by Janet Dailey
Individuality was further smothered by the issuance of regulation flight gear. In addition to the leather battle jackets, the parachutes, flight caps, and goggles, they received standard Army khaki flight coveralls.
When they returned to the barracks later that day, Eden shook out the jumpsuit given to her and looked at the inside tag. “These are men’s coveralls,” she protested to the rest of her group.
Aggie had already unzipped the front of hers to try it on. As she stepped into it and pulled it up so she could put her arms through the sleeves, the others stared at the way it fit her six-foot frame. The shoulder seams extended two inches past the width of her shoulders and the material sagged around her legs and hips like a deflated balloon.
“It’s too big,” Aggie said in surprise, while everyone else hastily tried on their own.
“Good grief, they look like those outlandish ‘zoot suits’ the Mexicans are wearing in California,” Marty complained as she watched Eden struggle to tighten the belt on her flight suit so it would at least look as if she had a waist.
“Do you suppose they’ll shrink?” Mary Lynn suggested hopefully.
“Maybe they will—” As Marty caught sight of the petite brunette, laughter exploded from her. The sleeves were so long they hid her hands, and the crotch hung down around her knees. Mary Lynn tried to take a step and tripped on the bottoms of the pants.
“They don’t really expect us to wear these, do they?” Eden wondered for all of them.
Only Mary Lynn’s appeal for a smaller suit was granted. The rest had to make do with what they were issued. The smaller-sized coveralls didn’t improve the baggy fit of the style when Mary Lynn tried them on.
“Just call us the glamour girls,” Eden joked feebly while she fastened the straps of her parachute, which ran uncomfortably between her legs.
For the time being all they could do was grumble about the fit of the jumpsuits as they were again called to fall into formation. In ragged columns, they marched toward the flight line, slowly making the transition into a military unit.
A large, circular pool was located in the middle of the base. Its low sides were constructed of stone with a cement cap around the lip. In the center of the reflecting pool of water, a fountain rose out of a stone base. Word spread through the ranks identifying the pool as the Wishing Well. A scattering of coins shimmered in the bottom where the sunlight caught them. The male trainees here before them had tossed the coins for luck to ensure a satisfactory check ride.
But it was the planes parked along the flight line that generated the most excitement. The ready room, where they gathered to wait for the instructors to call them individually, had windows all along the front, facing the parked planes. A motley assortment of tables and chairs was scattered about the room for the use of the thirty-plus women trainees in the flight group, and a Coke machine stood in the corner to ease their dry-mouthed excitement. Marty’s heart thumped against her ribs, betraying her eagerness. She’d never flown anything more powerful than her brother David’s Piper Cub.
“Martha Jane Rogers!” A deep, male voice boomed her name, and she came to her feet, flinching at the dreaded use of her given name.
“Martha Jane?” Chicago laughed and slapped at Marty’s leg when she passed by.
But it seemed unimportant as her legs stretched into long, eager strides to carry her across the ready room to the huskily stout man who had called her name. He was standing by the door with a clipboard in his hand, chewing on an unlit cigar. The earflaps on his cap were turned up, the straps dangling to create a comical sight, but the tough and unrelenting expression on his round, bulldog features didn’t invite a smile.
“You Rogers?” He swept her with cold eyes.
“Yes, sir.” Marty pushed her chin out, refusing to be intimidated by his gruffness. “Everyone calls me Marty.”
“I’m not everyone, Rogers,” he said flatly.
“No, sir.” She lowered her chin a fraction while her jaw tightened and she struggled to contain the quick retort she wanted to make.
His attention appeared to shift to the clipboard. “How come you sound so hoarse? Have you got a cold or something?”
“No, sir. I always sound like this,” Marty informed him.
He gave her a hard, short glance, then looked back at his clipboard. “My name’s Turner Sloane, and I’m going to be your instructor for this primary phase of your flight training. Any objections?”
“No, sir.” But she pulled in a deep breath to hold on to her patience and forced a pleasant smile on her mouth when he looked up.
