Nell set a heading northeast of the airfield and leveled out at a thousand feet above the desert floor.
“We’ll fly in a grid pattern,” she said into her headset. “If anyone sees anything, call it out in hour hands.”
The officers up front nodded and gave a thumbs-up. CJ added her eyes to theirs, but every so often her gaze strayed to the mountains east and west, the darker blue sky overhead, the distant sprawling dunes of White Sands and the snow-capped peaks of the Sacramento Mountains. When they turned and took a different tack, she pushed thoughts of sand dunes and cowboy hats from her mind. Forty-millimeter automatic cannons, fifty-caliber antiaircraft machine guns and ninety-millimeter tank guns—that was what the sandy-haired officer with the Errol Flynn moustache had said they were looking for.
Shortly after they passed Condron Field, a Biggs outpost ten miles east of the Organ Mountains, Nell spotted the first telltale sign.
“Reflection at four o’clock,” she said calmly, dipping the nose in that direction.
CJ looked hard, and there it was again: a single flash of light as the sun shone off something metallic in the seemingly empty desert below. Now it was like a puzzle coming clear—once she knew where to look, her brain assembled the rest of the pieces. She blinked, and her eye discerned netting, guns, even the short shadows of soldiers.
One of the officers cursed matter-of-factly, and the other asked Nell for their heading and altitude. She recited it and smiled over at CJ as the two officers discussed the engineering unit’s defenses in more detail.
“The good thing is,” Nell told her, “they could have taken us out by now. If we were an actual threat, that is.”
CJ pictured the enormous guns on the ground with their gaping mouths trained on their small aircraft. Once again, she could secretly appreciate the values that kept her from having to choose between a graduate deferment and combat. If she were a man, would she be able to do the job required of her? Or would fear win out?
Lucky for her, she would probably never have to find out. Meanwhile the men in the AT-11’s nose and the woman seated beside her too, for that matter, faced their fears routinely. For the officers, the worry probably had to do with losing trainees. That worry was even greater for the Air Corps. Rumor had it that more American flight crews had been killed so far in training than in combat. Far safer to be part of the regular armed forces—except that there was Tarawa and more battles like it in the near future, no doubt. She pictured Joe in his sports magazine pose with a bat over his shoulder, all-American smile gleaming, brown hair caught by the breeze. She couldn’t imagine him crawling across a booby-trapped beach on an isolated atoll in the Pacific, covered in sweat, grime and the blood of his brothers in arms. She simply couldn’t picture him there, not her sweet-tempered big brother who had taught her to ride, to throw a football, to repair a flat. He had never told her she couldn’t do something because she was a girl. Alec, on the other hand, had routinely refused to have her on his team, be it basketball, baseball, football. As a result, CJ had usually beaten him. Alec may have been a decent athlete, but he was no match for Joe. Then again, who in their narrow childhood circle was?
The officers asked Nell to circle the area a couple of more times, and then they turned for home, the sun high in the navy blue sky.
“Jamieson, do you have a driver’s license?” Nell asked after she had pointed the aircraft in a straight line toward home.
“Yes.”
“And are you a good driver?”
Suddenly it dawned on her where this line of questioning might be headed. “Yes,” she repeated.
“Then why don’t we see how you do with a different kind of wheel. Go ahead and grip it, lightly. The trick is to keep the altimeter at twelve hundred.”
The AA officers had gone quiet and were gazing back at them now. CJ could almost hear their thoughts: Not one woman driver, but two!
Then the control column was in her hands, and she was moving it slightly, automatically adjusting to the air currents. It really was like driving, she realized, except that the road was made of air, not asphalt. Her Link training came back to her, and she relaxed into piloting the AT-11, her mind focused intently on the information her hands and arms were transmitting to her brain.
“Look at you,” Nell said after a few minutes. “You’re a natural, Jamieson.”
CJ risked a glance away from the altimeter. “I am?”
