by Janet Dailey
“Cappy, is something wrong?”
A silent shake of her head first dismissed the question, then Cappy dragged in a breath and forced a smile to her lips. “I’m just tired,” she said, then attempted a laugh that came out brittle and false. “Did I tell you a cleaning woman in the lavatory mistook me for a lady plumber in my flight suit? I don’t know what all this fuss is about in Congress. Ninety percent of the people don’t even know we exist.”
Chapter XXVI
“OUR SONS, PRIDE of our nation …” As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt began his prayer, Mary Lynn sat close to the radio and bowed her head. She, Marty and Eden were with their fellow WASPs, massed in the common room of the barracks to hear the latest report on the massive Allied invasion of France’s Normandy beaches. The President was now praying for those fighting men. “Lead them straight and true. Give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith. They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again …”
Early on the morning of June 6, Walter Winchell had announced the news of the invasion to the West Coast. He told of American armies fighting on Utah Beach and bloody Omaha, while the British battled on Sword, Gold, and Juno. Tense, Marty leaned toward the radio. She’d heard the reports of paratroop divisions dropping behind German lines before the first Marines stormed onto the beaches. Her brother was bound to have been part of it. At this moment, he was over there fighting with the rest.
“… Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade …” FDR prayed.
When he finished, the room echoed with Amens, and a rush of talk followed the guardedly optimistic report. Amidst all the fears and prayers, there was a need to celebrate. Marty, Eden, and Mary Lynn headed for the Officers’ Club. Everyone else seemed to have the same idea. The place was packed with officers eager to talk, predicting victory.
“My brother David is over there,” Marty announced proudly. “He’s a paratrooper, so he was in the initial assault.”
An unhurried latecomer to their table was Captain Sam Walker. As he slowly approached, Mary Lynn lifted her head against the steady pressure of his presence. A drink was in his hand; there was always a drink in his hand. She tapped an unlit cigarette on the table, packing the tobacco.
“A vile habit.” A match flared and his long fingers held it out to her. Her eyes briefly met his, then fell away as she bent her head toward the match, letting the tip of her cigarette touch the flame.
“So is drinking.” Mary Lynn straightened from him, blowing smoke into the air in a strained attempt at nonchalance. “But I notice you do both to excess.”
“I have fallen into sinful and wicked ways.” He dragged a chair around to sit angled toward her. “Maybe you should try to reform me?” In a gesture of suppressed agitation, she turned her glass in half-circles within its damp table-ring. Sam Walker picked up her every little nuance of movement and expression. “Or maybe I should lead you the rest of the way astray?”
Marty leaned an arm on the table, her posture carrying more of a warning than a challenge. “Walker, why don’t you lay off her for once?”
“Mind your own business, Rogers.” Walker didn’t bother to look at Mary Lynn’s defender.
“Keeping wolves like you away from her is my business.”
With a finger, he hooked a loose curl behind Mary Lynn’s ear and noticed the way her dark eyes nearly closed under his feather-light touch.
“Do you think you need protection from me, Little One?” he drawled.
“No.” A tension remained about her expression as she kept her gaze downcast.
Marty changed tactics from direct to indirect confrontation. “Aren’t you lucky Ike ordered the invasion of France? Now everyone will think you’re drinking to celebrate that and never guess it’s where you find your courage.”
Such talk didn’t faze Walker; instead, he used it. “Does it bother you that I drink, Little One?”
With a rare display of cynicism, Mary Lynn retorted, “Would you stop if I said it did?”
“No.” His taunting smile was slow and even.
But Mary Lynn didn’t react as Walker had expected she would. She pushed her chair away from the table. “Please, I’m not in the mood for this.”
“Don’t leave.” He caught her hand, holding her with the small pressure. But he knew better than to use force to keep her; instead he let his intent gaze make inroads into her will. “It isn’t good for a man to drink alone.”
