Gone to Soldiers (61 page)

The Crooked Desires of the Heart Fulfilled

Bernice had grown used to the ferrying life, picking up new planes to be delivered wherever they were needed from San Diego to Hansen Air Force Base near Concord, Massachusetts. Her navigation skills were excellent; she had only gotten lost once, then found her way again after the storm had passed. Her group of ferry pilots had a home base at the field in Romulus, Michigan, and sometimes when several of them were there at once, they went into Detroit for a night out. Most of the time, Bernice was on the road, flying, seeking lodging and a meal, or slogging her way back to Romulus on overcrowded public transportation.

In some small towns, some small airports, people were friendly, but in others, they were deeply suspicious of a woman flying a military plane. Some air bases welcomed a WASP as they were now called, but others treated her as if she were a tramp. When she had walked into one mess and sat down at a table with the local officers, the colonel in charge ordered her to sit elsewhere.

Perhaps they were right, she thought, gazing down on the flat rectangles of Michigan, pale green and dark green and blue green, puddled with lakes like little tears in the fabric. Perhaps women flying planes were necessarily subversive. She felt a sense of power that few men would ever experience. She felt strong, independent, free—in spite of working in a military context with orders given, a schedule to keep to, irrational rules hemming her round.

The week before, she had had a peculiar experience at a South Carolina field. When she had landed in the rain, they had taken her for a man. She had not quite realized what had happened, except that she was being treated more respectfully than she was used to. When one of the mechanics slapped her across the back she realized their mistake; and had not corrected it. Had stood taller. Had lowered her voice in reply as she swung off the field. She had remained a man at that field the next morning. She kept waiting for them to guess, but they never had. She had not told any of the other WASPs about it, maybe because Lorraine was always teasing her about being too big and masculine.

She stopped envying Jeff. She felt that her love for him had cleared like a stream no longer contaminated, without the taint of envy for his freedom, his opportunities. No, having what she wanted made her more generous. Her father might not think she was a better person, but that was because he was concerned only with his convenience.

In his last letter, Jeff had written that he might not be in touch for a while, but that she was not to worry. He too was going to do what he most wanted. She knew he could not explain, but he sounded glad. His letter was scrawled in an uncharacteristic hurry, some words unclear.

Back at Romulus, rumors were flying in the mess. Helen learned that women from the class just after theirs were working at Camp Davis, on the edge of the Dismal Swamp, towing targets for gunnery practice—towing a muslin sleeve behind the plane so that artillery students could practice with live ammunition, or diving at the students as if to strafe or bomb them. Helen had also heard the women were having a hard time of it, lots of trouble from base personnel and planes that threatened to disintegrate.

“What it means,” Bernice said, “is that Cochran is pushing on the Army for us. That we're going to get to do more interesting things than deliver trainers. Not that I'm complaining about what we're doing, but maybe they're going to let us take over more noncombat functions. There's no limit to what we could do even if they won't let us fly overseas.”

“I met a woman,” Flo said, “who said she'd flown for the British, ferrying planes around England, long before they let us start here. I don't see why they won't let us deliver the planes overseas. They won't even let us take them up to Alaska. It's silly.”

“Hey, girls, you got your picture in
Collier's
.” One of their mechanics tossed a magazine on the table.

“Let me see!” Flo grabbed it and flipped the pages.

Helen said, “I wish she'd given us some warning. My hair looks as if I'd combed it with a propeller.”

Bernice had never seen many pictures of herself. She was the tallest of the women and the broadest shouldered. The picture seemed to center around her and the plane behind them, a Douglas Dauntless that happened to be sitting there. “It's too bad you're not a man, Bernice,” Lorraine said, tossing her pert head. “You'd be so good-looking.”

“Like my brother,” Bernice said, but she felt herself turning red. She kept thinking of South Carolina.

