Velva Jean Learns to Fly (21 page)

TWENTY-FIVE

B
y July the air was heavy, even at night, and the wind that always blew, whether it was winter or summer, suddenly blew like a broiler. It got up to a hundred degrees in the sun, and we moved slow and talked slow. Even flying was hot because now we were in the BTs, which was what we called the planes we flew in basic training, and these had closed cockpits, which meant we melted just like we were inside a Dutch oven. At bedtime, we soaked our pajamas in the bathroom sink and then wore them to sleep in.

We started sneaking our cots outside after lights out—not just Paula, Sally, Mudge, Loma, and me, but girls from other bays too. At night the breeze blew stronger and the air wasn’t cool, but at least we weren’t locked up in the bay where the air was so stuffy and thick that you couldn’t think to study or even talk much.

We had to watch out for rattlesnakes because they came out at night. They were trying to stay cool too. Sally said the thing to do if you saw one was to run if you were far enough away from it, but if you were close enough for it to strike, you had to stand still as a statue and then back away as slow as possible with steps so small that the rattler couldn’t tell you were backing away. Then when you were far enough from it, you ran like hell. Sally said that rattlers could strike at a distance up to half the length of their bodies.

Every night after supper, Ned Tyler the bugler met me at the mess hall door and asked me to take a walk around base, and every night I said no. He was good-looking and funny and he played the trumpet just as good as anyone I’d ever heard, but that was as far as it went.

Sometimes I talked to Ty, but I wouldn’t walk with him. I only talked to him about things that didn’t matter, like what the weather would be like tomorrow and what to do when you saw a rattlesnake. After mess one day, I told him what Sally said, mostly just to fill up space and not let any serious conversation in.

He said, “Oh no. What you want to do with a rattler is sing to it.”

“Sing to it?”

He started singing loud as could be:

You’ve had your day,
don’t stand around and frown.
You’ve been a good old wagon, daddy,
but you done broke down!

I tried not to, but I laughed till I was hiccupping. I said, “Could I sing it a hymn?”

He said, “Are you kidding? Rattlesnakes only like ragtime.”

He is the king of lovin’,
has manners of a crown.
He’s a good old wagon, daddy,
and he ain’t broke down!

I watched him while he sang—right there in front of the cadets, officers, and the girls from the WFTD walking by—and I thought, It’s a shame I can’t fall in love with you. He seemed like a good man to lose your heart to.

On July 6 we started practicing parachute landings. We trained by running as fast as we could and throwing ourselves onto the ground. We had to learn to land on our backs instead of breaking our fall with our hands or our feet because that was the surest way to break your arm or leg. We spent all afternoon in the burning sun jumping from a platform so we could prepare for an accident. When we were done with that, we swung down on pulleys to practice our landings that way. I was black and blue, just like someone who’d been punched and prodded with a stick. Every single bone and muscle ached, sharp stabbing pains that made me lose my breath each time I moved.

I sat at the table in our bay, Sally across from me writing and reading out loud, Paula propped on her cot where she was nursing her hip with an ice pack and groaning. I stared at my book on Morse code, but the words and figures blurred so that it looked like they were being washed out—just like I’d spilled water on the pages.

Jesus, just take me now. I’m done with this. I never thought I could be so tired or so sore. Please make this heat go away and let us have a break. I’ll learn Morse code, so help me. I’ll practice it all day long. Just don’t make me jump off any more platforms and don’t let them swing me from any more pulleys.

I wondered if Johnny Clay was throwing himself on the ground and jumping from platforms right now, somewhere in North Carolina, if he was even still there. The thought of him was like another bruise, another ache. I closed my book and said, “Sally, can I borrow some paper?” She didn’t even look up, just pushed her notebook over to me and kept talking to herself. I picked up a pen and started writing my brother a letter.

“Dear Johnny Clay,” I wrote. “Where on earth are you? Are you still in North Carolina or have you gone to Europe? Please answer me as soon as you get this because I want to know you’re okay.”

On July 8, just after bed check, we were lying on our cots, each of us tossing and turning. We could hear the sounds of airplanes outside, which meant the trainees in the class ahead of us were night flying.

Mudge said, “I’m too hot to drag my cot outside tonight.”

Sally said, “I’ve never been so hot in my life. Our Indiana summer ain’t this bad.” She cracked her gum three times in a row.

Paula sat up and said, “Blast it. I can’t sleep. Let’s go watch the show.”

Loma said, “What do you mean? Where?”

“The control tower.”

Loma said, “We’re not allowed up there.”

“Well, we’ll just have to be quiet about it.” Paula got out of bed and reached for her boots and her zoot suit.

