On Wings Of The Morning (35 page)

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Authors: Marie Bostwick

BOOK: On Wings Of The Morning
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43
Georgia
Waukegan, Illinois—May 1945
 
“
M
rs. Welles, I really wish I could help you. If I needed an-Mother flight instructor, I'm sure I couldn't find one better than you.” Mr. Rawlings moved an unlit cigar from one side of his mouth to the other and resumed chewing on its bedraggled end. “But I'm a businessman and a father; I'm interested in buying Welles Flight School to make a profit and provide my sons with a future.”
Mr. Rawlings owned a company that made radios, and he lived in a big house on Chicago's “gold coast.” Wealthy before Pearl Harbor, he'd become even wealthier through government contracts during the war. His sons, Skip and Joe, Jr., both pilots, were stationed in Europe and due to return home soon.
Mr. Rawlings was looking to buy a flight school and install Joe and Skip as instructors. Welles Flight School was perfect for his purposes, both because it was near his home in Chicago and because I was at the end of my financial rope and he knew it.
I'd been trying to hold out, believing that business would rebound after the war, but I owed money everywhere. Selling the flight school was my only hope of avoiding bankruptcy. I'd come to tell him I'd only sell if he'd let me stay on as an instructor and Stubbs as mechanic. I was bluffing, but I hoped Rawlings wouldn't realize that.
“Over time,” he said, chomping on his cigar butt and trying to appear sympathetic, “I believe the flight school will be big enough to need three full-time instructors, but that won't be for quite some time. Who knows for how long? Not only do I have to pay off the debts that you've already accrued”—he frowned and leaned toward me, speaking in a low, disapproving voice, as if to say that I had no one but myself to blame for my troubles—“but I have to carry the salaries of my own boys. It could be months before I see a profit. Maybe years. Mrs. Welles, much as I'd like to, I simply cannot afford to take on any additional employees.”
I looked at him unblinking, hoping he might mistake my stare for steely resolve and relent but also to give myself time to think. What could I do? If I sold the company to Rawlings, I might never be able to work in aviation again. I'd put in for every pilot job within five hundred miles, using the name G. C. Welles on the applications, with no success. There were plenty of pilots looking for work, and the few companies that did indicate an interest in hiring me, changed their minds once they learned that G. C. Welles was a woman. I didn't want to sell to Rawlings and potentially ground myself forever, not to mention see the demise of the business that Roger had entrusted to me, which Rawlings had already informed me would be renamed Rawlings Brothers Flight Instruction, but what else could I do? I asked myself again and blinked.
Rawlings smiled, knowing he'd won. He put both hands on his desk and pushed the sales contract toward me.
“Mrs. Welles, you've run out of time and options.” He held out a pen. “Sign.”
Stubbs Peterson was in the office, pacing, smoking cigarettes, and waiting for me to return from my appointment with Mr. Rawlings. It was easy to see how Stubbs had earned his nickname. He was built like a fireplug, short and stubby, not even as tall as I was. It had been a while since he'd seen fifty, but he crossed the room, back and forth, like he was running a race. Judging by the smell of smoke, he must have gone through a whole carton of Chesterfields while he waited.
“For heaven's sake, Stubbs,” I complained, coughing and fanning my hand in front of my smoke-teared eyes. “Couldn't you have opened a window or something?”
He ignored the question. “Well? Did he go for it?”
“No.”
Stubbs frowned and started pacing faster, berating himself as he did. “It's my fault. All my fault. I should have done something.”
“Stubbs, don't say that. You did the best you could, the best anyone could.”
