A Distant Melody

by Sarah Sundin

  Figured. Just as Walt was leaving. He hadn’t seen Jack since before Pearl Harbor. At least he’d seen Ray this spring while training in Texas.

  The envelope wasn’t thick with words but with pictures— Walt’s furlough pictures. His parents in front of the house, his grandparents by the old almond tree, George and Betty and their new bungalow, Jim and Helen and baby Jay-Jay, the aerial shots of Antioch. Walt paused over the next picture— the biplane, Allie in his A-2 flight jacket, the same one he wore right then, and Walt with a foolish grin. Yeah, foolish, all right. Then Dorothy, Betty, and Allie hamming it up on the blanket by the river, Allie’s mouth open in laughter. Then Allie alone, pretty legs stretched out, and a drowsy, sun-warmed smile aimed right at him. Cheesecake, and mighty fine cheesecake, but not his.

  “Who’s the dame?” Louis Fontaine plucked the photo from Walt’s hand.

  He looked up in alarm.

  Louis and Abe Ruben stood before him and studied Allie’s picture. Abe whistled. “She’s not bad. Too good for you.”

  Walt groaned. “That’s the absolute truth.”

  “You never said you had a dame,” Louis said with admiration in his voice.

  A lie formed in Walt’s throat, but he opened his mouth to tell the truth.

  “Because Allie’s a lady,” Frank said. “Not a dame. Not the kind of woman a man brags about.” He gave Walt a grin that said, ‘Take this ball and run with it.’

  How many times had Frank urged him to invent a girlfriend to get the men off his case? Already Louis and Abe looked at him with a whole lot more respect.

  “Yeah. Allie’s a lady.” Walt stood, took back her picture, and smiled. “What kind of gentleman lets fellows ogle his girlfriend?”

  16

  Riverside

  September 4, 1942

  “Hundred degrees outside, and we have blankets on our laps.”

  Allie smiled at Daisy Galloway beside her on the bus to March Army Air Base. Allie’s thighs stuck together under a chin-high stack of the Ladies’ Circle’s handiwork.

  “If I go up in flames, at least it’s in service to my country.” Across the aisle, Cressie Watts lifted her pile a bit and flapped her knees together.

  Not ladylike at all, but Allie’s arms and legs blazed with damp prickles, and she almost wished she weren’t a lady.

  When they reached the base, Cressie stood and led the two women down the aisle.

  “Isn’t this exciting?” Daisy’s cherry lips spread in a wide smile. “We’re a part of the war effort.”

  “Not until we actually deliver the blankets.” Allie gave her a smile and a nudge with her colorful pile. She had never been that chipper even at eighteen.

  The ladies stepped off the fume-filled bus, and Allie let out a sigh when the hot Santa Ana wind dried her bare legs. A rumble behind her grew in intensity. She looked back to see a large airplane approach for a landing—four engines, a tail fin curved like a bell, a clear nose, a glass bubble underneath, and another bubble behind the cockpit. Yes, a B-17. She smiled, proud she could identify one type of plane, and proud she knew a man who could fly the powerful machine—a man who wrote delightful letters.

  “Come along, Miss Allegra,” Cressie said. “Come along.”

  Allie’s gaze followed the B-17 in an arc, and the wind generated by the plane whipped her curls behind her.

  Daisy’s brown hair strained against the red bow tied around her head. “Allegra?”

  “Um, yes. Silly, isn’t it?”

  Daisy glanced at the B-17 and back to Allie with a slow grin. “Allegra Miller.”

  “Yes, but I go by Allie.” She shook her curls off her face, unable to smooth them with her arms full. Why was Daisy so intrigued by her name?

  “Why didn’t I put it together before? My dad helped your pilot find you.”

  Allie gave her a quizzical look.

  “Did you get a visit from a couple of pilots a while back?”

  She stopped and stared at Daisy. “Well, yes. My friend Walt, and one of his friends, but how did you—”

  “Oh, this is the most romantic story.” Daisy scampered to catch up with Cressie. “Let me guess, he got out of my dad’s taxi all casual-like and never told you it took two hours to find you. Isn’t that just like a man?”

