On Wings Of The Morning

by Marie Bostwick

  Working it through in my mind three thousand feet aloft, it had all seemed so easy. I would roll the truth out at Morgan’s feet like a scroll so he could read it for himself. And somehow it would all work out from there. I’d be in his arms, forgiven, understood, wanted. Everything would be all right.

  But everything had gotten jumbled. In his arms I couldn’t remember what I had wanted to say. All I knew was Morgan. His name was the word that came after “I want.”

  His arms around me were taut and strong as iron bands, but they moved with me, shielding and releasing all at once, and there was nowhere else I wanted to be. It was not like any lovemaking I’d ever known. There was no questioning hesitancy in the pressure of his lips on mine, no considered, tentative surrender in my response, only the need to yield and, for the first time in my life, to demand.

  Reaching my arms high over my head, I pulled his mouth closer to mine. He arced his body over mine. I pushed myself toward him, reaching on tiptoe and arching my back into an answering curve of desire until our bodies met at every point.

  I lowered my arms, wrapping them over his shoulders like a covering shawl and took a single step backward, leading the dance. He moved with me, and we were on the bed, lying face to face, matching breath for breath and kiss for kiss.

  Morgan pushed himself half up, leaning his weight on one arm and gently pressing my shoulder with the other so I lay down next to him. I guided his hand to my blouse buttons. I wanted him to hurry up. I wanted him to slow down. I wanted my body joined with Morgan’s, possessed and possessing, but that wasn’t all.

  My hand fluttered above his for a moment, a shy bird hesitant to light, before covering his, stopping him at the last button. His hand lay warm against the flat of my stomach, and it was everything I could do not to arch toward him, silently pressing him to carry on. I knew I had to say something and hear something before I let myself go further.

  I opened my eyes. “I love you, Morgan.”

  His eyes, deep and questioning, looked down at me, focused on my lips as they spoke, then moved to trace the curve of my brow, and the bone of my cheek, examining one part of my face and then another as if determined to memorize each feature individually. He was silent so long, and I couldn’t read his expression. A cold anxiety gripped me. Finally, his eyes returned to mine.

  “I love you, too, Georgia. I really do.” My heart warmed as he said it, and I rolled toward him, but he pushed me away. “That’s why I have to stop.”

  It felt like I’d forgotten to breathe, like my heart had skipped a beat. “I don’t understand.”

  “We can’t do this, Georgia. I love you too much to go any further. You’ll hate yourself if you do, and you’ll hate me for letting you.”

  “But, Morgan, if we love each other, then how can we just ...”

  He pulled himself away from me and lifted himself up to sit on the edge of the bed, groaning as if in real physical pain. “Georgia, you’ve got to go. I have to report to my ship in eight hours. I’m headed to the other side of the world. I’ll probably never see you again. Not to mention the fact that I’m a fighter pilot. The chances of me surviving the war are slim. Nearly every guy I started out flying with is dead. This one night is all we’d ever have together. Tomorrow I’ll be gone, and all you’ll have to remember me by is a guilty conscience.” He stood up and walked across the room, picked up a shirt from where he’d hung it on the back of a chair, and put it on. “I do love you, Georgia. I love you too much to let you betray yourself for a one-night stand.”

  I was flooded with relief. I understood. He looked so pained, so ashamed, but why wouldn’t he? He thought I was another man’s wife. I shouldn’t have let either of us get so carried away. I should have stuck to my plan, told him the truth before ever doing so much as shake his hand.

  “Morgan,” I began, “you don’t understand. I have to tell you something. In fact, that’s why I came here in the first place. I’m not married, Morgan. My husband is dead. I should have told you before.”

  “I know, Georgia. I knew that from the first. Your friend Pamela told me,” he said quietly. He stood up, towering over me with his shirt buttoned up tight and tucked evenly into the waist of his trousers.

