Trophy for Eagles (57 page)

Roget was relentless. "Most of these guys were good. And most of
them are dead. You've survived pretty well. If you let Patty fly, the
odds are against her, no matter how talented she is. You ought to put your foot down."

Bandfield walked away, shaken. Though tactless as a shark, Roget
was right—but there didn't seem to be anything Bandy could do. He
sat down at a table, wondering where Patty had gone.

She was with Clarice, Roget's faithful teammate, who pulled her to the same wall, the same picture. In an affectionate, caring voice, Clarice whispered, "She put him through hell. He never stopped blaming himself. You've saved him. Don't let it happen to him again."

The effect was different. Patty was not shocked, just angry, wondering if Bandy had put Clarice up to it.

The Rogets were traditionalists, from the rice they had thrown
after the wedding to the tin cans Bandfield found tied to the back of
the Auburn and to the tail wheel of the Roget Rocket they, were to fly to San Francisco. He had arranged with the Army to land at Crissey Field, and they had splurged on a room at the St. Francis
Hotel. Patty had been upset all the way up, and they hardly spoke through dinner. As they undressed unenthusiastically for bed, Patty
said, "Great start for a honeymoon, isn't it? I'll bet Clarice is a scream at a wake."

"They meant well. And I happen to agree with them. You don't have to prove anything."

"I know you agree with them. Did you put them up to it?"

She could tell by the look on his face that he had not. In a kinder voice, she said, "How can you be so understanding about most
things, and miss this completely? Stephan was right. You men flyers
have flying and sex so screwed up you think women feel the same
way."

"I thought you said they did."

"If I did, it was because we were courting, and I didn't want to
argue about it. Why can't flying be a challenge, like painting or music? Why can't a woman pursue something she's good at?"

"It's not natural. A woman is supposed to be the homemaker.
Why are there so few women doctors or lawyers? It's the same thing,
it's just not right."

She turned rigid with fury. "You're making my point. There aren't many women in the professions because you men won't let
them in. And that's why I'm going to have a flying career. Mother is
all wrong about Amelia Earhart. She does her flying for a larger cause."

"I'm not worried about any goddam larger cause! I'm worried about you and I'm worried about having a family."

He stopped, appalled at his echo of Stephan's discontent, biting his tongue in dismay at the cold, hard look that came over her. He reached over and stroked her arm.

"Get your hands off me and get the hell out of this room. I'm no serving cow, waiting for the current King Bull to jump me."

After a few apologies, he stayed in the room, ruefully remember
ing that they'd had a lot better honeymoons before they were married.

*

Sayville, Long Island/December 18,1934

Charlotte Morgan Hafner was rarely sentimental, but tears welled as
she realized that this snow-drenched Christmas was going to be the worst since the awful years after her first husband had been killed.
Bruno was off on another of his trips to Germany and France;
Dusty, poor bedeviled Dusty, was sequestered in Burbank working for Howard Hughes; and Patty was apparently determined to go on
flying no matter what anyone said.

When she'd first realized that she'd be alone, she'd been de
lighted, imagining that she would have a permanent wave, lie about
in bed, and generally take it easy. Then she thought about the
factory. Bruno had been systematically excluding her from work at
the plant, and she used the opportunity to try to get back into the
thick of things. Sometime in the last year he had completely revised
the accounting department, hiring all new people. They were polite, but they followed his instructions to let no one look at the
books. Not even a first-class Charlotte Hafner tirade with an aria of
curses and a coda of tears had budged them. They were properly cowed and apologetic, and their manner told her that Bruno was doing something unorthodox. But they were adamant, and whatever it was would have to wait until Bruno returned and she could dig it out of him.

She was unsettled by it. When Bruno had begun to become
obsessive about the business, a few years ago, it had pleased her, for she was tired of the work, just as they had mutually tired of their sex
life. She welcomed the chance to divert his interest, leaving her more time for Dusty. The irony was that Dusty too had long since become an indifferent lover.

I must be some hot number, she thought. Losing an American husband to the Germans, a German husband to boredom, and an American lover to dope.

She curled up on the couch, listening to Russ Colombo records on the Victrola, putting the squeeze on a box of chocolates to find
the nuts and caramels. Once she had been addicted to sex and flying
and chocolates. Now she was down mostly to chocolates.

Charlotte tossed the box of candy across the room, knowing only
too well that her real distress stemmed from the burning desire to
somehow excel over Amelia Earhart, to get the recognition that the
"Lady Lindy" got so effortlessly. Despite all Bruno's warnings, and
her own very clear insight, it had supplanted everything else in her
life save her love and concern for Patty, and her determination to help Dusty break his habit.

She knew that helping Dusty change was by far her most difficult
task. They had made good progress before Bruno sent him to California; Dusty was going longer between injections, and had begun to put back on a little weight. Now his latest letter admitted
that he had relapsed. He romantically blamed it on his need for her,
and there was probably some truth to the idea. As long as she was
with him, nagging him for his own good, Dusty had the strength to
quit. The problem was the close association with Bruno, who kept
Dusty supplied so conveniently with drugs. The only real way out for them would be simply to leave, to start a new life somewhere away from Bruno.

