The Wings of Morning

by Murray Pura

  “Mustard powder and seed mixed with the white of eggs and flour,” recited Lyyndaya. “Placed within flannel cloth.”

  “Exactly. Remove it every thirty to forty-five minutes, wait a quarter hour, then apply it again. Exchange the ingredients for fresh ones every couple of hours.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “You might want to feed her my recipe of garlic, chives, and red onions. Do you like chives, Ruth?”

  “I like chives…I am not so sure…about garlic.”

  “It may very well help you. Also steam. This can open up the lungs and airways.” He was looking down at Ruth. “We will use everything we know to help you.”

  “Do I…have it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do they call it…the Spanish influenza, the Spanish flu?”

  “Because there was so much of it in Spain this past spring,” Dr. Morgan explained.

  “What started it? What caused…it?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Can you cure me…sister?” She weakly reached a hand out to Lyyndaya, who took it in both of hers and squeezed gently.

  “We healed Emma,” she responded. “With God’s help.”

  Dr. Morgan patted Ruth on the arm. “Leave the cure to us and to divine providence. I will go and ask your mother to make up a tea for you. Lyyndaya, we will require the mustard poultice.”

  “Of course.”

  “But let me have five minutes alone with your father and mother first.” He slipped out the door, shutting it softly.

  “Such a silly argument we had last Sunday,” murmured Ruth.

  “It was the heat.” Lyyndaya smiled.

  “You think so?”

  “I do. We shouldn’t have been out in the sun for so long.”

  She continued to hold one of Ruth’s bluish hands between the two of hers.

  “What do you hear…about your knight in shining armor?” Ruth asked.

  There was a chair by the bed and she sat down in it. “Jude is a captain now. Commanding an entire squadron.”

  “He has not been hurt?”

  “No.”

  “And he has not hurt another…?”

  Lyyndaya smiled. “No, he has not, and he never will.”

  “But he fights—to keep his men fighting.”

  “He fights to keep his men alive.”

  Ruth sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “Such faith you…have. In this boy. In the God…you pray to for this boy. I wish we all had your trust…your innocence.”

  “But I don’t think of it as innocence,” Lyyndaya responded softly. “I think I have seen too much this past year to call myself an innocent. I prefer to think of myself as hopeful.”

  “Like—Christian’s companion in Pilgrim’s Progress.” She turned her pale eyes on her sister. “Lyyndy, do you think—I’m going to die?”

  “No.”

  “Will you give me a kiss on the cheek? My Hopeful? But…I will understand if you are afraid…”

  Lyyndaya leaned forward across the bed. “I’m not afraid. I was in Emma’s room for a week. Perhaps I’m immune.” She kissed her sister on one side of her face, then gently kissed her on the other.

  Ruth managed to get her arms around Lyyndaya’s neck. “Why would you be immune…and no one else?”

  “I don’t know. Is it because God wants me to nurse others that are precious to him back to health?”

  Ruth laughed quietly. The pain of the laughter made her wince, but she couldn’t stop herself from laughing a second time. “I am precious. Emma is precious. You don’t think you are precious? You don’t think God cares about you…as much as he does for those who are sick?”

  Lyyndaya shrugged.

  Ruth patted her on the cheek. “My sweet sister. I know one person who thinks you are precious—who counts you as more precious than even I do.”

  Lyyndaya kissed her sister a final time on her brow and then sat back, amused, a smile playing about her lips. “Ja, and who is that? Mama? Papa? Edward at the post office?”

  “You know who it is. He adores you. Every time I saw…the two of you together it was in his eyes. Even when Emma was hovering around and flirting.”

  “Oh, stop, Ruth—you exaggerate, he could never make up his mind between Emma and me.”

  Ruth made a small flicking motion with her hand. “That’s what you thought…and Emma thought. Maybe he thought it too sometimes. But I never believed it. When my eyes looked, I knew. When I prayed, I knew. Sick and dying, I still know.”

  “You’re not dying.”