  Suddenly I saw myself the way he did. My discarded shoes lay piled next to the bed where I’d kicked them off. My skirt was wrinkled and hitched halfway up my thighs, and my blouse was completely open, showing my brassiere and the flesh that spilled from the top of it, mottled and reddened with fading passion and embarrassment at finding myself so exposed. I sat up and tried to smooth my hair with one hand while pulling the edges of my blouse together with the other, trying to cover myself. I was so ashamed. I looked exactly like what he’d said I was—a one-night stand after the night is over.

  He could never love me. I should have known it from the first. I was Delia’s daughter.

  I slid my skirt back down below my knees. “I have to go,” I said, looking down as I fastened the buttons on my blouse and tucked it tight inside my skirt. I couldn’t look at him. “I’m sorry, Morgan. I should never have come here tonight. It was a mistake.” I slipped on my shoes, then picked up the pocketbook I’d let drop to the floor when Morgan first pulled me into his room. Clutching it close to my breast like a shield, I reached for the doorknob. Morgan put his hand on my shoulder.

  “Wait a minute,” he said. “It’s not what you think. Don’t run off like this. Let’s talk.”

  I pulled away from his grasp and opened the door. “There’s nothing to talk about, Morgan. It’s my fault. I have to go.” I ran outside, stepping into the harsh shaft of lamplight that spilled through the door, beaming a wedge of light into the black night. The sound of my high heels hitting the pavement was loud in my ears, nearly drowning out the sound of Morgan’s voice calling my name as he stood in the doorway. I listened hard as the distance between us lengthened and his shouts faded in the night, half-dreading, half-hoping to hear the sound of footsteps behind me, pursuing me, demanding an explanation, and offering another chance. But none came.

  It couldn’t work. You knew it, an inner voice said accusingly. You knew it all along.

  25

  Morgan

  San Diego, California—May 1943

  I’d set my alarm for five, but I didn’t need it. I’d lain awake all night, thinking about Georgia. One minute I wished I’d run after her, and the next I wished I’d just followed my instincts, told her I loved her, too, made love to her then and there, and waited until morning to figure out if it had been right or not.

  Fountain always used to say, “You know what your problem is, Morgan? You think too damn much. You got to let yourself live a little, son, while you still got life left in you.”

  Maybe he was right, but it was too late to do anything about it now. I was due to meet Mama at the all-night diner for breakfast in forty-five minutes. An hour after that I would have to tell her good-bye and report to the base, ready to ship out later in that day. For the next few hours the only thing that mattered was Mama. I had to perk up and put on a happy face. It might be another two years before I saw her again. Or I might never see her again. There was no way of knowing.

  Until today I had been able to shove my imminent return to the battlefield into a shadowy, closed-off compartment of my mind. Now I had to face the truth.

  When General Martin had transferred me back to the States, I hadn’t wanted to go home. Now I didn’t want to go back, but I knew I had to. There was no way out of it and no way to ignore it, not anymore. It was beyond my control. I needed help.

  For the first time in a long time, I got down on my knees and prayed.

  God, I don’t know if this war was part of your plan or if we brought it on ourselves, but I know it’s no surprise to you. I don’t know if I’ll make it home this time or not, but unless you’ve got a better idea, I’d like to come home in one piece—if not for me then at least for Mama. Watch out for her while I’m gone. And thank you, God, for Paul. He’ll take car
e of her no matter what happens to me. Thank you that I don’t have to worry about what will happen to her if I don’t come back.

  And Georgia ... I don’t know what to say about her, God. When it comes to Georgia, I don’t know if I should say I’m sorry for being weak or thank you for helping me to be strong. Just take care of her. Help her have a good life.

  Amen.

  I got to the diner a couple of minutes before Mama arrived and slid into a booth near the door. The waitress was yawning and took her time delivering the menus. I drummed my fingers on the tabletop, looked out the window to see if Mama was coming around the corner, and wondered why anyone would decide to cover every booth and stool in a whole restaurant with upholstery that was the same color red as those hard candied apples they sold at county fairgrounds. It was too jarring a color for this early in the morning; just looking at it made me antsy. But, then, maybe that was the idea—to keep people pepped up so they’d eat, leave, and make room for more paying customers instead of putting up their feet and lingering over five-cent cups of coffee.

