by Murray Pura
Becky threw up a hand. “Okay. I was just trying to be pleasant.”
“Don’t bother. It doesn’t suit you.” He looked at the airplane. “I’ll bet you can’t even do a decent barrel roll. Isn’t that why you’re afraid to take men up? Because you can’t cut it?”
Becky’s face settled down into a hard burn. “You really know how to push it past the point of no return, don’t you, Thunderbird?”
“Just taking my cues from you.”
“Get in. Backseat. Instructor up front.” She slid open the canopy and waved at one of the ground crew. “I need you to turn the propeller!” She gave Raven a glance so dark green it was black. “Let’s see if you have the stomach for combat flying. My hunch is you don’t.”
Raven climbed into the backseat. “Do your worst.”
She gave him a grim smile and adjusted her goggles. “My worst is my best. There’s a bag under your seat for when you toss your cookies, Thunderbird.”
He strapped himself in and put on his own goggles, offering up just a grunt in reply.
The sky was clear, the ceiling unlimited, and Becky put the plane into a steep climb and then let it fall and spiral around and around before going into a sharp dive and pulling up only a few hundred feet from the ground. She twisted her head around to look at Raven.
“You ready to walk on the wing yet, hotshot?”
“Yeah, but you better come out and hold my hand, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.” He began to laugh a deep laugh. “You even look like her, you know? Shirley Temple. She was all of, what, ten in the movie?”
Becky immediately went into a series of barrel rolls, so angry she didn’t bother to count them and had trouble reorienting herself when she leveled out. Raven was quiet. She thought he had passed out and glanced back hopefully. He winked at her.
“When does the stunt flying start?” he asked.
Becky had intended to only stay up for half an hour but she found Raven so infuriating that she did rolls and corkscrews and steep dives and sharp pull-outs for more than an hour-and-a-half, trying to get him to fall apart or beg for mercy or use the paper bag. But nothing seemed to break his calm. Finally she headed in to make a landing.
“Hey.” He tapped her on the shoulder. “When do I get to play the game?”
“Tomorrow. If you can still see straight. And Thunderbird?”
“What?”
“Don’t touch me.”
Before the propeller had stopped spinning Becky was out of the Piper and across the runway. She didn’t bother to watch him climb down. Grateful, he put a hand against the fuselage to steady himself, began to walk, almost dropped, clamped his hand to the plane again, counted to twenty-five, and headed slowly toward the office, walking as erectly as possible. She was not there when he stepped in. Flapjack looked up from his paperwork.
“How was that, Lieutenant?”
“She can fly, that’s for sure. Ought to be a combat pilot. Not that I’d tell her that.”
Flapjack put his hands behind his head. “She’s going to let you have the stick tomorrow. Says she hopes you kill yourself.”
“Well, that’s sweet of her. That would put her in jeopardy too, wouldn’t it?”
“Not if she bails out.” Flapjack grinned. “Still think she’s ugly?”
“As sin, sir.”
“Be here at seven. My driver will get you back to Wheeler.” Flapjack tapped his pen on the desktop. “It works with her.”
“Sir?”
“If you wanted her to go home thinking about you, Raven, today has been a success. You got under her skin.”
“If I got under her’s it’s because she got under mine first. I wasn’t raised that way, Mr. Peterson. My mother would smack my face for the way I talked to her. She’d probably kick me out of the house until I apologized to her on both knees and with three dozen red roses in my hands.”
“Wouldn’t work. Lockjaw tried roses after she slugged him. Almost crammed them down his throat.”
“It would be my mother’s idea. Not mine.” He opened the door and adjusted his aviator sunglasses. “You going to give her any other men pilots to work on?”
“Only civilian women for now. We’ll see how things work out with you. If you both survive, then sure, we’ll line ’em up. No one flies like her, Raven. Except maybe Amelia Earhart. And she’s gone.”
“They never did find her, did they?”
