by Janet Dailey
Motionless, Marty asked challengingly, “Why should he know?”
“They spent the weekend together, so I thought she might have mentioned to him when she’ll be back in.” The information was indifferently offered. “He was over at the Officers’ Club if you want to ask him.”
“What makes you think they spent the weekend together?” Marty demanded.
“Hey, all I know is that Walker picked her up on Friday and didn’t bring her back until Sunday. And I figure during that time they were together. That’s all I know.”
Trouble, she knew the man was trouble the first time she laid eyes on him. Marty stood there a minute longer, then went slamming out of the barracks and headed for the Officers’ Club.
At Marty’s approach, the corporal on duty came to attention and cocked his arm in a rigid salute, as Army protocol demanded, but Marty ignored it—and him—as she charged up the steps of the Officers’ Club. The truculent set of her features and the hard flash in her olive-gray eyes were warnings for those in her way to move.
Inside the club, she paused long enough to scan the room and locate the man with the captain’s bars on his uniform, sitting alone at a corner table. The evening was early yet, but he looked well ensconced. Marty made a straight line for his table.
Walker saw her coming, neither surprised nor concerned by her arrival. Taking another drink of Coke-diluted rum, he noted with indifference the killing temper that had her energies all coiled for an explosion.
A careless smile indented the corners of his mouth when she stopped by his chair, battle-ready in her “Ike” jacket and the ruffled honey curls of her Earhart haircut. “Hello, Martha Jane.” Without looking up, Walker greeted her with her hated given name.
She batted the glass he held so loosely out of his hand to the table. Spilling booze and Coke, it rolled with a crash to the floor. “You bloody bastard!” She made no attempt to keep her voice down, or to conceal her rage. “You rotten, stinking son of a bitch! How could you do this to her?”
Walker used a cocktail napkin to push the excess spillage to the far edge of the table, away from himself, and signaled for another drink to be brought. “Want anything?” He finally lifted his head to look at her.
When he did, the fist that had been cocked on a hair trigger swung at his face, slamming against the side of his jaw and splitting the soft inner flesh of his mouth on his teeth. The blow stung him and coated his tongue with the taste of his own blood. She had penetrated his outward cool and aroused a heat in him. The chair was kicked over as he came to his feet to face his female attacker.
As he took one threatening step toward her, someone grabbed his arms from behind. “Hey, Walker, cool down,” the voice chided. But he seemed to be the only one who noticed Marty didn’t back down an inch. In their locked glances, there was an iron message.
He flexed his muscles to shrug off the restraining hold. “What you don’t know about Martha Jane here,” he said to the officer behind him, “is that she’d fight dirtier than most men.”
A trickle of blood made a red stain on his lips, coming from the cut in his mouth. Walker wiped at it with his finger, glancing at the bloody smudge briefly, then looked again at Marty. Amidst the raw animosity, there was a glimmer of satisfaction on her face—not enough perhaps, but some.
Uneasy in this atmosphere so charged with hostility, the officer looked from one to the other and backed away. The risk of further physical violence seemed to have passed, although the officer noticed he still hadn’t been thanked for coming to Marty’s rescue.
The minute they were left alone, Marty started her denunciations again. “You’re worse than scum. You are—”
“Save it.” Walker cut across her words. “I’m sure you can swear better than a sailor, but I’m not interested in hearing the names you care to call me. If that’s all you want, you might as well leave.”
A waiter came to pick up the broken glass and mop up the drink on the floor. His presence stilled Marty’s tongue more than Walker’s reprimand. He righted his chair and sat back down at the table. Another drink was brought to him. But Marty couldn’t leave it at this. She yanked out a chair and sat heavily on it.
“Why?” she demanded to know. “Why did you do it? Why couldn’t you leave her alone?”
“If it hadn’t been me, it would have been somebody else.” His forearms rested on the table, both hands closed around the glass.
