On Wings Of The Morning (22 page)

Authors: Marie Bostwick

BOOK: On Wings Of The Morning

7.36Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Georgia

San Diego, CaliforniaâMay 1943

A
fter I'd finally calmed down enough to say good night to Delia, promising her that I was going to be all right, I put down the receiver, dug a handkerchief from my pocket, blew my nose, then squeezed through the door of the phone booth, murmuring apologies to the cherry-hatted matron who was still waiting outside.

“Excuse me,” I mumbled, keeping my eyes from meeting hers. “I'm sorry.”

“That's all right, honey,” she clucked and patted me awkwardly on the arm. “Is there anything I can do for you? Do you need a ride somewhere?”

Everyone in the restaurant was staring. I shrank back from her touch, embarrassed to find myself the object of pity and interest to so many strangers. “No. I'm fine. Thanks.” I pulled my jacket close and pushed my way quickly through the staring gauntlet of diners, singles on one side perched on counter stools like birds huddled on a telephone wire, and a sprinkling of couples on the other side, clustered together in booths, hunched over cups of coffee and half-eaten pieces of pie that they'd abandoned in favor of something more interestingâme, the central character in a drama they understood not at all but whose plot appeared satisfyingly sad and familiarly sentimental, like one of those B-grade war movies that Hollywood churned out as a means of touching the national heart and romanticizing the reality of war.

As I neared the exit I heard one of the pink-aproned waitresses stage-whisper a question to the woman. “What's wrong with her? What happened?”

“She was calling her mother. Must have gotten bad news, the poor thing. Probably lost her sweetheart or her husband.”

“Poor thing,” the waitress echoed. “It's terrible, this war. Ain't it?”

“Terrible,” the other woman said, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. She sniffed, and the cherry clusters bobbed up and down, nodding agreement.

I spent most of that night walking, crying, and thinking. When I finally went back to the boardinghouse near the base where I stayed whenever I was in San Diego, it was hard to sleep. I only dozed off for a couple of hours before the alarm jangled in my ear, and I jumped out of bed and splashed some water on my face before reporting for duty.

I had a passenger for my first hop, a captain who was heading out to a new post, but he must have been out celebrating the night before because he fell dead asleep about two minutes after we took off, breathing out beer fumes with each snore and not waking up until we touched down. For the next couple of days I did nothing but deliver single-seat fighters, so I had plenty of time by myself.

There is no better place to think than behind the controls of an airplane, where the constant hum of the engine blocks out all distraction and the beckoning lure of the horizon pulls the mind out of the trap of self-absorption and into the calm center of the universe, where it is easy to name the truth, easy to live with it. When I'm flying, my problems fall away, suddenly seeming as small and insignificant as the miniaturized landscape I'm flying overâtiny cars, tiny buildings, tiny problems with obvious solutions. At least that's how it seems when I'm in the air.

When I returned to San Diego late on Saturday night, I had a plan.

After I landed, I ran over to the boardinghouse to clean up a little. It was nearly eleven o'clock by the time I got to the base. Twenty thousand feet above sea level, my plan had seemed foolproof, but the closer I got to the visitors' barracks, the more nervous I felt. Half of me was afraid of finding him already asleep while the other half was afraid he wouldn't be.

Morgan's blinds were closed, but the door was open. It was a warm night. He'd left the screen closed to keep out the bugs. Lamplight shafted through the screen door, throwing a rectangle of light onto the sidewalk and scrubby brown grass that led to the door of his quarters.

For a moment, I thought about turning back. I stepped up to the door and looked through the screen. There was a half-packed duffel sitting on the dresser but no sign of Morgan. He was gone. Maybe it was just as well, I thought to myself, relieved and disappointed all at once. I turned to leave, but he must have heard me.

“Yeah?” he called, his voice muffled behind the closed bathroom door. “Who is it?”

I took a deep breath. “Morgan? It's me. It's Georgia.”

The bathroom door opened, and he stepped out. He wore only his shorts, undershirt, and a disbelieving expression. His hair was wet, and he held a damp towel in his hand. “Georgia?” He walked toward the screen, squinting as if peering at a mirage, trying to sort out what was real and what was false.

I had rehearsed a long introduction, something about going for a cup of coffee and a talk, about honesty and forthrightness, about being fair to him and myself. But standing on the front stoop, watching him come toward me, smelling of soap and shaving cream, his body backlit by lamplight, spilling over the chiseled muscles of his shoulders like a sun rising over a mountain landscape, I forgot how the speech began. All I could manage to say was hello.

