Texas Rich

by Fern Michaels

  CHAPTER SIX

  “I don’t know, Moss.” Billie pulled back on his hand, feet dragging as they crossed the tarmac to the little plane straining in the wind against the wires that anchored her to the ground.

  “Come on, Billie. I want to take you up. It’s important to me,” he insisted, urging her forward. “Look at her sitting out there, just waiting for us. You’ll love her. I promise you will.”

  “No, Moss, please,” she pleaded. “Can’t I just wait here?”

  “No, Billie, you can’t wait here. I want you up there with me. You’re married to a flyer and I want you to know what it’s like. Don’t you trust me?”

  There was such hurt in his eyes that Billie would have done anything to assuage it. She could never bring herself to cause him pain or disappointment, especially in herself. “Of course I trust you. It’s that machine I don’t trust. Mother says if God meant for us to fly, He would have given us wings.”

  “But He did, Billie. Only He didn’t attach them to our backs. Those are the wings He gave us. Now, will you stop being a silly little girl and take to the air with your man?”

  Billie followed behind Moss as though she were being led before a firing squad.

  “She’s a beauty, isn’t she? She’s a PT nineteen, a trainer, and safer than Ivory Soap.”

  The craft’s fuselage was painted a dark meridian blue and her wings, carried low under the main body, were painted a garish yellow. Billie saw nothing of beauty here, only that the cockpit was open to the sky. She knew a terrible fear. “Moss! There’s no roof! I’ll fall out!”

  “Not roof,” he corrected, “canopy. And no, you won’t fall out. You’ll be safely strapped in. You’ll love it, Billie. You will.”

  Moss was already involved in his ground check. His hands smoothed over the wafer-thin edge of the wings, testing the elevator flaps and trailing beneath to some unseen gadgetry. Billy watched him, eyes focused on those sensitive fingers as they ran over the skin of the aircraft. It was the way a man would caress a woman; delicately, worshipping, exploring.

  The hot wind blew relentlessly across the tarmac, ballooning Moss’s shirt and ruffling his dark, crisp hair. Her own slacks were flapping violently against her legs and the sun was already burning the tip of her nose. But Moss was oblivious to everything but the craft. He checked something near the tail, and as a final gesture he kicked one of the balloon tires.

  “She’s in great shape,” he declared. “C’mon, Billie, up you go!”

  Showing her where to step, Moss placed his hands firmly on her neat little bottom and shoved as she gracelessly climbed onto the plane and then down into the front seat.

  “Now tuck your hair up onto your head and put this on.” He handed her a leather helmet. “Without a canopy the wind’ll blow you to kingdom come. Be sure to pull it down firmly over your ears and watch out for that wire—it goes to the headset and plugs into the instrument panel.”

  Her fingers frozen with terror, Billie fumbled with the wind-tangled strands of hair, pushing them beneath the leather helmet. Moss was spitting on the inside lenses of the goggles and wiping them with the sleeve of his shirt. “Can’t have them fogging up, want you to see what it’s all about,” he said, handing them to her and instructing her to pull the band at the back of her head to secure them.

  She didn’t want to do this—she hated it already—but most of all, she hated Moss’s condescending tolerance. The excitement lighting his eyes wasn’t for her. It was for this garishly painted aircraft that could offer him something she couldn’t.

  Billie watched with dread as Moss released the guide wires holding the craft to the ground. The space inside the cockpit was small and narrow with barely enough shoulder room for herself, much less a man, but the space beneath the instrument panel was deep and long, built to accommodate long legs. Billie’s feet fell far short of the interior bulkhead, where they could have found purchase and helped to brace her against the motion of the plane. She felt as though she were dangling on her seat, frail and vulnerable.

  Moss slapped the fuselage twice at Billy’s left elbow before climbing into the seat behind her. The few inches of bulkhead separating them seemed miles wide, robbing her of his much needed closeness. When the sudden spurt of engine power turned the prop, slowly at first and then with the alarming speed and thrust of a turbine, Billie’s fingernails bit into the palm of her hands. The soft balloon tires bounced them down the runway as they gathered speed, jostling her in her seat, feet reaching for purchase to steady herself. She was unaware of a crackle in her ears until she heard Moss’s voice coming over the headset. “Take it easy, Billie. We’re almost up and then the going is smooth.”