“No.” Marty didn’t accept that weak explanation. “You were too persistent. You kept after her and after her.” She glared at him, hating him. “I’ll bet you’re feeling very proud of yourself. You’re drinking to celebrate, aren’t you?”
“Celebrate.” He seemed to ponder the word. “I have very little to celebrate, Martha Jane.”
“Don’t tell me you’re sorry,” she retorted scornfully, not buying it.
“No, I have no regrets.” He knew what Mary Lynn saw in him—her husband, the way he might be when he came home from the war. But Walker kept that piece of conjecture to himself. It was never wise to examine things too closely, especially relationships. Sometimes it hurt to learn what was below the surface.
“You’re nothing but a drunken, used-up pilot who used to fly the big ones,” Marty scoffed. “The Army’s kicked you so far downstairs that you’re flying safe, little two-engine passenger ships. You’re not a man; you’re a coward.”
“I’ve got my skin—no thanks to the Army—and I mean to keep it.” Walker saw it as survival, rather than cowardice. “You can be the hot pilot. I just want to live through the war.”
“That’s a terrific attitude. I guess it’s because of men like you that women pilots are doing most of the dangerous work—the test flying, the target towing. When haven’t the women gotten the shitty jobs?” Marty challenged.
“If you don’t like it, get out.”
“I’m not a coward and a quitter like you,” she retorted stiffly. “And a liar and a cheat and a rat—and all the other rotten things you are. I’ll never understand”—an angry vehemence broke through—“I’ll never understand why someone like you is alive—and my brother is dead!”
“Look—” Walker lowered his gaze to his cigarette. “I—I was sorry to hear about your brother.” The offhand offer of sympathy was a vague gesture.
“You shut up about him!” Her husky voice rumbled from deep in her chest, filled with grief. “David was never afraid of anything in his whole life!”
Her hands were doubled into fists at her side, but Walker didn’t say anything. He understood this resentment of the living, although it was seldom so openly admitted. Always, a vague sense of guilt clung to those who survived while their buddies fell.
Nearly finished, she pushed away from the table and stood up. “Stay away from Mary Lynn while I’m gone, Walker. If you hurt her, I swear I’ll get you for it.”
Walker smiled dryly. There was no going back to what had existed before. Always when he looked at Mary Lynn, there would be a sense of ownership. She had belonged to him—and would again. Each time their eyes would meet, a knowingness would be exchanged of the intimacy they had shared. It was a human weakness, this need to touch. And Walker had never claimed to be strong. He stared at his glass while Marty strode away.
Washington, D.C., sweltered in the soaring summer temperatures while June officially ushered in the hot season. Major Mitch Ryan blotted the sweat beading on his upper lip. The air was close and stifling in the visitors’ gallery of the House, and the heat made it difficult for him to concentrate on the endless debate being waged on the floor below.
His uniform clung damply to his skin and Mitch wished for the milder climate he’d so recently left in England. General Arnold, conferring with the Allied commanders as the combined armies battled inland, had yet to return. The air strategies that had come out of the Casablanca meeting more than a year before had proved successful. The bombing raids, by the U.S. by day and the R.A.F. by night prior to the invasion, had wreaked havoc with the enemy
’s transportation system, hampering the movement of Nazi reinforcements to Normandy, and their strikes on the aircraft plants had practically castrated the German Luftwaffe, rendering it impotent against the invading forces. The Allies had the superior air power.
So, while General Henry Harley Arnold remained in England, he had ordered Mitch back to the States to observe the House debate on the bill to militarize the WASPs. It seemed Mitch could not escape reminders of Cappy. In his job, it was too easy to keep tabs on her even if he hadn’t seen her since they broke up—which was another reason he longed to be somewhere else.
The Washington Post had predicted a battle of the sexes over the legislation. Two days before, a Louisiana congressman, James Morrison, had fired the opening shot, critically referring to the WASPs as a glamorous and elite corps who wore stylish uniforms tailored by Neiman-Marcus and protesting the probable windshield-washing job the supposedly more qualified civilian male pilots were likely to get. From the outset, it was clear to Mitch the opposition to the bill was going to be as hot as the weather. He had his own problems being objective about the issue.
