She threw her hand up in the air. “Captain Woodward, sir!” she called. “Permission to try the ignition, sir?”
Captain Woodward looked at something over her shoulder, his face stone. “If you think you’re ready, Palmer,” he said.
“There’s no way,” Pickman sneered.
Lottie took a deep breath. Then she climbed up over the wing, stuck her head in the cockpit, and fired the inertia starter. When she saw the mixture advance, she waited for the ignition to spark.
For a sickening instant, she didn’t hear anything. Then there was a slight hum that turned from a purr into a growl.
When she pulled her head back out of the cockpit, the propeller on her side of the plane was spinning merrily.
The one beside Pickman stood stock still.
“It wasn’t fair,” Pickman complained. “Hers is probably the side that only broke after landing. It probably didn’t even need fixing.”
Captain Woodward walked over as a smattering of applause broke out among the gathered men, tepid at first, but then growing. “Actually,” Captain Woodward said, “that was your side, Pickman.”
Then he looked up at Lottie, meeting her eyes for the first time in weeks.
With a little shrug, Lottie turned her back on him and stuck her head into the cockpit to shut the engine down.
When she turned back, he offered her his hand, to help her down.
“I don’t need a hand, Captain,” she said. “I can do it by myself.”
Then she jumped down without his help and started putting the engine back together again, part by part.
Fourteen
THE MESS HALL WAS never a quiet affair. The seamen who had ruled the San Diego base before the WAVES got there to train were a rowdy, rough-and-ready bunch to begin with, and when the women of the WAVES had arrived, they’d brought their own feisty spirit right through the door with them.
But Lottie had never seen the women as keyed up as they were this morning. And she knew why. Today was the last day of training for the women who had arrived with her on the base. Their permanent assignments had been dropped off sometime during the dead of night in the mail room. So everyone had stopped there to pick theirs up on the way to breakfast. And everybody was asking and telling everyone where they had been stationed, all at once.
In Lottie’s pocket was the letter she had just picked up from the mail room, with her permanent assignment in it.
Machinist’s mate.
That was Navy-speak for airplane mechanic, and it didn’t come as a surprise.
But the location of her station did: Pearl Harbor.
Hawaii.
A few years ago, that would have conjured up nothing more than images of travel agent window posters of smoky volcanoes over sparkling blue water and pristine beaches.
And Pearl Harbor should have conjured the prettiest images of all—a beach strewn with pearls, or a harbor filled with oysters full of pearly treasure. But now nobody in the country—or probably the world—could hear the name without thinking of the Japanese surprise attack on the base that had killed thousands of American naval officers.
Her mother had been hoping that Lottie would be assigned to one of the stations on the East Coast, about as far from the front as you could get anywhere in the world. And that was a very sensible hope. Most of the girls whose assignments Lottie had overheard had wound up at stateside bases, where they’d be doing secretarial or accounting work, to free up men for active duty.
But Hawaii was the only part of the United States that had actually seen open conflict in this war. It was the most dangerous place in the whole country. It wouldn’t settle her mother’s fears.
It would make them worse.
And her father—Lottie could hardly think about how worried he’d be. He’d be tempted, she knew, to try to buy the whole base up and shut it down, just to keep her out of harm’s way.
But this wasn’t a competitor that he could drive out of business. This was the war: something far bigger than Lottie or her father. And the fate of the whole world depended on the choices that all these individual people, even ones as small and insignificant as Lottie, were making, at any given moment.
Lottie hated the thought of worrying her parents. But at the same time, it felt right. So many other parents were worried. So many parents had lost so much to the war already. Wasn’t it right that their family should give something that really mattered, that really cost them something, despite all their wealth, as well?
What still didn’t feel right to her was the break with Eugene. Just like when she’d gotten the assignment to San Diego, some deep part of her now wanted to share her new assignment with him. For so long, he’d been the first one she’d told about almost everything. It almost felt as though if Eugene didn’t know about something in her life, it might not be real. But at the same time, the life she was living felt more real than anything she’d ever experienced before in her days as a socialite, which now seemed more and more like a dream. And even though she missed Eugene, she didn’t have any desire to return to that life—or to live as his wife.
The only good thing about Pearl Harbor was that she’d be away from Captain Woodward, his constant hassling and disdain. It was a wonder that she’d been able to learn anything in his shop, when he so clearly wanted to see her fail. And she couldn’t wait for a fresh start, to prove herself in a new shop.
As she sat down at a nearby table, the other girls were eagerly swapping their assignments.
“Parachute rigger!” one of the women said, laughing. “I mean, my brother always said I was the best in the family at folding the laundry. But I thought that was because he didn’t want to do it himself.”
“Both of those things can be true,” the woman next to her observed.
Lottie’s table was crammed with yeomen, who would be serving as secretaries, doing administrative work; women in storekeeping, who would be keeping the books with careful accounting; a few coders; one woman assigned to radio transmission.
Maggie walked up, carrying her tray full of what the Navy insisted, against all evidence to the contrary, was breakfast.