“You shouldn’t drink at all.” There was a reluctance in her voice. She wanted nothing from him, yet found herself responding to him against her will.
“Then keep me away from that evil rum and dance with me instead.” He changed his hold on her hand, slipping under her fingers to curve them atop his.
A protesting sound came from Marty, but it seemed to goad Mary Lynn into action. That nervy restlessness could affect a person, push her into throwing aside caution. It was something he knew better than anyone there.
On the dance floor, he brought her inside his arms until her warm body was close to his. Her fragrance revived all his hungers. She was all things good and sweet—too good for him, but he wanted her all the same. And he’d have her, too. He knew that’s where the wrong in himself lay. By taking her, he’d drag her down.
Her dark head came to his shoulder and her hand rested lightly on the muscled tip of it. Mary Lynn didn’t lift her gaze higher than the silver captain’s bars on his uniform. The sweet smell of her hair came to him.
“Do you think I’m a coward, Little One?” he asked gently.
“I try not to think about you.” She dodged his question.
“Do you succeed?” Walker tipped his head to the side, trying for a better view of her face.
“Most of the time.”
“At least you think of me once in a while. That’s a beginning.” He smiled, but the look in his eyes was serious, completely sober despite the alcohol he’d already consumed. “I think about you all the time.”
“In between the booze and the poker.”
“And the nightmares,” he added without thinking.
She looked at his face, striking him with the dark, earnest openness of her eyes. “Why do you have nightmares?”
At that moment, he was careful not to shut his eyes, not to let in those images of fighter planes with black crosses painted on their wings tearing out of the sky, spewing rockets of death—or the sight of Flying Fortresses rearing out of formation as if clawing for life, with part of a wing or tail shot away, bleeding thick smoke from the wound—the crew of ten men inside, maybe friends and maybe strangers. More than anything, Walker shut out that sickening sense of helplessness when they went into their slow death spiral.
That bitterness came—that wretched, angry bitterness. “Don’t you know there’s a war on?” There was cruelty in his voice.
Her head went down. “Yes, I know,” she said softly.
The anger that welled in him took another course, deliberately seeking out sore spots and testing them to see if they were still tender—within himself and within her. “Have you had a letter from your husband lately?”
She became stiff in his arms. “Why? You don’t know him.” Her glance rushed upwards to his face. “Marty finally remembered where she had met you before. It was in Miami Beach. You told her that you didn’t know him.”
“I did? Well, fancy that,” Walker murmured, untroubled. “I must have made a mistake.”
“You deliberately lied to me, didn’t you?” she said accusingly.
“You’ve had a long, lonely time of it, haven’t you, Little One?” he murmured, ignoring her accusation. “All that flying … and all that restless energy just has you taut as a drumskin. The ease of forgetfulness comes in the arms of a lover. That’s what you need—someone to make love to you and u
ntie those knots that have you all wound up inside.”
“Why did you lie to me?”
A rising energy made him impatient. “You needed an excuse to be with me so I gave you one. We played a little game of pretend. You wanted to be able to say ‘He knows my husband’ to explain why you spent so much time in my company. You use it as a reason to justify why we’re dancing and why you’re letting me hold you in my arms. The truth is it’s what you want.”
Her feet ceased following the pattern of his steps as she halted in the middle of the dance floor. “Marty was right about you. You’re a liar and a coward. I must have been blind not to have seen it before.”
“You didn’t want to see it,” Walker snapped. If it had been her intention to hurt him, she had done it well. For all his callous attitude, he had his pride.
“I love my husband,” she declared as if raising up a shield.
“Yeah? Well, he’s not here and I am. That’s the difference.”
Mary Lynn pulled out of his arms. “You’re a liar and a cheat and a coward.” Sensing how to hurt him, she struck deep to wound him and salvage some of her own self-respect in the process.
For a long minute he stood fast, then his mouth slanted in a cruelly mocking line. “Then what does that make you, Little One?”