“It wouldn’t do you any good if you did.” He tucked the clipboard under his arm, then pushed his hands into his pockets.
“That’s what I thought.” Marty’s smile grew wider and lost its pleasantness as in silent disgust she watched him manipulating the fat cigar to the other side of his mouth. All the instructors were civilians, mostly pilots who were too old to qualify—like Turner Sloane—or who couldn’t pass the stiff Army physical.
“That smart mouth is going to get you in trouble, Rogers.” He tilted his head back, his gaze narrowing, and Marty realized she was a good inch taller than he was.
“Yes, sir.” It was very difficult to keep her mouth shut. Even that response had a hint of sarcasm. Marty had a strong suspicion that he was deliberately needling her.
“Are you ready?” That cigar held between his teeth made every sentence come out in a kind of sneer.
“Yes, sir.” Her own militarily correct responses were beginning to grate on her nerves. But she wanted to fly, whether this man wanted to teach her or not.
He took the cigar out of his mouth to bark gruffly, “Then get going.” As if this whole conversation had been her idea.
Swallowing the hot rush of temper, Marty used that fire of energy to push herself out the door ahead of him and into the coolness of a west Texas winter day. Outside, she pulled up to wait for him, her gaze running impatiently to the rows of nosehigh aircraft parked on the hangar’s apron, nearly thirty that Marty could see. The area was astir with activity, planes taxiing while instructors and trainees made their walk-around, or ground inspection to visually check the plane’s airworthiness.
With a wave of his hand, Turner Sloane singled out the trainer they’d be flying. Marty suppressed the urge to run ahead and shortened her stride to keep pace with her slow-walking instructor, but her gaze devoured the plane.
That spurt of antagonism she’d felt toward her argumentative instructor was forgotten as she listened intently while he described the features of the Fairchild PT-I9, its takeoff and landing speeds, its stalling characteristics, its cruising speed, fuel consumption and range. Marty stared at the low-winged plane with its open cockpits, the forward one for the pilot and the rear cockpit for the passenger, or in this case the instructor. A high charge of nervous excitement had her stomach churning and her hands itching for the feel of the stick. She trailed a hand along the edge of a wing. The metal almost seemed alive.
“Are you going to stand here gawking at the plane all day or what?” Sloane challenged her belligerently.
Stung by his mockery of her awe for the plane, Marty made a sharp denial. “No.”
“Well, what are you waiting for? Climb up there in the front seat.” He jerked a hand toward the open cockpit.
Closing her mouth, Marty climbed onto the low wing and walked forward to the front seat. Awkwardly, she maneuvered herself into it, hampered by the bulky flight suit and the parachute straps between her legs. By the time she had buckled herself in, Sloane was standing on the wing. After he had shown her the location of the instruments and gone over the operations with her, he made sure she had on a helmet and earphones so she could hear his instructions from the rear seat above the engine noise.
“But what if I want to talk to you?” There was no microphone for her use.
“I am the teacher and you are the student. I do the talking and you do the listening,” he stated and didn’t cr
ack a smile. Marty held her tongue and stared at the instrument panel. It was becoming clear that this was not going to be fun. But if Turner Sloane thought that was going to dampen her enthusiasm for flying, he was greatly mistaken.
Within seconds after Turner Sloane climbed into the back seat of the open cockpit, he was barking in her ear. When the 175-horsepower engine roared to life, so much more airplane than she’d ever flown before, the vibrations added to the excited trembling of her own nerves. All her senses were alive, her perceptions heightened.
As they taxied away from the apron under Sloane’s pilotage, Marty felt the movement of the jointly controlled rudder pedals under her feet. The tail-wheel aircraft had a typically nose-high attitude which made it next to impossible to see anything in front. He S’ed the plane down the taxi strip, curving left and right in order to have a view of what was ahead of them.