“Seems I might not be able to get away with calling you a groundhog anymore.”
“What a disappointment…” CJ bit back a gasp as a gust of wind threatened to wrest the steering column from her hands.
“It’s okay. You don’t fight it as much as you ride it out, like a bicycle going down a hill. Watch.”
She took her own controls again, and once they were through the rough patch, they flew the plane together back to Biggs, each holding onto one of the steering yolks. Nell even let her turn the plane and line it up with the runway before assuming control for the landing.
CJ tried to play it cool as they taxied back to the Balloon Hangar, but she couldn’t stop the grin from splitting her face. She, an Air Corps penguin, had flown an airplane! Wait until Brady found out.
“Nice job, Private,” the sandy-haired AA officer said, while his swarthier companion nodded.
“Thank you, sirs,” she replied cheerfully, following them from the cockpit.
Jill and Sarah were waiting on the tarmac as they disembarked.
“How was it?” Sarah asked.
“I flew!” CJ practically shrieked.
“She did,” Nell confirmed, laughing.
“We knew that, dummy,” Jill said, heading toward the Beechcraft. “Anything mechanical to report, Nell?”
“Nope. She did beautifully,” the WASP said, gazing at CJ.
“I flew the plane,” CJ clarified. “Nell let me take the controls on the way back.”
At this, Sarah and Jill turned and gave the WASP an incredulous look.
“It’s okay,” she said, still looking amused. “I’m rated as an instructor. Most of us are. Besides, the Kansan is designed for training.”
“Bombardiers, maybe,” Jill said. “But pilots?”
CJ smacked her squad mate’s shoulder none too gently. “You’re just jealous.”
“Damn right she is,” Sarah agreed. “As will be the rest of the crew.”
“Don’t worry,” Nell said. “I don’t think we’re in danger of winning the war anytime soon. There are plenty more hops where that one came from if you play your cards right.”
And with that, she winked at CJ once more, slung both of their parachutes over her shoulder and strolled toward the Balloon Hangar, humming a tune CJ recognized as the Army Air Corps song:
Off we go into the wild blue yonder
Climbing high into the sun;
Here they come zooming to meet our thunder,
At ’em boys, give ’er the gun! Give ’er the gun!
* * *
CJ looked for Brady at dinner that night, but she didn’t see her. She lingered at the mess hall even after her own friends had gone, half-concentrating on an old copy of Yank someone had left behind, but Brady and her Admin buddies never showed. Finally CJ headed back to her barracks to write letters and wait. Bed check arrived before Brady did, and CJ lay in her cot with doubt nibbling at her mind. Was Brady angry with her? Was she okay? Could the honeymoon be over that quickly?
To distract herself, she replayed the afternoon flight in her mind, feeling the steering column jumping beneath her touch, the responsiveness of the AT-11 when she turned the yolk, simultaneously pulling the elevator up to maintain altitude throughout the turn. Nell had said she was a natural, and CJ believed her, even if the pilot was a bit flirty. But CJ had felt comfortable at the plane’s controls. Perhaps she should think about going for her pilot’s license. Flight technology was sprinting ahead, spurred by ever-increasing demands of the air war. No doubt the industry would continue to surge even after the wa
r ended.
She stared up at the barracks ceiling, chewing the inside of her cheek. Would she be a historian or pilot after the war? A wife or an illicit lover? The choices facing her were interesting, anyway.
At PT the next morning, she caught Brady watching her. Relief flooded her as Brady waved, smiling, and she waved back. Brady wasn’t angry with her, apparently. Whew.
“Where were you last night?” she asked at breakfast. She and Brady were seated alone at a table far from the mess line that wound outside and down the rickety wooden steps.
“El Paso. Geraldine Hunt is engaged, and she wanted us all to meet her fiancé, who’s in town on furlough before he ships out.”