  “Two hours?” Allie struggled with the wind and with Daisy’s statement.

  “He didn’t know your address. Lost it, he said. Also just like a man.” She climbed the steps, and Allie forced herself to do likewise. “He gets in Dad’s cab and gives him a page he tore from the phone book—all the Millers in Riverside, and that’s no small number. Now people shouldn’t rip up phone books, but I forgive him. After all, he said he had to find you before he shipped out. Had to.”

  He searched for her? Allie tried to speak, but her mouth formed no words.

  “He knew you were rich, so that narrowed the search. But goodness, aren’t there a lot of swanky neighborhoods in Riverside?”

  Allie’s cheeks tingled at the mention of her wealth.

  An orderly stepped outside and held the door open for the ladies.

  “Dad started at the top of the alphabet and lost count how many houses they went to. Two hours till they found you. No need to tell you my dad sure liked that fare, although he gave them a discount, seeing as how sweet the whole thing was. Daddy’s nothing but a big old tenderhearted teddy bear, and your—Walt?—seems he’s cut from the same cloth.”

  The tingles flowed down Allie’s cheeks to her chest and arms. Two hours? Stanley Miller—they would be near the end of the list. “Yes, Walt’s a sweet man.” Then she shook her head, shook off the tingles. “But he’s—he’s not mine. He’s a friend.”

  Daisy gave Cressie a look. “A friend.”

  “Take her at her word, love. Take her at her word.” Cressie led the way across the lobby, peppered with small groups of men talking and smoking.

  Allie pondered an explanation, but then she gasped. A man sat in a wheelchair, one leg amputated above the knee, the other below the knee. The man standing next to him had his pajama sleeve pinned up over the stump of his arm.

  As if he’d heard her gasp, the man in the wheelchair looked right at Allie. He couldn’t have heard due to the noise in the lobby, but that did little to soothe her guilt and regret. She should expect such sights in a military hospital.

  To atone, she offered a smile to him and his companion. “Good afternoon.”

  “Good afternoon, miss.” The man in the wheelchair gave her a grin that compensated for his missing legs.

  The other man leaned his stocky frame against the wall and took a drag on his cigarette. “I hope it’s miss and not ma’am.” Then he winked at Allie.

  She almost dropped her blankets. Was he making sport of her? Or flirting? Or just being friendly? Something genuine in their smiles made her decide on the latter. She smiled back and hurried after Cressie and Daisy. Such a small gesture, a smile and a greeting, had brightened the day for those two men—and for her.

  The ladies turned down a corridor, pungent with disinfectant, and entered an office. A poster on the wall showed a tiny girl with a pale blue scarf over her blonde curls, clutching a doll and sucking one finger. Flames and debris behind her accentuated the message of the slogan: “War Relief—Give!”

  Behind a steel desk heaped with papers, a stout woman with a dark complexion and a gray Red Cross uniform rose to her feet. “Cressie—my star volunteer. Look at those wonderful blankets. Oh, so many. These will do the boys a world of good.” She swept stacks of manuals from chairs to the precarious tower on her desk.

  They set the rainbow of blankets on the wooden chairs. Cressie introduced Allie and Daisy to Regina Romero, who directed the Red Cross Hospital and Recreation Corps at March—the Gray Ladies.

  Cressie frowned at the desk. “Swamped with work as always, love?”

  “As always.” A stack of books slipped from its perch and threatened a paper avalanche, but Regina righted it in time. “Never enou
gh help. All the young women want paying jobs nowadays.”

  Guilt sank in Allie’s chest. Her pianist job took but a few hours a week and made no contribution to the war effort, other than enabling her to purchase more war bonds.

  Regina picked up a clipboard and discussed the papers with Cressie. A poster by the door drew Allie’s attention. A Red Cross lady offered a snack up to a soldier leaning from a train window. What a difference the Gray Ladies made.

  Lord, I want to make a difference too. This is something I could do, something I should do.

  “You did what?”

  “I volunteered with the Red Cross, Mother.” Allie pulled silverware from a drawer in the sideboard. Nervousness bored acid holes in her stomach. “I know forty hours a week is a lot, and you’ll miss my help at home, but it won’t be any different than when I was at Scripps or—” She swallowed. “Or after I’m married.”