  Billie squeezed her eyes shut against the sight of the tarmac speeding beneath the wings. A sudden burst of power, a last bounce, and they left the ground. “Atta girl,” Moss was saying, “easy now, easy.” Billie hung on to the sound of his voice, taking the reassurances deep inside her. It was the only contact between them and she clung to it: “Give the little lady a nice ride; it’s her first time up. Easy, sweetheart, easy.”

  Billie’s eyes popped open behind the protection of the goggles. Moss was sweet-talking the plane! That familiar loving note in his voice wasn’t for her at all, but for this damn piece of machinery with her bumpy riveted skin and whorish paint!

  “We’re going up, Billie. Hold on!” And the nose of the little trainer plane shot upward vertically. Billie gulped, swallowing past the painful lump of fear. Her eyes squeezed shut again and she decided not to open them again until she was once more standing on God’s own earth. She felt the wind against the exposed portions of her face, whistling past her ears. The engine vibrated, sending shivers through her body. She held a white-knuckled grip on the edges of her seat, praying that she would live past this moment into the next and the next until she was once again on the ground. A terrible heart-squeezing fear iced her veins and stole her air.

  “That’s my girl! You’re a beauty! A real beauty!” Moss cried, exhilarated.

  They were up for more than an hour, Billie clutching furiously to the sides of her seat, her stomach heaving. When Moss finally set the craft onto the runway and taxied to her reserved space on the tarmac, Billie had to pry her stiffened fingers loose, pressing them against her legs in order to work them out of their clawed posture.

  She had hated it, every minute of it. Worse, she now understood fully that airplanes were her rivals for Moss’s affection. An acid jealousy stirred in her at the realization, as though airplanes were flesh-and-blood women.

  After reattaching the guide wires, Moss came to help her out of the cockpit. His face was beaming, wreathed with smiles. “God, I can’t tell you how good that was. Every day I don’t fly I only feel half-alive!” His hand reached out beyond Billie to once again appreciate the sweep of the wing tip. “You’re a sweet little thing,” he said. “And you’re a sweet little copilot.” He threw his arms around Billie’s shoulder to hug her against him, leading her with long strides across the tarmac back to the hangar.

  When she came abreast of it, she abruptly tore away from Moss and entered the door marked “Ladies.” Staggering to her knees, she knelt before what she’d heard Moss call the “porcelain princess” and vomited.

  Billie and Moss moved into the master bedroom on the second floor of 479 Elm Street. Privacy was theirs:

  June gave way to July and the days were long and hot. Billie was plagued with morning sickness, which she tried to cover by not rising for the day until after Moss left for the Navy Yard. But Agnes had the eyes of a hawk and always seemed to be standing outside the bathroom door just as Billie made her wild dash each morning to retch in the bowl. And always there was the satisfied expression in Agnes’s eyes, which Billie mistook for gloating judgment. “Bad things happen to bad girls.” How often she’d heard Agnes repeat that smug little saying as she was growing up. By now her mother should have forgiven her little indiscretion. After all, she was married now. Happily married
to a wonderful man.

  There was no doubt in Billie’s mind that she was pregnant. Still, she never spoke the word aloud. Until a physician made it official, she was simply a young married woman with a delicate stomach. Every so often Billie was aware of how Moss’s glance went to Agnes, and sometimes it seemed that they had more in common than she had first realized. Moss didn’t exactly defer to Agnes, but he did seem to discuss things with her first. Where had this understanding between them come from? How had it happened? Hesitantly, she spoke of it to Moss, and he was quick to tell her it was her imagination. She believed him.

  Dinner was over—breaded pork chops, to which Moss had added ketchup. He liked to add a variety of spicy condiments to his food, especially to Agnes’s plain home-style meals. He liked to sink his teeth into thick rare beef or juicy fried chicken, not a pork chop that had been cooked to kingdom come or an indefinable meat loaf. The pork chops hadn’t even been center cuts: Rationing was something that never concerned the Colemans of Texas.

  “Whose turn is it to wash, yours or mine?” Billie asked, smiling across the table at her handsome husband.

  “You two argue it out. I have a meeting,” Agnes declared, rising from the table.