CJ’s stomach dropped a little. Brady hadn’t thought to bring her along to socialize with her work friends. But of course she hadn’t. How could she? Still, it didn’t seem fair. Brady went out with her and the D-lites regularly, but ever since they’d started seeing each other, she’d stopped inviting CJ along on Company A adventures. What did it mean that they could be themselves with CJ’s friends but not with Brady’s? Then again, it had been that way right from the start. No reason to think that being in love would change anything.
Squaring her shoulders, she looked Brady in the eye. “Are you ashamed of me?”
“What? No, of course not.” Brady stared at her. “I thought we were past all of that.”
“I did too.”
“Is this because I didn’t invite you along last night?”
CJ nodded.
Brady’s expression softened. “I’m sorry. I would have, except we went straight from work. Besides, you would have been bored silly. Trust me.”
Trust me.
That was the problem, CJ thought later as she rode to work with the rest of her squad in the back of a transport truck, the winter sun creeping above the eastern horizon. After their shaky start, she wasn’t sure she trusted Brady entirely. Having to hide their relationship didn’t help in the faith department either. But CJ wasn’t hiding their relationship, not from her friends. Brady was the one pretending to the people who had known her best and longest in the Army that she was the same person they had always assumed her to be.
And what if she was? What if what they had together was merely a matter of comfort, of convenience? Except that being with another woman while serving in the US Army was neither comfortable nor convenient. No, Brady must love her. Otherwise, why would she risk so much?
Geraldine was lucky. CJ pictured the pretty redhead who worked in the PRO with Brady. She could show off her engagement ring secure in the knowledge that their friends, families, the world even supported their relationship. Maybe her parents wouldn’t like her husband-to-be; maybe a sister or a friend would like him too much. But people of all nationalities were rooting for her, even if she didn’t realize it.
* * *
The rest of the work week went quickly as CJ read tech orders (TOs), took apart unfamiliar engines and passed the time getting to know the members of Flight C. The pilots were averaging a run every second day, which meant they spent a lot of time reading TOs and waiting around for a chance to check out on a new airplane. CJ and her squad mates weren’t nearly as busy here as they had been in the Transient Hangar. Whimpy kept saying that would change after the start of the new year, but for now, pilots and mechanics alike had more down time than they knew what to do with. Carol had found a stray kitten on base and started bringing the tiny creature daily to the hangar where anyone not on the assignment board would dutifully spend her time carrying the kitten around and making cat toys out of bits of string and cloth. Spicket was perhaps the only Balloon Hangar resident displeased with the new addition.
On Thursday, Reggie got her first chance at a hop with Holly during a tow target run. On this type of assignment, the squadron’s specially equipped B-25 would tow a large, flat-panel cloth target behind it on a 2,500-foot steel cable, while the AA boys on the ground tried to hit the target with forty-millimeter shells. Holly invited Reggie along to serve as tow operator, the soldier who ran the crank that released the target cable.
“Heck yes!” Reggie squeaked. She cleared her throat. “I mean, sure, I’d be happy to.”
She and Holly were in the air for much of the afternoon, flying straight lines back and forth above the artillery fields. When Reggie finally returned to the Balloon Hangar with her parachute bag in hand and a dreamy look fixed to her face, Toby elbowed CJ.
“Do you think the smile is for the B-25 or its pilot?”
“I was wondering the same thing.”
With Geraldine’s boyfriend in town for such a short time, Brady was AWOL from CJ’s life that week. The PRO Wacs and their GI colleagues were in El Paso or at the men’s enlisted club every night, and though Brady had invited CJ along, she hadn’t taken her up on the invitation. Spending time with people who looked down their noses at her didn’t appeal, not when she could go to the movies or out for drinks and pool with her own buddies. She tried to tell herself that the situation didn’t mean anything, but she missed Brady. How was it that they saw each other less now that they were a couple?