  Mother marched to the archway between the dining room and the sitting room. “Stanley, did you hear what your daughter did? Speak to her.”

  Father settled back in his red leather armchair and ground his cigarette into the ashtray. “Sorry, dear, but this will be a good experience for her. We’ll look harder for paid help.”

  “Thank you, Father.” She set the silver around his plate, the knife protecting the spoon from the fork.

  “Baxter?” Mother said. “You speak to her.”

  Allie grimaced. The poor man was caught in the middle. “Volunteer work is a very high-class activity,” she said. “Many ladies from Riverside’s best families volunteer.”

  “Is that right?” Baxter said. “Well, Mrs. Miller, maybe this is what Allie needs. She’s been so strange and restless this summer.”

  Strange and restless? The doorbell rang, and Father rose to answer. Allie strode to the kitchen for the mashed potatoes. If joining a God-fearing church and volunteering to help wounded servicemen was strange and restless behavior, then she hoped to be even stranger and more restless.

  “Allie, a package for you,” Father said.

  “For me?” She frowned, set the potatoes on the table, and went to the sitting room where Father held a box about two feet square and eight inches high.

  She sat in the wing chair, the box heavy in her lap. Her name was written in all capitals with the first letters taller than the others—Walt’s handwriting, a style he’d learned in engineering school.

  What on earth had he sent? All too conscious of everyone watching, she worked off the string and opened the lid. A letter lay on top of wadded newspaper. She scanned it for news to relay. After the wedding fiasco, she was diligent to mention something good about Baxter in every letter to Walt, and just as diligent to read Walt’s letters to her family.

  “It’s from Walt. He says his group is going overseas soon. He knows where but can’t say. Since he’s in Massachusetts, he must be going east. He says they received new planes. Hmm? Again? I thought they received new planes last month. Oh, and as the pilot, he has the right to choose the name—Flossie’s Fort,” she said and laughed.

  “Flossie’s Fort?” Baxter asked.

  Allie told of the loss and recovery of Fortner’s Flossie, but the story seemed deflated compared to her memory, and her memory recalled details she didn’t dare relate, details which brought telling warmth to her cheeks.

  She glanced down at the letter:

  Baxter’s property sounds swell, and so does the house. Remember when my dad told you how he built Riverview Community Church just as my mom wanted, because he loves her so much? You never have to doubt the love of a man who builds something for you.

  Mouth dry, Allie paused over the tidbit she should read aloud. However, he was mistaken. Baxter built out of pride, not love. She continued:

  Now to explain the model. I sent these to my family and friends to remind them to pray for me. Besides, you already have a model of Fortner’s Flossie, so I thought you should have Flossie’s Fort. J.P. Sanchez, my flight engineer, did the artwork on the real plane and the model. He’s good, isn’t he?

  Allie dug through the newspapers. “It’s a model of his plane. He carves.” She gasped in wonder at how well he carved. The model stretched almost a foot and a half from wingtip to wingtip. The details were exquisite—why, even the wheels and propellers spun. It sported green and olive drab camouflage paint on top, gray paint underneath, and a white star on a blue circle on each side. On the nose, a bust of Flossie the cow, in a leather flight helmet and jacket, raised a hoof in salute.

  She looked up, expecting disapproval of such a personal and time-consuming gift, but everyone was enthralled. She’d write Walt that evening to report their delight and tell him about the Red Cross.

  Allie took the model to her room and set it on her desk next to the wooden cow. She folded Walt’s letter and added it to the others in a desk drawer.

  He told Mr. Galloway he’d lost Allie’s address? More likely he’d torn it up after what she’d done. He’d be embarrassed to ask Betty for her address—that’s why he didn’t want Betty to know they were writing. And yet he searched for her. What a precious sacrifice of time and pride, all for the sake of their friendship.

  Allie ran her hand over the wooden plane and rested on the cockpit.

  You never have to doubt the love of a man who builds something for you? She had to be careful not to read too much into that statement.

  17

  Gander, Newfoundland

  September 6, 1942

  “Sixty miles per hour . . . Seventy,” Cracker Huntington called out.

