by Janet Dailey
“It was really a sight to see—those two formations of planes barreling through the sky,” Chicago declared to the others.
The door to the bay was pulled open and they began filing through. Mary Lynn didn’t notice the pile-up ahead of her and ran right into Cappy’s back. Behind her the door swung shut, hitting her in the rump.
“Hey, what’s going on?” she protested.
There at the back of the group with all their bodies blocking her view, Mary Lynn couldn’t see what was causing all this consternation. Finally, Marty, who had been the dam-block, moved, and Mary Lynn saw a tall, slim woman sleeping on the far cot that Eden had once occupied. Her shoulder-length hair was a pale shade of blond, all touseled and mussed.
“What the hell is she doing here?” Marty wondered in a stunned outrage.
Her gruffness caused Mary Lynn to snicker behind her smothering hand. At the accusing look she received from Marty, she explained, “This sounds like Goldilocks and Who’s been sleeping in my bed.”
No one else seemed amused by her analogy. Mary Lynn decided they hadn’t read that particular bedtime story as many times as she had, or they would have seen the humor in it. For the moment, however, they were intent on the stranger in their midst.
“She’s probably one of the trainees from Houston,” Cappy guessed as they drifted toward the cot.
“Well, that doesn’t explain what the hell she’s doing here.” Marty purposefully stalked to the cot and roughly shook the woman’s shoulder. “Wake up, Goldilocks.”
A violent toss of the arm threw off Marty’s grip and a female voice snarled, “Leave me alone.”
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing here?” Marty appeared incensed at the opposition she was getting as she hovered beside the cot.
This time the blond head moved a fraction. “Sleeping. What the hell does it look like?”
“All right, who are you?” Marty challenged with hot sarcasm.
“One damned tired Woofted.” The woman made an attempt to burrow deeper into the cot and huddle into a smaller ball.
“A Woofted,” Marty repeated, then looked blankly at the others, still sarcastic. “She’s a Woofted, whatever the hell that is.”
The woman on the cot appeared to give up. In long, fluid moves she sat up on the edge of the narrow Army bed, her shoulders bowing in tired lines and her head drooping with weariness. But there was plenty of fight in her voice, and her eyes were so violet as to appear almost purple-black.
“Women’s Flying Training Detachment, stupid,” she said to Marty. “Woofteds. W-F-T-D, Woofteds, that’s what we call ourselves.”
“Woofteds, I should have guessed,” Marty said mockingly. “We go by a much simpler term—trainees.”
The blonde raked Marty with a scathing glance. “It figures.”
Marty was ready to claw those unusually dark eyes out of her head, but Cappy stepped in. “Would you mind telling us what you’re doing here?” Her tone had an authoritative ring, which didn’t appear to sit any better with their Houston counterpart.
“I was assigned to this bay and this cot. Believe me, I don’t like it any better than you do,” she stated flatly.
“I suppose the place isn’t good enough for you,” Marty retorted.
“As a matter of fact, this place is the Taj Mahal compared to some of the living quarters we had in Houston. We lived in moldy, bug-infested tourist courts before they finally got barracks built for us. The food they served us was fit only for the garbage can. They finally installed a rest room. Before that, the nearest one was half a mile away. We wore the same clothes from dawn to dusk, because there was no place to change, so we walked around all day, dusty, dirty, and stinking with our own sweat.” Her sweeping glance encompassed all of them. “You don’t know how good this place is.”
“Isn’t it wonderful, girls?” Marty piped sarcastically. “Now we have our own resident expert. Instead of our parents telling us how rough they had it, we have a Woofted.”
“You don’t like me and I don’t like you,” the woman informed Marty. “Let’s leave it at that. Now I happen to have flown practically across the whole state of Texas, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to get some rest.”
Marty backed away from the cot in mock deference. “Forgive us for disturbing you. Just because this happens to be our bay it’s really of little consequence. Why should we care who’s sleeping in it?”
“Rachel Goldman from New York. Do you feel better?” she said sarcastically.
