A Memory Between Us (28 page)

Yeah, perfect. Jack smiled at the back of his brother’s head. The song would remind Dad to be thankful his boys were alive, no matter their career choices.

Rather than a traditional duet, the couple played with Walt’s left hand and Allie’s right, two people as one. With her free hand, Allie cradled what remained of Walt’s right arm.

Jack’s eyes felt funny, and his nose stuffed up. He remembered Walt in the hospital, his voice husky as he proclaimed no woman would ever love him.

“You can sing, you know,” Walt said with a grin. “This isn’t a concert.”

The family sang. Everyone knew the song, because it played almost continuously on the radio, but their voices sounded thick and throaty.

Jack was home for Christmas, next to the piano crowned with doilies and the brothers’ service portraits. How long until they all sang around this piano again? Would they ever? Ray and Walt were safe. Next year Walt and Allie would be married, and Ray would find a wife before long. Little Novaks would soon add to the music.

Would Jack be there to see it? Or would he be frozen in time as a black-and-white portrait?

Why not? Charlie was already frozen in time, and Bill Chambers and Nate Silverberg and countless others. In Maryland the de Groots were spending their first Christmas without their youngest son, and May Jensen was deprived of the man she loved and a home to long for.

What about Ruth? Jack stared at his stack of gifts, meager due to shortages, but Ruth would have none. What kind of holiday would she have in Kentucky? Was she still friends with May, or had Jack made her close her heart again?

Jack studied Walt and Allie at the piano. Their love was unconditional, but Jack’s love—one mistake and he snatched it away.

Who was he to hold Ruth’s mistakes against her? He’d failed her countless times, but she kept forgiving him. She forgave him when he left her on the truck with his men in Bury St. Edmunds, and what could be more terrifying for a woman with her history? She forgave him for kissing her, when a kiss meant trauma to her, not love.

Jack realized the music had stopped. He brought his eyes into focus. Walt whispered in Allie’s ear. She nodded, shaking her brown curls. Then she turned to Walt with a trembling smile and tears on her cheeks.

Walt brushed them away. “We’re your family now.”

Jack blew out a sigh. This was Allie’s first Christmas away from her home and the family who had disowned her for refusing to marry the man they had chosen.

“Then I’d better go help in the kitchen.” Allie stood and bent over to kiss Walt on the forehead. He tipped back his head and kissed her on the lips. She blushed, laughed, and walked away with green velvet swishing around her ankles.

Mom was gone to the kitchen, judging by the intensified smell of roasting turkey. Dad was gone too, probably to polish tomorrow’s sermon. When had they left? And Ray—he studied Jack.

Jack tensed. No longer could he dodge pastoral counsel.

“You leave on Monday, huh, Jack?” Walt spoke first, thank goodness. Small talk.

“Yeah. Figured I’d get an early start with this railroad strike. Can you believe it? Men are fighting and dying, and our railroad men refuse to work, all for a couple bucks.”

“It’s not right,” Ray said.

“No kidding. So I’ll catch military planes. I’ll have to hop, skip, jump all over the country before I can get overseas.”

Ray leaned forward on his knees. “Are you ready to go back?”

“Sure am. Can’t wait.”

Ray didn’t look convinced, and Walt looked downright skeptical.

Jack sighed. “The war’s tough, I’ll give you that, but there’s no place I’d rather be.”

Ray’s eyebrows bunched together. “Are you sure? You seem—well, you’re not yourself.”

“Yeah,” Walt said. “You’ve barely insulted us all week. We wondered—”

“Am I flak-happy? No, not that. It’s other stuff, okay?”

“The military versus the ministry?” Ray asked.

Jack groaned. “That’s just a part of it, a small part.”

“Would you—”

“Fine. You want to know what my problem is? It’s my pride. You know Charlie got shot down. What I didn’t tell you is he died because of my stupid decision. Not just Charlie, but twenty-seven men killed and thirteen POWs because of my pride.”

“Oh, wow.” Walt looked as if he’d been slugged in the chest. He’d also lost his best friend over Europe, but it wasn’t Walt’s fault.