It was a remark that struck low and hard. Mary Lynn whitened and swung away from him just as Eden danced right beside her, looking concerned. “Are you all right, Mary Lynn?” she asked while her dance partner showed only mild interest.
“I … I have a headache. Tell Marty I’m leaving.” Mary Lynn left the dance floor, walking swiftly toward the exit with Walker following close behind.
Within seconds, Marty was pouncing on Walker, challenge glittering in her silvery-green eyes. “Leave her alone, Walker.”
“What are you? Her keeper?”
“Yes. She’s a decent kid, and I want to keep it that way,” she answered.
“Meaning what? That I’m not good enough for her?” Walker taunted.
“You’re a bastard, Walker,” she replied as if that explained it all. “What did you say to her?”
Walker looked at her with hard, narrowed eyes. “None of your damned business.” In a rank temper, he bulled his way to the bar.
A steady stream of reports came from the beaches of Normandy over the next few days, but most of the women pilots were in the skies. Marty hopscotched across the Southwest, gazed longingly at the B-17S in Las Vegas, and flew back to Long Beach on June 8. It never failed to amaze her how well the airfields on the Pacific Coast were camouflaged. Unless a pilot knew almost precisely where they were, she’d never see them.
Back at the WASP quarters after a three-day absence, she stuck her head inside Mary Lynn’s doorway. “Hi. I’m back.”
“How was your flight?” Mary Lynn set aside her letter-writing paraphernalia and swung off her cot to follow Marty down the hall to her own room.
“Not bad. I ran into some junk in southern Colorado, but I flew out of it before the weather got too rough.” She slung her briefcase onto the narrow bed and shuffled through the mail that had accumulated in her absence. She pulled out one envelope. “Well, what do you know?” Marty said with surprise and curled a leg under her to sit on the cot. “A telegram from my parents.” As she ran a finger under the flap, she looked at Mary Lynn. “I haven’t heard from them in weeks.” Marty took out the telegram to read it. “No.” The soft word conveyed shock.
Mary Lynn started to speak, then saw Marty’s whitened face and the glazed quality of her silvery-green eyes when she looked up from the telegram.
“My brother … David.” Confusion and disbelief swarmed through her roughly controlled voice. “They’ve been notified …” Marty stared again at the telegram, as if needing to see it in writing. “… He was killed in action.”
The words, the finality of them, were silencing. Not David, not her brother—she kept thinking there must be some mistake. The shock seemed to suck all feeling out of her, draining her empty. He was her big brother, her idol and her rival; it was his feats she’d always tried to match or better. David couldn’t die. He was supposed to come home the hero—with decorations on his chest. It wasn’t right that he should be killed. It wasn’t fair.
Mary Lynn gazed at the telegram, the kind mothers and wives dreaded to receive. A twisting fear weaved through her. This was the first time the lightning had struck so close. It wasn’t a neighbor’s son down the block, or a third cousin’s husband. This was Marty’s brother.
“Marty.” Mary Lynn took a step toward the silent, staring figure on the bed, wanting to comfort and thus be comforted.
“No.” Marty swung off the bed and faced the corner, turning her back on Mary Lynn and hugging her arms tightly around her middle. “I …” Her husky voice was choked with grief. “Mom and Dad … they’ll need me. I’d better … make arrangements to go home this weekend.”
“I’ll help,” she offered.
“I think … I’d rather do it myself.” She needed the activity to release the spiraling tightness. Marty couldn’t stay still as the phrase kept hitting at her: “killed in action.” David Allen Rogers III had always played such a big role in her life; his death left a gaping hole. “Do you mind? I’d like to be alone.”
But Mary Lynn couldn’t stand the thought of being alone.
She needed to be around laughing, loving, living people. She left the nearly empty barracks. Most of the WASPs were on flights somewhere, and the few present were catching up on laundry or sleep.