  I was actually thinking of asking the waitress her opinion on the subject when I heard bells jangle as the door was pushed open and looked up to see Mama. I jumped out of my seat to give her a big hug and a smile. I wanted our last hour together to be happy. There was no point in allowing the gloom of impending farewell to spoil what might be our last meal together for a long time—or ever. We both understood the situation. It was pointless to dwell on it.

  We settled ourselves back into the booth and took a look at the menu. I ordered three over-easy with bacon and two donuts. Mama got scrambled eggs and toast. The waitress filled our coffee cups and took the order back to the kitchen.

  Pretend you’re just going away for a little while, I told myself, like when you went away to college.

  It worked. I started off asking Mama to fill me in on a little of Dillon’s gossip, especially about Bud and Jolene Olinger’s baby boy. Aunt Ruby, who was always in the know when it came to the details of Dillon’s sordid and seamy underbelly, had hinted that the Olinger baby, who was reported to be only nine months old, was already walking. Ruby’s intimation was that Jolene, who had shocked the town by entering into a May-December marriage with the graybeard Bud, was already a few months in the family way before the wedding ceremony and the couple’s subsequent extended honeymoon in Texas. I couldn’t have asked Mama about it with Paul sitting there; there are some things a minister in a small town simply can’t know about—or if he does know about them, he has to pretend that he doesn’t.

  Blushing and whispering, even though I told her she didn’t have to keep her voice down—there was no one in the diner but the two of us—Mama confirmed the story. I laughed out loud. “Well, good old Bud! Who’d have thought it!”

  Mama hushed me and drew her brows together disapprovingly, but I could see her working to compress the smile that played on her lips. I teased her, and we talked some more, and for a few minutes it was just like the old days back in Dillon, but better because I was older and we could share stories and jokes in a way that wouldn’t have been possible when I was still a boy. It was just like old times, but different because I was different and so was Mama. She was still my mother, but now she was my friend as well. It was nice.

  Her eyes twinkled as she told me how she’d sweet-talked Mr. Cheevers, who’d run the filling station ever since I was a little kid, into selling her an extra gallon of gas beyond her ration so she could take Grandma on a birthday picnic at the lake.

  “Mama the Black Marketer!” I laughed, and Mama joined me, but then I caught a glimpse of the clock on the wall and my heart sank. For a few minutes I’d forgotten that we were running on borrowed time. In fifteen minutes I’d have to go. Mama knew it, too.

  Mama pushed her eggs from one side of her plate to the other; she’d hardly touched her breakfast. I dunked my donut into my coffee and took a bite, trying to buy some time while I figured out what I could say that would lighten the mood. Suddenly, without really thinking, I cleared my throat and blurted out, “Mama, have you seen Virginia Pratt lately?” I gave my donut another dunk into my cup, trying to act casual, but my mind was racing. Virginia Pratt? What made me ask about her? I’d sent her a letter just before I left for San Diego, but just that morning I’d decided to write another telling her I didn’t think we had a future together and she should look for someone else. I should have done it months ago, I thought guiltily.

  “Why no,” Mama answered with a trace of surprise in her voice. “Not recently. I guess she’s about ready to graduate, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah. Next month. She made salutatorian,” I said and immediately wondered what in the world had made me volunteer that bit of information. Now, just when I was getting ready to break it off, Mama would get all kinds of crazy ideas about Virginia and me.

  Just then a soggy piece of donut broke off and dropped onto my uniform, staining it with coffee. “Oh, damn it!” I said, plucking the mess off my shirt.

  “Don’t curse,” Mama said primly and handed me her napkin so I could blot the coffee stain.

  We might have taken a brief detour into the landscape of adult friendship, but she was still my mother. “Still trying to turn me into a gentleman, Mama?”

