Blue Skies Tomorrow (20 page)

“See, if you married me, we wouldn’t have to stay late. We could finish our work cuddled on the couch together.”

Something solidified in Helen’s mind. If it was courage, she’d grab hold of it. She stopped beside the car and faced Vic under the moonless sky. “Vic, this has to stop. I’m not going to marry you. Ever. I like you. I’ve always liked you as a friend, but if you keep up this nonsense with these late hours in the mistaken notion that I’ll fall in love with you—well, I’m finding it hard to even like you.”

The only light in the sky, the floodlights a mile away to help the night shift load two freighters, showed the droop in his eyes and the tightening of his cheeks.

She’d hurt him, but he wouldn’t hurt her, not that way. Besides, she had to do this, and subtlety never worked with him. “I’m sorry, but I miss my little boy. I want to read him a story every night, and dance with him, and listen to his prayers, and tell him I love him. I haven’t even seen him today.”

Vic shifted his jaw to one side. “I’ll take you home now.”

She gripped her purse strap as if the Lord could use it to infuse her with strength. “I’ll work from nine to six as we agreed. If you’re not ready, I’ll catch a bus. The Greyhound stops here in town, and it drops me a few blocks from home.”

His chin lifted. “I won’t have you riding the bus. I’ll take you—”

An orange flash down by the river, blinding, as if the floodlights had turned into the sun.

Sound crashed into her ears, knocked her to the ground, like a door slamming, the doors of heaven slamming shut.

“What on earth?” Vic lay crumpled on the ground beside her.

The sky glowed yellow. Helen pushed herself up to her feet, and she winced. Broken glass from the car window poked her bare feet.

Bare? Where were her shoes?

There by the car. She’d been blown right out of them.

Thunder cracked, crashed, resounded, pitched her to the ground again. Sharp pain warmed her right cheek.

“We’re under attack!” Vic scrambled to his feet. “The Japanese—they’re bombing us.”

All the air rushed from Helen’s chest. A carrier strike? How did the Navy let a carrier so close? And the coastal defenses? No warning? None at all?

She ignored Vic’s outstretched hand and reached for her shoes. “I need my shoes.”

“Forget the stupid shoes. We’ve got to get to shelter.”

“The glass. I need them.” She slipped them on.

“Good God in heaven, help us.” Vic stood still, hatless, his eyes enormous and directed north to the river.

Helen pulled herself up. The sight filled her eyes and paralyzed her heart.

White smoke towered thousands of feet in the air and foamed over at the top. Red lines shot out in a horrid fireworks display.

“They must have . . .” Vic’s voice came out raspy. “They must have hit the ship—one of the ships. The ordnance. Oh no, the men.”

“How . . . how many?”

“Two shifts. Three hundred men.”

The bottom dropped out of her heart. “We’ve got to get down there and help.”

“Are you insane? We’re under attack.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the building, but he stopped short.

One wall of the administration building was buckled, the roof sat at a crazy angle, and all the windows were blown out.

Whistles above. Thumps shook the earth.

Vic threw her to the ground and flung himself on top of her.

Under his weight, Helen turned her chin to look out. A glowing red chunk of metal the size of a door plunged into the ground and shook her. She cried out and tucked her face into the space between Vic’s chest and the sidewalk. So this was what it was like for those poor people in Europe and Asia during air raids. Such helpless fear.

Where else were they bombing? Antioch didn’t have any military targets except a small shipyard, but did the Japanese know? Did they care? “Oh Lord, Jay-Jay. Keep my baby safe.”

Silence returned. And darkness. Such darkness.

“I think they’re gone,” Vic said.

“I never heard any planes.”

“Me neither. Strange.” He helped her up. “Let’s get you someplace safe.”

She shoved tangled hair off her face. “I need to help. The men on the docks, the ships, the barracks. Look at the administration building. Imagine the barracks, right by the river.”

“Don’t be silly. It isn’t safe.”

“Safe?” She crossed her arms and felt rips in the sleeves of her suit. “It’s war. There is no safe. I’m a trained Red Cross volunteer, I’m a doctor’s daughter, and I have more than my share of experience with injuries.”

“Helen—”

“Let’s get to work.” She headed back to the car. “We’ll drive to the dispensary, pick up supplies—gauze, iodine, splints. Do you have a flashlight?”

“In the glove compart—Helen, this is crazy.”

