Flygirl (15 page)

“Howdja do?” Lily asks as I climb out of the plane. I take my time undoing my turban and wait for the instructor to join us.

“Well, Mr. Jenkins?”

Jenkins smiles and waves his clipboard. “A-plus, Miss Jones. You've passed. I look forward to seeing you in Intermediates.”

“Thank you, sir.” I shake his hand, cool as November, and leave him to his next test subject. At least I think I'm cool. Lily nudges me as we head back to the ready room.

“Ida Mae Jones, you're blushing!”

“I am not,” I insist. “It must be windburn.”

“Right,” she says. “It must be Instructor ‘Windburn.' I don't blame you, though. He's a thousand times better looking than old mealymouthed Martin!”

“Lily!”

“It's true!” We've reached the reading room. Lily drops down onto a bench. “Thank goodness that's over!” she exclaims. “I thought for sure Martin was going to fail me, or demerit me, or I don't know what.”

I slap my thigh where the course map is still strapped to my pant leg. “Trust your map. No matter what old Martin says.”

“Amen to that!” Lily grabs my hand. “And thank you, Ida, so very much, for figuring it all out. If it weren't for you, I'd have flown that plane straight home to New York before I knew I was off course.”

I smile and sit down beside her. “What was it Patsy said? One for all and all for one.”

“Hear, hear.”

I look around the ready room. “Where is Patsy, anyway? I thought she was due to go up with Martin right after you.” We look at the clock simultaneously. It's already half-past fourteen hundred hours.

“Oh, I'm sure she'll be here any minute,” Lily says, but she doesn't sound so sure.

We sit together in nervous silence. Most of the other girls who've passed their flight tests have gone back to the barracks or the mess hall. Lily and I are dismissed for the day, but we promised to wait for Patsy.

“Maybe we should check with the tower,” I say after a minute.

Lily smiles hopefully. “Of course. But you know Patsy. She's probably just pranking on old Martin again.”

I smile back, but I don't feel it on the inside. “That's probably it,” I say doubtfully. We stand up. “She never could resist putting him in his place.”

“And on test day, too,” Lily adds.

But our bravado rings false. We break into a run outside the ready room. Sergeant Middleton is at the control tower.

“Keep your pants on, ladies. They were spotted over Baker's Pond about ten minutes ago. They should be here in about half an hour.”

“Thank God,” Lily gasps. I want to hug the sergeant, but the look he gives me makes me step back and simply nod at him.

“Sorry to bother you, sir.”

He snorts and waves us away, but I notice he's searching the skies himself. “Damn radio's probably on the fritz,” he mutters as we leave the tower. “Don't want to lose another plane.”

Outside, Lily looks furious. “Another
plane
, did he say? Why, I ought to give him a piece of my mind!” She turns in her tracks, but I stop her.

“Let's go, Lily. He's just as worried as we are, but he's an army sergeant. He can't afford to show it.”

Lily adjusts her shirt and nods. She lets out a deep breath from somewhere inside that petite body. “Well, thank God we're not army.”

I smile. “Come on. Let's go wait for Patsy.” I pat my pockets as we walk back to the ready room. “Got any nickels?”

Lily shakes her head. “I never fly with coins in my pocket. I once heard about a pilot who lost his loose change doing a loop. It killed a man on the ground. Can you believe it? They say a dime can do the same amount of damage as a Mack truck if you drop it from high enough up.”

“Oh, I think a Mack truck dropped from a plane would hurt a whole lot more than a bitty old dime,” I tell her. She rewards me with a poke in the ribs.

“You know what I mean. What's the nickel for, anyway?”

“The wishing well, of course.” The well was actually more of a small fountain outside of the ready room. It's WASP tradition to toss coins into it for luck or toss WASP into it when they've done their first solo flight. “Today's a big day,” I add. “I think it deserves more than a penny, don't you?”

Lily agrees, but we don't go to the ready room to ask the other girls for change. We don't leave the field until we see Patsy's plane on the horizon.

The sky is turning pale purple when she finally appears over the far end of the airstrip, signaling the tower.