“New York,” Chicago repeated and nodded toward Eden. “Eden’s from New York, too.”
“Yeah?” She eyed the redhead, sizing her up with a wary, yet interested look.
“We live on Fifth Avenue just across from the park at Seventy-fifth,” Eden volunteered.
“Well, I’m from the Lower East Side,” she said and began shifting in preparation to lie down again. She had slapped away the friendly hand that had belatedly been extended to her. Again, she stretched her long, feline body on the cot, and turned her back to them. In her stockinged feet, she missed being six feet tall by a fraction of an inch, so there wasn’t much room left at either end of the cot.
Slowly they all moved toward their own Army cots, unsettled by this sudden intrusion of a stranger among them. The five of them had been a complete unit; they hadn’t needed or wanted another.
“Someone probably had the bright idea of integrating the two classes,” Cappy suggested in an undertone.
“Well, it stinks!” Marty declared.
Mary Lynn winced at the loudness of her friend’s remark. “Marty, keep it down,” she advised quietly. “She’s trying to sleep.”
“So? I’m not going to tiptoe around here because of her!” Marty belligerently made no attempt to lower her voice, but the figure on the cot didn’t appear to care.
It wasn’t that Rachel Goldman was not used to defending herself. She had the sharp claws required to do it. They had been honed over the years of being picked on. As a Jew, she had often been made to feel unwanted, the victim of subtle persecutions and sometimes not so subtle ones.
There were only two things that had ever enabled her to escape, even briefly, from that. Dancing and flying. Despite her natural talent and years of training, there simply weren’t many male dancers capable of lifting a six-foot ballerina, and her height made it equally difficult to get a job on a Broadway chorus line. So, mostly she had worked in nightclubs as a showgirl.
The first time Rachel had ever been in an airplane, it had been a transatlantic flight to Austria to visit her grandmother in Vienna. Of course, that was years ago, before Austria was occupied, when Hitler was merely a pompous-sounding fanatic, spouting his theories about the master race.
She’d spent a glorious month with her grandmother. After corresponding for so many years, first at her parents’ insistence, then because her grandmother seemed to really understand her love for the classic theater. Her grandmother had been wardrobe mistress at the Vienna opera house. At first, communicating was difficult; her grandmother’s English was not good. Rachel’s Yiddish was equally faulty, and her German nonexistent.
She had been fresh from flight when they met, enthralled with the sensation of it. She had talked about the experience for days on end until her grandmother had finally proclaimed, “If you love flying so much, learn to do it yourself.” That, unfortunately, required lessons, which required money, and Rachel already had a big investment in dance.
Her parents had never been enthusiastic about her theatrical career, but her grandmother’s support had always swayed the balance. When it came to flying, they had been even less thrilled to let their daughter try it. “Marry, settle down, raise children. Forget all this nonsense,” her mother had urged. But Rachel had preferred her grandmother’s advice. Ultimately, her parents had thrown up their hands, and Rachel had earned her own money for the flying lessons.
Along the way, she had learned some things, some bitter truths. If you want to be a
ccepted outside your own community, don’t be Jewish; if you want to get a job in a nightclub, don’t look Jewish; if you want friends and lovers outside your faith, don’t act Jewish. In some circles, it was even claimed the Jews were responsible for starting the war so they could profit from it. Some of the things “Lucky Lindy,” Charles Lindbergh, had said still made Rachel cringe when she thought about them.
Since that awful day in 1938 when Austria was virtually handed over to Hitler on a platter, communication with her grandmother had become sporadic. A letter smuggled out of Europe by a fleeing family shortly after Warsaw fell was the last her family had had. Later came the vague stories of persecution, properties confiscated, arrests, roundups, then the work camps—some said death camps.
Way back in the beginning her father’s group had lobbied Congress and the State Department in Washington to allow more Jewish refugees into the country. Hitler had offered to send the Jews to whatever country would take them, but almost no one had accepted—not even the United States.