The hammering voice in her ear constantly reminded Marty that she wasn’t along for the ride. But she was all concentration as he aimed the plane down the center of the runway. The roll was begun, the engine thundering with full throttle and the wheels bouncing roughly over the ground as the plane gathered speed. Her throat tightened as she kept watching the airspeed indicator.
Then came that moment when the vibrations stopped and as the plane lifted off the ground the engine roared smoothly. All the anxieties and tensions seemed to fall away from her. Marty smiled with the utter calm and confidence that filled her.
The sensation of speed abated as the plane climbed effortlessly into the high, gray sky, staying well below the cloud ceiling. The altimeter needle rotated, marking off the altitude they gained in hundreds of feet. The small, dusty town of Sweetwater lay to the east. Marty spied the gypsum plant and a small refinery, highly visible landmarks in this west Texas terrain of mesquite and grease wood.
The stick pressed against her knee as the plane banked to the north. Below her, all the roads seemed to have been laid by a compass, running either north-south or east-west. It was a country meant for flying, with a lot of open sky.
After the plane had attained the desired altitude, Turner Sloane leveled it out. They had reached one of the practice areas. Two other PT-19s were already in the vicinity, doing maneuvers.
“All right, Rogers, you take the stick,” ordered the rough voice in her earphones. “I want you to make a simple, slow turn to the right.”
There was a surge of adrenaline through her system as her hand gripped the stick between her legs. That exhilarating sense of power was nearly all-consuming when Marty gently banked the plane to the right and felt its instant response. When the turn was complete, she smoothly brought the wings back level with the horizon.
“What’s the matter, Rogers?” came the caustic voice. “Was that too hard for you? You lost thirty feet in altitude, and the ball never saw the center of the turn-and-bank indicator. Try it again, and this time use some rudder.”
So it went, with Turner Sloane finding fault with everything she did. Marty felt as green as a raw beginner. It was one of the most frustrating experiences in her life.
Less than an hour later she heard, “That’s enough for today, Rogers,” ordered in a voice that sounded riddled with exhausted patience. “Take a heading back to the field.” For a split second, Marty froze. Her head swiveled in panic while she tried to get her bearings. “What’s the matter, Rogers? Are you lost?”
“When he said that to me”—Marty’s hands were doubled into fists as she recounted the story to her baymates—“I wanted to take those earphones and jam them right up his—”
“Careful, Marty,” Mary Lynn cautioned her.
“—butt,” she offered as a concession.
“Did you know where you were?” Aggie questioned.
“I knew the field was somewhere to the south, so I just turned the plane in that direction and crossed my fingers. Luckily, I saw the smoke from the refinery and managed to zero in on the field after that,” Marty explained with a rueful expression for the whole misadventure. “I think I would have flown in any direction before admitting to Sloane that I wasn’t sure where the field was. I don’t know why I ended up with such a hard ass for an instructor.”
“My instructor made it quite clear that I shouldn’t expect any special treatment just because I’m a woman.” Cap tapped the ash off her cigarette. “They’re probably going to go to the opposite extreme to make sure they aren’t accused of it.”
“Do you think that’s it?” Eden curled a leg beneath her as she sank onto her cot. “I wondered if the problem was the fact that we aren’t paying for our own training. If we were customers hiring them to train us, we’d be treated with more respect.”
“But it wouldn’t make them like us any better,” Marty pointed out.
“I don’t know.” Chicago frowned and shifted uncomfortably, appearing slightly self-conscious. “I didn’t have any trouble with Mr. Lentz. He was real nice to me.”
“Yeah, I saw you two when you taxied back to the hangar.” Aggie poked the short-haired brunette in the ribs. “He helped her down off the wing and everything,” she told the rest of the girls with a big wink.
“Look! Chicago is blushing.” Marty drew everyone’s attention to the dots of color in her cheeks.
“Come on,” Chicago protested. “He was just being polite.”
“You seemed to have an awful lot to talk about,” Aggie teased. “You stood out there in the cold a good ten minutes.”