The second day, he had sat silently in the gallery while around him supporters of the civilian pilots’ cause vocalized their objections to the WASP bill, constantly interrupting the member of the Rules Committee who was attempting to present the resolution and explain its provisions to the House. This turned into a forty-five-minute process. Once the rules had been adopted governing the debate and vote on the legislation, the House adjourned until the following morning, June 22, 1944, the first full day of summer.
Representative Charles Elston of Ohio, on the House Military Affairs Committee and a proponent of the bill, had the floor.“… Instructors are required to pass only the Class Two examination, which is the equivalent of the airline pilot test. On the other hand, a WASP must pass the combat examination …”
Mitch’s attention drifted. All of the arguments for or against the bill were centered around the controversy regarding the civilian male pilots whose services were no longer required in the training of Army pilots. However, with the ground war in Europe beginning, the walking Army needed men. At issue was not whether the women were qualified pilots performing functions vital to the military, but whether they were taking jobs from men.
The thought triggered a flash of recall to the times he’d sat behind the pilot’s seat while Cappy flew the plane—and he’d lean forward and kiss the curve of her neck, raising little shivers over her flesh. And the ache surfaced again, taunting and torturing him with images of her. Mitch wanted her—loved her no less than he did before—but the futility of it remained. She had allowed no room for compromise.
“What is it that these women are qualified to do that these C.A.A. pilots cannot do?” Compton White, a congressman from Idaho, made this demand of the bill’s sponsor, who had brought the matter to committee the past February.
John Costello, formerly a California lawyer, replied, “The C.A.A. pilots can qualify, probably for many of the same jobs, but what the Army needs now is fighting men.”
Mitch’s glance sought out Costello’s opponent in the House as he threw out the challenge, “And the gentleman wants to take these men out of the flying corps and put them on the ground?”
“No.”
“That is the meat of the coconut, is it not?” White insisted.
To this, Representative Costello responded, “No. If the men are qualified to fly planes, we want to put them in the Army flying planes. If they cannot qualify to fly planes we want to put them in as Army navigators and bombardiers. We want to use every man that is qualified.”
The heat, the debate, the prejudices of the gallery visitors, all combined to make Mitch impatient with the proceedings. White’s reply was typical of other questioning comments that had gone before. So much of it was a repeat of arguments that had previously been expressed that Mitch’s attention kept wandering.
Costello was speaking again. “… This should be done because these women, at present, are denied hospitalization; they are denied insurance benefits and things of that kind to which, as military personnel, they should be entitled. Because of the work they are doing, they should be receiving …”
Mitch glanced at his watch and wondered how much longer this would go on. While the debate droned on, he stepped out of the gallery to stretch his legs. When he returned, Karl Stefan was offering his opinion.
“No matter what this House feels about the women in our armed forces, Mr. Chairman, I feel now that we are discussing them I cannot resist in some way championing their cause,” the Nebraska Representative said. “My information is voluminous regarding the ability of these women in flying these monsters of the air through storms and clouds and making safe delivery after thousands of miles of flight. The knowledge of some of these women regarding the reading of maps and the handling of radio and their skill in emergencies are contained in many chapters of thrilling experiences of the Army Air Corps. It will be told more graphically when the war is over. …”
They all spoke as if the end of the war were imminent, Mitch thought in disgust. The armies were only now entering Cherbourg to secure the Cotentin Peninsula, and in the Pacific, the Navy had engaged the Japanese fleet in the Philippine Sea near the Marianas.
The debate waged on until Representative Edward Izak brought the matter to a head, openly admitting his desire to kill the bill by striking the enacting clause from it. “There are more than twenty-five hundred men sitting out on the beaches of California”—the state he represented—“today, who have been instructing for four years, the finest aviators we have in this country. The Army says, ‘You cannot pass the examination so out you go, but we will uniform these women and let them take your places.’ Is that not a fine situation?”
