipped around her neck. After he leveled off, he put his hand on her shoulder. “How’re you doing?” he shouted.

Allie’s smile shone as bright as Walt’s hopes. “I love it.”

Yeah, she might be the one. Not only was she an attractive, intelligent woman, but she played the piano and liked to fly. She actually liked to fly. Most amazing—he could talk to her even though she wasn’t taken. No doubt about that. No one had ever asked her to dance, and he had a hunch no one had ever told her she was pretty. He wanted to be the first. Too bad he didn’t have Ray’s way with words or Jack’s way with a grin and a wink.

He’d just have to wing it. Walt chuckled at his unintentional pun. He tapped Allie’s shoulder and pointed down at Antioch. She craned her neck to look over the edge, then turned and shouted something he couldn’t hear. He shrugged. Allie cupped her hands together.

“Yeah. Like toys,” he said.

She nodded and looked down to the miniature town in its grid along the river. Sure would be nice to take her into the hills or up the river. Still plenty of fuel. As a farmer, Grandpa would get unlimited fuel once it was rationed, but Walt didn’t want to abuse the privilege.

He headed over the riverbank and poked Allie’s shoulder. “Want a swim?” He pulled the stick to the right and depressed the right rudder pedal. Up went the right aileron, down went the left, and
Jenny
went into a tight right-hand turn.

Allie screamed, but the laughter in her scream made Walt smile.

Now he could impress her with the crosswind landing. He circled the white farmhouse and the weathered gray barn to approach from the south. The wind from the west had picked up, but not enough to worry him.

Walt lowered the upwind left wing and applied right rudder pressure to keep
Jenny
from turning left. Surely Allie could feel the struggle of the little plane against the wind. Boy, was it swell.

With flaps down and the stick forward, he eased the plane down, all the time compensating for changes in wind currents.

Now for the fun part—the momentary, one-wheeled landing required with a crosswind. That’d give Allie a thrill. About ten feet from the ground, Walt pulled the nose up for the flare to lose airspeed and settle to the ground.

Then he saw Flossie.

“Walt!” Allie screamed. “A cow!”

“I see her.” At one o’clock, wandering into his path, and deaf—stone deaf.

Too late to get airborne again. Too little speed, too short a field. The left wheel touched down. If he turned to avoid the cow, he’d go into a ground loop, maybe flip the plane. But if he hit the cow . . .

“Lord, I need your help here.”

The right wheel touched down. Flossie’s backside rushed up before him. Walt eased the left rudder down enough to angle the nose away from the cow, but not enough to send them into a spin. “Oh Lord, move that cow or stop this plane.”

Allie screamed. The plane shuddered and bumped down the field.

He applied the brakes as hard as he could without nosing the plane over. The right wingtip clobbered Flossie’s rear end. An angry moo. The plane bounced to a stop.

Walt clenched the control stick. His breath came hard and fast. Oh, swell. He wanted to impress Allie and he almost got her killed. Now she’d never fly again. She’d never speak to him again. All because he watched her and not the field. Stupid, amateur, almost fatal mistake.

Allie turned to him slowly, her face white.

“You okay?” He dreaded her answer.

She nodded. “How’s the cow?”

The cow. Walt glanced to Flossie, who trotted away with loud, indignant moos. “She’s awful mad.”

Allie laughed. She actually laughed, and she kept on laughing. Walt joined in, relieved that they were alive and intact, and amazed at Allie’s good humor.

Betty ran up to the plane. “Allie! Allie! Are you all right?”

She nodded, still laughing. “Oh, Walt, the cow—the way she mooed.”

Fresh waves of shared laughter lifted him higher than any aircraft. He swung out of the plane and held up his arms. “Come on, Allie. Stop laughing long enough to get out of that death trap.”

“I don’t think I can stop.” She climbed out onto the lower wing.

He put his hands on her tiny waist and lowered her to the ground. Her laughter tumbled sweet in his face, and it was all he could do not to hug her close and never let go.

“Say, Walt,” George said. “Give me your camera. I’ll get a picture.”

“Great idea.” He took off his goggles, then Allie’s.

“Oh, not me.”

“Yeah, you. You’re my copilot.”

The smallest smile crossed her lips. “Promise never to show my parents? I don’t want them to know their only daughter played Amelia Earhart.”

“See, you did something your parents wouldn’t approve of, and you survived.”

“Barely.” The sparkle in her eyes stirred up all sorts of strange and wonderful things in Walt’s chest.

He rested his arm along the fuselage behind Allie. Maybe when the fellows at Wendover saw the picture, they’d think she was his girlfriend. Who knew? Maybe by then, she really would be his girlfriend.

5

Thursday, June 25, 1942

“Oh, good,” Betty said. “The men are already here.”

Allie crested a grassy dune, and the San Joaquin River stretched wide and sparkling and gray blue before her. In a small cove, a lone willow tree trailed lacy branches over the beach.

Betty and Dorothy spread a blanket on the sand, and Allie set the picnic basket on top. She squinted at two men in a rowboat not far from shore. George, long and skinny, waved to the ladies. Art, smaller but sturdier, shielded his eyes before he added his greeting. A silver ripple formed in the water behind the boat, and Walt popped up. He smoothed his hair from his forehead, waved, and swam toward shore.

Allie helped Betty and Dorothy with another blanket. Walt had been so kind the last few days. Betty was appropriately absorbed with her fiancé, Jim and Helen had sequestered themselves with the baby, and Dorothy, for all her protests of not caring one whit for Arthur Wayne, stayed by his adoring side. Walt’s company shielded Allie from loneliness.

