Wings (12 page)

“That's the trouble”— Cassie looked at him with a sad smile—” most pilots would risk anything to fly. But other people don't understand that.”

“Maybe that's why women shouldn't, Cass,” he said quietly and she sighed.

“You sound like my father.”

“Maybe you should listen to him.”

She wanted to say “I can't,” but she knew she couldn't say that to him. She could only say that to Nick. He was the only human being who knew the whole truth about her, and accepted it. No one else really knew her. Especially not Bobby.

She saw Chris walking toward them then, and she ran to him. He was carrying his medal, his face was glowing with pride, and Pat was walking on air right behind him.

“First medal at seventeen!” he was telling anyone who would listen. “That's my man!” He was handing out beers, and slapping everyone on the back, including Chris and Bobby. Chris was basking in his father's love and approval. Cassie was watching them, fascinated by how desperate her father was for Chris's success in the air, yet at the same time how adamant he was that she never get there. She was ten times the flier Chris was, or better still, but her father would never acknowledge it, or even know it.

Nick came over to shake hands with Chris, and the boy was elated by his victory, and then he went off with Nick to meet some of the other pilots. It was an exciting day for him, and a day Pat O'Malley had waited fifty-one years for. And as far as he was concerned, this was only the beginning. Instead of seeing that this was the top of Chris's skill, he wanted more. He was already talking about next year, and Cassie felt sorry for Chris then. She knew how much their father meant to him, and that no matter what it cost him, he would do anything to please him.

The O'Malley clan were in high spirits. They were almost the last ones to leave, and Bobby went home with them for dinner. Nick went out to celebrate with his flying friends, and he looked pretty well oiled by the time he left the field. But he knew Chris was flying the Bellanca back to O'Malley Airport, and he could hop a ride in Pat's truck, so he didn't have to worry about flying or driving.

Oona had cooked platters of fried chicken for them in the morning before they left, and there was com on the cob, and salad and baked potatoes. There was a ham too, and she had baked blueberry pie and made ice cream once back at the house. It was a real feast, and Pat poured Chris a full glass of Irish whiskey.

“Drink up, lad, you're the next ace in this family!” Chris struggled with the drink, and Cassie watched them, feeling sad. She felt left out somehow. She should have been flying with them, and basking in her father's praise, and she knew she couldn't. She wondered if she ever would. But the only fate that seemed open to her was that of her sisters, having another baby every year, and condemned to their kitchens. It seemed a terrible life to her, although she loved them all, and her mother, but she would have rather died than spend her life the way they had.

Cassie noticed
too
that Bobby was very sweet
to
all of them. He was kind to her sisters, and adorable to all their children. He was a gentle man, and he would make a wonderful husband. Her mother pointed
it
out to her again when she was helping clean up in the kitchen. And afterward, she and Bobby went for a long walk, and he surprised her when he talked
to
her about flying.

“I was watching you a lot today, Cass, and I know what all that means to you. And you may think I'm crazy, but I want you to promise me you'll never do any of that crazy stuff. I really don't want you to fly. It's not that I don't want you to have fun. But I don't want you to get hurt. You know… like Amelia Earhart.” It seemed reasonable to him, and she was touched, but Cassie laughed nervously. The idea of promising anyone that she wouldn't fly made her shudder.

“I'm not going to fly around the world, if that's what you're worried about,” she said with an anxious smile. But he shook his head, he meant a lot more than that, and she knew it.

“That's not what I mean. I mean I don't want you flying at all.” He had only seen a glimmer of how dangerous it was, but watching the stunts at the air show had convinced him. There was no question that there were risks in flying, and two years before there had been a terrible tragedy at the same air show. Bobby was no fool, and he knew the magic it held for her. Simply put, he didn't want to lose her. “I don't want you learning to fly, Cass. I know you want to. But it's just too dangerous. Your father is right. And it's much too dangerous for a woman.”

“I don't think that's a reasonable thing to ask,” she said quietly. She didn't want to lie to him, but she also didn't want to tell him that she'd been flying regularly with Nick for over a year now. “I think you have to trust my judgment on that.”