The hustle of the flight line pulled her. For a while she stood outside, listening to the ebb and flow of voices and airplane engines, life recirculating. Impatient for something more to fill the hollow ache inside, Mary Lynn entered the operations building.
The jocular voices and the back-slapping camaraderie going on didn’t include her, as pilots milled about the ready room, playing cards or chatting idly, puffing on endless cigarettes. She wanted to be part of the living world, not an onlooker.
Mary Lynn couldn’t put a name to the force that made her turn around so that she saw Walker when he came in. The dark stubble of a day’s beard growth shadowed his angled cheeks, concealing the scars. Tired lines creased his eye corners, but the hard, glinting mockery remained in their dark surfaces. His officer’s cap was raked to the back of his head, showing the heavy brown hair that grew with such unruly thickness. His leather battle jacket hung open and the tails of the white scarf draped around his neck were dangling loose.
Walker paused to draw a match across the abrasive strip of its match cover and cup the flame to his cigarette. Over the fire, he caught sight of the small, silent woman watching him from a corner of the room. Her dark eyes were on him, rousing him fully.
For an instant, she became the only living thing in the room for him. Slowly, he lifted his head, staring at her as he shook out the match. Steadily, she returned his gaze, not looking away or showing reluctance.
There was a message in that—one he wanted to explore … to be sure of its meaning.
He moved toward her, crossing the room at a sauntering pace. “Hello, Little One.”
She spoke, without preamble, her voice soft as a whisper yet urgent. “A telegram came for Marty. Her brother was killed in action.”
He’d gotten from her the opening he wanted. With no sense of guilt, Walker followed through, gathering her into his arms and holding her there for an easy run of minutes until her stiffness and frigidity softened and melted.
Bending his head, he rubbed his mouth against the silken fineness of her raven hair. In tentative movements, she shifted, slowly lifting her head to look at him and the nearness of his mouth.
Walker needed no more than that. His driving kiss tasted her needs without restraint. She let him glimpse the deep and passionate core of her feelings. Walker wasn’t sure whether she had willingly given him this entry, but she had returned his kiss with a full and heated response.
His breath was run
ning deep when he dragged his mouth from hers. “Tonight—” He needed the promise inherent in that kiss. “—I’ll pick you up at nineteen hundred hours.”
There was a moment when he sensed her conflict, but her answer ultimately came with no reservation. “Yes.”
In the hallway outside the hotel room Mary Lynn waited, clutching her purse, while Walker inserted the key the clerk had given him and unlocked the door. He led the way inside, making a quick survey of the room before turning to draw her in and close the door.
The room was small, with space for little besides the bed and chest of drawers. Its use was starkly limited and it pretended to little else. Rigidly she avoided looking at the bed as she crossed to the window, but the view was restricted to a seedy back street of Los Angeles.
A paper sack rattled and bottles were set on the bureau. Without looking, she could discern Walker’s movements. Mary Lynn stayed at the window, listening to the sounds of glasses being righted and caps screwed off bottles.
“What will you have—rum and Coke or Coke and rum?” The lazy inflection of his voice didn’t have its customary note of spiteful mockery.
“Neither, thank you.” She managed the response, letting a smile take any sting out of her rejection.
“Sorry I couldn’t get you any whiskey. I know that’s what you usually drink—when you drink,” he acknowledged, and liquid splashed in a glass, bubbles fizzing in a soft hiss.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw him drape his jacket around the lone straight-backed chair in the room, then she turned to watch him loosen the knot of his tie. Walker was talking to her, but none of his words registered as he crossed to the bed, taking a swig of his rum and Coke, then setting it on the nightstand.
Once the tie hung loose around his neck, he unfastened the collar button of his shirt, then pulled the shirttails out of his trousers and unbuttoned it the rest of the way. Soon the shirt was thrown over the end of the bed and the undershirt was being pulled over Walker’s head to join it. His dogtags jingled briefly against their securing chain.