“No. It's my fault. When you got back, the place was in such a mess. Look how long it took you to get the files back in order.”
“Sure, they were a mess, but no worse than they were when I first came to work for Roger,” I said and rubbed my eyes, this time from fatigue instead of smoke. I felt a terrible headache coming on. “You're no bookkeeper, Stubbs, neither was Roger, but that isn't why the business failed. We just had more expenses than income, that's all.” Exhausted, I flopped into my desk chair. “If anyone is to blame, it's me.”
But Stubbs wasn't listening. “I should have done something.”
“Stubbs, come on. What more could you have done? There was no money coming in. When's the last time you took a paycheck? Two months? Three?”
He didn't say anything, just looked at me and shrugged noncommittally.
“Let yourself off the hook. We did everything we knew how to do. We just got beat, that's all. Cheer up. It could have been a lot worse. I'm not crazy about Mr. Rawlings, but thank heaven he came along.” I pulled a fat envelope from the pocket of my jacket. “There's twelve thousand dollars in here. Considering how much I owe, it's a pretty decent price. Oh!” I said, brightening. “I almost forgot. At the last minute, Rawlings decided to let me keep one of the trainers.”
Stubbs stopped pacing for a moment. “Really? Why'd he do that?”
“Because at the last minute, I said if he didn't let me keep one of the planes, then I wasn't signing.” I smiled at the memory of my own stubbornness. At first Rawlings had thought I was bluffing again, but I'd meant it. I'd have let the bank take everything before I was going to sign those papers and let Rawlings Brothers leave me without so much as a glider to call my own. “Once he saw I wasn't kidding, he said I could keep one trainer for myself, the PT-20.”
“What? That old Ryan trainer? It's a piece of junk! Do you have any idea how many hours are on that engine? It needs to be completely rebuilt. It was the first plane Roger bought.”
“I know,” I said quietly. “That's why I asked for it.”
Stubbs sighed and shook his head. “Well, you can't fly that thing.”
“It runs, doesn't it?”
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, for the moment, but it needs a whole new engine.”
“Fine!” I hissed through clenched teeth, irritated that he wouldn't let me enjoy my one small victory. “I'll take my half of the money and buy a new engine.”
Stubbs eyes grew wide, and he sucked hard on his cigarette. “Half? Georgia, I'm not taking half that money. This was your business, yours and Roger's, and I'm not taking half of what you got for it. Wouldn't feel right about it. You and Roger were always—”
“Stubbs!” I shouted. He froze and stared at me. I lowered my voice.
“I'm tired. I've lost my business, and I've got a headache. I know you mean well, but could we maybe fight about this tomorrow? What's done is done, and we'll just have to make the best of it.”
“Sorry, Georgia,” he mumbled, chastened. “Sure. We can talk tomorrow.”
“Thanks.”
“Can I do anything for you? Get you some aspirin, or something to eat?” He looked at his wristwatch. “The Soaring Wings is still open. I could run over and ask Thurman to make you up a grilled cheese.”
“Yeah. That would be great.” I wasn't really hungry, but I knew Stubbs needed something to do. Running to the café would give him a mission and me some time alone.
“Okay,” he said. “I'll be back as quick as I can.”
“That's all right. Take your time. I need a little time to get my desk cleaned off, anyway.” He nodded and walked toward the door, lighting up a fresh Chesterfield as he went. I started shuffling through the papers on my desk.
“Say, Stubbs, did the mail come yet?”
“Yeah,” he called over his shoulder, “it's right there, under that stack of past-due notices.”
I pushed the pile of bills aside and saw it, a dirty, ragged envelope, fat with multiple pieces of stationery, addressed to me, and covered with F
ORWARD TO A
D
DRESSEE
stamps in a rainbow of colors. It must have been lost in a morass of military mailbags, chasing me as I moved from one air base to the next for months on end.
The letter was postmarked August 11, 1944. And it was from Morgan.
Dear Georgia,
 