“You get your assignment?” Lottie asked Maggie as Maggie tucked into a pile of rubbery yellow flakes that the Navy liked to describe as scrambled eggs.
“Yeoman,” Maggie said ruefully. “Apparently I didn’t manage to convince them I was qualified as a mechanic with my excellent skills putting papers in files.”
“You do a lot more than that,” Lottie said.
Maggie shrugged. “Oh sure,” she said, brushing Lottie’s compliment off, as she always did. Lottie wasn’t sure if Maggie would have called them friends or not, exactly. But since that night at the club, there had been a noticeable thaw. They’d at least gotten to know each other, to the point where Lottie could recognize certain of Maggie’s habits.
Maggie brightened at another thought. “But at least my station is a little exotic.”
“Oh?” Lottie said.
Maggie nodded. “Pearl Harbor,” she said.
Lottie’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding,” she said.
Maggie’s brow furrowed. “What?” she said. “You think I can’t take the Japs?”
“No,” Lottie said. “It’s just…”
But by then, Maggie’s quick mind had put two and two together.
“No,” she said. “You aren’t—”
Lottie nodded, and the two of them burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” the woman next to Lottie demanded.
Lottie shook her head, fighting back her laughter to answer. “We’re both stationed at Pearl Harbor,” she said.
“Pearl Harbor’s no laughing matter,” the woman said, and looked away in a disapproving manner.
When Lottie looked back at Maggie, she was mildly gratified to see Maggie’s evil eye turned on someone besides her, at least for the moment.
“You know,” Maggie said, “there was a time when I thought I couldn’t wait until I never
had to see you again.”
“You weren’t the only one,” Lottie quipped, and waited for a second, bracing for a blast of Maggie’s temper.
But Maggie’s grin just got wider. “Ha!” she said. “You’ve always got more spirit than I thought. And you know what? Maybe it’s not so bad, having to see you again.”
“Maybe not,” Lottie allowed with her own grin.
“But first we have to get through our last day of training,” Maggie said. “We’re taking an exam on a list of Navy rules and regulations the size of the encyclopedia. What’s your final test?”
“I don’t know,” Lottie said. She hadn’t even thought about what Captain Woodward could be cooking up for them.
She walked into the hangar at high alert that morning, eyes peeled for any clue about whatever devilish puzzle Captain Woodward might throw at them this time, as a farewell present.
But when she got there, it looked just like business as usual.
Did everyone know something she didn’t?
In the few months she’d been there, she hadn’t made friends with any of the men in particular. She didn’t want her questions to be misconstrued as “fraternizing.” And she didn’t want people thinking she didn’t know her stuff just because she was asking questions.
That actually made it harder to learn. All around her, she could hear the men educating each other, all the time. It was like they didn’t know how to talk to each other unless they were explaining how something worked.
But she was good at eavesdropping. And it wasn’t worth it to get into any sort of misunderstanding with any of the men.
Today, though, on the last day, she decided she could risk at least one question.
“Is there some kind of test today?” she asked one of the men when she came in. “Some kind of exam?”
This didn’t seem to have occurred to him, but once the thought struck him, he wasn’t a fan of it.
“Hey, Larry,” he asked the guy next to him. “You heard anything about this test today?”
“Test?” Larry yelped. “There’s a test?”
Within a matter of moments, the chatter about a phantom final test had traveled all the way around the hangar, to Captain Woodward, who shook his head in amusement and climbed up on the wing of the bomber he happened to be standing by to get a bit of elevation over the gathering.
“All right, all right,” he said. “Settle down. What’s this about a test? Who’s giving it?”
“Is there a test today?” someone shouted.
“A final exam?” someone else added.
Captain Woodward gave his head a definitive shake.
“This whole training has been a test,” he said. “Every day you’ve been here. Today’s no different. Whatever you’ve been working on, I want you to finish it. Top quality. Like your life depends on it. Or even better, like someone else’s does. Because others people’s lives do depend on our work, every day. That’s your test.”
Then he swung down from the wing and turned his back to the crowd, who began to disperse to their own stations with a mutter of relief.
So Lottie went back to the project she had been working on the day before: getting the fuel gauge on a little SOC Seagull amphibian working again—or actually, rebuilding the plane’s dashboard, which she’d had to dismantle in order to get at the wiring that had gone faulty in the intrepid little plane.
That took her until about ten a.m.
But when she hopped down and looked around at the other groups to find another one to join, which was the common practice in the apprentice-style shop Captain Woodward was running, her eyes fell on something else: the old chunk of Merlin engine from her first day on the job, still standing on its test stand, still silent.
It had seemed impossible to fix. But he’d also told them, over and over again, that there was nothing that was impossible to fix.
A stubborn knot of determination began to form in her chest.
She’d been given the assignment to fix it, she told herself, the very first day she walked in the hangar. Nobody could deny that it wasn’t fixed yet. And Captain Woodward had just told everyone to finish up anything they’d started while working in the shop.
