Higher, Further, Faster

by Liza Palmer

  Our plans to try out for the Flying Falcons this year may never reach fruition. And Jenks might very well be secretly reveling in that possibility. But at least I’ve kept up my end of the bargain by successfully spending at least a portion of today’s festivities relishing in Jenks getting his nose 30 percent rubbed in Maria’s and my (now well-documented) excellence. I know Maria is right and that nothing we do will change his mind, but it doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop trying.

  The gathered crowd of USAFA luminaries and cadets’ families number in the thousands. Noisy and celebratory, every step we take is met with tear-filled sobs from proud parents juggling signs and flowers for their cadets. I keep my eyes forward, knowing my family won’t be among their ranks and refusing to let that fact damper the sheer joy of today.

  All the flights are on the parade field, yet, despite the sheer number of cadets, the massive field still manages to dwarf us. As the ceremony kicks off, we’re told to look up at the sky for a flyby of three F-15s. For the briefest of moments, out on that sun-bleached field, I allow myself to close my eyes and listen to the roar of those engines. It’s breathtaking, and it takes everything I have not to burst out in a smile.

  Someday.

  We sing the National Anthem and raise our right hand and repeat the Honor Oath.

  All thousand cadets repeat the words: We will not lie, steal, or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does. Furthermore, I resolve to do my duty and to live honorably, so help me God. And just like when I took my Oath of Enlistment, the words get caught in my throat as their meaning fills me with pride and purpose. But this time I keep my eyes wide open, and I’m able to move through to the next event without being chastised by Jenks.

  And then—as if we’re just marching across a field in any drill or in any other formation on any other morning—our flights join the Cadet Wing, forming what will become our academic year squadrons.

  It’s hard to settle in and let myself really digest what’s going on with all the pomp and circumstance around me. Not that I could grasp the magnitude of today even if I was sitting in my dorm room all by myself.

  For so many weeks, today has been all about remembering the inverted-wedge formation, and when to walk here, and when to go there, and this is when you salute, and studying for the military-knowledge test, and working every morning to get my mile-and-a-half run down so I could get that Warhawk, and on and on.

  Is that how it happens? How a dream becomes a reality? Crossing off items on a checklist one at a time? Maybe instead of keeping a journal like Maria, I should keep an ongoing record of every checklist I make along the way. Because if Past Carol Danvers saw today’s checklist—with its Accept Honor Graduate and F-15 Flyby and Join Cadet Wing, she would not believe it.

  Over the last thirty-seven days, I’ve become the person I’d always imagined.

  As we march with our newly formed squadrons, I flick my gaze over the back of Maria’s head. All I want to do is get her attention and then yell at the top of my lungs, WE DID IT! THIS IS REALLY HAPPENING!

  And then I’d look back at Bianchi, Pierre, and Del Orbe to check how they’re doing: Are they as proud of themselves as I am? Are they nervous and scared, or relieved and full of happiness? Or maybe all four? Or are they just trying to get their feet right and their salute right and hope they don’t sweat through their blues?

  As each squadron conducts their own pass and review, I am barely able to contain myself. It’s our turn, and I can feel all that training and all those drills paying off, as my stride falls in with the other cadets. We salute the commandant of cadets as one unit and move past in lockstep.

  The ceremony comes to an end, and we are now fourth-class cadets.

  I am now Airman Danvers.

  The next moments are a blur of handshakes and back slaps and pulled-in-tight hugs. Parting words of wisdom from OCs Chen and Resendiz. I search the field for Maria, but Del Orbe tackles Pierre and me in a raucous, lunging hug, all formalities forgotten in the glory of the day. There are congratulations and yawps of joy. Del Orbe drags Pierre along, and his two-man congratulations wagon moves on to the next crowd of newly minted airmen.

  “Congratulations,” Bianchi says, walking up.

  “Congratulations to you,” I say, still searching for Maria.

  We are quiet.

  “I was wrong,” Bianchi says, his voice an eruption. I stop scanning the field and focus on him. I wait while he rests his hands on his hips and searches the grass, like he’s trying to buy himself a minute. Finally he says, again, “I was wrong.” He can only repeat himself.

