Wings (4 page)

Jerry Bluff entered the hangar. “Liddy, you climb down from there!”

She ignored the order and continued her inspection. “Can I take her up?”

“No, definitely no,” Jerry yelled. His aggravation chopped his breathing, pushing his middle-aged paunch in and out in a quick rhythm. His effort to cross the hanger taxed him, his exhales stressed his shirt buttons, and perspiration broke out on his forehead.

Liddy looked at Jerry from over her shoulder. “The engine hasn’t been broken in, has it?”

“Yes, it has and listen here, you’re not taking up this plane or any other until you reconcile your account.” Jerry folded his arms across his chest, not realizing his tie had flopped clumsily over his arms.

Liddy dug into her pocket before remembering her take from the show that day was gone. She jumped down from the plane and approached Jerry. He tightened up the lock of his arms as if he was creating a shield from Liddy.

“You don’t want me to head off to serve your country having only flown those old ships of Crik’s and the skeletons you’ve been letting me fly, do ya’?”

“Skeletons? None of my planes...” Jerry held his ground. “This is a business, Miss.”

“I have a big show coming up. I’ll get caught up, I promise.”

Jerry maintained his stern disposition but was quick to give Liddy some slack. “At Crik’s place?”

“Yeah,” Liddy fudged and thought,
I’ll start the day at Crik’s place.

“What’s so special about this show?”

“There’s four or five buses coming over from Genner Springs,” still fudging.
Surely someone might be there from Genner Springs. There could be a bus.

“Completely paid up?”

“In full,” Liddy said with the kind of confidence that was hard to doubt.

“Okay, but I’m not blocking any time for you. You only go up when the schedule’s clear, and no more, definitely no more.”

“Thank you, thank you.” Liddy trotted back to the plane and jumped up on the wing, “So, can I take her up?”

“No, definitely no.”

The instrument panel glinted
in Liddy’s eye as she taxied the blue and yellow Fairchild out of the hangar. She waved at Jerry from the cockpit. He didn’t return the wave but kicked at the ground and shuffled back into his office. Liddy rolled out to the runway and waited at the end of the blacktop for clearance.

Her fingers walked over the panel—
not a scratch
.
What a day. A new plane. A first—Jack would be impressed, Crik too.

A crack over the radio startled her out of her spell, “All clear, Bluff 19A.”

She throttled, stepped gently on the rudder and felt the plane scoot and sway obediently. The thrust of the engine caught up her whole body and Liddy was giddy. Next thing she knew, she floated above the strip. She drew the stick to her and drifted up and up until she caught full air and was where she wanted to be. She clocked the odometer to a hundred plus and sat back to glide.

Liddy had no questions when she flew. Everything made sense and she was lost and found. Free from the worries that hem in a life. Worries that have no place until you’re down again, if you ever are. The hospital bill, her account with Jerry, Jack’s health, it all floated away. You didn’t know Liddy unless you had flown with her, so few people actually knew Liddy Hall. The power floated her free and there was nothing or no one that she wanted to be but her. It had always been that way. The sky had chosen her. This was something she knew for sure.

As Liddy flew along the highway she spotted a patrol car. An officer had pulled over a motorist and was approaching the driver’s door. She took the stick forward and gunned it, picking up speed as she dove, heading straight for the vehicles. She swept in low, and the papers on the deputy’s clip board ruffled from the blast of air. His hat flew off his head and bounced and spun on the asphalt.

“Ahaaa!” Liddy yodeled.

The officer chased his hat down and then ran into the middle of the road. He attempted to read the ID numbers on the plane but Liddy banked sharply to keep them from view.

“I’m sorry, Joe, were you trying to read my tail?” Liddy quipped.

She flew in a circle, banking left and right leading the man into a kind of back and forth figure eight. Once she got him good and dizzy, she rolled out and flew off into the distance.

Defeated, the policeman returned his attention to the roadside where his patrol car sat alone. The motorist had left the scene and was a speck in the distance. He slammed his ticket board to the ground and followed that with his hat.

Seventeen little Johnsons
burst through the screen door of a dilapidated farm house, out of the barn, from the garden and the yard they spilled out and gathered together. Liddy was watching for them as she flew above the homestead. The Johnson farm was leaning all over the place, but it was whitewashed with love. Charlie Johnson was the son of a farmer and he and his wife were the saviors of the county. Always providing meals for the sick, rebuilding burned-down barns, gathering up orphans, which accounted for the numbers of their brood—all this in the absence of two pennies to rub together. The Johnson clan was an army of sacrifice and goodwill.

Charlie had come from a long line of servants. It was his parents who swooped in to care for Liddy and her father when her mother became ill and died in just a few short months. Liddy was twelve. Helping Mrs. Johnson clean and cook in her mother’s stead taught Liddy to do the needed tasks around the house. It hadn’t occurred to her to take up these activities when her mother was alive. It was never expected. Edda Hall had accepted that Liddy’s heart wasn’t in the kitchen but had set itself on her father’s interests.