“I got reprimanded and lost out on a promotion I’d worked for all year.”

“Oh, wow.”

“Yeah, and that’s not all.” Jack felt manic glee in dumping this on his brothers. “My pride cost me the woman I love.”

Walt frowned. “Who? Lieutenant Doherty? I didn’t know you were dating.”

“We weren’t. Didn’t stop me from falling in love.”

“What happened?” Ray wore that firm but gentle look a pastor should have.

Jack hesitated. Walt had met Ruth, so he needed to be discreet. “I lashed out at her. I found out she—she had a past.”

“Mm.” Ray nodded slowly. “Does she have a present?”

A dagger right in his gut. “No. Absolutely not.”

Ray shifted his gaze up, right over Jack’s head. “Terrible thing, a past. No matter what you do in the present, your past never changes. You confess, you repent, you turn your life around, but your past remains. Always.”

A heavy band encircled Jack’s chest. Even if he uprooted every weed of pride, he’d always be responsible for those deaths and for condemning Ruth.

Now he understood what Ruth lived with. Now he had a past.

35

Bowman Field

Friday, December 31, 1943

Ruth buckled the leather flight helmet under her chin and tugged at her scalp to loosen hairs pulled by the headset and helmet.

Across from her, wedged on a metal bench in the altitude chamber, May and Dottie giggled. In green oxygen masks, the six nurses and six techs of their flight looked like longnosed grasshoppers.

Ruth pressed her mask over her mouth and nose. The smell of rubber made her cough. She fumbled to strap the mask onto a ring on the helmet over her cheek.

“Here, let me help you.” Sergeant Burns reached for the strap.

Ruth twisted her shoulder to block him. “If you want to help, let me learn to do it myself.”

Burnsey’s sabotage was so subtle, no one saw it but her. During C-47 drills, he stood in her way, bumped against her, reached in front of her, and handed her things backwards or upside-down. Each act wasted precious seconds. Whenever she confronted him, he gave the same response: “We’d get along better if we spent more time together.” Ruth knew what he really meant, and the way his gaze drifted over her body when they were alone confirmed it.

“These A-14 oxygen masks are an improvement over the A-8.” The instructor, Lieutenant Brown, stood in the door of the chamber. “The A-8 is a continuous flow model with a rebreather bag, but the A-14 has a demand flow regulator with a diaphragm that closes on exhalation.”

Ruth nudged her mask higher to relieve pressure on the bridge of her nose.

“An aneroid in the regulator expands as altitude increases, shutting the port for air and opening the oxygen port. Thus, the percentage of oxygen automatically rises to meet higher requirements at altitude.”

May quirked an eyebrow at Ruth, and Ruth smiled. Yes, she also wished Lieutenant Brown would stop droning and start the simulated flight to 25,000 feet.

“The A-14 also has a built-in microphone, so throat microphones are no longer necessary.”

Ruth’s stomach twisted at the reminder of her test flight, and May’s eyelashes fluttered. That night on the bivouac, huddled in their pup tent, May had finally cried for Charlie. As Ruth had never allowed herself to grieve so she could be strong for her family, May had trained herself never to demonstrate anger or sadness or discontent for fear of losing favor in the orphanage. But that night May cried—jerky, unpracticed sobs—and Ruth held her and listened to her and laughed with her because they had nothing clean to use as a handkerchief.

Muffled laughter sounded in her headphones. Burnsey wrapped his hands around the corrugated hose connected to the chin of his mask and pretended to play it like a clarinet.

She sighed. Burnsey was the darling of the squadron with his quick wit and his access to items in short supply. His family ran a wholesale business, and whatever the PX lacked, Burnsey seemed to receive. He sold the items at cost, which endeared him more.

Lieutenant Brown sealed the hatch of the cramped metal compartment. Over the next hour, the air would be pumped out to produce the rarefied atmosphere experienced at high altitude.

“One thousand feet,” Lieutenant Brown said on the intercom from his station outside the chamber.