“I want you to promise me you won't fly,” he said, showing a strength and stubbornness she had never seen before. She was impressed, but she wasn't going to promise.

“That's unreasonable. You know how much I love to fly”

“That's why I'm asking you to promise, Cass. I think you would be just the one to take chances.”

“Believe me, I wouldn't. I'm careful… and I'm good… that is, I would be. Look, Bobby, please… don't do this…”

“Then I want you to think about it. This is very important to me.” So is flying to me, she wanted to scream. It was the only thing she cared about, and now he wanted to take it from her. What was wrong with all of them? Bobby, her father, even Chris. Why did they want to take something away from her that she loved so much? Only Nick understood. He was the only one who knew, and cared how she felt about it.

Though at that exact moment, Nick Calvin was passed out cold in the arms of a girl he had met at the air show. She had bright red hair, and brightly painted lips, and as he nestled close to her, he smiled and whispered, “Cassie.”

7

C
assie's schedule at Bradley was more demanding than it had been as a senior in high school, but she managed to juggle it anyway, and now she and Nick met twice a week, always on Saturdays, and sometimes on a weekday morning. Her father wasn't aware of her schedule, and it was easy for both of them. And she had started working as a waitress in order to repay Nick for the fuel, even if she couldn't afford to pay him for the lessons. But he had never expected any payment from her. He did it for sheer love and pleasure.

She was getting better each time they flew, refining some fine points, and flying every plane she could so as to learn their differences and their quirks. She flew the Jenny, the old Gypsy Moth, Nick's Bellanca, the de Havilland 4, and even the lumbering old Handley. Nick wanted her to fly everything she could, and he had her perfecting all her techniques and honing her skills with great precision. He had even taught her some rescue techniques, and told her all the details of some of his more illustrious forced landings and near misses while fighting the Germans. There was very little she didn't know about flying the Jenny or the Bellanca or even the Handley, which Nick had brought with him because it was so much heavier and harder to fly, and had two engines.

She spent less time at her father's airport now, since she had farther to go to school, but she still hung around whenever she could, and she and Nick would exchange a conspiratorial smile, whenever their paths crossed.

She was working on an engine one day, in a back hangar, when she was surprised to see her father walk in with Nick. They were talking about buying a new plane, and her father thought it might be too expensive. It was a used Lockheed Vega.

“It's worth it, Pat. It's a heavy plane, but it's a beautiful machine. I checked one out the last time I was in Chicago.”

“And who do you think is going to fly it? You, and me. And the others are just going to bring it down in the trees. It's a damn fine machine, Nick, and there aren't five men here I'd trust to fly it. Maybe not even two.”

But as her father said the words, Cassie saw Nick looking at her strangely, and then she felt terror run up her spine. She knew instinctively what he was going to do. She wanted to tell him to stop, but another part of her wanted him to do it. She couldn't hide forever. Sooner or later her father would have to know. And Nick kept talking to her about flying in the next air show.

“There may not be five men around here who can fly it, Pat. But I can tell you one woman who can, with her eyes closed.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Her father growled at him, already annoyed at the mention of a woman who could fly anything, let alone a plane he wouldn't trust his own men with.

Nick said it very quietly, and calmly, as Cass watched them, terrified, praying that her father would listen. “Your daughter is the best pilot I've ever seen, Pat. She's been flying with me for more than a year, a year and a half to be exact. She's the best damn pilot you and I have seen since seventeen. I mean that.”

“You what?” Pat looked at his old friend and associate in total outrage. “You've been flying with her? Knowing how I'd feel about it? How dare you!”

“If I didn't dare, she would. She would have killed herself a year ago, terrorizing her brother into taking her up and letting her fly anything she could lay her hands on. I'm telling you, she's the best damn natural pilot you've ever seen, and you're a fool if you don't let her show you what she's got, Pat. Give the kid a chance. If she were a boy, you would, and you know it.”