“She'd better hurry up or she'll qualify for a night landing,” Lily says.

“Yeah.” I keep my eyes on Patsy's plane. She's been gone too long. Way too long for it to be good news. Neither one of us has mentioned it, but Lily and I both know that this could be a washout offense.

Patsy lands beautifully and pulls to a stop just a few yards from where we are waiting. But she doesn't get out of the plane. Even when old Martin hops down with his fussy little goggles clamped tightly to his head, a white scarf—far too romantic for a fellow as tight as Martin—thrown twice around his neck against the late-afternoon chill. Patsy just sits in the cockpit and stares straight ahead.

Martin walks past us without a word. His face is red, but whether from wind or something Patsy did, I can't tell.

“You don't suppose she really did do a wing walk on him again, do you?” Lily asks.

“Oh, no, she's smarter than that.” And then I think of that crowd of people sitting on their trucks and cars, watching us fly overhead. “At least, I think she is.”

We wait for Instructor Martin to disappear into the ready room before we rush up to Patsy's plane.

Patsy doesn't see us at first. She's too busy crying. Not sobbing hysterically, the way I would be if I had failed. Not angry, like we've seen her before. Just slow, quiet tears streaming down her pale cheeks.

“Oh, no!” Lily cries.

I climb up onto the side of the plane. “What is it, Patsy? Did he fail you?”

Patsy jumps, startled to see me so close. She wipes her eyes, embarrassed. When she speaks, she sounds like her old self.

“Well, he tried to, the old goose. Made me run through all the paces, basic training, first-week stuff, all the way to Baker's Pond and back.”

“That's why you're late?” I ask hopefully.

She nods. “He was looking for a reason to flunk me. But I showed him. I was like you, Lily.” She tips her head toward the other girl. “A perfect student. He said do a loop, I did it perfectly. Do a roll, and I did one, a beautiful one, too. And we come up on Baker's Pond, and there are all these farmers out there, standing on the hoods of their cars and the backs of their trucks, cheering, like we were the circus and the president rolled into one . . .” Patsy looks at us. The sunset catches her face in its glow.

“This was the best flight of my life, Jonesy. The best damn flight, ever.”

“Then why are you crying?” Lily asks, brow furrowed.

Patsy smiles slowly, but her smile is big and wide. “Tears of joy, hon. Tears of absolute joy.” She laughs. “He passed me. With flying colors, or almost. I had enough demerits for a one-way trip back to nowhere, but even old Martin thinks I've got the stuff.”

She pulls herself out of the plane real slow, like she doesn't want to leave it.

“Come on, girls. It's Friday night. We're going to town to celebrate.”

 

“Town” means the Avengerette Club. Here in Texas they call it a honky-tonk hall. Back home, it's a juke joint—the kind of place Mama would never let me go. But tonight I'll walk in with the rest of my friends, not as a teenager, but as a WASP. The brass consider the place an officers' club of sorts, suitable for WASP and military gentlemen. Nothing special on the inside, just a redecorated room above a store in town, donated by the good people of Sweetwater. Still, tonight is a celebration night. Patsy, Lily, and I indulge in extra-long showers, and we take the time to apply long-discarded makeup and curlers.

“I'd forgotten how much better I look with curled lashes,” Lily mutters, clamping down on her lash curler in front of the bathroom mirror. Thanks to Patsy's delayed flight, the rest of our classmates are already at the club. The place should be in full swing by the time we get there.

This will be our first trip to the Avengerette. I guess part of me feels like I'm here to fly, not dance. And the other part of me knows Mama just wouldn't approve. Socializing with white men will only get me into the kind of trouble she was worried about. And dancing with soldiers? That's even worse. But tonight is special. I wish Jolene was here with me. She's a regular social butterfly, and boy, can she dance.

The thought makes me sad enough to leave the mirror and take a breather at the foot of my bed. I haven't written home but once or twice in the month since I got here, and that was just to send home some money and say I was okay. Nobody back home would be interested in basic training, or in my white classmates, or anything I'm doing right now. And besides, I've been waiting for something good to tell them. Something that would make Mama and Grandy proud. Today is finally one of those days.