Bitter—yes, she was bitter. And she hated, too, with a passion that would have made the Zealots proud of her. So when she had slapped away the one friendly overture made by Eden, it had been with the wariness of a cat many times burned, who now circled the beckoning flames but stayed well away from the warmth. Rachel’s features had a hardened look to them that suggested all of her twenty-six years hadn’t been easy ones. But Rachel was wiry and tough—a survivor. And right now, she needed a cat’s short sleep.
The following day the last class of Army cadets left Avenger Field, Colin Fletcher among them. Just as their daily schedules had been regimented to keep the cadets separated from the trainees, so it was with their departure. The girls had no opportunity to wish them “good luck and good flying.” They never actually saw the cadets leave. They were simply gone.
After an afternoon on the flight line, they returned to the bay to shower and change before evening mess. The vacant barracks across from theirs seemed faceless and forlorn. There had always been that underlying excitement of knowing men slept just across the way. Now that presence was gone, and with it, the little forbidden thrills it had conjured. The bays wouldn’t be occupied until the next class of female trainees arrived in a couple of weeks.
“I’m going to miss those guys.” Chicago sent a glance in the direction of the opposite barracks as she opened the door to their bay.
“Yeah,” Eden agreed. “No more late night visits from Colin and his cohorts. No more conversation by flashlight.”
Halfway through the doorway, Cappy stopped and bent to pick up a note lying on the floor.
“What is it?” Marty crowded ahead of Mary Lynn and Chicago.
“It’s a note.” Cappy’s curiosity was aroused as she moved into the long room and studied the small envelope in her hand. “Addressed to all of us,” she added with a sweeping look.
“I’ll bet it’s from Colin. Hurry up and read it, Cap,” Marty urged impatiently, unzipping her flight suit the rest of the way down.
The connecting door to the bath facilities opened and the new baymate, Rachel Goldman, came in. Fresh from the shower, she was wrapped in a long blue chenille robe. Her wet hair had a silvery look to it as she rubbed the dripping ends with a towel. There was a slight break in her motion when she saw the five of them, then she continued toweling her hair dry as she walked to her cot.
Cappy removed the feather-thin note paper from the envelope, effectively directing the group’s attention to it. “It’s from Colin, Grimsby, and the rest,” she said after a quick glance at the signatures at the bottom of the short message. “We wanted to thank you”—-she read—“for all the nights you made less lonely for us, and for the warm memories we will be taking with us. Mary Lynn, we promise we’ll keep an eye out for your Beau if we get to merry old England. We’ll hope he understands when we give him your love.”
“Those rats,” Marty interposed with a chuckling laugh.
“They wouldn’t?” Mary Lynn wasn’t sure whether to laugh or not. No one answered her.
“To prove we aren’t four-flushers, not by half, we have left one last treat for you to enjoy, a last cup of kindness.” A frown creased Cappy’s forehead as she and the others tried puzzling out the meaning. “Since we couldn’t say goodbye to you, we won’t say it now. Just ‘Good flying.’ … Signed, Colin, Arthur, Morley, and Henry.”
“What last treat?” Chicago asked, as they all looked around the bay to see if something had been left—a package or a box. There was nothing in sight.
“Hey, Goldman?” Marty called, somewhat combatively. “When you came in, was there anything sitting out here?”
“It’d still be there if it was,” she retorted.
“I’ll bet they’ve hidden it somewhere,” Eden surmised. She gazed about the room for a logical hiding place.
“‘A cup of kindness’ … you drink it for Auld Lang Syne.” Distracted by Eden’s musings, Marty started putting pieces together. “You don’t suppose?” she began, then a gleam of an idea spread the beginnings of a grin across her mouth. “Half of a four-flusher—I think I know where they put it. Come on.”
“Where they put what?” A bewildered Mary Lynn followed the group, led by Marty, as they charged into the bathroom.
Marty went straight for the two stalls, unoccupied at the moment. She lifted the tank lid of the first commode, but it was the second one which contained the bottle of bonded whiskey. She held up the wet bottle in triumph while the others gathered around her.
“I can’t believe it.” Eden almost fondled the bottle of aged liquor. “Who did they bribe to get this?”
