by Janet Dailey
When the runways of Avenger Field came in sight, Cappy contained a sigh and entered the traffic pattern. Her hands grew sweaty on the stick, and she wiped first one, then the other, on the baggy pants of her zoot suit. As she turned on her base leg, perpendicular to the runway, a family of tumble weeds rolled onto the strip. She extended her turn onto final rather than risk fouling her landing gear or prop with the errant tumbleweeds.
The windsock sat at an angle to the runway, indicating a crosswind. The runways at Avenger Field did not seem to be laid out with the prevailing winds in mind. Takeoffs and landings were rarely made squarely into the wind. It seemed to always come at an angle, as now. On her final approach, Cappy crabbed the plane into the wind to hold a straight line to the runway. She kept her eyes alert for the appearance of a dust devil, those tiny cyclones capable of tipping a wing. The wheels of her landing gear touched down and rolled smoothly onto the ground while her tail slowly settled until its wheel met the ground in a textbook-perfect landing.
Back at the hangar area, Rex was waiting for her. His freckled face was split with a smile that went ear to ear. Hardly able to contain her own excitement, Cappy scrambled out of the plane and hopped off the wing, taking off goggles and helmet to shake her dark hair out to the wind. With swift, running strides, she hurried to her instructor, beaming with that inner thrill of accomplishment.
“I did it.” She stopped in front of him, her body straining with the urge for physical contact.
“You sure did. Congratulations, Hayward.” He took her hand and squeezed it between both of his, then held on to it. “You are one of the best damned natural pilots I’ve ever seen. You try too hard once in a while, but you’re going to be one of the best.”
Tears stung her eyes. For a minute, she couldn’t see. She turned her head aside, lowering it while she blinked to clear away the blur. It hurt that she had no one with whom she could share that compliment or the elated pride she felt. It would mean nothing to her mother, and her father wouldn’t care. Yet, if she’d been a boy, right now he would have been bursting with pride. It wasn’t fair.
“Thank you.” But her voice rang hollow. With her head lifted once again, Cappy pushed her chin out and managed a distant smile. Puzzlement flickered across Rex’s expression. But doors always closed when anyone saw too much or came too close to Cappy.
Mary Lynn soloed that same afternoon. When the rest of the trainees learned of their milestone, the two girls were dragged from their bay and hauled to the Wishing Well for a baptismal dunking.
Cappy was the first to be thrown into the three-foot-deep water, dumped head first, zoot suit and all. “Grab some money!” one of the girls shouted as Cappy was going under. According to custom, the coins thrown into the pool for luck could be retrieved by those who had earned the privilege of being dunked. She surfaced, gasping with the shock of the cold water. When she opened her hand, a copper penny lay in her wet palm. Shivering, she scrambled out, aided by Eden’s helping hand, which had also pushed her in.
Then it was Mary Lynn’s turn. In her letter to Beau that night, she wrote:
… They wanted to throw my two pillows in the pool with me, but Marty rescued them before they got wet. I managed to scoop up a dime and a British pee or pence, I guess they call it. One of the cadets from the U.K. must have thrown it into the well before a check ride. It immediately made me feel I was sharing the moment with you, darling. I’m going to keep the coin for luck—luck for me and for you.
Tomorrow we’re finally going to be allowed to go into town. They’ve had us confined to the Field. I have some shopping I want to do, and I hope I can find some little souvenirs of Texas that I can send home.
I miss you, Beau.
All my love,
Mary Lynn
Chapter V
DOWNTOWN SWEETWATER, TEXAS, was only a few streets wide. The women trainees from Avenger Field flooded the business district of the small cattle community, splintering into groups composed of baymates.
“Lord God above, please let there be a hairdresser in this town,” Eden murmured as the six of them piled out of her bright yellow car and headed down the street.
“To hell with a hairdresser,” Marty retorted. “If you’re going to ask for something, make it worthwhile.”
“Like what? A drink?” Chicago suggested with a laugh.
“This may be a dry county, but you can bet there’s some bootleg to be had if you know who to ask,” Marty declared. “Colin’s hinted as much to me.”