“Nope. She missed her fueling stop and went down in the Pacific.”
Raven was about to step outside when he glanced back. “Do you believe in reincarnation, sir?”
Flapjack frowned, his face creasing up. “No.”
“Neither do I. But if I did, I’d bet Becky was another version of Amelia. Sent by God to test all men.”
“Well, since you’re the only man in her life now outside of her father and brother, try not to fail the test. You’re representing all the rest of us red-blooded males.”
“I really have no interest in her, sir.”
“No? Tell me who you dreamed about when you show up here tomorrow morning. Seven sharp.”
“Yes, sir.”
Becky was waiting by her Piper J-3 at six-thirty. Raven showed up fifteen minutes later.
“Thought you’d thrown in the towel,” she said.
“I don’t know how to do that. Maybe you could teach me.”
“Why don’t we start with barrel rolls? You’ll probably want to do towels after that.”
“I’m game.”
They took off and Becky let him have the stick once they had plenty of air beneath them. “You can’t be casual about this, Thunderbird. The letter said you don’t believe there’s going to be a war. I don’t care what you believe. I’m not interested in getting a reputation for doing a bad job teaching army pilots how to get out of trouble.”
“Okay.”
“Not that I care if you do get into trouble. It’ll probably be your own fault and you’ll only be getting what you deserve.”
“Thank you for your confidence.”
“I don’t want it to look like I didn’t know what I was doing. I have my pride.”
“Are you running for office? When are the speeches over with?”
Becky turned around in her seat. “Be a wise guy, and eight weeks from now you won’t be any better at flying than you are today and Billy Skipp will give you a nice new infantryman’s uniform complete with a single pretty stripe.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, and I’ll have myself a good laugh every time I fly over your silly little head with its silly little tin pot strapped in place. Which would be great. Life has been rough and I could use as many good laughs as you can give me.”
“Life has been rough?”
Becky nodded. “You make my life rough, Thunderbird. So you might as well be considerate and provide me with the laughs as well.”
“Is there a barrel roll in our future?”
“Sure.”
She threw the plane sharply on its side and keep turning and turning, finally leveling out after she counted four. “You see that, tough guy? Now you do it.”
Blinking his eyes behind his goggles, clutching the stick more tightly than he would have liked, Raven began to bank the Piper to the left.
“Don’t bank!” shouted Becky. “There’s a fighter on your tail! He’ll just keep shooting you full of holes! Go left hard and fast! Like this!”
Becky put them into another quick roll. When she had leveled out she raised her right hand and opened and closed her fist. Raven knew it meant to relax. He loosened his grip.
She shook her stick and jabbed her thumb at him. She wanted him to take over the controls and try again.
“Go ahead. Go ahead.”
Raven flew straight and smooth for a few minutes. Then he banked left and did a slow loop and banked right and did another slow loop. His barrel roll was soft and round and he took his time. His dive was precise and gentle. Finally Becky tapped the top of her leather helmet to tell him
to relinquish the controls. She took them back to the airfield and landed the Piper quickly.
“Thunderbird!” She was hollering at him the moment she pulled open the canopy. “How did you get a call sign like that? You fly like an old man who’s afraid of speed. Peterson has souped-up Pipers that have almost three times the horsepower of the regular ones. They can do anything. If you wanted a pleasure cruise, why didn’t you buy yourself an old Curtiss Jenny instead of telling Uncle Sam you wanted to be a combat pilot?”
“I’d rather fly my P-36 than a Jenny.”
“You could be in a shooting war by this time next year. You won’t last a day against the enemy.”
Raven brought his sunglasses from a shirt pocket and put them on. “There won’t be a war and there won’t be an enemy.”
“There already is a war and there already is an enemy. Haven’t you seen the newsreels of the Germans bombing Poland and France and England? Of their tanks crashing through Russia and the Ukraine? Just the other week they were battering at the gates of Moscow.”