“Lorraine, has anybody ever told you you're an asshole?” Flo said loudly. “Bernice looks fine. Some like them big and some like them small, but I don't know nobody who likes them as mean as you.”

The others were giggling that night as she was trying to go to sleep about something called The Mile High Club, which consisted of women who had screwed while aloft in a plane. You couldn't do it in the small planes of course. That such a rumor was going around meant to Bernice just one interesting thing: Somewhere women were being allowed to fly bombers, where they probably had male navigators. If women were flying big planes, she wanted to be one of them.

One Friday she returned from a trip, hitched a ride to the camp and found a message waiting for her, along with several copies of
Collier's
that had come in her absence. The message said that Major Zachary Taylor was in town, staying at the Book Cadillac Hotel in Detroit, and would like her to call as soon as she arrived.

It was actually the next morning before they managed to get on the phone together. “Zach! I thought you were in England. Is Jeff with you?”

“Not this time, Bernie. He's wandered off on his own, the ungrateful little tramp. I'll give you all the news over supper. Have you something you can wear here? Or will you arrive in your overalls, and we can have room service?”

“I have a dress. It isn't too fancy.…”

“I'm indifferent. We simply want to glide by the management. I'll pick you up from the sticks at six.”

“How?” she asked bluntly. “Surely you don't have a car?”

“They hire out, even in such frontier outposts. You see them on the streets painted yellow or green with little lights.”

Until she told Flo and Helen about her evening plans, she forgot that she had made use of Zach to give her a man in her past.

“Zachary Barrington Taylor. Where does his family live?” Helen asked.

“Chicago.”

“
In
the city?”

“No, north. On the lake.”

“What town?”

“Lake Forest.”

“That's all right. Their money is from …?”

“How do I know? Zach worked in insurance for a while. My goodness, Helen, he can pay for the cab even if it would be a small fortune to me, don't worry about it. He's not living off his military pay.”

“Is he commissioned?”

“The note says major.”

“Better and better. He hasn't been able to forget you …”

“Helen, he's in a strange town and bored. I'm one of the few people he knows around here. If he knew you, he'd call you up.”

“You can use my Arpège,” Flo said. “And I'll do your hair. I'll paint your nails too. Now what are you going to wear?”

“He said I had to wear a dress, so we can eat in the restaurant.”

“Well, of course you'll wear a dress! We're not all crazy.” Flo gave her behind a swat.

“I prefer the tan gabardine pants and a white shirt.”

“Not on a date, silly!” Flo seized her by the arm. “We'll get started right now.”

That was the day's activity: fixing up Bernice. She was so sorry she had told anybody she was seeing Zach that she could have kicked herself twice around the field. She had not spent a more uncomfortable day since she had graduated from the hotbox where they learned instrument flying at Avenger. She felt entrapped in her own lies about the nature of her relationship with Zach. He would find her gussied-up appearance peculiar and might even think she was interested in him. She had never been sure she had managed to conceal her long crush. If only she had kept her mouth shut and simply vanished at six o'clock!

Oh well, it would shut Lorraine up. In all the primping and fussing, she almost forgot to anticipate actually seeing her old friend. She would have news of Jeff. Zach would tell her whether or not he was supposed to, she was sure of that.

The thing that made her really unhappy as she waited for him, already half an hour late, was that she could not meet him on the field in her flying gear. What she longed to do was take him up and show him how she handled a plane now. She wanted to show off to him. Instead here she was stuffed into her only good dress, which was fortunately simple and lacking even one flounce or ruffle or sequin—an absence mourned all afternoon by Flo—with her hair distributed unnaturally about her head, drenched in Arpège and wearing Helen's pearls and Flo's earrings, tripping along on wedgies with bows borrowed from the only other woman on the base with close to her size feet. She had no silk stockings, and while nobody would go quite far enough to lend her any, Flo had carefully painted Bernice's legs.