In some respects it would be easy. Patty was mature, and Char
lotte no longer loved flying for flying's sake. The days when a flight
above the clouds or aerobatics close to the ground had given her a
near-sexual satisfaction had gone forever, vanished in the irritation
over the adulation that Earhart had received for her flights across the
country and from Hawaii. Bruno had explained to her time and again that Earhart had an advantage with her fragile delicate looks and vulnerable manner that was almost insuperable. Her husband, George Putnam, had a genius for promotion, and made Amelia unbeatable in the press.

Bruno had tried to reassure her, telling her, "Among the pro
fessionals, you are the best—but you'll never beat her in the news
room." But now, she had a story winner in her grasp—the new four-engine bomber. To her knowledge Earhart had never flown
anything bigger than a Vega. Initially, Bruno was against her flying
the bomber—said it was too big for her—but he yielded quickly to
her argument that it was the one sure way to sell Congress. There
was a strong Congressional sentiment, fed by careful briefings from
the Navy, that anything bigger than the twin-engine Martin B-10s
would be "too difficult for the average Air Corps pilot to fly." It was
baloney, but it suited the battleship admirals perfectly. They wanted the Air Corps relegated to close infantry support and coast defense.

Even within the Air Corps, there was a powerful faction that wanted smaller airplanes, simply because you could buy more of them. When Bruno had told her that he was entering a four-engine plane in the bomber competition, she saw the possibilities for herself at once. She would demonstrate the plane at Wright Field, and then get one on loan—or have the company build one especially for her if necessary—and set all the women's records for speed, distance, and altitude. She could probably do it all in two or three flights. Then she could put her helmet in the locker and concentrate on the chocolates—and on curing Dusty.

The only genuine difficulty was persuading Patty to quit her own
career. In the end she gave up and simply promised to support her every way she could. Maybe Patty could be her copilot on the bomber—that would be something, a mother-and-daughter team setting records. Having a daughter was one thing that damn Earhart couldn't do, for sure. Charlotte had always wondered if Amelia wasn't a man in disguise.

*

Downey, California/February 15, 1935

Bandfield glanced over his
Los Angeles Times,,
covertly watching Patty planning her flight, her desk awash with maps, plotters for
drawing the course lines, and tables to predict her fuel consump
tion. He loved her deep absorption in any flying task. Her lips would
compress as tightly as a recalcitrant clam and her ordinarily smooth brow would furrow into ivory corrugations as her whole body be
came a tightly wound coil of total concentration.

The quarreling honeymoon had set the tone for most of their first
month of marriage. She made it into an elaborate game of marital diplomacy that left her in complete possession of the field. Their
compromise had been that she was going to manage her own flying career, doing exactly what she wanted to do when she wanted to do
it, and he was going to help her to the exact degree that she required.

Beyond that she was now a perfect wife, still very eager in bed,
maintaining their little ranch house without help, and cooking well
enough but not so expertly as to prevent making eating out a regular
pleasure. Tonight, she was planning her record transcontinental run, doing all the figures herself, refusing to let him help until she
was finished. Then she was glad to have him make any corrections.

He went back to the
Times.
The newspapers were filled with gloom and doom, at home and abroad. The Depression was getting worse instead of better, and things were heating up in Europe. Mussolini was claiming that ninety thousand Ethiopians were massed on the border of Italian Somaliland, threatening to invade! The newsreel scenes of
II Duce
strutting and posturing were laughable, yet the, League of Nations seemed to buy his preposterous claims.

"Did you see that they convicted Hauptmann? I wonder if Slim will come back from Europe now."

She looked up, pensive. "He would if the press would let him alone. Sometime I'd like to meet his wife."

Yeah, me too, Bandfield thought. He had corresponded with Lindbergh over the past few years, mostly about the RC-3, but
always with a little personal stuff mixed in. Lindbergh seemed to be
drifting rapidly to the right—unless it was himself drifting to the left.
Bandy had written something about the purges in Russia not being
much different from the arrests Hitler was making in Germany, and
Lindbergh had taken violent offense, claiming that the differences in scale and cause were enormous. He maintained that Stalin was
eradicating whole sections of the country because he felt they were a
political threat, while the Germans were simply solving some of the
problems caused by the war.

Bandy felt a little guilty, because he knew he was at least in part
baiting Slim—he realized it was bad practice. The situation at Roget Aircraft was critical now. Douglas was simply eating up the market,
so that even mighty Boeing was giving up on commercial aircraft. He might need Lindbergh to give him the nod in some domestic competition.

It was probably a forlorn hope. He hadn't helped in the past, and with all their arguments, it was even more unlikely that he'd help in
the future. Fuck him.

He put down the paper and reached for his Spanish text. Major Caldwell was insisting that he have a reasonable proficiency in German and Spanish. The Spanish came easy, but the German was tough. Thank God they'd decided he didn't need to bother with Chinese.

*

Farmingdale, Long Island/May 8, 1935

The final assembly bay looked like a disaster-area dormitory, with
iron cots and surplus Army mattresses and blankets lining the walls.
Fully clothed workers were asleep in some of them, oblivious to the
glare of the overhead lights and the machine-gun rattle of the
riveting guns. At the far end, an improvised kitchen served three hot
meals a day, with coffee and sandwiches at all hours.