That was the crux of it.
After nearly five hours of debate, Mitch was not surprised when the roll was called and 188 versus 169 representatives voted to kill House Resolution 4219 to commission women pilots in the Army Air Forces.
No doubt Cappy would be pleased to learn she would not be part of the Army.
On Monday, General Arnold was back in his Pentagon office, and meeting with his Director of Women Pilots. Jacqueline Cochran interpreted the congressional defeat to mean Congress wanted no more women trained at the all-female Avenger Field base in Sweetwater, Texas. The general agreed. Telegrams were sent that morning to inform the class due to report June 30 that the training program was terminated. Those already in training would complete their courses, but no new classes would begin.
By the end of June 1944, twenty-three women pilots had been killed in crashes of their planes. Aircraft mechanical failures were the major cause, although a midair collision occurred when a tower controller negligently gave clearance to two pursuits to land. Some trainees at Avenger Field had been killed when their instructors were in the planes with them.
Chapter XXVIII
JAUNTILY SWINGING HER briefcase and whistling a tuneless song, Marty ran up the steps to the barracks, and nearly bumped into Mary Lynn on her way out. They faced each other for tense, silent seconds while the July sun angled long afternoon rays at them, bathing them in its amber-tinged color.
During the two weeks since Marty had returned from Michigan, conflicting flight schedules had kept them apart—which was just as well because it gave Marty time to get over that first painful blast of anger and hurt at what she saw as Mary Lynn’s fall from grace. She tried to put all the blame on Walker, certain that Mary Lynn simply couldn’t see what a cad he was.
Irritation glittered in her silvery-green eyes as Marty noticed the raven-blue sheen on Mary Lynn’s fresh-washed hair, silkily smoothed over its rat, then studied her face. Mascara blackened the heavy fringe of lashes around her dark eyes, her most striking feature, but the points of color on her round cheeks were not caused by rouge. Her glance dropped away from Marty’s as she made a half-move to go around her.
“Going someplace?” Marty demanded, deli
berately seeking to make Mary Lynn uncomfortable with her sins. “With Walker, I presume.”
Mary Lynn attempted a stiff, but very quiet answer. “I don’t think it’s any of your business where I’m going or with whom.”
“Is that right?” Hurt and angry, Marty hit her flash point. “What about Beau? I suppose it isn’t any of his business either! I thought you loved him!” She struck hard, trying to make Mary Lynn see sense and remember what she had.
“I do,” she insisted. Defensive and sensitive, she answered back with a protesting challenge. “But I’m human, too. Don’t you think I get lonely sometimes?”
“You’ve got us,” Marty retorted, meaning herself, Cappy, and Eden. In her opinion, that should have been sufficient company for a married woman.
“So do you,” Mary Lynn countered to refute the argument. “Are you satisfied with our company alone?”
“It isn’t the same.” She didn’t want to know that Mary Lynn might have the same physical needs that she did—and if she did, it still didn’t change anything. “Nobody’s going to get hurt by what I do. But you have a husband. How could you do this to him?”
Mary Lynn’s only answers were selfish ones. She had needs and wants, the same as anyone else. Why was she denied the right to satisfy them? Why did she have to give up everything? But there was no real justification beyond the purely selfish reasons. So she walked by Marty without saying another word. She felt guilty about what she was doing, but she didn’t know how to stop.
Marty watched her walk down the steps, knowing she hadn’t accomplished anything. But she wasn’t about to give up. More than ever before, Mary Lynn was going to need her. Turning, she started to enter the barracks, but Cappy was standing in the doorway, eyeing Marty with scorn.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, Marty, throwing stones at her,” she said in low-voiced anger. “Maybe you can tell me why sinners think they know so much more about morals than saints?”
Marty flushed darkly and pressed her way inside the barracks.