I'm writing you from a hospital in New Guinea. I had to ditch the plane after basically being run off the map during a dogfight and got myself a little banged up in the process. Nothing to worry about; they had to take a couple of toes, but the doctors say I should be fine in a few weeks.
I'm not writing to give you my medical update but because I wanted to tell you something. After bailing out, I had about a week to sit around, wait for rescue, and think. Many of my thoughts were of you, as they have been ever since San Diego. I've tried to deny it for a long time, but I can't anymore and I don't want to. I love you, Georgia. That's all there is to it. I know we hardly know each other. The collective hours we've spent in each other's company add up to days, not months or weeks. I know almost nothing about your family, or where you come from. Heck, I don't even know what your favorite color is. And still, I love you.
I know you were married to a pilot who was killed in combat. Maybe that's why you're so hesitant about letting me get closer to you, but I don't know for sure. You never told me. Just like I never told you why, when we were so close to coming together that night in San Diego, I put a halt to things. I know you were hurt and embarrassed. I should have explained to you right then why I backed away, but I couldn't do so without letting you in on my family secrets.
Even now, I'm nervous about telling you the whole truth—hearing it might convince you that you should have nothing to do with me, but I've decided to tell you anyway. Partly because, when I was out on that island and thinking I might die there, I promised myself that if I did live, I would stop living my life in the shadows of secrets that veiled my family since before I was born, but mostly because I love you and if you love someone you should be honest with them, even if being honest means you might lose them.
I stopped for a moment and held the pages of the letter to my breast. Who'd ever have thought it? Morgan Glennon quoting Cordelia Carter Boudreaux Prescott.
So here goes. I'm a bastard. My mother met my father when she was seventeen years old. He was a pilot, a barnstormer who stopped in our town for just a few days. She didn't even know his real name. After he left, my mother found out she was going to have a baby, me. When you just write it out like that, it looks bad, I know. You'll probably think my mother was the worst sort of woman and that she held herself very cheaply indeed, but you'd be wrong. Mama was young, and innocent, too trusting, and too in love. Maybe my father was too, in fact, now I think he probably was, but he wasn't brave, at least not then, and he wasn't wise. He left her alone without thinking about the consequences of his actions and how Mama might have to pay for them. And later, when he found out about me, he walked away a second time, because he was afraid of what might happen if people found out. He left my mother to pay the price for loving him. And she did pay, for her whole life. So did I.
That's why I backed off that night in San Diego, not because I didn't love you, but because I did and still do. Knowing that, I couldn't put you in a position to have to pay for my carelessness, especially when I was about to ship out. No matter how much I wanted you, Georgia, I couldn't do that to you. It would have been wrong, morally and practically. Faith goes deep in me. I know that lots of people look at the Bible as a big bunch of rules that are designed to keep people from having fun and for a while, I guess I felt the same. But the older I get, the more I see God's laws our best chance for living happily and well in a fallen world, a guide given for our own protection and out of love. Just like I feel about you. Because I loved you, I wanted to protect you from the kind of pain and payment that was exacted from my mother.
But there's more, the secret so big that my own mother never told me. My father isn't just some nameless pilot; he is Charles Lindbergh. I didn't know it until just recently. When I was a kid, Lindbergh was my idol, but I never dreamed there was any connection between us. He was sent to the Pacific to teach pilots how to stretch out their fuel and he ended up on my base. We actually flew together and he told me he was my father. That was the night before I found myself stranded on that island.
I don't have enough paper or time to explain all the things that went through my mind while I was hoping for rescue. At first, I was mad, at Lindbergh, at Mama, at the whole world, and there is probably some of that still in me. I imagine it will take a while for me to work all this out in my mind, but the more I waited and the closer I got to death, the closer I moved toward forgiveness. From the first minute they met, my parents made terrible mistakes, but having come so close to doing the same myself, I can't exactly throw stones. While I can't help but wish I'd known about my own past sooner, I see now that Mama was doing what she thought was right at the time. As for my father, he should have owned up to his responsibilities years ago, but at least it is to his credit that he finally tried to do so. I'm glad, at last, to know my father. Even though he's never been a real part of my life and I don't expect that will change in the future, I can see that some parts of my personality, good and bad, I've inherited from him. On the good side, the love of flight comes quickly to mind and I'm sure there are other things too. On the bad side, there is this tendency to hide feelings and play it safe, leaving those I care about most in the dark.
And, like him, I'm trying to make up for that. Maybe it is too late. Maybe you can't forgive me. Maybe you'll find the truth of my family history so shocking that you can't love me. Or maybe you never loved me to begin with. It's a chance I had to take.
I'll be in the hospital a few weeks. I'm not sure where they will send me next, but they'll forward my mail. I really hope to hear from you, Georgia. And if I don't? I guess that means one of the maybes was true.
Love,
Morgan

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