  Moss volunteered to dry. He disliked soapy water up to his elbows and under any other circumstances would have refused any kitchen duty at all. At home, they had cooks and housekeepers who handled the mundane chores of living.

  Billie liked being alone in the kitchen with Moss, doing all the little things that married couples did. Someday, they’d have a little house all their own and a swing in the backyard for their baby. “I heard the news this morning,” she said, scraping the plates into the trash. “The USS Enterprise has been assigned a new commander. A Captain Davis. Did you know that, Moss?” Now why had she said that? Why must she persist in punishing herself by mentioning ships and carriers and airplanes and then watch for the eager expression in his eyes?

  “Yes, I heard.” Christ, he’d give his right arm to be on that ship. Davis. Should he tell Billie now or later? Later always made more sense. Why mention it when he didn’t know if Captain Davis would remember him? Just because Davis had been in San Diego while Moss was in flight training didn’t mean the captain would go out of his way to honor Moss’s request for transfer to the Big E. He had never in his life wanted anything as badly as he wanted out of the Navy Yard and an assignment in the Pacific.

  He looked at Billie, who was humming along with the radio as she rinsed the dinner plates. She was all most men would dream of, but Moss knew he needed more than a pretty wife. He needed adventure, challenge; he needed to fly. His gaze lowered to Billie’s waistline. Once the pregnancy was confirmed, he’d make his move.

  Billie’s voice was so soft Moss had to strain to hear it. “They were talking about Midway,” she said, her arms immersed in dishwater. “You were talking about it only last week. Remember?”

  “How can I forget? The Big E proved herself and closed the argument against aircraft carriers.” Always when he talked about carriers Moss’s eyes lit from within and his slow, easy drawl quickened to a staccato. Billie felt the stirrings of panic. “Shore-based aviation had only a minor effect on Midway. High-level horizontal bombing is okay for land targets, but it’s ineffective against ships at sea. That’s why the Flying Fortresses failed where the fighter planes succeeded.”

  Moss was thinking of the Pacific map hanging in his quarters. He’d bet anything Guadalcanal was next on the Big E’s agenda. When he noticed Billie’s silence he looked up to see a great tear rolling down her cheek. “Hey, Billie, what’s wrong?” He dropped the dishtowel and gathered her into his arms. She cried softly into his chest. “I was just thinking of all those men and how they died. Moss, if anything ever happened to you, I’d die. I’d just die!”

  “Billie, nothing’s going to happen to me. Don’t cry.” He held her, soothing her, comforting her, thinking all the while what a bastard he was because soon, very soon, he’d leave her to join the ranks of the Pacific vanguard.

  Routine in the Coleman/Ames household had taken on new life. Billie busied herself with small chores around the upstairs bedroom, trying to make it as inviting as possible. She spent hours standing in line at the butcher shop for something she knew Moss would especially like for dinner. On occasion, she squandered the precious coupons on steak—he’d taught Agnes and Billie just how he liked his steak done, charred on the outside, raw on the inside—and then pleaded an upset stomach at dinner, settling happily for a poached egg. Moss seemed unaware of the sacrifices Billie made, although they didn’t go unnoticed by Agnes.

  As activities in the Pacific intensified, Moss spent more time at the Navy Yard, sometimes coming home well after midnight and going immediately to bed. While operations for the Pacific were sent directly through the West Coast and not Philadelphia, information did leak through and he was hungry for every morsel. He was well apprised of the escalation of the war in Europe, as it was part of his job, but it was always to the western skies that his attention would drift.

  When Moss arrived home late, Billie was satisfied to lie beside him propped up on a pillow and stroke his dark head. And every night, she’d pray that he would stay at the Navy Yard and not be sent off into battle.

  By the first weeks of August, Billie had resigned herself to morning sickness. She had missed her second period and was one week into her next cycle. It seemed to Billie that all of Moss’s and Agnes’s attention was focused on her belly. It was two days now since Billie had been to the doctor. Agnes had made the appointment. She had to know, and Moss needed to know. Billie told them she had a lifetime ahead of her to have babies. ,

  It was three in the afternoon when the telephone rang. Agnes, who was hovering about in the living room picking lint off the sofa, reached for it on the first ring.