  Ruth closed her eyes. “I know what you do not know…because in this one thing you would not permit yourself to hope…or to believe. Jude, your Jude, your crazy boy…he would gladly give his life for you.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  The sky was a flat blue calm. It reminded Jude of lakes he’d seen in Minnesota when he was eight or nine and his father had taken him to visit an uncle who lived in the north of the state.

  He rubbed his gloved hands roughly up and down over his nose.

  Lucille was cruising at twenty-two thousand feet and the September air was sharp and clear with a good bite to it.

  He checked his watch. His men were late. They were supposed to be flying formation below him by now. Jude glanced toward Nancy. There was a cluster of black dots rising from the green and brown earth. That would be them.

  A look toward Metz revealed nothing. Visibility from the cockpit of a SPAD was not all Jude could have wished, but he was certain no German plane was in that vicinity. Still, he hoped his squadron might pique some interest as they moved closer to enemy lines. Perhaps a Jagdstaffel might appear and challenge them. Then perhaps even Schleiermacher might show up with the German fighters. Or, as was his preference, haunt the edges of any ensuing air battle, hoping to catch a solitary target off his guard.

  He drifted over into German territory. “Archie”—antiaircraft fire—burst angrily in red and black far below him. When his squadron finally arrived and crossed over, the shots were above and below and all around them. They ignored the bursts and carried on at sixteen thousand feet. Jude counted the squadron craft, recognizing each different camouflage scheme of light greens and forest greens and earth browns, knowing each number by heart, connecting each plane with a face and a man he realized he loved dearly—Zed, Billy, Tex, Sam Baker from Wisconsin, Timmy Erwin from Louisiana, Jack Ross from Nevada—even Ram Peterson, Flapjack, who’d escaped from the German camp where he’d been held. He had spent a harrowing week crawling through no-man’s-land hoping he wouldn’t be shot by French, British, or American troops. In the end, it was the Canadians who’d rescued him and driven him to Nancy and the aerodrome, fed, cleaned up, and in a fresh set of clothes, the red flannel shirt making the flyer complain the Canucks had dressed him up like a lumberjack.

  “You’re Swedish, aren’t you?” Billy Skipp had pointed out.

  “Everyone should have a go at no-man’s-land,” Flapjack had responded. “It’ll put red blood in your veins and hair on your chest. You know, I imagine our northern neighbors recognized these qualities and decided to dress me suitably as a symbol of North American manhood.”

  “How long were you mucking about in the barbed wire and rats?” Jude had asked.

  “The Canucks found me on day six.”

  “It must have given you a different perspective on the war and life.”

  “You mean that I ought to be thankful to God I fly an aeroplane?”

  Jude had smiled. “I wasn’t preaching a sermon, Peterson.”

  Flapjack had been busy cleaning the bean sauce up from his plate with a thick slice of bread while they talked. “It’ll do wonders for your Christian faith and prayer life. I highly recommend it.” Then he’d pointed his hunk of bread at Jude. “Though I would suggest traveling only by night and bearing south by west rather than north. The Heinies notice movement in the daylight, for some reason. And the heaviest concentrations of their troops are in the north.”

&nb
sp; “That’s a spiritual lesson I think I’ll skip,” Jude had replied, pushing away from the lunch table.

  “If God wills,” Flapjack had quipped.

  Now, as he sat in his SPAD, Jude suddenly noticed movement from the direction of Metz. He began to count—four, five, six, seven. It was a Jagdstaffel. And they were flying Schleiermacher’s kind of plane, the Fokker D.VII. But as they rose to meet the threat from Jude’s squadron and their colors and markings became clear, he couldn’t spot the nine of diamonds or the blue paint that would spell Heinrich Schleiermacher to any Allied aviator. But then, as Jude reminded himself, it was rarely the German ace’s style to fly with a group. If he was around, he’d show up somewhere else and by himself.

  Minutes before the two squadrons were about to engage, that was exactly what happened. Jude had his eyes on his men and, as was his custom before a fight, was praying for each of them one at a time, watching as they prepared to dive down into the German planes, which were already beginning to fire. Out of a white cloud directly below him, at twenty thousand feet, a blue aircraft with black Brunswick crosses on its wings appeared. It shadowed Jude’s squadron, waiting for the right moment and the right opportunity to strike. When it banked slightly to follow Billy Skipp, the nine of diamonds on its fuselage was obvious.