“I want to go in here.” Mary Lynn headed for the entrance to a small shop, and the others trooped along with her. “You don’t have to come with me, if you don’t want to.”
“Maybe the clerk will be able to tell me where I can find someone to fix my hair,” Eden said.
All six of them invaded the shop, splitting to go down the aisles and investigate the merchandise. On the street outside, a big truck lumbered to a stop at the corner, pulling close to the curb. The trailer of the semi was fitted with long board seats to haul its human cargo and its slatted sides for ventilation earned it the nickname “cattle truck.” As it disgorged its occupants, Marty recognized the tall sandy-haired cadet.
“Colin’s in town.” She nodded to direct Cappy’s attention to the handful of cadets coming their way.
Colin was in the middle of the boisterous, laughing group as it drew level with the gift shop. His hands were hitched in the side pockets of his trousers. Marty rapped on the glass window that separated them, attracting his attention, and waved. Given to impulsive behavior, she never thought twice about the possibility that a friendly gesture might be considered too forward. This nonsense about waiting for the man to make the first move had never made sense to her.
When Colin saw her, a crooked smile immediately broke across his features. He came up short, back-pedaling a step or two while the group flowed around him. Voices were raised in razzing comments that Marty couldn’t quite hear when Colin separated from the group and approached the shop entrance.
The bell above the shop door tinkled when he entered. Marty turned expectantly to meet him, but before he could take a step in her direction, he was intercepted by the brown-haired salesgirl.
“Colin Fletcher, I was hopin’ you’d stop in.” Her voice fairly gushed with delight, its nasal twang thickening with the dripping sweetness.
Quickly recovering from his initial start of blankness, Colin flashed her one of his winning smiles. “Hello, Sally,” he said warmly, but his glance flitted by her to Marty, his eyes betraying a dry patience at the interruption. Marty’s eyebrows arched in amusement over his situation.
“Momma would like you to come over tonight for supper.” All that eagerness in the invitation was positively cloying, as far as Marty was concerned. It was all she could do to conceal her reaction, steadfastly looking away so she wouldn’t break into chortling laughter. “We’re havin’ some friends over for homemade ice cream. I … Momma … knows how much you like it so she said for me to be sure and ask you over if I saw you today.”
“That’s most thoughtful of your mother,” Colin acknowledged, and Marty glanced sideways so she could see how he was going to handle it. That dry, dashing charm was in evidence as he smiled at the girl. “Unfortunately, some of us have already made other plans for the evening.”
“Oh.” Disappointment seemed to sag through her. “You will come to Sunday dinner tomorrow after church, as usual, won’t you?”
“Naturally, I will.” He inclined his head in an affirmative nod, warmly polite but sufficiently aloof to discourage too much familiarity. “I couldn’t let a weekend pass without enjoying your mother’s cooking, now could I?”
“No.” But it was plain, his explanation was not the one she wanted to hear. After a short hesitation, she added, “If you change your mind about tonight, you’re welcome to come anyway.”
“Thank you.”
There was an awkward moment while the sales clerk waited for Colin to say something
more to continue the conversation, but he remained silent, regarding her with obvious forbearance. Mary Lynn stepped over to the cash register, giving the girl an excuse to move away. Colin looked after her for a moment with an expression of amused indulgence before he leisurely strolled over to Marty.
At the counter Mary Lynn was asking, “Do you have a box or something I can pack these in for mailing?”
There was an attractive glitter in his hazel eyes when Colin stopped in front of Marty. “We finally meet in broad daylight,” he remarked softly. “With no dark corners the flashlight can’t reach.”
“No slinking through the shadows.” Marty went along with his thought, but she was conscious of the hotly jealous look she was receiving from the sales clerk. Obviously Sally regarded Colin as her property, and Marty was poaching.
“The sunlight becomes you.” His mouth slanted with a crooked smile.
“Enough flattery, Colin, or I’ll start to believe you.”
“Since this is your first trip to town … ladies”—he expanded his comment to include her other baymates within earshot—“you should have an escort to show you the sights.”