“I don't know what I know!” he raged at both of them, “except that you're both two damn lying fools, and I'm telling you right now I forbid you
to
fly, Cassandra Maureen.” He looked straight at her as he said it, and then at Nick. “And I'm not going to put up with any nonsense from you, you damn fool, Nick Galvin, do you hear me?”

“You're dead wrong!” Nick was insistent, but Pat was too livid to listen.

“I don't give a damn what you think. You're a bigger idiot than she is. She's not flying my planes at my airport. And if you're fool enough to fly her in your own, somewhere else, then I lay the responsibility on your head if you kill her, and it's your own damn fault, if she kills you, which she will undoubtedly. There isn't a woman alive who can fly worth a damn, and you know it.” He had just knocked out, with a single blow, an entire generation of extraordinary women, and among them his own daughter. But he didn't care. That was what he believed, and no one was going to tell him any different.

“Let me take her up and show you, Pat. She can fly anything we've got. She's got a sense of speed and height that relies on her gut and her eyes, more than on anything she sees on the controls. Pat, she's terrific.”

“You're not going to show me anything, and I don't want to see it. Couple of damn fools… I suppose she's bamboozled you into all this.” He looked at his daughter with total fury. As far as he was concerned, it was all her fault. She was a stubborn little monster, determined to kill herself with her father's planes and right at his own airport.

“She didn't bamboozle me into anything. I saw her scud running a year ago, in that storm she got herself into with Chris, and I knew damn well he wasn't flying the plane. I figured if I didn't step in, she'd kill both of them, so I started teaching her then.”

“That was Chris flying in that storm last year,” her father argued defiantly.

“It was not!” Nick shouted back at him, furious now himself at how unreasonable Pat was prepared to be, and all to support an outdated position. “How blind can you be? The boy's got no guts, no hands. All he can do is run straight up and down, like an elevator, just like he did for you at the air show. What on Cod's earth makes you think he could have gotten them out of that storm? That was Cassie.” He looked at her possessively, and he was surprised to see that she was crying in the face of her father's fury.

“It was, Dad,” she said quietly. “It was me. Nick knew. He confronted me when we came down, and—”

“I won't listen to this. You're a liar on top of everything else, Cassandra Maureen, trying to take the glory from your own brother.” The force of his accusations took her breath away, and told her again how hopeless it was to try to convince him. Maybe one day, but not now. And never seemed more likely.

“Give her a chance, Pat.” Nick was trying to calm him down again, but it was useless. “Please. Just let her show you her stuff. She deserves that. And next year, I'd like to put her in the air show.”

“You're both daft, is what you are. Two brazen fools. What makes you think she wouldn't kill herself, and me, and you, and a dozen other people at the air show?”

“Because she flies better than anyone you've ever seen there.” Nick tried to stay calm, but he was losing control slowly. Pat was not an easy man, and this was a very volatile subject. “She flies better than Rickenbacker, for chrissake. Just let her show you.” But he had uttered the ultimate sacrilege this time, in invoking the name of the commander of the 94th Aero Squadron. Nick knew he'd pushed too far, and Pat stalked off and left them, and went back to his office. He never looked back at them, and he never said another word to his daughter.

She was crying openly by then, and Nick came to put an arm around her.

“Christ, your father is a stubborn man. I'd forgotten how impossible he can be when he gets something in his teeth. But I'll get him yet on this one. I promise.” He gave her a squeeze and she smiled through her tears. If she had been Chris, her father would have let her show him anything at all. But not now, not ever, not her, because she was a girl. It was so unfair, but she knew that nothing would change him.

“He'll never give in, Nick.”

“He doesn't have to. You're eighteen. You can do what you want, you know. You're not doing anything wrong. You're taking flying lessons. So what? Okay? Relax.” And very shortly she'd have her own license. She was more than qualified for it. When Pat had started flying in 1914, he hadn't even needed a license to fly then.

“What if he throws me out of the house?” She looked terrified and Nick laughed. He knew Pat better than that, and so did she. He made a lot of noise, and he was limited in his ideas and beliefs, but he loved his children.