Meanwhile, Nell had pulled night duty, so CJ also hadn’t seen her much. Antiaircraft ground troops at Bliss were being trained to use massive searchlights to locate airplanes at night. Pilots who were instrument-rated, like Nell, would fly back and forth in the dark while the troops scanned the skies. AA officers also liked to use searchlights for tow target practice at night. It was dull to fly these missions, Holly reported, but at least the lights kept them wide awake. Once the searchlight caught her, a pilot was unable to see the horizon or anything else outside the aircraft, which was why she had to be instrument rated.
On Friday, when another dust storm grounded pilots and engineering crews alike, Holly invited Reggie and her “pals” into the WASP ready room to drink Cokes and play poker. At first, Em, the Vassar girl, looked askance at their presence. But after she learned that she and Toby had once lived on the same block in New York’s Greenwich Village, she thawed a bit.
After three awful hands, CJ tossed down her cards. “I’m out.” They were playing for pennies, and if she lost much more, she wouldn’t be able to buy Brady’s Christmas present—a waterproof, shockproof sports watch Brady had lingered over during their stroll through El Paso the previous weekend.
CJ pushed away from the table and paced the length of the room to where Jill and Carol, a pretty young Texas pilot, were playing with the kitten. Dropping to the floor beside them, she sat cross-legged and played with the cat while Jill and Carol chatted. Carol had recently arrived at Biggs from Avenger Field in Sweetwater, while Jill had gone through Chanute six months before CJ had. They were talking about men when CJ joined them.
“I ran into a couple of boys I knew from home,” Carol was saying, “who are now P-63 pilots. I don’t know what it is, but peashooter pilots are so much more fun than bomber pilots.”
“Aren’t they?” Jill agreed. “We’re not allowed to date officers, you know, but there were a couple of ferry boys who came through Transient regularly with their Cobras, and, boy, was I tempted to break regulation for them!”
The two women giggled, and then Jill glanced at CJ and covered her mouth with her hand. CJ smiled at her and remained where she was through a discussion of a lieutenant in Flight B who had invited Carol out for a drink, but whose wife and children had shown up at the officers’ club the very next day.
“I thought for sure he was a wolf,” Jill said, shaking her head.
Spicket chose that moment to charge their little group, eager to inform Kitten that she had overstayed her welcome. CJ jumped up, the Pomeranian firmly in her grasp.
“Come on, buddy,” she said to the dog. “Let’s leave this corner to the feline members of the company.”
Jill smiled almost apologetically at her, but CJ touched her shoulder as she turned away. She was glad that Jill, the youngest member of their crew, had found a friend among the newly arrived group of WASPs. Jill hadn�
��t batted an eye when everyone teased Reggie about her sudden interest in flying. In fact, she and Sarah had joined in the razzing with gusto. Still, it couldn’t be easy being outnumbered. Immediately her mind went to Brady. How could Brady prefer to spend time with her Company A friends? Unless she didn’t feel outnumbered among the Admin Wacs. Maybe her infatuation with CJ was running its course, and she was even now setting her sights on a male GI.
Thoughts like that would drive her crazy. As her father always said, it was better to focus on what you could control than what you couldn’t. Spicket securely tucked under her arm, CJ wandered over to one of the arced walls to study the formation posters, stroking the dog’s soft fur absently. Formation flying spooked her. To move through the air at one hundred fifty miles per hour with another plane’s wings mere feet from your own—she couldn’t quite grasp what would be fun about it. Necessary, yes. In combat, formation flying helped pilots maintain visual contact with each other and offered bombers protection against smaller, quicker fighters. It also allowed heavier craft to conserve fuel on long missions. But enjoyable?
“Let me guess,” a voice drawled at her elbow. “The boy-crazy talk was a bit much for you.”
CJ glanced at Nell’s face in profile. “A bit.”
“They’re young. They don’t know any better.”
Not like we do, her expression seemed to add. CJ knew from that look that her suspicions about Nell were correct: The WASP was indeed a member of the secret club. Although how secret their club was seemed to be arguable these days.
In the Company of Women Page 20
