The High Calling

by Gilbert, Morris

  They arrived at the airfield one day to find the maintenance men totally exhausted, trying to grab some sleep on the grass by the runway. Denny Featherstone and Keith Poe, Parker’s two lead mechanics, roused themselves when the women arrived, very glad to see them. Featherstone, burly and as muscular as a wrestler, filled them in on what had been happening as he munched on a fish sandwich, while the much smaller Poe filled up on cakes and cookies.

  “Well, it’s like this, you see,” Denny said. “The Germans have been sendin’ bombers over at low levels to knock out our radar towers.”

  “That’s very bad, isn’t it, Denny?” Kat asked.

  “You’ve got that right. A lot of the women who work in the stations got killed. Men too, of course.” He took a huge swallow of his coffee and then bit an enormous plug out of his sandwich. The hand he held it in was full of grease stains, but that didn’t seem to matter. “We’ve been awful busy around here. The planes come in all shot up, and we have to get ’em ready to fly again.”

  “That must be very hard,” she said. “What do you do if they can’t be fixed?”

  “We rob ’em for their parts. One of the things we had to do was put armor plating behind all the pilots and under the seat. That took a bit of doin’ to get ’em all ready.”

  Denny seemed to be enjoying explaining his job to a civilian, and he pointed to the other crew members in the area as he explained their various jobs. Some of them were lying flat on their backs on the grass sound asleep, while others were helping themselves to the food Kat and Meredith had laid out. There were the armorers, who were responsible for the ammunition and flares. The fitters were in charge of the engines and related controls, and the riggers were responsible for the overall structure of the plane. Denny told her that many of them had never been outside of their base, and many more went for days without even seeing their bunks or the inside of their mess hall.

  “Does it bother you that you don’t get any credit for what you do?” Meredith asked. “I mean, the pilots get all the headlines. People never see the work you do.”

  “Nah, that don’t bother us much,” Poe said. “The fliers, they know what we’re doin’. They’re quick to tell us how much we mean to them.”

  “Our boys are doing real good,” Denny said. “Brodie’s got fourteen kills now. That’s four more than Wing Commander Braden.”

  Kat just nodded. The business of killing the enemy seemed a necessary evil in the present conflict, but it was not something she felt she could rejoice over.

  Poe grabbed a sugar cookie and washed down a big bite with a cup of scalding coffee. He appeared to have asbestos lining in his mouth, for no coffee was ever hot enough to suit him. He smacked his lips, but there was a worried look around his eyes when he said, “Been a little friction between the wing commander and Brodie Lee.”

  “That’s enough of that,” Denny said roughly. “We don’t tell tales out of school. They’ll be all right. Natural enough there’d be a little fuss now and then as tough a job as they’ve got.”

  Both Kat and Meredith were intensely curious to hear more, but Featherstone had shut the conversation down, so they didn’t ask any more questions.

  Ten minutes later Featherstone cocked his head. “They’re comin’ in. Hey, you lazy blokes, get up!” He went around prodding the remaining sleeping men with his toe while Kat and Meredith moved to the edge of the field. Both of them watched the dots that were appearing to the south, and long before they could identify anyone, Featherstone growled, “Only eleven. One of them’s missing.”

  “Can you tell who’s missing?” Kat asked as the planes got closer.

  “Number two. It’s Blue Three.”

  “Who’s that?” Kat asked.

  “Brodie Lee.”

  Both women stared at the burly crewman, but neither said anything. They watched as the planes came in and rolled into place, the pilots crawling wearily out.

  “They’ll have to go give their reports first, miss,” Keith Poe said. “Then they’d probably appreciate a hot meal.”

  One of the pilots, however, did come over as the others filed toward the building where they would be debriefed. “Hello, Miss Winslow, and you too, Miss Bryce,” Bernie greeted. “I see you’ve brought some goodies for us again.”

  “Hello, Bernie,” Meredith said. She smiled nervously and poured a cup of coffee for the pilot. “What happened to Brodie?”