“How did they smuggle it in here—that’s what I’d like to know,” Cappy murmured.
“Who cares?” Marty replied.
“But if we get caught with it on base, we’re automatically thrown out of the program.” Mary Lynn saw nothing to rejoice about in that.
“That’s true,” Marty agreed, but there was a wild sparkle in her olive-gray eyes. “We don’t have a whole lot of choice, girls,” she said. “We’ll just have to drink the evidence.”
Mary Lynn was the only one skeptical of the solution; the rest heartily endorsed the plan. Chicago was dispatched for a round of Cokes. Half of each bottle was poured down the sink to make room for the whiskey. In a conspiratorial huddle, they re-entered the bay carrying their spiked Cokes. The capped whiskey bottle was tucked inside Marty’s flight suit.
As they passed Rachel’s cot, Marty nudged Chicago and stopped. In their absence, Rachel had dressed in slacks and a blouse. The thick mass of her blond hair was nearly dry.
“Thirsty, Goldman?” With a wide-eyed look of absolute innocence, Marty extended the extra Coke bottle to her, seemingly in a peace offering. “You’re welcome to drink this. Mary Lynn didn’t want it.”
On the verge of refusing, Rachel appeared to reconsider and wavered for a skeptical minute before warily accepting the bottle. “Thanks.”
“Cheers.” Marty lifted her own bottle in a mock toast and watched with barely disguised glee as Rachel tilted the bottle to her mouth to take a swig of the Coke.
A second later, Rachel was choking on burning whiskey, coughing and spitting up the liquid her convulsing throat muscles refused to swallow. Despite her cupping hand, some of the liquid dribbled onto the clean blouse she’d just put on.
They all tittered with laughter, even Mary Lynn. Rachel Goldman was the only one who didn’t see the humor in the prank. Anger glittered in her indigo-violet eyes as she shoved the bottle back into Marty’s hand.
“Very funny.” Her voice still rasped on the edge of a coughing spasm.
“We thought so.” Marty’s voice naturally matched the sound. “The drink’s yours, if you want it.” She offered her the Coke again. “Mary Lynn doesn’t drink anything but mint juleps.”
“Keep it.” Her look swept them all with contempt. “You might have come here to party, but I’m here to fly.”
As Rachel stalked fr
om the bay, Marty quirked an eyebrow, unperturbed by the denunciation. “Little Mary Lynn isn’t the only teetotaler in our midst.”
Chicago looked apprehensively after their departing baymate. “What if she reports us?”
“She won’t,” Eden replied coolly. “She wouldn’t dare.” The implied threat in her remark was unmistakable.
“Here’s to our guys.” Marty lifted her glass. “May they never drink the water in the Channel.”
By the time lights out came, the “evidence” had been consumed and the bottle was broken into non-incriminating pieces. All that remained of the label was a charred, curled mass of ashes. None of them had gotten drunk; they had more sense than that. But they slept deeply and soundly that night.
Too soundly. They missed reveille. And if Rachel Goldman hadn’t yelled at them as she was heading out the door, they would have missed breakfast formation. Heavy-eyed, they staggered into line and tried to shake off the drugged sensation of sleep. They looked at Rachel, so alert and impassive, with a mixture of gratitude and resentment.
Outside morning mess, they dawdled to grumble before joining the cafeteria line. But the aroma of freshly made doughnuts invigorated their senses.
“I’d kill for them,” Marty declared as she piled four of them onto her tray.
As they reached the end of the line, Chicago stopped. “Look. They’ve taken our table.”
Stunned by the announcement, they stared at the far end of the long table they had occupied since their very first meal at the base. Part of the Houston class, including Rachel, was now seated in the space they considered reserved for them. Others in their class had always respected their right to it.
“I’ll handle this,” Eden asserted and strode to the front, leading them across the room to the table. Their arrival barely rated a glance. “Excuse me. This is our section.” Her cool hauteur implied all would be forgiven if they would vacate immediately—a tone guaranteed to make a maître d’ bow, very low.