Air hissed through the hose and into Ruth’s lungs, heavy with the taste of rubber. On evacuation flights she would rarely, if ever, fly high enough to need oxygen, but on bombing missions the men stayed on oxygen for long hours. Right then, Jack could be wearing a similar mask, if he was still alive.

“Two thousand feet.”

Ruth swallowed to pop her ears, and made a note on her clipboard. Why did she allow herself to care for Jack? May was right. He didn’t care for her, not one bit. He was proud and unforgiving. God wanted to remove her shame, but Jack added to it. Her stomach soured, and she wrote so hard her pencil tip snapped.

Burnsey nudged her and held out a pencil. “Here, I always bring a spare.”

So sour, but she had to take it to complete her work.

“Three thousand feet.”

In her mind, Ruth repeated a passage from Psalm 34:
“I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears. They looked unto him, and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed.”

God wanted her to be lightened, to glow with his love, free from shame. How could she not love God and trust him, when he treated her, in her vile sin, with such mercy?

May hooked arms with Dottie and Ruth as they walked to the mess for lunch. “My New Year’s resolution for 1944 is to find makeup to cover the rims those oxygen masks leave.” The rims shone red on May’s fair skin, but Dottie’s had faded. Ruth didn’t care if she had rims or not.

“I resolve to take up smoking,” Dottie said. “All the great actresses smoke. They look daring and glamorous.”

“Sickly,” May said. “Stinky, raspy voiced.”

Dottie’s hand flew to her throat. “My voice. Oh no. I’ll need a new resolution.”

Ruth had a ludicrous thought. “You could give tap dancing lessons to us orphans.”

Dottie’s face lit up. “Wouldn’t that be fun? Look. This is a shuffle. This is a ball change.” Her black Oxfords kicked up dust on the pathway.

May clutched Ruth’s arm. “Oh, what have you done?”

Ruth shook her off and tried to copy Dottie’s footwork. “Come on, expand your horizons.”

“I’ll fall on my face and break my nose.” But May tried a shuffle.

“More snap on the shuffle,” Dottie said. “That’s it. Keep moving. Lunch awaits.”

Ruth laughed at her own awkwardness as she shuffled and ball changed down the path.

“Try this—the time step.” Dottie’s feet flew into a frenzy. “It looks hard, but the components are easy. I’ll break it down.”

Ruth could hardly speak through her laughter. “Break it way down.”

“Stomp, hop, step, shuffle, ball, stomp—you just keep going. Come on, try. Stomp, hop …”

Too many steps. Ruth stomped and hopped any old way. May broke down in giggles, and Dottie spluttered corrections. They rounded the corner of the mess hall, and Ruth paused mid-stomp.

A man leaned back against the wall of the mess, his head slumped. He wore a flight jacket, olive drab trousers, and a pilot’s crush cap over black hair. If she didn’t know Jack was an ocean away …

“Don’t stop now,” Dottie said. “You’ve almost got it, Ruth.”

The man’s head snapped up. Jack.

“Oh my goodness,” May said.

“Stomp, hop, step …” Dottie’s voice trailed off.

Ruth struggled to catch her breath, from the dancing and from the sight of a man she never imagined she’d see again, a man who treated her like filth. Something flamed in her chest. “What are you doing here?”

He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Furlough. I was home—for Christmas—home. The railroad strike. I flew—skip, hop, brought me here. I wanted that. I’ve got a—yeah, an hour. C-47—La Guardia.”

Ruth had never seen him with stammering speech and halting gestures.

May marched up to him. “The nerve of you. Haven’t you said enough to her?”

Jack flinched, and then his face twisted. “No, I haven’t. I didn’t say one thing I should have, and everything I did say …”

Ruth remembered. He’d beaten in her shame, while Christ had been beaten for her shame. She pulled her chin high and set her jaw.

May pointed toward the airfield. “Go catch that plane.”

He dragged his gaze to Ruth. “I came to apologize. You deserve an apology.”

“Go catch—”

“No, let him.” Ruth’s voice came out strong, although her throat was tight, her stomach in a knot, and her hands balled at her sides. She strode past him to the privacy beside the mess. “Over here.” How satisfying to hurl his words back at him.