He closed the distance between us in four long strides, opened the screen door, and pulled me into his embrace. Without releasing his hold on me, Morgan pushed the door closed with his foot.

I hadn't planned on coming into his room. My only thought had been to go someplace quiet to talk and to tell him the truth about myself, that I was a bastard, a mistake of a child born to a woman whose entire life was consumed by wanting, who went from bed to bed pretending to be something she wasn't, just so someone, anyone, would love her. It didn't matter to Delia if it was true or not. She was willing to be whatever they wanted. It didn't matter if she was loved for a lie. She expected it; she was that certain no one could love the truth of her.

I had planned on telling him how I'd rejected her and pushed her away, inventing a new life for myself and denying she was my mother as surely as she had denied I was her child. That night as I wailed my want through the phone line was the first time I understood how closely Delia and I were related. We were both searching for the love we had to have and didn't know how to get, both hiding behind walls of secrets because we were so afraid of revealing our true selves and being cast out yet again. I was going to tell him it had to stop, that I had decided it would stop with me. Then I would tell him that I had married a man I didn't deserve and didn't love until it was too late, that I was still afraid I didn't know how to love. That was why I'd lied and let him believe I was married.

Working it through in my mind three thousand feet aloft, it had all seemed so easy. I would roll the truth out at Morgan's feet like a scroll so he could read it for himself. And somehow it would all work out from there. I'd be in his arms, forgiven, understood, wanted. Everything would be all right.

But everything had gotten jumbled. In his arms I couldn't remember what I had wanted to say. All I knew was Morgan. His name was the word that came after “I want.”

His arms around me were taut and strong as iron bands, but they moved with me, shielding and releasing all at once, and there was nowhere else I wanted to be. It was not like any lovemaking I'd ever known. There was no questioning hesitancy in the pressure of his lips on mine, no considered, tentative surrender in my response, only the need to yield and, for the first time in my life, to demand.

Reaching my arms high over my head, I pulled his mouth closer to mine. He arced his body over mine. I pushed myself toward him, reaching on tiptoe and arching my back into an answering curve of desire until our bodies met at every point.

I lowered my arms, wrapping them over his shoulders like a covering shawl and took a single step backward, leading the dance. He moved with me, and we were on the bed, lying face to face, matching breath for breath and kiss for kiss.

Morgan pushed himself half up, leaning his weight on one arm and gently pressing my shoulder with the other so I lay down next to him. I guided his hand to my blouse buttons. I wanted him to hurry up. I wanted him to slow down. I wanted my body joined with Morgan's, possessed and possessing, but that wasn't all.

My hand fluttered above his for a moment, a shy bird hesitant to light, before covering his, stopping him at the last button. His hand lay warm against the flat of my stomach, and it was everything I could do not to arch toward him, silently pressing him to carry on. I knew I had to say something and hear something before I let myself go further.

I opened my eyes. “I love you, Morgan.”

His eyes, deep and questioning, looked down at me, focused on my lips as they spoke, then moved to trace the curve of my brow, and the bone of my cheek, examining one part of my face and then another as if determined to memorize each feature individually. He was silent so long, and I couldn't read his expression. A cold anxiety gripped me. Finally, his eyes returned to mine.

“I love you, too, Georgia. I really do.” My heart warmed as he said it, and I rolled toward him, but he pushed me away. “That's why I have to stop.”

It felt like I'd forgotten to breathe, like my heart had skipped a beat. “I don't understand.”

“We can't do this, Georgia. I love you too much to go any further. You'll hate yourself if you do, and you'll hate me for letting you.”

“But, Morgan, if we love each other, then how can we just ...”

He pulled himself away from me and lifted himself up to sit on the edge of the bed, groaning as if in real physical pain. “Georgia, you've got to go. I have to report to my ship in eight hours. I'm headed to the other side of the world. I'll probably never see you again. Not to mention the fact that I'm a fighter pilot. The chances of me surviving the war are slim. Nearly every guy I started out flying with is dead. This one night is all we'd ever have together. Tomorrow I'll be gone, and all you'll have to remember me by is a guilty conscience.” He stood up and walked across the room, picked up a shirt from where he'd hung it on the back of a chair, and put it on. “I do love you, Georgia. I love you too much to let you betray yourself for a one-night stand.”

I was flooded with relief. I understood. He looked so pained, so ashamed, but why wouldn't he? He thought I was another man's wife. I shouldn't have let either of us get so carried away. I should have stuck to my plan, told him the truth before ever doing so much as shake his hand.