  “No. Trying to remind you that you already are a gentleman.” Frustrated by my inability to eradicate the coffee stain, Mama took the napkin from me, dipped it in her water glass and handed it back. “See if that works any better.” It did.

  Mama’s nonchalant attitude wasn’t fooling me. It didn’t take two shakes for her to turn the conversation back to Virginia Pratt. Though the stain was all gone, I kept blotting my shirt with the wet napkin.

  “She seems a sweet girl. Must be smart to stand second in her class. Always had nice manners, I remember.” She paused, waiting for me to volunteer more information, and when I didn’t, she cleared her throat and asked, “Anything you want to tell me?”

  Not about Virginia, there wasn’t.

  But there were things I wanted to ask. So many things. I wanted to ask Mama about my feelings for Georgia. I wanted to ask her about everything, about girls and women, life and living, about love and lust, and how to tell one from the other. I wanted to ask how I came to be. Had she loved him like I loved Georgia? Like Georgia said she loved me? If so, where was he now? Where had he been all these years? If he loved her, how could he have left her? Left us? What kind of man does that to a woman he loves?

  The look in Georgia’s eyes last night—it was the same look I’d seen in Mama’s face when I was a little boy and the clucking, self-satisfied wives of Dillon would whisper as we walked down the sidewalk, just loud enough so we could hear. A picture of Georgia flashed in my mind, of Georgia crouched on the bed, undone and suddenly small, refusing to look at me, clutching shirt buttons and shame to her breast, trying to cover herself and get away. She ran away, and I let her. What kind of man does that to the woman he loves? What kind of man was I?

  I took a drink of coffee. “Virginia and I have talked about ... you know, things. But she’s awfully young. She wants to go to college. Maybe be a teacher. It’d be a shame if she didn’t go while she has the chance and ...”

  What’s wrong with me? This might be the last time I saw my mother on earth. I wanted to say at least one thing that was true before I left. Something. Where should I start?

  I looked into her eyes. I didn’t smile or pretend to smile. “Mama, I’m a pilot. You know the odds aren’t good for me.”

  She bit her lip and whispered, “I know.” For a moment I thought she was going to cry, but then she said, “So many times I’ve thought I should have insisted that you stay in college. Maybe I shouldn’t have let you learn to fly in the first place.”

  “You couldn’t have stopped me, Mama. No one could have. It’s part of who I am.” It was true. That was one thing I knew for certain. “When I joined up, all I thought about was flying, just me and the plane and the blue sky that doesn’t end. I neve
r really thought about why I would be flying.” There it was again—that need to divide things up and shove them in separate boxes, to think only about the things I wanted to think about, the things I thought mattered. What I was starting to realize was that everything mattered. That was the difference between being a boy and a man: facing the truth and naming it.

  “It’s not that I didn’t understand there was a war on and that I would be in it, but I really didn’t know what war was. The newspapers clean it up and make it seem so simple and straight, but there’s no color in those pictures. There’s no spewing of red blood, or ravenous orange flames eating at tail sections, or blue-black ocean that sucks downed planes into the depths and closes over them. A battle reported in black and white is just an outline of the real thing.”

  “You’ve grown up fast, haven’t you?” It was a question that, in another context, might have been flattering. As it was, it was just a statement of fact, one that seemed to make Mama a little sad.

  “Eighteen months are like ten years when there’s a war on,” I said. “I thought I’d ship out, wrap a white scarf around my neck, shoot down a few Zeros from far enough away so I wouldn’t have to see the pilots’ faces, win a medal or two. Maybe dance with a few fast girls from the U.S.O. in my spare time.” I couldn’t help but smile because it had all been so true. Less than two years ago I’d been a baby, a wide-eyed kid who thought heroism was as bloodless and straightforward as a Lone Ranger script. When I hopped into the cockpit of my old Stearman trainer and took off for college, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. “I never pictured myself being afraid.”