“He used to live in Chicago when he was a little boy—in the same suburb where I live. He was just asking me about some of the old places he remembered.”
“Is he married?” Marty asked.
“No—” Chicago stopped abruptly when she saw the glints of laughter in their expressions. She reddened even more. “He just happened to mention it,” she insisted.
“Just happened to mention it,” Marty repeated with teasing mockery. “What does this paragon of gentlemanly virtue look like? Tall, dark, and handsome, I’ll bet.” When Chicago showed signs of reluctance, Marty urged, “You tell us, Aggie.”
“Well, he’s about five foot eight or nine. He’s got a good build, not too skinny and not too stout,” Aggie began. “With that cap on it was hard to tell, but I think his hair was brown. His eyes were brown, too … or were they blue? I can’t remember. Which were they, Chicago?”
It was an obvious trap. Chicago glanced around the room, then a faint smile touched her lip corners. “Blue,” she said and they all laughed. “But for all the good it does, they might as well be purple. They made it pretty plain to us today that we aren’t allowed to socialize with our instructors.”
“Rules are made to be broken, honey,” Eden inserted in a silken voice. “The trick is, don’t get caught.”
“Is that the voice of experience talking?” Marty challenged.
“Of course.” Eden tipped her head back, exposing the creamy arc of her throat, and blew a stream of cigarette smoke upwards.
“Getting into trouble is a lot easier than getting out of it … I suppose, unless you can buy your way out of it,” Marty retorted with acid sweetness.
“Don’t be so testy, Marty,” Cap inserted grimly.
“How come you’re always sticking up for her?” Marty demanded.
“I’m not,” she retorted impatiently, then noticed Mary Lynn pulling on her flight suit. She took advantage of the chance to change the subject. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to find out whether this thing will shrink.” She zipped the oversized garment all the way up to her chin, and looked at the others. “Anyone for the showers?”
“Hey! That’s a great idea!” Chicago seized on the suggestion and hauled out her own flight suit to put it on.
Before it was over, six pairs of coveralls were hanging on the clothesline in back of the barracks. Judging by the number of dripping wet khaki coveralls already hanging on other lines, the idea wasn’t a unique one.
Chapter IV
FOUR DAYS LATER
bay doors were standing open, crowded with female trainees. More women were hanging out the double-hung windows, bottom sashes fully raised. Their low, laughing voices had a conspiratorial sound as they made jocund comments, looking across the Texas-red ground, sparsely covered with scrub grass between the long gray barracks.
A deeper rumble of voices came from the direction of the opposite barracks. The roofs were extended into wide overhangs that shielded the concrete walkways abutting the buildings to create a military version of galleried walks. A straggly male group of enlisted trainees shuffled toward their assigned bays, dressed in their flight suits with parachute packs slung over their shoulders. There was a dragging tiredness about them that didn’t stop them from smiling and flirting across the distance with the bevy of women who were making their own assessment of the men.
“Say, girls!” A tall, lanky airman with a thatch of light brown hair all askew from his helmet and goggles called to them. The long white scarf tied around his neck gave him a somewhat dashing air. “Why don’t you come over?” The invitation was seconded by a chorus of his buddies.
“Yeah, birds of a feather should flock together,” another shouted.
Another one added his voice. “Wanta flock?”
“Can’t.” Marty’s distinctive voice lifted in answer. “We aren’t allowed to socialize.”
“That’s a rotten shame,” the first retorted.
“It sure as hell is,” she agreed. Beside her, Cap groaned under her breath.
Then, suddenly, a stern voice was saying, “You just earned your first demerits, Rogers.” A quick pivot and Marty found herself confronted with a staff officer. With a stern clap of the hands, all the trainees were called to order. “Okay, girls, fall in. Volleyball time.”
As they trudged into marching columns, stifling groans, Marty glanced across the way at the tall cadet who lingered in his bay doorway to watch. Her shoulders lifted in a barely perceptible shrug of resignation. His mouth curved upwards at the corners.