“Morgan,” I began, “you don't understand. I have to tell you something. In fact, that's why I came here in the first place. I'm not married, Morgan. My husband is dead. I should have told you before.”

“I know, Georgia. I knew that from the first. Your friend Pamela told me,” he said quietly. He stood up, towering over me with his shirt buttoned up tight and tucked evenly into the waist of his trousers.

Suddenly I saw myself the way he did. My discarded shoes lay piled next to the bed where I'd kicked them off. My skirt was wrinkled and hitched halfway up my thighs, and my blouse was completely open, showing my brassiere and the flesh that spilled from the top of it, mottled and reddened with fading passion and embarrassment at finding myself so exposed. I sat up and tried to smooth my hair with one hand while pulling the edges of my blouse together with the other, trying to cover myself. I was so ashamed. I looked exactly like what he'd said I wasâa one-night stand after the night is over.

He could never love me. I should have known it from the first. I was Delia's daughter.

I slid my skirt back down below my knees. “I have to go,” I said, looking down as I fastened the buttons on my blouse and tucked it tight inside my skirt. I couldn't look at him. “I'm sorry, Morgan. I should never have come here tonight. It was a mistake.” I slipped on my shoes, then picked up the pocketbook I'd let drop to the floor when Morgan first pulled me into his room. Clutching it close to my breast like a shield, I reached for the doorknob. Morgan put his hand on my shoulder.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “It's not what you think. Don't run off like this. Let's talk.”

I pulled away from his grasp and opened the door. “There's nothing to talk about, Morgan. It's my fault. I have to go.” I ran outside, stepping into the harsh shaft of lamplight that spilled through the door, beaming a wedge of light into the black night. The sound of my high heels hitting the pavement was loud in my ears, nearly drowning out the sound of Morgan's voice calling my name as he stood in the doorway. I listened hard as the distance between us lengthened and his shouts faded in the night, half-dreading, half-hoping to hear the sound of footsteps behind me, pursuing me, demanding an explanation, and offering another chance. But none came.

It couldn't work. You knew it,
an inner voice said accusingly.
You knew it all along.

Morgan

San Diego, CaliforniaâMay 1943

I
'd set my alarm for five, but I didn't need it. I'd lain awake all night, thinking about Georgia. One minute I wished I'd run after her, and the next I wished I'd just followed my instincts, told her I loved her, too, made love to her then and there, and waited until morning to figure out if it had been right or not.

Fountain always used to say, “You know what your problem is, Morgan? You think too damn much. You got to let yourself live a little, son, while you still got life left in you.”

Maybe he was right, but it was too late to do anything about it now. I was due to meet Mama at the all-night diner for breakfast in forty-five minutes. An hour after that I would have to tell her good-bye and report to the base, ready to ship out later in that day. For the next few hours the only thing that mattered was Mama. I had to perk up and put on a happy face. It might be another two years before I saw her again. Or I might never see her again. There was no way of knowing.

Until today I had been able to shove my imminent return to the battlefield into a shadowy, closed-off compartment of my mind. Now I had to face the truth.

When General Martin had transferred me back to the States, I hadn't wanted to go home. Now I didn't want to go back, but I knew I had to. There was no way out of it and no way to ignore it, not anymore. It was beyond my control. I needed help.

For the first time in a long time, I got down on my knees and prayed.

God, I don't know if this war was part of your plan or if we brought it on ourselves, but I know it's no surprise to you. I don't know if I'll make it home this time or not, but unless you've got a better idea, I'd like to come home in one pieceâif not for me then at least for Mama. Watch out for her while I'm gone. And thank you, God, for Paul. He'll take care of her no matter what happens to me. Thank you that I don't have to worry about what will happen to her if I don't come back.

And Georgia ... I don't know what to say about her, God. When it comes to Georgia, I don't know if I should say I'm sorry for being weak or thank you for helping me to be strong. Just take care of her. Help her have a good life.

Amen.

I got to the diner a couple of minutes before Mama arrived and slid into a booth near the door. The waitress was yawning and took her time delivering the menus. I drummed my fingers on the tabletop, looked out the window to see if Mama was coming around the corner, and wondered why anyone would decide to cover every booth and stool in a whole restaurant with upholstery that was the same color red as those hard candied apples they sold at county fairgrounds. It was too jarring a color for this early in the morning; just looking at it made me antsy. But, then, maybe that was the ideaâto keep people pepped up so they'd eat, leave, and make room for more paying customers instead of putting up their feet and lingering over five-cent cups of coffee.