  As Bianchi stands in front of me, the picture of contrition, I feel like I just got smacked in the face.

  “Oh no,” I say.

  “What?”

  I shake my head. “I’m on the cusp of being the first baby.”

  “How—?”

  “You made fun of me—and just now? As you were pouring your heart out—”

  “I mean, I wasn’t pouring—”

  “As you were pouring your heart out, do you want to know what I was thinking?”

  “Sure?” Bianchi looks legitimately terrified.

  “That I couldn’t wait to tell you that you were wrong. And that I won. And that”—the second realization takes my breath away—“I want to rub your nose in it.” What I don’t add is just like I want to do with Jenks. I pull the words the state trooper scrawled onto that ticket all those weeks ago out of the depths of my brain: Let yourself learn.

  “And what do you want to say now?” Bianchi asks.

  Think, Danvers. Take a breath. Let yourself learn. “I want to be a good airman,” I say at last, slowly.

  “Me too.”

  “I didn’t know that in order to be a good airman, I had to be a good human.” I see my words hit Bianchi like a truck. “I know that sounds cheesy or whatever.”

  “It doesn’t.” Bianchi shakes his head and looks up at me. “It doesn’t sound cheesy.”

  “I think we’re going to win more often than we lose. I thought that was going to be the hard part. The winning. But now I think the hard part is going to

  be making sure I don’t lose my integrity…along the way.”

  “There you are!” Maria says, settling herself between Bianchi and me. We snap out of our conversation and both turn toward her.

  “Congratulations, Airman Rambeau,” Bianchi says to Maria. Then he clears his throat and looks around. “I’d better find Pierre and Del Orbe before they launch into the commandant of cadets for a hug.” One last wave and Bianchi heads off in search of his friends.

  “I figured it out,” she says as soon as Bianchi is out of earshot, unable to keep from beaming.

  “Figured what out? You’ve only been gone for like ten minutes.”

  “I know how we’re going to get our private pilot’s license,” she says, her voice quivering with excitement.

  My eyes widen. “Are you…are you serious?”

  “Yeah. I have a plan, Danvers.”

  MARIA AND I SPEED AWAY FROM THE USAFA campus that Sunday, a rare day off from training. The roar of my Mustang engine coming to life after so many weeks being left unused feels like recovering a piece of myself I’d forgotten in the blur of Basic. We exchange a contented, borderline-smug look as we peel off, feeling like we’ve gotten away with something, even though we have no idea what it could be. Then we roll down our windows and let the crisp early-morning air cleanse and awaken us as we sail down the hill toward Maria’s plan.

  As is always the way with exciting road-trip adventures, the glow of luminous possibilities begins to fade with every red light, every clueless meandering driver we’re stuck behind, and every frustrating traffic jam that keeps us trapped and motionless, bringing us back to earth bit by bit. As Maria scans radio stations for a better song, the beginnings of another blisteringly hot summer day hits the side of my face like the blast from an open oven door.

  With the adrenaline subsiding, I’m feeling someth
ing much more troubling: anxiety, mixed with a hefty dose of doubt as to what it is we’re about to do here, and whether I can do it at all.

  I sift through some of my emotions, trying to land on something to share that will ease this burden but that won’t completely scare Maria off. I haven’t had that many opportunities to have a best friend—certainly not someone as awesome as her. I don’t want to alarm her with the part of my brain that’s suddenly speeding ahead even faster than the Mustang, cycling through everything that could go wrong and every way that we could fail and prove our naysayers right. I shrug my shoulders as if commanding my body to relax, to appear as careless and casual as possible, and in doing so, force my insides to fall into line.

  “Why are you doing that weird thing with your shoulders?” Maria asks before I utter one “carefree” word.

  “I’m being breezy,” I say, and Maria barks out the biggest laugh I’ve ever heard from her. She can’t catch her breath. She actually slaps her knee at one point. “Easy, breezy.” I shrug my shoulders again and she pitches forward with a lingering cackle. “That’s me.”