  Bernie Cox was the smallest man in the squadron. He looked more like a jockey than a pilot. He sipped his coffee and shook his head, a worried look in his eyes. “We met a flight of Stukas and pretty well whipped up on ’em, but you know we only have fifteen seconds of firing time with our guns, and all of us were pretty much out of ammo, and nearly out of fuel too. We had to do a long chase.” He sipped his coffee again and seemed reluctant to continue.

  “What happened, Bernie?”

  “Well, we saw a flight of German bombers, Heinkels, and Brodie took off after them. I called him back and so did the wing commander, but he didn’t answer.” He cast his troubled eyes up to the sky. “He should have been back by now. I’m worried about him.” He finished his coffee and set the cup on the table. “I’ll have to go in and give my report.”

  As Cox left, Kat said, “We’d better go make more coffee.” She started toward the truck but soon realized Meredith hadn’t followed her. She turned and saw that Meredith was staring at the ground. Kat went back to stand in front of her, noticing the strain on her face. “What’s wrong, Meredith?”

  She shook her head and looked down at her trembling hands that were clasped together.

  “Are you worried about Brodie?” Kat asked, putting her arm around the shorter woman.

  When Meredith looked up, Kat was surprised to see her eyes were moist and her lips were trembling. “I can’t go through it again. I just can’t!”

  Kat knew that Meredith was thinking about the loss of her husband. She knew little of the circumstances, but she knew that the death of Donald Bryce had been terrible for Meredith. They had not been married for long, and although Meredith rarely spoke of him, her voice was often unsteady when she did. Quickly Kat made up her mind. “Look, I can handle this alone. I want you to take a cab and go home and get some rest. Sleep if you can.”

  Meredith did not argue. She said not a word as Kat took her to the edge of the field and called a cab for her. When she put Meredith inside, she said, “Try not to worry. I’ll call you if we hear anything.”

  Meredith still did not answer, and as the cab drove off, Kat saw that her friend was slumped in the back seat. Kat went back to the truck and began to make more coffee. Fifteen minutes later the pilots all emerged from the building and headed straight for the truck. David Deere, leader of Yellow Flight, was in the lead, along with the two men who flew with him, Al Tobin and Orin Morris. Morris was a rather timid man, but David Deere made up for that with an oversupply of confidence.

  “Hello, Miss Winslow. What have you got for us today?” David asked.

  “Fried fish sandwiches with hush puppies and apple pie.”

  “Hush puppies? What’s a hush puppy?”

  “Here.” Kat picked up one of the round balls and handed it to him. “See how you like it.”

  David popped it into his mouth, and his eyes opened with surprise. “This is good! What’s it made of?”

  “It’s just corn bread fried in fat with some green onions added.”

  “Why do you call them hush puppies?”

  “The story I’ve heard is that back in the old days on the farm when the dogs would crowd around the table to try to get something the people were eating, someone would toss some of these little corn bread balls to them and say, ‘Hush, puppy.’ They’ve been called that for a long time where I come from.”

  The pilots gathered around, and Kat was kept busy dealing out the sandwiches and hush puppies. The men ate like starved wolves, and all of them complimented Kat mightily.

  “I’ll tell you what, Miss Winslow,�
� David Deere said. “I think I’ll marry you so I can get hush puppies all the time.”

  “Don’t listen to him, miss,” Trevor Park said, his eyes gleaming. “He’s already married.”

  “Sure, I am, but the Bible says two wives are better than one.”

  Kat laughed outright. There was a cheerfulness about David that was welcome in the sometimes tense environment. “Where does it say that? I don’t remember reading that.”

  He shrugged his burly shoulders. “It actually says two are better than one. Somebody forgot to put the word wives in there.”

  “You can’t even take care of one wife, much less two,” Parker said. He had joined the group and was enjoying listening to the banter. When he’d had his fill, along with the rest of the pilots, he told the men to try to get some sleep. He had a feeling they wouldn’t be able to sleep long.