  Walt nodded and eased the throttles forward.

  “Eighty . . . Ninety.”

  They were committed now, had to take off. Walt frowned. Flossie felt sluggish for the calculated weight: nine crewmembers, a mechanic flying as a passenger, luggage, and the eight hundred gallon auxiliary tank in the bomb bay needed to fuel the 2,100-mile flight across the Atlantic.

  “One hundred . . . Hundred ten.”

  Above stalling speed, enough for takeoff as calculated, but Walt wanted more. J.P. Sanchez hunched between the pilots’ seats, trusted as always to watch the instrument panel while Walt watched the runway.

  “One fifteen . . . One twenty.” A question mark hung in the air. They were supposed to take off at one fifteen.

  Walt shook his head. The plane rumbled down the runway, and the trees rushed toward him in the twilight. Just a little more speed.

  “One twenty-five,” Cracker said, a tense edge in his voice.

  Walt guided the control wheel back. Up went the nose, and the rest of the plane followed, but the resistance made him hold his breath until he cleared the trees. “Wheels up.”

  “Check,” Cracker said, still with the edge. “Too close to the end of the runway.”

  “Feels mushy.” Walt peered around his left shoulder and watched the landing gear fold into the nacelle of engine two. “Up left.”

  “Up right. Don’t forget we’ve got eight hundred extra gallons of fuel back there.”

  “Tail wheel up,” Harry called on the interphone from the back of the plane.

  “Yeah. Still doesn’t feel right.” Walt followed the other planes in his squadron, little lights in the darkening sky. Thirty-five planes from the 306th were leaving Gander for the eleven-hour trip to Prestwick, Scotland—nine planes each from three squadrons, and eight from the fourth.

  Walt leveled off at an altitude low enough not to require oxygen. To maintain hands-free flying, he adjusted the elevator trim wheel on the center console. He frowned again. It didn’t just feel wrong, it was wrong—Flossie was heavy in the tail. Didn’t make sense. The bomb bay, with most of the extra weight, was located at the plane’s center of gravity.

  “Take the controls,” he said. “I’m checking out the back.”

  “Why? They’d tell us if something was wrong back there.”

  Walt caught a flash of alarm in his copilot’s eyes. Yeah, something was wrong. “Take the controls,” he said. He unplugged his headset,
swung his legs to the side, and maneuvered over the open passageway that led down to the nose compartment.

  “Good takeoff, Novak,” J.P. said, “but you’re right. Mushy.”

  He smiled and patted his flight engineer’s shoulder when he passed. J.P. was the only crewmember who didn’t call him Preach.

  Walt squeezed around the top turret apparatus in the back of the cockpit and squirmed through the door to the bomb bay. The B-17’s interior was cramped enough in regular clothes but was awfully tight in his sheepskin-lined B-3 flight jacket and with a seat-pack parachute slapping the back of his knees.

  He clutched the metal supports as he walked the narrow aluminum catwalk in the bomb bay. The engines’ power vibrated through his gloves and sheepskin-lined boots. The auxiliary tank looked fine.

  When he entered the radio room, four men sat up straighter on the floor.

  “Hiya, Preach.” Bill Perkins took off his headphones at his seat at the radio desk. “What’s up?”

  “Flying heavy in the tail. I’m checking her out.”

  Al Worley scrambled to his feet and blocked the door to the waist compartment, which was closed to keep the men warm. “I don’t think you should go back there.”

  “All the more reason to go.” Walt shoved the little man to the side with the back of his arm.

  “Really, Preach. Luggage all over the place,” Harry Tuttle said.

  Walt opened the door and moved to step through. He couldn’t. He could only stare.

  Luggage lay heaped on top of the housing for the ball turret, and stacks of wooden crates filled the tubular waist compartment. He read the labels on the crates—bourbon, gin, rum.

  What on earth?

  The crates weren’t there when he did the preflight inspection. Guaranteed. When? How?

  The parachute.

  He’d set his parachute on the pilot’s seat before preflight. This—this was why it disappeared. This was why he had to trudge all the way back to the equipment shed and fill out all the stupid forms to get a replacement. This was why the men insisted Walt enter through the nose hatch instead of the waist.