It was close to seven when Zach arrived in a checker cab to fetch her. Flo and Helen managed to be on hand, so she had to introduce them. Zach was polite but perfunctory, hurrying her into the cab. She had remembered his height but not his breadth. As he gave her a quick buss hello, he surrounded her. His ash blond hair was worn long for the military.

He had seen the
Collier's
piece. “I come back and find you famous. I bet The Professor is furious.”

“He won't even write me.”

“I've seen his letters to Jeff. You're better off without.”

“Why are you wearing that black armband?”

“Oh, let me remove it.” He did, examining it as if to read something from it, before he opened the cab window and tossed it out into the brisk September evening air. “That's why I'm back in the States. My father and my older brother were hit by a train at a grade crossing in Kansas where they were off inspecting a plant we own.”

“That's horrible, Zach. They were killed outright?”

“Immediately. In fact there wasn't much intact, if you see what I mean. They gave me compassionate leave.”

“What a shock, losing your brother and your father at once.”

“Come on, Bernie, you know bloody well I detested my father, and he had nothing but contempt for me. I'm the black sheep. My brother was the good son and I was the bad son, and now I'm the whole show. The one I feel sorry for is Mother. She's collapsed and under sedation. She's going to have a hard time, because whether she actually loved the old man or was just used to having him squatting on her head, she feels lost. I've done what I can, stuck my thumb in the business, but it should run itself just fine.”

“I know your history with your father, but those things can get you. I never thought I'd feel guilty leaving home after being a live-in servant for years, but I did.”

“Ah, but you're softhearted, while mine has been hardened by the slings and arrows of this world, till it resembles a granite monolith.”

“It'll probably hit you after the war.… How is Jeff?”

“And where is he? I'll tell you later.” He gestured toward the cabbie who was obviously listening.

He waited to resume the conversation about Jeff until they were seated at a table in the Hawaiian Room, with paper leis around their necks and tall fruity drinks sprouting parasols before them, eating a sweet pork dish. “He's in France. Gone off on his lonesome and become a spy.”

“Jeff?” She stared into the plate before her, trying to imagine what it must feel like to be alone in enemy territory. “They shoot spies, don't they? If they catch them?”

“Hitler's orders. Special operations, guerrillas, partisans, parachutists, all of us are shot. But it was a damned fool thing to do. Our branch is just getting into high gear. He's too impatient.”

“I wish he hadn't done that, Zach. It frightens me.”

“As well it should. It frightens me.” He took her hand for a moment and squeezed hard. “Buck up. You had better believe that I tried every argument and every trick in the book to get him to change his stubborn, foolish, arrogant little mind. And I failed.”

“He didn't write anything about it to me. Only that he was going to do something he really wanted to. But why?”

“I don't know.” Zach frowned. “But I feel we owe it to him to figure it out together.”

“I know he was upset about the English girl who died.”

“Oh, her.” He waved off the memory of Mary Llewellyn like a pesky fly. “The only reason he made such a fuss was because she talked up his painting and because she did die, which made her unique, you see. He didn't leave her. She left him, and irrevocably. Like your mother.”

Drinking the tall pineapply drink he had ordered she shuddered. “I'm sorry. I feel as if we're in this garish place surrounded by death.”

“Drink up and we'll go. I've had enough of this fruit salad decor and those whining musicians. I have some nice scotch, and we can talk where it's quieter.”

“What was in those drinks?” she asked as they rode up in the elevator. “I thought they were like Shirley Temples, at first.”

“Rum, by gum. But you always could hold your liquor like a little trouper.”

“Little?” she laughed. “Who else on earth would call me little?”

“All things are relative.” He loomed over her, taking her arm. “Come along, this way. I have the corner suite.”

There were two rooms. The living room had a sofa that faced the windows on the corner of the building. He turned out the light and opened the draperies. Detroit was dimmed out, but not as dark as the coastal cities, and the moon was bright. He sat beside her on the couch pouring scotch into two tumblers. “You've turned out nicely, don't you think?”