  The men all thanked Kat again, and when they were gone, Parker said, “Let me help you clean up.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that.”

  “I don’t mind.” As they began to clean up, he asked, “What happened to Meredith?”

  “She was upset. I sent her home.”

  “You mean over Brodie?”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t know she was that close to him.”

  “I’m not sure she is. She’s still mourning the loss of her husband. I think she suffers when anything like that happens again.”

  Even as she spoke, the noise of a plane coming in caught Parker’s attention. He shaded his eyes with his hand but then shook his head. “I thought it might be Brodie, but it’s not.”

  “You’re worried about him too, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am. He shouldn’t have gone after those Heinkels by himself. He couldn’t have had much ammo left.” He saw that she was watching him with a nervous expression, and he tried to be more positive. “He might be all right, Katherine. Maybe he had to bail out. We’ll probably hear that someone’s picked him up.”

  Kat continued gathering the dirty utensils, but she could not forget Brodie. Finally she said quietly, “He’s not a Christian, Parker. It would be . . . terrible if he were dead.”

  Parker turned to face her at once. “You care for him, Katherine?”

  “No, not like you mean. But I do care for him in another way. We got very close after you left Georgia, Parker. He would stop in and cheer me up, and he was always upbeat and happy. Or seemed to be. I can’t even fathom the thought that he might be . . .” She could not bring herself to speak the word. “Well, we’d better get this mess cleaned up.”

  But Parker took her by the arm and turned her around, his face set with a peculiar expression. “Have you ever had second thoughts, Katherine, about refusing to marry me three years ago?”

  She could not answer, for in all truth she had wondered if she’d made the right decision. She could not admit this to Parker, however. “I try to put things like that behind me.”

  “You were looking for a high calling then from God. Have you found it?”

  “I . . . I’m not sure. I thought God wanted me to work with the mission here. It’s good work I’m doing, and I’m glad to do it. But I’ve always thought I would be doing something more than serving fish sandwiches and hush puppies.”

  Parker did not speak for a moment, and finally he said, “I don’t want what I’m going to say now to be a burden to you, Katherine—but I’ve never gotten over what I felt for you.”

  “You shouldn’t say that, Parker. You have a wife and a family. God’s given you a great gift. Your children are wonderful.”

  “Yes, they are, and I love them with all my heart. But I think you know that my marriage is a travesty, and I know you feel as I do that marriage is forever.” He started to say something else but then caught himself. He shook his head as if he were angry, then pulled himself together. “I should never have mentioned this. Please forget it.”

  He turned and walked away, and Kat watched him go. She knew that what he had asked would be impossible, that she would not be able to forget what he had just said. Not for weeks or months or maybe forever.

  ****

  Meredith had been tossing and turning for two hours. She did not want to have to take a sleeping pill, and more than once had almost decided to get up and read a book or pace the floor. She had come home from work the day before at Kat’s insistence but had been unable to sleep no matter how hard she tried. Kat would not hear of letting her go to work today, so she had stayed home again. While Kat worked the night shift at the hospital, Meredith had endured the loneliness of the evening and had finally gone to bed when it was almost midnight.

  There had been no letup from the grief she had felt at the airfield. She had willed the phone to ring, for somebody to call to say that Brodie was safe, but it had remained silent.

  Just as she was about to get up, a rap sounded on the door. She leaped out of bed, grabbing her robe. As she hurried to the door, she thought, What if someone has come to tell me he’s dead? She stood there for a moment in the darkness unable to move. “I can’t face it again,” she whispered. The knock was repeated, and she turned on the living room light. She slipped the latch and for one moment wished she did not have to open it, but she knew she had to hear the news, whatever it was.

  She opened the door—and caught her breath, for there stood Brodie Lee, grinning at her.

  “Sorry to come so late, but—” He broke off suddenly and the smile left his face when he noticed how pale she was and that her lips were twitching. “What’s wrong, Merry? Are you sick?”