“Far away, Miss Whetstone. It doesn’t affect me.”
“It affects me!” she exploded. “My brother was in Nanking when the Japanese captured it. They raped and tortured and mutilated and murdered for months. If China had an air force as good as the Japanese it would never have happened. Has it ever occurred to you that innocent women and children might be counting on you some day to save their lives?”
Becky stalked off. Billy Skipp was standing by Flapjack’s office as she approached. She was used to seeing him and his wife at the house and, even though rage was all through her body and ripping apart the smooth skin of her face, she stopped to say hello.
“How’s it going with Thunderbird?” he asked.
“It’s not. There’s no point in my taking him up again. He has no fight in him. No passion. No heat.”
“Light a fire under him.”
“I’ve tried.”
“Try again.” Skipp took off his Ray-Ban aviators and cut into Becky with the eyes of a hawk. “There are three or four top pilots on Oahu right now. You’re one of them. Probably the best. If I could I’d give you Thunderbird’s rank and plane and send you up. But I can’t. So I’m doing the next best thing. Pouring you into him like water into a glass.”
“He’s not listening.”
“Make him listen. People will be counting on us to defend our borders soon enough.”
Becky shook her head. “He doesn’t believe that.”
“What matters is what you believe. You’re the teacher. Put it into him.”
“I can’t.”
“You have to. He should be as good a flier as you but he’s not. He has the whole package—eyesight, reflexes, self-control—but he doesn’t have the will to go hard and push the limits. You’ve always had that. It’s your gift. Share it.”
“He doesn’t want it.”
Skipp bit out the words. “Make him want it.”
“Thunderbird doesn’t like me, Colonel.”
“And you don’t like him. So what? You’re the trainer—train him. You’re the instructor—instruct him.”
He put his Ray-Bans back on and waited as Raven came slowly toward them. She opened the door to Flapjack’s office. Skipp gently took her by the arm.
“Becky. You can do this. I know you can do this. Or I wouldn’t have asked.”
She gave him a crooked smile. “You didn’t ask. I’m your employee. You’re my boss and this was an order, not a request. You made that very clear.”
“And are you going to follow orders?”
“I’m taking him up every day, aren’t I? I just think it’s a mission we ought to abort.”
Skipp took away his hand and turned to face Raven. “Not yet. Come up with another angle.”
“I don’t have any other angles.”
“I don’t believe that, Becky.”
TWELVE
Do you think I’m scrawny?”
“What?”
“And, well, ugly?” Becky stared into the mirror as her aunt looked up from the large quilt she was stitching. “My eyes aren’t the nice green that mother has. And they’re too far apart. And my mouth is too big. And I really am skinny.”
“This is too much vanity, Becky. You look the way you should look. Thank God and get on with your life.”
Becky sat down at the table where Ruth had spread her quilt. “I know he doesn’t like me. Why should he? I’ve been insulting him since the first day we met. It isn’t the Christian thing and certainly not the Amish thing, but I can’t seem to stop myself.”
“What do you think of him?”
“Well, I don’t like him any more than he likes me, and his tongue is just as sharp as mine.”
“How much prayer have you put into this?”
“Not much. I’d rather just walk away. But Flapjack and Billy Skipp won’t let me.”
“Talk to your father.” Ruth had been threading another needle and now she handed it to Becky. “Why don’t you work on that side of the quilt while we’re sitting here?”
“All right.” Becky began to thrust the needle through the fabric. “At least I’ll accomplish something.” She stitched for several minutes. “Dad is on Flapjack’s and Billy’s side.”
“Why? What’s his reason?”
“His reason is the same as their reason. Christian Raven is too slow in the air and they think I have something that he needs.”
“Something special?”
“I guess.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. Stuff.”
“Stuff?” Ruth took a sip from a glass of lemonade. “I think the word is spirit.”
Becky shrugged.
“Aren’t things going well with your other students?” Ruth asked.