Mudge and Sally started getting dressed, Sally chattering away. “There’s the cutest boy that works the control tower. Rodney Bloom. Red hair, blue eyes, built just like a football player.” She whistled. “I’ve had my eye on him for weeks now and the most he’s done is smile at me.”

Loma said, “I’m not going.”

I felt a thrill deep down as I stood up, the cot creaking, and pulled on my zoot suit over my nightgown, which was still wet in places.

Mudge said, “All for one and one for all, Lolo. If you don’t go, we don’t go.”

Loma was quiet. We all stood there waiting for her, and then she sighed and swung her feet onto the floor.

It was a dark, moonless night, but we didn’t dare use flashlights. We tiptoed in a line, Paula leading the way, Loma falling last, and climbed the steep steps of the control tower. The boys in the tower nodded at us, but otherwise didn’t pay us much attention. We huddled together by one of the windows. Paula whispered, “They think we’re here to wait our turn in the flight line.”

Sally leaned into me and said, “He’s over there.”

I looked past her at a red-haired boy sitting behind a panel of switches. We watched him for a minute until he glanced up and saw us and smiled at Sally. She pinched my arm and put her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. Then we watched the lights on the wings and tails of the planes as they took off and climbed into blackness. The lights traced a pattern around the field, just like floating, gliding stars, before coming back to land. We watched the traffic controllers direct the planes, waving different colored lights—red, green, amber. White was for emergencies. Shirley Bingham had told us about more than one girl that had an electrical failure, which meant the plane would plunge into darkness and the gear had to be pumped by hand. It also meant the radio would die, so the girl would have to land in silence.

Just the thought was scary enough to keep me up nights long after the others had gone to sleep. I thought about Mudge saying Loma was the worryingest girl she knew. But she had no idea how much I worried each time before I flew and after. I could imagine every single thing that might go wrong. The only time I didn’t seem to worry was when I was actually flying.

Tonight I didn’t worry though. I just stood there with my friends and watched the bright-white lights of the planes taking off and landing and soaring high above us.

On Saturday nights the girls and me went to the Avengerette Club in town and danced with the cadets. Every week Ty asked me to go with him as his date and every week I said no. This didn’t mean I didn’t dance with him now and then, but I never danced more than three or four dances with him a night. On Saturday, July 10, I danced six.

On Monday, July 12, I was sitting on the runway in my BT, waiting to take off, and suddenly Ty appeared, pulling himself up into the plane. He sat in the seat behind me and slouched way down, looking out the window at the ground below. He said, “Go, go, go—before they see me!”

I said, “You’re not supposed to be in here.”

He said, “Go!”

“You’re going to get me in trouble!”

“Go, Velva Jean!”

I pulled the throttle and I went. I took off faster than I should have because he’d surprised me and shook me up a little. It was one thing to try to dance with me but another to get into my plane when I was supposed to be flying solo. I lived for these moments up in the air all by myself. I thought, Ned Tyler, you’re going to be sorry you got in my plane today. I thought I might take him into a dive or a spin, or maybe one spin after another, over and over.

The clouds were rolled into huge, billowy masses. They looked like mountains made of snow. I took us in and out between the clouds, up and down. When we climbed above them, Ty leaned forward and said, “I like it best up here. Up above the overcast. Look around you—nothing but blue.”

I didn’t say anything to him, and he leaned forward then and said in my ear, “You ever been fence hopping?”

“What’s that?”

“We have to find a farm first.” The way he said it was funny because all there was out here was farms. “You just put her down, low to the ground as you can, and when you come to a fence you have to hop it. Just watch out for bushes and cows.”

We flew for a bit and I thought: I’m not going fence hopping just because you tell me to. I’m not doing anything I don’t want to do myself. There was a white fence down below, and there were horses grazing behind it.

“Now!” he said.

I dropped us down sharp and fast, soaring over the ground as close as I dared. I hoped I’d scared him. The fence was right in front of us, and I thought: This is so stupid. Do you want to get yourself killed? But I didn’t feel scared because suddenly I felt his hands on my shoulders and this made me feel like I could hop a hundred fences all in a row.

I pulled up just as we got to the fence and then I dropped back down and found another one. We did that over and over, both of us laughing, till Ty started singing “Don’t Fence Me In.” Then I flew us high up into the air so we could head on back to Avenger Field. I looked down at the ground and everything looked the same and I didn’t see any sign of the base.

I said, “Which way is it?” I was trying to remember what Puck said about knowing your compass because sometimes you found yourself without any landmarks to go from. He had been making us practice this again and again—naming each town we passed over, not by the water tower, but by direction. He always said: “You have to figure it out on the basis of what you know, not what you see.”

Ty said, “I think we need to go east.”

I had a doubtful feeling in the back of my mind, but I turned the nose of the plane eastward, and we circled over more farms, more fences, more cows. I said, “I don’t think that’s right.”