  “Danvers, and this is the biggest compliment I could ever pay you, you couldn’t be breezy if you spent ten years training yourself,” Maria says, swiping her tears away.

  “I actually did spend a year of my life training myself to be breezy!”

  “What?” Maria asks, still laughing. Now my own giggles are erupting out of me like lava. I can barely contain myself as I tell my own tragic history.

  “There was this girl in my fourth-grade class who would just gaze out the window of our classroom and sigh. I was fighting with my pencil to learn cursive and struggling through division, and there she was, just impenetrable. She seemed so dreamy. I spent all year trying to copy her.” We stop at another red light. I perch my elbow on my steering wheel and cradle my face in my hand just so. I sweep my gaze across the windshield and, with a contented sigh, melt into my seat. I look over at Maria with a raised eyebrow.

  “I mean, like everything else you put your mind to…it’s exceptional,” Maria says, her tone mock serious. “Although, I can see your jaw clenching from here, so…” The light turns green and we roll through the same intersection where just a few months prior I’d had my little run-in with State Trooper Wright. I scan the mountain roads and the far-off horizon for her squad car. I don’t know what I’d say to her now. Probably just…thank you.

  “I’d just gotten sick of always being called intense, you know?”

  “Intense is good,” Maria says.

  “Not for little girls.”

  “For little girls who want to be the first female fighter pilots?” Maria nods her head, and I can see her mood darken. “Intense is good.” Maria looks over at me and I can see the weariness in her eyes.

  “You too?”

  “She’s just a lot,” Maria says, her voice high and dripping with faux concern. “You better break that spirit.” We fall into silence. And before I can filter it or pretty it up, I just start talking.

  “I have a hard time not doing all this just to prove them all wrong.” There. I said it. Maria and I have a plan, but without that intense fire of wanting to prove myself right, and them wrong, fueling me…I feel like a barely flickering candle instead of a flamethrower. Doubt is a new feeling for me, but I can’t help but think: Will it be enough to just have me driving me through all of this? I want it to be enough. But I’m not used to doing things out of my own internal motivations.

  “The twenty percent rubbing their noses in it thing,” Maria says with a nod.

  “Thirty percent but—”

  “It’s thirty percent now?” I can’t look at her. Maria waits. The silence expands as a soft, ethereal-sounding voice floats from the radio, raspy and beautiful.

  “Okay, yes. The percentage is climbing. And yes, I’m worried that pretty soon that percentage will go all the way up to one hundred, and like I’ve done my entire life, I’ll be doing something just to prove everyone else wrong. And that’s no way to live. And yes, I’ve heard the saying ‘Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy,’ but look, why not be both right and happy? Huh? Ever think of that?” As Maria shakes her head and laughs, I turn into the driveway she’s circled on her map for us, and proceed down the long dusty road.

  “You gotta get out of your head, Danvers. It’s pretty scary in there. Ooh, look, I think this is it—it should be right over there,” she says, craning her neck and searching the vast expanse of land ahead.

  And then, I feel it. The low growl of its engine vibrates throughout the Mustang, its singsongy hum snaking up my spine just like it always used to when I spent my days craning my neck toward the skies instead of grinding through training courses on the ground. I slow the car, and Maria and I look up—in back of us, overhead, off on the horizon.

  “It feels like it’s in the car with us,” Maria says, now almost completely hanging out of the passenger window to get a better look. The growl and purr grow closer. I pull into a parking spot just next to hangar thirty-nine, and Maria and I leap out of the car just in time to see that same yellow biplane with the blue and red accents, the only one I couldn’t name on my first morning in Colorado, soar overhead, lining up with its runway and touching down.

  “It’s wonderful,” I say, smiling wide and unguarded. I look over at Maria and her face is just as open and just as joyous.

  “Beautiful,” Maria says, in a glorious daze. And without a word or any agreement, both of us take off running toward the plane as it rumbles on to hangar thirty-nine.