I pull out the little stack of stationery I bought at the five-and-dime in town last month and put it in my purse. I've never been much for dancing. That's Jolene's specialty. But with luck, there'll be a quiet corner where I can get my letter written.

A sneeze from the other side of the room makes me look up. “God bless you,” I say automatically.

“Thank you.” It's Melanie Michaels, one of the girls from the other side of the barracks. She's pale and yellow-haired, but her face is even paler than usual.

“Sorry,” she says. “I thought everybody had gone out.”

“Almost,” I say. I close my purse. Melanie is wearing civilian clothes. So am I, but I'm in a party dress, black with tiny polka dots and fluted skirt. Melanie is wearing a tweed travel suit.

“Melanie? Are you leaving?”

She ignores the question and squats in front of a footlocker. “This is Nancy's, right? She borrowed some shoes of mine. I want them back.”

I put down my purse and go to her side. Melanie and I don't know each other well, even if we do share a bathroom. She's from Philadelphia, I think, or Connecticut. I kneel next to her.

“Yes, that's Nancy's locker. But what's going on?”

Melanie looks at me and her face crumples like a newspaper, only all the headlines are sad. “Oh, Ida Mae, they flunked me.”

“What?” I feel a chill all of a sudden, like angels passing overhead.

“Baker's Pond. I flunked the test.”

I scowl. “Martin is a fool. We can appeal it. Go to Jenkins. He's fair.”

Melanie wails, “No, I can't! He's the one who failed me. Said I was indecisive and it could cost me my life, or my plane.”

She sniffs through her tears and imitates Jenkins's warm voice, but with a sneer to it that I don't remember hearing. “‘Miss Michaels, I'm sorry, but I won't have your death on my hands. Or this airplane in yours.' He flew us back. It was so humiliating.”

She throws her arms around my neck. I hug her, but there is nothing to say. If Hap Martin had flunked her, it would be one thing, but Walt Jenkins . . . I wish I had paid more attention, seen what she could do. All I can think is Jenkins must be right.

Melanie is the sixth girl to wash out of our flight, the first in our barracks. I try to remember who she was standing next to that first day, when Deatie Deaton said the girl to either side of each of us would fail. Whoever it was must be breathing a sigh of relief. Or feeling the same chill I've got right now.

“It'll be okay, Melanie.” I say it, but I know it doesn't help. How could it?

After a minute, Melanie pulls herself together. “There they are.” She pulls a pair of black pumps out of the locker. “Apologize to Nancy for me. I just . . .” She wipes her eyes. “I just didn't want to have to tell all the girls.”

We stand up. “I understand. I'll let them know.”

“Oh, tomorrow. Wait until tomorrow. They should be able to celebrate without pitying me tonight.”

“Sure.” We hug quickly, and she is suddenly all business.

“Good luck, Ida. You've always seemed like a swell girl. If you're ever in Connecticut, look me up.”

“I will.”

I walk with her to the door and watch her walk out into the night, her suitcase dragging along beside her, the pumps she lent Nancy still in her hand. I stare into the darkness after she is gone, glad not to be in her shoes.

“Leaving without us?” Patsy asks. I jump at the sound of her voice.

“No, no. I was just . . . looking at the stars.” I shut the door and turn around. I give a low whistle. “Boy, you two sure got dolled up.”

Patsy is in a sky blue dress with a silk flower on one shoulder. Her straight black hair is curled into waves. Lily's trapped her own natural curls into a bun with brown netting. A chocolate brown dress picks up the red of her hair and her creamy skin.

“Thanks, you're a peach,” Lily says with a shake of her shoulder. She giggles. “Patsy's been giving me lessons in sass.”

“She learns quick.” Patsy winks. “Let's get the show on the road, ladies. Last carload leaves the base in five minutes.”

I grab my purse and follow them out into the warm Texas night. I don't feel like celebrating anymore. Melanie Michaels has washed out. Any one of us could be next.