“Sorry.” Eden was the first to turn down his invitation. “I have the name of a woman who fixes hair. If I’m lucky, she’ll be able to do something with these nails of mine, too.”
Mary Lynn begged off with the excuse she had more shopping to do. Aggie and Chicago had some errands to finish, which left only Marty and Cappy to accept the invitation. Eden submitted to arm-twisting and promised to catch up with them later at the Bluebonnet Hotel.
“Where is it?” she asked.
“You can’t miss it,” Colin replied. “It’s the only hotel in town.”
With Cappy on one arm and Marty on the other, Colin went swinging out of the shop as the little doorbell tinkled merrily. Their tour of the town, what there was of it, was periodically delayed by groups of cadets or other female trainees they met along the way. The size of their party fluctuated as others joined them for a block or two, then parted for some other destination.
The downtown businesses were grouped around the courthouse square—Sweetwater was the seat of Nolan County. Once they had strolled the square’s perimeters and wandered its peripheral feeder streets, they stopped at the USO Club, but Marty and Cappy were refused entrance. All three of them left and ventured into more residential areas. After Colin had pointed out six of Sweetwater’s ten churches, Marty suggested they save the remaining four for another time. He took them to the city park located at the north edge of town on Lake Sweetwater. He assured them they would hallucinate about this man-made body of water when the mercury soared to one hundred degrees in April and stayed there until September. Where the scrub growth encroached on the park, he regaled them with tales of dark-of-night assignations with the local bootlegger, a seedy old granny, as his story went.
The sun was resting on the lip of the horizon, igniting the sky with its copper-pink glow, when they arrived at the Bluebonnet Hotel. One of the cadets had rented a suite at the Bluebonnet where they could all congregate. The suite, as it turned out, consisted of two adjoining rooms with a connecting door.
Word spread of a party in progress. Soon there was a constant flux of trainees and cadets flowing in and out of the rooms and spilling into the outer hall. Cigarette smoke thickened the air while Coca-Cola bottles clanked. A cadet from Colin’s barracks arrived with a bottle of clear liquid tucked inside his jacket. He produced it with a little flourish amidst the cheers of those who recognized the illicit liquor for what it was. While the bottle made a cola-spiking circle of the room, the cadet told them the spooky story of his eerie meeting in the mesquite brush with the lady bootlegger.
As many as eight or nine crowded onto the hotel beds at one time, virtually the only sitting area in the rooms. More camped on the floor, sitting cross-legged or with knees pulled up to their chests, while others leaned against walls. There was no clear pathway, so any movement meant stepping over bodies. Competition for the softer seats on the bed was keen. To leave the bed was to lose your place and free-for-alls erupted intermittently as others vied to claim space.
The roisterous clamor of loud, laughing voices filled the smoke-heavy hotel rooms. Marty was one of the lucky ones to have a seat on the bed, curled at the top with the headboard at her back. The pillow was long gone, in use somewhere as a cushion against the hard floor. Colin had a narrow edge of the bed near her, his long legs drawn up under him.
Marty poked a finger into her cigarette pack but it was empty. “Damn.” She crumpled the pack with a mixture of irritation and disgust. “I never smoked so much until I came here,” she said to Colin. “My mother would have a hissy-fit if she saw the way I puff on them. She’s very midwestern. According to her, nice girls don’t smoke. ‘Course, according to her, nice girls don’t do a lot of things.”
“Parents are like that. They’d like us to believe they never did anything improper.” He dug into his breast pocket and took out a stubby, thin, hand-rolled cigarette, the paper ends twisted. “Want to share one of these?”
“Sure.” Marty watched him place the crude cigarette between his lips, her glance lingering on his strong mouth. They were close, their bodies brushing, his back and shoulder pressing against her thigh as her arm hooked her legs and pulled her knees up under her chin. Neither attempted to carve out more space on the bed, preferring the physical contact.