“Swell. But Raven is a combat pilot and they aren’t. He could make a difference one day. The kind of difference that saves the Nankings of our world, you know? And I can’t reach him. I just can’t.” Becky stopped stitching and stared at the needle in her fingers. “He’s holding back.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why.”
“I suppose a lot of men think the same way about you.”
“What?”
“They’re polite. They ask you to the movies. To the restaurant. To a dance. And it’s always no. Usually with a fair bit of heat attached. They probably wonder what a pretty girl like you is doing sitting around at home every evening. What’s holding her back? they must be asking themselves.”
“Let them ask. There will never be another man for me. Never.”
“They don’t know that. They don’t know your story, about what happened in Pennsylvania. They don’t know why you are who you are and why you act the way you do. It’s the same with Christian Raven, isn’t it? Don’t you think there’s a good reason he’s holding back?”
“Who knows?”
“You have a reason for why you won’t date a man. He must have a reason he won’t fly as hard and fast as you want him to. If you find out what it is, you still may not be able to help him but at least you’ll understand him.”
“Never in a million years will he let me in on something like that.”
Ruth put fresh thread through the eye of her needle. “He might if you let him in on what happened with Moses Yoder.”
“What? I’m never going to tell a person like that about Moses!”
“‘A person like that’?” Ruth pulled the needle through a corner of the quilt. “It’s not as if there aren’t stories going the rounds. Why not tell him the truth and let God take it from there?”
“What stories?”
“That you cut your hair off with a knife. That you had a friend killed in a plane crash and you were the one piloting the plane.”
“What?”
“In church last week a woman asked me if it was true that you had been married and that your husband had divorced you because you wouldn’t give up flying.”
Becky put down he
r needle. “Why are so many people talking behind my back?”
“There’s always talk going on behind all our backs. Now and then you have to decide where and when you’re going to refute it. And who you think really ought to know the truth. Do you think Christian Raven deserves to know the truth?”
“Christian Raven! He doesn’t deserve anything.”
“So you’re content that he thinks you chopped off your hair with a butcher knife and killed the man you loved when you flew poorly and crashed your plane?”
“I don’t care what he thinks.”
“Well, then, you’re back where you started. You don’t know why he’s the way he is, and he thinks he knows why you’re the way you are but he’s wrong.”
Becky got up. “I need a break.”
The house Flapjack had found for the Whetstones was on a slope. To the south she could make out the waters of Pearl Harbor, and far to the left, Diamond Head. She walked through a grove of palm trees and looked toward Wheeler Army Airfield miles to the north. Watching the tiny dots of planes in the late afternoon sky she thought about Christian Raven without meaning to or wanting to. He might be flying his P-36 now—smooth, fluid, controlled, and without even the slightest hint of fire in his bones.
He’d never have made it as a barnstormer. We’d have given him the little kids and their grandparents to take up for nice gentle rides.
She sat down on a rock. Now all she could see were palm fronds and pineapple plants. Without planning to, she began to pray, talking to God out loud as drops of light fell on her arms and face through the palm branches.
He said he believed in God but I don’t really have any idea what he believes in. Of course we’re not on speaking terms, are we? More like sniping terms. But I suppose in the end it doesn’t matter what he does or doesn’t believe or how he acts toward me or why he is the way he is. It just matters how I respond or act toward him. I haven’t done a very good job, Lord. I haven’t acted like a Christian in any way that you would recognize. I’ve been pretty nasty.
And not just to him. To all the pilots I’ve met. It’s not like any of them pinned my arms behind my back and forced me to kiss them. They just wanted to ask me out and I’m still so upset about Moses all I could do was snap at them—“How dare you?” I expect all these men to know what happened in Pennsylvania and that I’ve given my heart away to another for all time, and they don’t know anything about Moses or the Amish or what happened before we came here. I haven’t been fair, have I? Not sure what to do next. I can’t stand the thought of apologizing to Christian Raven.