I was actually thinking of asking the waitress her opinion on the subject when I heard bells jangle as the door was pushed open and looked up to see Mama. I jumped out of my seat to give her a big hug and a smile. I wanted our last hour together to be happy. There was no point in allowing the gloom of impending farewell to spoil what might be our last meal together for a long timeâor ever. We both understood the situation. It was pointless to dwell on it.

We settled ourselves back into the booth and took a look at the menu. I ordered three over-easy with bacon and two donuts. Mama got scrambled eggs and toast. The waitress filled our coffee cups and took the order back to the kitchen.

Pretend you're just going away for a little while,
I told myself,
like when you went away to college.

It worked. I started off asking Mama to fill me in on a little of Dillon's gossip, especially about Bud and Jolene Olinger's baby boy. Aunt Ruby, who was always in the know when it came to the details of Dillon's sordid and seamy underbelly, had hinted that the Olinger baby, who was reported to be only nine months old, was already walking. Ruby's intimation was that Jolene, who had shocked the town by entering into a May-December marriage with the graybeard Bud, was already a few months in the family way before the wedding ceremony and the couple's subsequent extended honeymoon in Texas. I couldn't have asked Mama about it with Paul sitting there; there are some things a minister in a small town simply can't know aboutâor if he does know about them, he has to pretend that he doesn't.

Blushing and whispering, even though I told her she didn't have to keep her voice downâthere was no one in the diner but the two of usâMama confirmed the story. I laughed out loud. “Well, good old Bud! Who'd have thought it!”

Mama hushed me and drew her brows together disapprovingly, but I could see her working to compress the smile that played on her lips. I teased her, and we talked some more, and for a few minutes it was just like the old days back in Dillon, but better because I was older and we could share stories and jokes in a way that wouldn't have been possible when I was still a boy. It was just like old times, but different because I was different and so was Mama. She was still my mother, but now she was my friend as well. It was nice.

Her eyes twinkled as she told me how she'd sweet-talked Mr. Cheevers, who'd run the filling station ever since I was a little kid, into selling her an extra gallon of gas beyond her ration so she could take Grandma on a birthday picnic at the lake.

“Mama the Black Marketer!” I laughed, and Mama joined me, but then I caught a glimpse of the clock on the wall and my heart sank. For a few minutes I'd forgotten that we were running on borrowed time. In fifteen minutes I'd have to go. Mama knew it, too.

Mama pushed her eggs from one side of her plate to the other; she'd hardly touched her breakfast. I dunked my donut into my coffee and took a bite, trying to buy some time while I figured out what I could say that would lighten the mood. Suddenly, without really thinking, I cleared my throat and blurted out, “Mama, have you seen Virginia Pratt lately?” I gave my donut another dunk into my cup, trying to act casual, but my mind was racing. Virginia Pratt? What made me ask about her? I'd sent her a letter just before I left for San Diego, but just that morning I'd decided to write another telling her I didn't think we had a future together and she should look for someone else.
I should have done it months ago,
I thought guiltily.

“Why no,” Mama answered with a trace of surprise in her voice. “Not recently. I guess she's about ready to graduate, isn't she?”

“Yeah. Next month. She made salutatorian,” I said and immediately wondered what in the world had made me volunteer that bit of information. Now, just when I was getting ready to break it off, Mama would get all kinds of crazy ideas about Virginia and me.

Just then a soggy piece of donut broke off and dropped onto my uniform, staining it with coffee. “Oh, damn it!” I said, plucking the mess off my shirt.

“Don't curse,” Mama said primly and handed me her napkin so I could blot the coffee stain.

We might have taken a brief detour into the landscape of adult friendship, but she was still my mother. “Still trying to turn me into a gentleman, Mama?”

“No. Trying to remind you that you already
are
a gentleman.” Frustrated by my inability to eradicate the coffee stain, Mama took the napkin from me, dipped it in her water glass and handed it back. “See if that works any better.” It did.

Mama's nonchalant attitude wasn't fooling me. It didn't take two shakes for her to turn the conversation back to Virginia Pratt. Though the stain was all gone, I kept blotting my shirt with the wet napkin.

“She seems a sweet girl. Must be smart to stand second in her class. Always had nice manners, I remember.” She paused, waiting for me to volunteer more information, and when I didn't, she cleared her throat and asked, “Anything you want to tell me?”

Not about Virginia, there wasn't.

But there were things I wanted to ask. So many things. I wanted to ask Mama about my feelings for Georgia. I wanted to ask her about everything, about girls and women, life and living, about love and lust, and how to tell one from the other. I wanted to ask how I came to be. Had she loved him like I loved Georgia? Like Georgia said she loved me? If so, where was he now? Where had he been all these years? If he loved her, how could he have left her? Left us? What kind of man does that to a woman he loves?