  She did not answer. She couldn’t! She wheeled and walked over to the window, leaving Brodie standing there. He put his hat on a chair and followed her. “What’s wrong?”

  “Go away.”

  But he was entirely serious now. “Have you had bad news?”

  “You’re bad news! Now please go away!”

  He did not know how to take what was happening. “I went to the mission and you weren’t there. Then I went to the hospital, and Kat told me you weren’t feeling well. She wouldn’t say what was wrong. I came by to see how you were.” Brodie stood waiting for her to answer, but she did not move. He could hear a muffled sobbing and finally he reached out and turned her around. Her face was pale and tears were running down her cheeks.

  “Here. Sit down before you faint or somethin’.” He pulled her to the couch, keeping his arm around her. “Can’t you tell me what’s wrong, Merry? Can I help?”

  “I thought . . . I thought you were dead,” she said in a muffled voice.

  Brodie had grown tremendously fond of Meredith Bryce, and with his arm around her, he could feel the tenseness of her body and the tremors that were going through it. “I’m sorry to worry you.” She did not answer, and he began to explain. “I chased some Germans out over the Channel, and my engine conked out. I bailed out, and I got picked up almost right away by a British destroyer that was headed for Scotland. They couldn’t stop to let me off, and they couldn’t break their radio silence. Some kind of a secret mission. Anyway, there was no way I could call in. They let me off in Scotland. I had to catch a train back. I’m all right. Nothing to cry about.”

  But Meredith had not moved. She was obviously still struggling, and the tears were now running freely down her cheeks. Brodie felt entirely helpless. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She whispered, “I never cried once when Donald was killed.”

  Parker was no psychologist, but he knew Meredith was bound up tight and headed for real trouble. “Sometimes,” he said gently, “it’s the best thing to cry.” He pulled her into his arms, and she fell against him, sobbing. This was no dainty sort of crying. It shocked Brodie how she wept with great gulping sobs and clung to him fiercely. He made comforting noises, but mainly he simply held her and stroked her back until the sobs began to mitigate.

  She finally pulled away from him and sat back, and he reached into his pocket and gave her his handkerchief. She took it and wiped her fa
ce with it. “I’m sorry,” she said weakly.

  “It’s all right,” he said with relief. “I don’t think anyone ever cried for me like that before.”

  “It wasn’t just you, Brodie. I was worried, of course, but it’s all mixed up. I was thinking about Donald and about the other men who don’t come back, and it all caught up with me.”

  Brodie took the handkerchief from her and wiped away more tears that she had missed. “I don’t like to see you cry.”

  The room was quiet, and for a moment the two stared at each other. Something passed between them, and then suddenly color started to rise on Meredith’s cheeks. “You’d better go, Brodie. No man likes to be around a weepy woman.”

  But he shook his head. “No, not unless you’ll go with me. Let’s go get something to eat.”

  “It’s too late, but I’ll fix you something.”

  “All right, but I can’t help. I can’t even boil water without burning it.”

  “It won’t be much,” Meredith said as she got up. “How does a ham and cheese omelet sound?”

  “Sure, and anything else you find. Throw it in there.”

  Relieved to have something to do, Meredith moved around the kitchen putting the simple meal together. True enough, she had not wept over Donald when he died, but now she realized she should have. She marveled at the strength she had, even though she still felt a bit weak.

  As she fixed the omelet, Brodie began telling her stories of his youth in Georgia. Before long he even had her laughing. She put the omelet on a plate before him, and he ate heartily while she drank some of the tea she had made.

  Afterward they sat talking quietly, and the mood turned serious again. “I’m glad you’re all right,” she told him.

  “So am I.” He looked at her intently. “Are you okay now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’d better go. We’ll have the neighbors gossipin’ ’bout us—and I got my reputation to think of, you know.” He got to his feet, and she followed him to the door. He put his hat on and opened the door.