  Jude knew why the German hadn’t seen him and was leaving himself open to attack. Jude had positioned himself carefully so anyone looking upward for him would catch only the glare of the sun. He was also passing in and out of the same intermittent cloud cover as Schleiermacher—sometimes visible, sometimes not. And the other pilot wasn’t used to having aircraft hover over him at twenty-two or twenty-three thousand feet. He wasn’t used to the SPAD and its capabilities. The German ace was sure of himself and thinking only of his next victory.

  “The Lord,” Jude whispered, “has delivered you into my hands.”

  He began to edge his plane, Triple One, slowly downward so he would be within striking distance in a few minutes.

  The dogfight was already swirling all over the sky below him, Fokkers chasing SPADs and SPADs hunting Fokkers. Tracers zipped yellow and white from one aeroplane to another. A Fokker began to corkscrew, flames pouring out of its tail and fuselage. Then it fell from the sky and Billy Skipp broke away to follow it down. Schleiermacher banked and stayed on top of the redheaded boy. When he felt Billy was least on his guard and far from the protection of his comrades, Jude knew the Blue 9 would leap and tear him to pieces with his guns. But Jude wouldn’t give the German even another instant to decide when to go after Billy. He pushed his joystick forward and Lucille screamed into a sharp dive. In seconds Jude was in range and opened fire.

  The German twisted his head and looked back in shock and fear. Jude kept firing. The Blue 9 went into a dive of its own. Both the Fokker and the SPAD shrieked past Billy, who was startled to see not only Schleiermacher, but Jude as well, race past him. If the German went left, so did Jude. If he steepened his dive, so did Jude. When he pulled up and tried to loop around on Jude’s tail, Jude pulled the same stunt and kept his sights on the German’s rudder. Less than a minute after Jude had attacked, the Fokker seemed to lose control and drop into a lazy spin.

  “I’m not that stupid,” Jude hissed.

  He followed Schleiermacher down and, to let the German pilot know he was wise to the ploy, fired a burst into the fuselage. Suddenly the Fokker pulled out of its spin and began to flick back and forth to get out of the SPAD’s sights. Jude stayed with him, firing again and again. The Blue 9 steered a course for Metz. Jude roared up on him and aimed his guns. Words came into his head—And Agag said, Surely the bitterness of death is past. And Samuel said, As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women. And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal.

  His shots took out the Fokker’s rudder, and the blue fighter began to swerve from side to side. He crept closer and this time put the back of Schleiermacher’s seat in his sights.

  Suddenly more words rushed into his mind—Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.

  Jude hesitated before making the killing shot. It was not only the words that disturbed him, it was the voice that had spoken them. Not his voice or Bishop Zook’s or some other preacher’s. It was Lyyndaya’s.

  Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

  It seemed as if the old game of pretending that Lyyndaya was in the cockpit had taken on a new twist. Her green eyes touched upon him with an intensity he couldn’t ignore. It seemed to him she took his hand and squeezed it and her face was only inches from his own when she spoke—Love your enemies, Jude, bless them that curse you, do good to them which hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.

  It wasn’t only that he felt the presence of the woman he loved in his aeroplane. He could not deny he had a strong sense of the presence of God as well. He closed his eyes, in the briefest of moments prayed one of the most important prayers of his life, then threw his joystick to the left and roared up on Schleiermacher’s side. The German stared over at him and saw the three ones on the fuselage. Jude, using unmistakable hand movements, pointed at the enemy pilot, then pointed back behind them to the Allied lines. He did this several times until the German pilot nodded and began to turn his plane, which was sluggish due to the loss of most of the rudder and a large section of fabric from one wing.

  Jude followed him closely as they flew west. Once Schleiermacher attempted to descend and bank left, but Jude fired a burst over his head. When the German glanced back, he pointed again to the Allied lines. After that, his Fokker responding heavily to his hands, Schleiermacher made no further attempts to escape his captor.