With typical self-honesty, Marty recognized the wayward direction her thoughts were taking, which had nothing to do with the potent spirits that laced her Coca-Cola. Passion was a natural stirring of her body in response to the closeness of an attractive male. Her physician father had been frank in his early talks with her about sexuality so she had always regarded her own urges as normal. If she liked and respected a guy, she did not believe in holding back. As long as a consenting couple took the necessary precautions to prevent pregnancy, she saw no reason why they shouldn’t make love and satisfy those natural urges. So after enjoying Colin’s company for the better part of the day, it seemed logical for her to wonder whether she’d enjoy the embrace of his arms.
After the match flame had ignited the paper-wrapped tobacco, Colin pulled the smoke deep into his lungs and held it while he passed the cigarette to Marty. A smile twitched her mouth as she inhaled it. She was reminded of an old Bette Davis movie she’d seen once. This seemed a variation on the corny romanticism of that scene.
As the smoke’s cloyingly sweet smell infiltrated her nostrils, Marty drew her head back to frown skeptically at the homemade cigarette. “What is this?”
“Hemp weed.” His hazel eyes studied her with a certain bemusement. “One of the cowboys from a ranch outside of town put me on to it. It makes you feel all loose and relaxed. It’s a great tension-easer on those nights before a check ride.”
“Really?” Beyond the acridly sweet taste, Marty felt no soothing effect.
“The trick is to hold it in your lungs and slowly exhale it.” Colin took the cigarette from her fingers and demonstrated the procedure.
Marty tried it again, wrinkling her nose at the taste. She made the mistake of trying to swallow the smoke, and a spasm of racking coughs convulsed her as she waved a hand in front of her face to clear the smoke from the air she breathed. Laughing at her attempts, Colin persisted. Finally, squeezing the last drag out of the cigarette, Marty managed it and nearly burned her fingers in the process as the fire neared the end of the butt.
With an air of expectancy, Marty sat quietly and mentally checked out her system. Beyond a deliciously liquid sensation, she didn’t feel a thing.
“What did you say that was made from? Hemp weed?” she questioned Colin.
“Yes. It’s a plant that grows wild around here.” He gazed steadily into her unusual gray-green eyes.
Soon the party began breaking up. They left in groups of threes and fours, segregated by sexes, some assisting their slightly inebriated friends. Cappy paused beside the bed where Marty and
Colin were sharing another hand-rolled cigarette.
“We’re leaving now, Marty. Are you coming with us?” She attempted to prod her baymate into action.
“I’ll be along.” Marty impatiently waved her away.
Cappy turned to the others and shrugged. Together, Cappy, Eden, and Mary Lynn made their way to the hall door. The crowd in the connecting rooms had thinned to only a handful of people. Colin swung around to sit next to Marty, using the headboard for a backrest. He passed her the cigarette and she took a long drag, not paying any attention to her departing friends.
“This isn’t very sanitary.” She gave him the cigarette that had just been between her lips and watched Colin carry it to his mouth.
“Neither is kissing,” he pointed out.
She chuckled. “Now I know what this has all been about. You’re trying to fuddle my thinking so you can take advantage of me.”
“You’ve found me out.” He acknowledged his guilt with a properly remorseful expression, but a wicked twinkle gleamed in his eyes. “What a damned shame—and just when things were looking so good, too.”
Marty turned her head to study him. “Did you really believe you’d have to resort to such tactics with me, Colin?”
“You’re so damned forthright, I don’t know for sure how to handle you,” Colin remarked with a rueful smile.
“I’m no simpering Sally, that’s for sure.” After the oblique reference to the girl in the gift shop, Marty dropped the smoldering butt into her spiked drink.
“I guess that’s it.” He tilted his head back and stared absently at the ceiling. “I’m not interested in becoming some woman’s husband, which is what the Sallys of this town are seeking. A few of the guys in my class want wives they can impregnate to ensure their immortality before they go off into enemy skies.”
“But you don’t want marriage and all the things that go with it.” Marty studied his profile in a sideways glance, her head, like his, resting against the headboard. A long, patrician nose and slightly receding chin were his prominent features beneath that thatch of sand-brown hair.