  The plane approaches us as we try to balance ogling it with not getting run over. As it gets closer, I notice two open cockpits—one behind the other. Maria and I watch and wait as the two pilots guide the plane into the hangar and finally shut the plane down with a last shudder. We can barely contain ourselves.

  The pilot in the front climbs down first and stands on the wing. Then he and another man who’s emerged from the hangar help the other pilot to climb out of his cockpit. Both pilots hop down, and the one in the front takes off his bomber hat and goggles.

  Maria and I can’t help but look at each other with a now almost atomic level of excitement. He is a she. The other pilot takes off his bomber hat and goggles—this one is unmistakably male—and they both make their way over to us.

  “You look just like your dad,” the man says to Maria. His salt-and-pepper hair is closely cropped, and the indentation of the goggles has left an imprint on his wind-burned russet skin. His face is lined with age but still maintains a sense of youth. Open, yet cryptic. It seems the pilot is just as inscrutable as the plane.

  “You’ve gotten so big,” the woman says, just before pulling Maria in for a hug. Her voice is a wobbly rasp. Her light brown hair is mussed from the bomber hat, and just like the man beside her, the goggles have left a mark on her tawny-beige skin—which only calls more attention to her huge hazel eyes. She’s the most quietly powerful woman I’ve ever met.

  “Carol Danvers, this is Jack and Bonnie Thompson. They flew with my dad,” Maria says, absolutely beaming with pride and adoration. Both Jack and Bonnie extend their hands to me, and I find myself completely speechless.

  “It’s…wow…I…It’s nice to meet you,” I finally manage. And then I can no longer hold it in: “If I could? Please…what kind of plane is that?”

  “Mr. Goodnight?” Jack asks.

  I laugh. “Why’d you name the plane Mr. Goodnight?” I ask.

  “You’ll see when you fly him,” Jack says, with a wink.

  “When I fly him?”

  “It’s a 1942 Stearman. PT-Seventeen,” Bonnie cuts in.

  “It’s what I trained in,” Jack adds.

  “And so will you,” Bonnie says with a wry smile. Maria and I share a look of deep concern. The plane is magnificent in its own way, but it’s not what either of us had envisioned earning our forty hours of flight training with.

  “Not quite the plane you guys were imagining for this lit
tle flying school Maria here has arranged?” Jack asks, reading my mind as he leads us toward the hangar.

  We enter, and any misgivings I had disappear. Hangar thirty-nine is what I envision heaven would look like.

  Dimly lit and cool, it’s bigger than any building should be. In one shadowy corner there’s a beautiful, pristine T-41 Mescalero. And lurking in the wayback, Jack and Bonnie have—no biggie—a couple of civilian Cessnas. There’s that P-51D Mustang I heard—its engine now deconstructed and laid out on the floor. Tools, engine parts, cleaning supplies, and propellers are scattered under an old World War II poster of Captain America saluting us good citizens for buying war bonds. The entire space is controlled chaos, and it’s wonderful. Jack switches on an old radio perched precariously atop their workbench, and the crack of a baseball bat bursts through the cavernous space as some far-off radio announcer calls a game.

  “So, Maria tells us you want to get your private pilot’s license so you can join the Flying Falcons?” Bonnie asks, setting up an old coffeemaker. Jack reaches up to a higher shelf and hands Bonnie a can of coffee, along with a stack of filters. She thanks him just as he winces, reacting to a less-than-stellar development in his baseball game.

  “Yes, ma’am…Pilot Thom…Mrs. Thom—” I stumble.

  “Just Bonnie, honey.” She makes eye contact. “You can just call me Bonnie.”

  I nod and try again. “Bonnie.” She smiles at me and I melt.

  “Bonnie flew transports in the war,” Maria says.

  “Trained me to fly,” Jack adds.

  “I wanted to fly combat, but…” Bonnie trails off. She doesn’t have to finish. We know.

  “So do we,” Maria says.

  “And you think getting into the Flying Falcons will…what?” Bonnie asks, the smell of percolating coffee now wafting throughout the hangar. Maria and I look at each other. We know what this sounds like when we say it out loud. Especially to Bonnie.