  She found Billie in the kitchen drinking lemonade. Billie couldn’t remember her mother smiling this way before.

  “That was Dr. Backus. He says the rabbit died. That means you’re pregnant, Billie. Moss will be delighted.”

  Pregnant. It was official now. She was going to have a baby, Moss’s baby. She should be happy, ready to share in the joy; instead she was a tangle of confused emotions. She didn’t think she was ready to become a mother. Not yet. She still wanted to have Moss all to herself: She needed this time with him, wanted it. She would become big and ungainly, uncomfortable and awkward. Would Moss still want her? Would he still be as passionate and demanding in bed? She couldn’t comprehend how a couple could make love when the woman’s belly was sticking out to here! “You’re happy, aren’t you, Mother?” Billie asked quietly.

  “Certainly I’m happy, for you, Billie. And I’m sure that Moss will be just as delighted. You’ll see. I think we should wait until after dinner to tell him, don’t you? This isn’t something you just announce over the telephone.”

  Agnes was jubiliant. She felt as though a load of bricks had been lifted from her shoulders. It was a fact. Billie carried the Coleman heir. Moss Coleman, Jr. It was done. Now Billie’s and her future was secured, regardless of what happened or didn’t happen to Moss. The baby’s future, too. It was an afterthought.

  “Mother, I’m going upstairs for a while. If Moss calls, call me, all right? Even if I’m sleeping.”

  “Of course, Billie. You do seem a little peaked today. It must be the heat.” It couldn’t be anything else, Agnes thought. She wouldn’t allow it to be anything else.

  Billie lay back amid the mound of pillows with their lace edging. She was feeling an apprehension and dread that she couldn’t explain. She should be happy, exuberant. Instead she just wanted to cry. This pregnancy was going to make a difference, she knew it would. No matter what her mother or Moss said. It was going to make a difference. She slept, her pillow wet with tears.

  Billie was setting the table when the phone rang. Agnes answered, listened, mumbled something Billie couldn’t hear, and then hung up. “Moss won’t be home tonight. Take away his
plate.”

  Take away his plate, as though he were already gone. “Mother, why didn’t you let me speak to him? Didn’t he ask for me?”

  Agnes stared at her daughter. It was only natural that she was disappointed, although Agnes would never become used to Billie’s romanticism. “Dear, he recognized my voice and he just said to give you the message. I think he was in a hurry. There seemed to be quite a bit of commotion in the background.”

  Billie sank down into a chair, worry and disappointment dimming her features. “You really are a lucky girl, Billie,” Agnes said mildly, disguising her impatience. “You’re married to a man in the military and you must accept the fact that he will have duties to perform. Think of all those other wives whose husbands are thousands of miles away.”

  “What time is it?” Billie asked anxiously. “Let’s put on the radio and listen for the news. I just know something awful happened.” And then she exploded. “I hate this damn war!”

  Moss didn’t come home that night. The following night he didn’t appear or call. Billie felt a terrible, urgent need to talk to Moss. It had been two whole days. Didn’t he miss her? Was what he was doing more important than her and the baby? He didn’t even know about the baby.

  Dabbing her eyes, she went to the phone, dialed the Navy Yard, and asked to be put through to Admiral McCarter’s office. An unfamiliar voice answered the phone and explained that Lieutenant Coleman was not at his desk. Was there a message? Billie muttered something that passed for a negative and hung up. She hated the pitying expression in Agnes’s eyes that seemed to be saying there were going to be many times like this and the quicker she got used to it, the better. She’d never get used to it. Never.

  The next day, just when Billie was anticipating still another night without seeing her husband, Moss staggered up the walk. It was noon; she could hear the Angelus ringing. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot from lack of sleep and too many hours in smoke-filled rooms. His uniform, usually impeccable, was wrinkled and mussed. Kissing Billie briefly on the lips, he shook off her clinging arm. “I need a shower and I could go for a cold beer. I’ve got three hours before I have to get back and I haven’t had any sleep to speak of for two days, and no, Billie, I can’t discuss it with you. I should’ve stayed on the base, but I wanted to see you. Now I’m so damned tired I’m hardly worth your trouble. Get me that beer, won’t you?”