So it just stood to reason that taking another crack at that Merlin was her next assignment.
At least, that’s what she told herself as she made her way across the shop, trying not to make eye contact with anyone else who might call her over into some other job.
When she got to the Merlin, the sun had already moved across the morning sky to create a wedge of shadow that the Merlin was half lost in.
It was not the ideal light for working. But on the other hand, it was ideal light for her to slip into unnoticed.
Within a few minutes, she was dismantling the engine. But she knew from her training that it could take days to really test every element—especially if there was some secret flaw, as Captain Woodward seemed to suggest.
So she began to flip through the various systems in her mind, trying to think which ones would cause a total failure of power, and how easy they were to get to, as she dismantled the engine piece by piece, looking into the heart of the machine.
Then suddenly something snapped into focus.
The piston.
On the Double Wasp in the Mitchell. Which had also totally “failed to proceed,” as Rolls-Royce and her own father liked to put it. “A car made with Palmer parts doesn’t break down,” he used to say with a shudder.
There were no guarantees, but the pistons on the Merlin were reasonably close to the surface on the B-side of the engine, and therefore pretty easy to examine. And when she dismantled the engine far enough to get a look at the pistons, she knew immediately why the engine had seemed impossible to fix.
Each piston was attached to a connecting rod by a floating pin, and machined with three compression pins on one end and a scraper ring on the other. All the pistons moved freely, which she had tested before. But when she checked the connections on each piston, she discovered that one of the three pistons was missing a compression ring. No matter what else she did to the engine, without that ring, it wouldn’t work properly.
But that didn’t mean it was impossible to fix. That just meant it was impossible to fix without the right ring.
Nearby was an area the men called “the Junk Box”—a large, only marginally organized workbench full of cubbies large and small that were themselves in turn filled with spare parts in varying degrees of disrepair.
It only took a few moments of sifting through a box of compression rings to find one that matched the one Lottie had unscrewed from the Merlin engine for comparison.
And it only took her a minute longer to put them both back in place when she got back to her workstation.
Rebuilding the rest of the engine took her longer—over an hour. The thrill of the victory of discovery had long vanished, replaced by the deadening work of strategizing which pieces went where, in what order.
So before she flicked the makeshift ignition that the hangar mechanics had rigged up to test engines that had been removed from their planes, she felt a wash of familiar self-doubt.
Lottie had a nagging fear that she’d just gone on a fool’s errand. Was some other, much worse flaw still hidden deep inside the machine?
As she wheeled the engine out of the hangar into the open air to test it, she was grateful for the fact that, for once at least, she wasn’t working in front of a crowd.
She sent up a prayer and tried the engine.
When Lottie heard the sweet, familiar hum of the machine coming to life, she couldn’t resist letting out a little yelp of celebration.
And that started to draw a crowd after all.
“Hey,” one of the guys working nearby called to her. “Palmer! Ain’t that the Merlin? You fix that old Merlin after all?”
Suddenly, all the determination that had brought Lottie to this point melted away. Now she was just uncomfortable. And she was suddenly worried about what Captain Woodw
ard would say. She had the sinking suspicion that this would be seen as some kind of insubordination. Had she just risked everything she’d earned at the last minute, just like Pearl?
“Hey,” the guy who had noticed the engine start up called to the guys he’d been working with. “Look at this. The little girl fixed that old bastard of an engine.”
Lottie thought ruefully about what Eugene had always said, based on his experience of the all-men’s clubs the power brokers of the city frequented: men were even worse gossips than women. And judging by the way the word spread like wildfire around the hangar, it was true.
But before she could think anything else, Captain Woodward was standing in front of her.
She lifted her chin, ready to take whatever he had to throw at her: anger, mockery, or anything else. And she felt indignation rise in her own chest in response to what she knew was coming. What kind of a teacher gave students a deliberately impossible task? What kind of a man set people up to fail on purpose? What could a student ever hope to learn from that?
But Captain Woodward just stared, bug-eyed, at the machine. And then at her. And then back at the Merlin.
“How did you do that?” he demanded. “It’s missing an O-ring. I took it out myself, to keep the cocky ones humble.”
Lottie had a crazy, panicky thought that she was about to be accused of witchcraft. But luckily, she had a perfectly reasonable explanation to offer. “I saw that,” she said. “So I replaced it.”
Lottie shifted uncomfortably and looked at the men around her. Some of the faces were astonished. Some seemed resentful. Captain Woodward’s eyes filled with an admiration that she might have found gratifying earlier in her training but now found irritating.
She was done proving herself to men who didn’t think women were as good as them. It was a lesson that didn’t need proving. Now she just thought of how glad she was never to have to see him again, since training was finally done.
“Good work, Palmer,” he said.
“I know,” she said, and walked away.
Fifteen
LOTTIE STOOD ON THE beach, feeling the sand between her toes, trying to understand how Hawaii could feel so different from California.
For Love and Country Page 11