She set her hands on her hips. “Doing nothing would be crazy. If you won’t drive me, I’ll walk, but that’ll waste precious time. Men are injured down there, bleeding, dying.”

He paused. “Fine. I don’t have time to argue. I’ve got to get down there myself.”

After they brushed broken glass from the car seats, they drove to the dispensary. Aided by car headlights, a bucket brigade of men shuttled supplies from the partially collapsed building. One man called out instructions, a heavyset man wearing a navy blue service jacket, pajama pants, and a stethoscope.

Helen approached him. “Sir, my name’s Helen Carlisle. I’m a Red Cross volunteer trained in first aid. I need gauze, iodine, splints, scissors, whatever you can spare.”

He frowned and looked her up and down.

“She’s with me, Dr. Thompson,” Vic said. “And her father’s a physician.”

Dr. Thompson nodded. “Ever use a morphine syrette, young lady?”

“No, sir, but I’ve seen the training film, and I’ve watched my father give injections.”

The doctor headed for a stack of boxes. “Take care of what you can down there. Send the serious cases here. They’re setting up work gangs. Try to get those Negroes working for once.”

Helen winced. From what she’d seen, the Negroes did all the work at Port Chicago.

With the car packed full of supplies and sailors, Vic drove down the dark road.

At the fork in the road, a Marine guard pointed them to the left. “Head to the barracks. That’s where you’re needed.”

“Lots of bomb damage?” Vic asked.

“Bomb? That was no bomb. An accident, sabotage, I don’t know, but the
E.
 
A. Bryan
blew to smithereens. Not a bit left of her. Few seconds later, the
Quinault Victory
blew straight out of the water, broke to bits. Dock’s gone, train’s gone. Ain’t nothing, nobody left down there. Ain’t nothing you can do.” He waved them down the road to the left.

Helen hunched in the seat behind the box of gauze bandages on her lap, squished between Vic and a pajama-clad officer who apologized in a Southern accent every time he bumped her. Nothing left? Nobody left? How many had been killed? And what would the barracks be like?

In silhouette, Vic’s jaw jutted forward. “An explosion. Carver Jones warned them. He said this would happen.” He pounded his fist on the steering wheel.

“Was he—was he working tonight?”

Vic’s lips pulled tight. “We’ll find out.”

The barracks still stood—eighteen long, two-storied wooden buildings. The headlights showed window frames knocked out, collapsed roofs, and rubble all around. Men staggered out, supported buddies, or ran inside with flashlights and crowbars.

Vic parked the car so the headlights illuminated a dark doorway. “Okay, men, you four in the backseat, you’re with me. You two in the front, stay with Mrs. Carlisle, set up a first aid station.”

Helen spread blankets in the yellow wedge of light, and the men piled up the boxes and gathered scraps of lumber for splints.

“Ma’am? You a nurse?” A man restrained another man as if he were under arrest. “My buddy—he got glass in his eye, keeps trying to rub it. He’ll make it worse, I tell him.”

“Your friend’s right.” Helen set her hands on the struggling shoulders, although the blue work shirt was splattered with blood and glass. “Please sit down, sir. Keep holding his hands,” she said to his friend.

Her patient eased himself down, writhing and cursing.

“Sir, I need you to be calm and still.” Helen knelt in front of him. She gently pulled down his lower right eyelid and used a square of gauze to lift loose glass particles. “Very still, sir.”

His good eye honed in on her. “Ain’t never had no white woman call me sir before.”

She gave him a slight smile. “Then it’s a night of firsts for both of us. I’ve never removed glass from a man’s eye before.”

She folded back his upper eyelid and repeated the process. Dr. Thompson would have to take care of the glass that had already penetrated the eye. By the time she’d placed a loose bandage around her patient’s head, a dozen men stood in line for care. The Southerner in pajamas rinsed wounds with water from a bucket, and the other officer loaded seriously wounded men onto a truck. Helen sent her patient with him.

“Helen! Helen!” Vic ran up, supporting a man in torn work clothes. “It’s Carver. I pulled him from under some timbers. He’s cut up. I think his arm’s broken. I gave him some morphine.” He helped Jones lie down on the blanket, and then he ran off on his scissor legs.

Helen pulled her lipstick from her shoulder bag. “Pardon the indignity, Mr. Jones, but Dr. Thompson needs to know about the morphine.” She wrote “MS 10:45” in red on his forehead, glad she knew the abbreviation for morphine sulfate from helping Papa in his office.