The look in Georgia's eyes last nightâit was the same look I'd seen in Mama's face when I was a little boy and the clucking, self-satisfied wives of Dillon would whisper as we walked down the sidewalk, just loud enough so we could hear. A picture of Georgia flashed in my mind, of Georgia crouched on the bed, undone and suddenly small, refusing to look at me, clutching shirt buttons and shame to her breast, trying to cover herself and get away. She ran away, and I let her. What kind of man does that to the woman he loves? What kind of man was I?

I took a drink of coffee. “Virginia and I have talked about ... you know, things. But she's awfully young. She wants to go to college. Maybe be a teacher. It'd be a shame if she didn't go while she has the chance and ...”

What's wrong with me?
This might be the last time I saw my mother on earth. I wanted to say at least one thing that was true before I left. Something. Where should I start?

I looked into her eyes. I didn't smile or pretend to smile. “Mama, I'm a pilot. You know the odds aren't good for me.”

She bit her lip and whispered, “I know.” For a moment I thought she was going to cry, but then she said, “So many times I've thought I should have insisted that you stay in college. Maybe I shouldn't have let you learn to fly in the first place.”

“You couldn't have stopped me, Mama. No one could have. It's part of who I am.” It was true. That was one thing I knew for certain. “When I joined up, all I thought about was flying, just me and the plane and the blue sky that doesn't end. I never really thought about
why
I would be flying.” There it was againâthat need to divide things up and shove them in separate boxes, to think only about the things I wanted to think about, the things I thought mattered. What I was starting to realize was that everything mattered. That was the difference between being a boy and a man: facing the truth and naming it.

“It's not that I didn't understand there was a war on and that I would be in it, but I really didn't know what war was. The newspapers clean it up and make it seem so simple and straight, but there's no color in those pictures. There's no spewing of red blood, or ravenous orange flames eating at tail sections, or blue-black ocean that sucks downed planes into the depths and closes over them. A battle reported in black and white is just an outline of the real thing.”

“You've grown up fast, haven't you?” It was a question that, in another context, might have been flattering. As it was, it was just a statement of fact, one that seemed to make Mama a little sad.

“Eighteen months are like ten years when there's a war on,” I said. “I thought I'd ship out, wrap a white scarf around my neck, shoot down a few Zeros from far enough away so I wouldn't have to see the pilots' faces, win a medal or two. Maybe dance with a few fast girls from the U.S.O. in my spare time.” I couldn't help but smile because it had all been so true. Less than two years ago I'd been a baby, a wide-eyed kid who thought heroism was as bloodless and straightforward as a
Lone Ranger
script. When I hopped into the cockpit of my old Stearman trainer and took off for college, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. “I never pictured myself being afraid.”

Mama eyes were glued to my face, but she didn't say anything. I couldn't tell what she was thinking.

“Mama, do you remember Mrs. Hutchinson from church?” Mrs. Hutchinson had been my fourth-grade Sunday school teacher, and Mama's and even Grandma's before that. “She wrote me a letter after I made lieutenant, congratulating me and saying how everybody was so proud to have a real live war hero come from Dillon.”

Mama nodded. “Mrs. Hutchinson is right. Everybody in town is proud of you. You're Dillon's first pilot.”

I shook my head. They were wrong. I could bear that, but I couldn't bear the idea that Mama would think I was something I wasn't. Even if it meant she'd think less of me, she had to know the truth. “Mama, I'm no hero. I just love to fly, that's all. When I climb into the cockpit and feel the engine hum, it's like feeling my own heart beating. And when I lift off from the runway and rise up toward the sun, it's like reaching out to touch the door of heaven.” And it was, every single time. Just for a moment. Just until I remembered that somehow, some time in the past, someone had decided to make flying a way to wage war. What kind of a man was I?

“As soon as I look down and see the airfield fading off in the distance, I'm afraid, because I know there's a good chance of me or one of my friends not making it back. With all my heart I want to turn back at that moment, but I keep the plane on course because I know I have to. Somebody has to.”

Other books

Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorpe

Celestial Bodies by Laura Leone

Legacy Lost by Anna Banks

Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword of Avalon by Diana L. Paxson

Renegade by Nancy Northcott

The Horror in the Museum by H. P. Lovecraft

Little White Lies by Aimee Laine

Rivalry by Jack Badelaire

Double Shot by Christine D'Abo

Cat Striking Back by Shirley Rousseau Murphy