  Suddenly they were surrounded by an escort of SPADs, one after another forming up on the left and right. Jude counted them. His whole squadron had returned from the vicious dogfight with the Jagdstaffel. He saw holes in wings and fuselages, as well as scorch marks where fires had flared up and died, and Zed was leaking oil as if writing in the sky with a thin line of India ink, but they were all there.

  Thank God, he thought to himself. Thank God.

  There was no Archie when they crossed the lines from east to west. The German antiaircraft gunners recognized the blue Fokker, and the British and French gunners recognized the SPADs. Zed and Billy, in the lead on Schleiermacher’s right and left, began to turn south for Nancy and their aerodrome. The German ace didn’t need more direction than that. His D.VII wobbling, he banked left and dropped in elevation.

  Jude couldn’t honestly say that his spiritual experience in the skies over the German Empire had brought him to the point where he loved his enemy. But he did know he no longer desired Heinrich Schleiermacher to crash and die.

  He drew up alongside the German aviator again and pointed down. Schleiermacher nodded and, likely relieved to be landing an aeroplane that was pitching from side to side more and more violently, immediately began to lose altitude. Jude stayed with him so that, when they touched down, they did it simultaneously and side by side. The German made a perfect landing with a plane that seemed ready to fall apart, and Jude couldn’t help but admire him for his flying skills.

  All the SPADs landed and the men came running toward Jude and Schleiermacher. The ground crew and “Ironwood” Jackson were already there—as well as a reporter from the Boston Globe who had been hanging around for days, hoping for a dramatic story that would get him “above the fold” when he wired it back to America. He asked the German to pose for a shot, then Jude, then he wanted the whole squadron to stand for a picture until Jackson pushed him aside. His eyes locked with Jude’s.

  “What do we have here, Captain?” he asked.

  Jude had pulled off his leather helmet and goggles. “I’ve brought you the Pegasus, sir.”


  Jackson turned to the German ace, who was standing by his plane. There was blood running from the sleeve of the German’s flying jacket onto his hand. Nevertheless, he had accepted an American cigarette from Jude’s head mechanic, Mickey, and was smoking it, ignoring his wound.

  “You’re hit,” Jackson said to the captured pilot, indicating his injured hand.

  The German came to attention and saluted Jackson. Jackson returned the salute. Schleiermacher lifted the hand with the blood on it. The other held the cigarette. “It is—small thing.” He looked at Jude as the young man came toward him. “I must—thank you—for—my life.”

  “Liebe deine Feinde,” Jude responded. Love your enemies.

  Schleiermacher was startled. “Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

  Jude nodded.

  The German pilot asked, “Sie sind religiös?” Are you religious?

  Jude replied, “Ich glaube an Jesus Christus.” I believe in Jesus Christ.

  “My father is—pastor—yet we are still—at war,” said Schleiermacher.

  Jude nodded. “Möge Gott uns verzeihen.” May God forgive us.

  Astonishing himself, he extended his hand. The German put the cigarette in his mouth and gripped Jude’s hand with his good one. “Es freut mich, dass ich Sie nicht umgebracht habe,” Jude told him. I am glad I did not kill you.

  Schleiermacher smiled. “Ich auch.” I am too.

  The others, listening to this German flying back and forth, were surprised when the two men began to laugh.

  “His wound needs to be tended to,” Jackson broke in gruffly. “You Krauts can chitchat later. Before we send him to prison camp, where he’ll get better care than our boys in their graves received from his murderous hand.”

  Two guards stepped forward to take Schleiermacher for treatment. As they led the captive away past the knot of American pilots and ground crew, with the reporter from the Boston Globe trailing after them, Jude called, “Wieviele Männer haben Sie verloren?” How many men have you lost? Schleiermacher looked back at him as he walked away. “Genau wie Sie, Weisse Ritter. Gar zu viele, dass die Mütter in Frieden wären.” Just like you, White Knight. Far too many for the mothers to be at peace.