Jones groaned and clutched his arm to his stomach. Bloody gashes ran across his chest.

“All right. I’m going to look at that arm.” Helen snipped open his shirtsleeve.

In the slanted, shadowy light, red blood glistened on blue fabric.

Jim had worn the same uniform.

How much had he bled before he died? How much pain did he bear? Did he die instantly or agonize for hours? Even after all he’d done, he didn’t deserve to suffer like that. No one did.

Helen gasped from the pain of it and turned away for supplies. She arranged two lumber scraps on either side of Jones’s broken arm and secured them with gauze.

She shivered in the cool air.
Oh Lord, forgive me. I wanted Jim to suffer as I did.

What kind of woman wished her own husband dead?

20

Over Germany
Tuesday, July 18, 1944

Ray stroked the control wheel between gloved fingers. Black puffs from exploding antiaircraft shells dirtied the blue sky and the thick white clouds below, and
One O’Clock Jump
trembled whenever one burst too near. The men hated flak more than fighters because they couldn’t shoot back. Ray felt the opposite. The fighter pilot looked a man in the eye and vowed to kill, but the antiaircraft gunners twenty thousand feet below aimed at radar blips, protecting their homeland.

Could Ray blame them?
Jump
carried four tons of bombs to destroy an oil refinery at Kiel. Without oil, Germany would perish.

Ray’s vision darkened again, and he drew a rubbery-tasting draft through his oxygen mask. Despite what Sergeant Bodey said, something was wrong. “Oxygen check, Goldman.”

The copilot waved a hand in loose circles. His dark eyelashes fluttered.

Ray shook Goldman’s arm. “Goldman! Leo! Wake up. Hewett, get a portable on him. Radovich, how much longer to the target?”

“About ten minutes.”

“Left waist to pilot. Paladino passed out. I’ve got him on oxygen.”

“Thanks, Tucker.” He flew through a spent shell. Black smoke snaked over the windscreen, shrapnel pinged against the fuselage, and Ray blinked.

He couldn’t turn back with a full bomb rack when the flak was picking up. After the first abort, someone painted “Chicken Coop” on
Jump
’s nose. Even after the successful supply drop, Jack would want him pulled if he failed to complete this mission.

Or was he endangering ten lives—for what reason? To prove himself a man? To win Dad’s respect? To earn God’s favor? What a bunch of baloney. Had he lost his mind? People were shooting at him, his men were passing out, and for what? For what?

“Novak!” Someone tugged at his mask.

Ray blinked at Hewett’s pale, freckled, frightened face. “What?”

“You nodded off. Take a deep breath. I hooked you to portable oxygen.”

He’d passed out? For how long?

Goldman, wide-awake, manned the wheel. “Okay, fellows, listen up. We’ve got to finish this mission. No one calls us chicken. Everyone get a portable and keep an eye on your buddies. Take turns refilling from the main oxygen system.”

Ray settled the yellow oxygen tank on his lap and studied the controls. “How much farther, Radovich?”

“We should be there. Don’t know why the lead hasn’t dropped.”

“Radio to pilot. I know why. The wing command ship says the H2X isn’t working. Head for the secondary.”

The radar failed. Swell. The secondary target at Cuxhaven lay a hundred miles behind them, forty minutes plus time for the complex act of turning in formation. How long would the portables hold out? What if he and Goldman passed out at the same time?

Ray groaned. He flipped the radio switch overhead to command mode and informed his squadron commander he was returning to base.

“Again?” The major’s sarcastic tone drove like a corkscrew into Ray’s head.

He lowered the plane from her slot in the formation. The group would turn right, so Ray turned left to cross the Jutland peninsula just south of the Danish border. Aiming for the layer of altostratus below, he let
Jump
build to 200 miles per hour. “Radovich, got a new course plotted?”

“Highly unlikely,” Buffo said. “He was drawing bunnies on the map. Yes, I put him on oxygen.”

Jump
plunged into the milky pool of clouds, and Ray kept a close eye on the panel. Pilots sometimes succumbed to vertigo and found themselves upside down. As long as he trusted his instruments rather than his instincts, he’d be glad to snuggle in the cloud’s protection.

But at 12,000 feet, the clouds broke up. Below him stretched German land in neat squares of green with clusters of red-roofed buildings.