Betty and Dorothy stripped to their bathing suits, and Allie removed the blouse that covered her yellow gingham suit. Walt’s ripple approached the shore. Allie paused. It didn’t seem proper to remove her wraparound skirt in front of him.

He emerged, panting, from the water and raked his hair back. “Hi,” he said with a smile in Allie’s direction.

She fought to keep her gaze from the trickles of water meandering down through the hairs on his solid chest, and her stomach clenched in an unfamiliar way.

Betty settled on the blanket and crossed her ankles in front of her. “Did you bring your camera, Walt?”

“Yep.” He walked to a heap of clothing farther down the beach.

Allie took advantage of the moment to take off her skirt, sit next to Betty, and compose herself. She’d never had that reaction with Baxter, but then she’d never seen Baxter in bathing trunks. Why, he never took off his jacket, much less his shirt.

Betty flung her arms around Dorothy’s and Allie’s shoulders. “I’ve always wanted to be in a cheesecake photo.”

Allie shrugged off Betty’s arm. “Oh no. Not me.”

“Yes, you.” Betty pulled her down again. “We’re a trio. Move over, Rita Hayworth, here come Dorothy, Betty, and Allie.”

“Come on, Allie.” Walt crouched down and focused the camera. “A man needs wallpaper for his barracks.”

The thought of her photograph in a barracks was so ludicrous, she laughed.

The camera snapped. Walt looked up and grinned. “That was swell.”

In the shade of the willow tree, over fried chicken and fresh strawberries, Allie bounced between conversations about wedding plans and the Allied progress in the Pacific, amazed at her ease with these people, most of whom she had known only a few days.

After the one-hour safety window, George and Betty appropriated the rowboat, Art and Dorothy went for a stroll, Walt took a running dive into the cove, and Allie followed.

Delta water was saltier than Lake Arrowhead water, and after a few laps it stung Allie’s eyes, and she returned to the beach. She dried off and sat down, legs stretched before her. At first, the sun chilled her as the residual moisture evaporated, but then it warmed her through.

Allie closed her eyes and tilted her face to the sun, which painted bright patterns behind her eyelids.
Oh Lord, thank
you for this day, this week. I’m having even more fun than I
did at Scripps. If only . . .

She expelled a deep breath and the sadness of the incomplete thought.
Thank you for Betty’s friendship, for Walt’s
kindness to a stranger—

“Hi, Allie.”

Once again, Walt had sprung to her presumed distress. Betty must have commanded him to keep an eye on poor, shy Allie, abandoned by her boyfriend. She turned to him and smiled.

The camera clicked.

“Walter Novak!”

He plopped to the blanket beside her, his face too innocent. “As I said, a soldier needs cheesecake photos. Reminds him why he’s fighting, inspires him.”

She wrinkled her nose. “My photo would never inspire anyone.”

“I heard that,” Betty called from the boat. “She can’t stand compliments, Walt, especially about her looks.”

Allie held her chin high. “I was raised to be modest.”

“No.” The water seemed to magnify Betty’s glare. “You were raised to believe you were homely. Nonsense. I’ve always thought you were darling, and no matter how much you roll your eyes, I’ll still say so.”

She closed her eyes to prevent them from rolling. This was always painful, but with men around, it was excruciating.

“Walt,” Betty said. “Don’t you agree? Doesn’t she have the most gorgeous green eyes?”

Oh no. How could Betty do this to her?

“Huh?” Walt shot her a quick glance. “Oh. Um, yeah.”

“Betty,” Allie groaned. Poor man had probably never noticed.

“I wish I had eyes like yours,” Betty said. “Blue eyes are so common, and with my blonde hair, I look like a German fräulein. I’m afraid they’ll kick me out of the country.”

George grinned at her. “And you’re marrying an Italian man.”

Betty laughed. “If I say
sayonara
, I’ll never see American soil again.”

“Axis spy!” Walt lunged forward into the water and thrashed to the boat. With a giant downward heave, he tipped the boat and its passengers into the water.

Allie laughed and brushed away the sand Walt had kicked up, relieved at the shift in attention.

Betty glided into the cove. “Come on, George. You wanted a swim anyhow.”

Walt tossed the oars into the boat and pushed the craft ashore. “Say, Allie, you haven’t gone out yet. Want a ride?” “Sure.” She got to her feet.

His face lit up as bright as when she’d accepted the plane ride.

“On the other hand,” she said, “the last time I rode with you, we ran into a cow.”

“All right, smart aleck. Just for that, you’re rowing.” With taut muscles, he steadied the boat while she stepped in and sat on the clammy seat. Then Walt gave the boat a push and jumped in. Allie gripped the sides until he sat and the wobbling stopped.

He draped his arms along the stern. “Okay, Miss Miller, all yours.”

She bit down on her lip so she wouldn’t laugh. He thought she played only classical music, and now he thought she couldn’t row. She studied the oars with feigned confusion, then cranked the boat into a turn and headed across the cove. “Where to, Lieutenant Novak?”

“Well, I’ll be.” A smile worked into his cheeks. “You never fail to amaze me.”

“You’ve only known me—four days.”

“Can’t wait for tomorrow’s surprise.” He settled deeper into his seat. “Nothing for me to do but put up my parasol, trail my fingers in the water, and whistle a romantic tune.” He looked up to the azure sky, puckered his lips, and whistled “Green Eyes.”