Liddy looked down at the dilapidated farm and thought how poverty was never associated with a Johnson. They never radiated any need, and were a complete and happy lot. Their happiness filled the air as the children flailed their arms to get Liddy’s attention. She rocked the wings up and down as if to say ‘I see you’. From tall to small the tribe stampeded into the field, dragging the littlest Johnsons between them. Tiny hands were clutched in the grip of their older siblings. Their small bodies swung up and down as their feet touched the ground briefly and floated back out. When they reached a steep pile of chopped straw, they circled it, hand-in-hand.

Charlie Johnson emerged from the barn and met his wife in the yard where she had been hanging out the family’s clean wardrobe. His grin pulled full across his face as he screened his eyes with one hand and peered out and over the field. With his other arm he squeezed his wife’s waist in excitement.

Liddy flew out about half a mile, headed back and tilted forward on the stick. She aimed straight for the children who were dancing like popping corn around their hill of gold. The closer the plane came to the troop, the more some of them jigged, while others tightened up, tucked their chins to their chests and braced themselves.

Closer—closer—Liddy skimmed the air above the pile and it exploded into a cloud of golden bits. The children’s clothes flapped and waved as they bopped in merriment with their arms stretched to the sky. The hay hung on the air and then wafted leisurely down onto the dancers who leaped and spun about. Remnants of straw set down on their heads and carpeted the ground at their feet and the big band blended into their dance floor. Liddy flew in circles watching the party. With her last pass, she tilted and waved at Charlie and his wife, double rolled and then sailed away.

Back at the airport,
Liddy sat at the end of Jerry’s desk. She folded her WASP application with precision and placed it in an envelope. Jerry leaned back in his chair watching. She licked the envelope, sealed it and held out her hand as she shot him a needful look.

“Sure, next you’ll want my car or my house maybe. I’m sure my wife won’t mind.” Jerry pulled open his desk drawer and retrieved a stamp. The phone rang and he answered it, “Bluff Air.”

Liddy reached for the postage pinched between Jerry’s fingers and he pulled it back. He drew the phone a distance from his ear, and shouting reverberated from the receiver, but Liddy couldn’t make out the words.

“Well, Sheriff Squim, if you can give me the ID numbers, I can tell you if it was one of mine.” Jerry squinted suspiciously at Liddy and more hollering floated into the room. “Liddy Hall? Yes, she still flies out of here.” Still watching Liddy, Jerry accused her now.

Liddy returned a shrug of innocence.

“Today? I’d have to check on that. Can I get back to you?”

The Sheriff’s voice boomed from the phone. This time his words were distinct, “You damned well better check on that.” The rant continued but retreated back to a muffled rumbling.

Jerry moved the mouth piece just close enough to end the conversation, “Thanks for the call, Sheriff.”

The lawman’s roar continued to spill from the receiver as Jerry gingerly set the phone in its cradle. He pulled his desk drawer open and removed a little box. Jerry dropped the stamp that he held between his fingers into it and pushed the whole lot toward Liddy. “Make sure you get enough postage on that.”

Liddy stood in front of the mailbox.
She checked every word she had carefully written on the envelope and then set it on the ledge at the opening of the slot. When she let go, the letter teetered and then was still. She picked it up again, re-examined it and then bounced it in the palm of her hand, checking for weight. The sky was graying. She had missed the day’s post and debated holding on to the application until the morning but decided against the stall. Liddy again set the envelope on the ledge. This time she tapped the end and it slid down the chute. She peered in to see where it landed, but the box was dark. It was done. Liddy Lynn Hall had applied to be a Women Airforce Service Pilot. Now she would wait.

When Jack Hall first saw the magazine cover with a woman sitting on the wing of an Army plane, he assumed it was war propaganda. But when he found out that the article was about a program to train women to fly for the Army, he shoved it at his Liddy. The two of them battled about her not wanting to go away and leave him and Jack demanded that he didn’t need another nurse. Jack won and Liddy accepted his determination for her and admitted her own to herself.

Liddy had secretly dreamt of someday being more than a country show flyer. That kind of flying wasn’t respectable in the minds of some who were serious about aviation and it didn’t offer new challenges for her or the financial means to help take care of her and Jack. But it was what she knew, and she thought she had settled on it. So this new direction churned all kinds of excitement in Liddy. That magazine had become worn and ragged from the hours that she’d spent poring over the photos and text.

It chronicled the journey of Jackie Cochran, under the supervision of Army Air Force Commander General ‘Hap’ Arnold, to establish the Women Airforce Service Pilots program. Cochran, who was a pilot and a woman of influence, saw a need that female flyers could fill in the war effort. She used her influence to develop the program to train novice to advanced women pilots to do noncombat duties at home, freeing the men to fight overseas. It was a civilian program, but Cochran had her sights set on militarization for the WASPs.

Aviation was government regulated by the 1940s, but some of the flying was still being done that wasn’t licensed, especially in farm country. Farmers needed dusters and aviation wasn’t something local law enforcement cared much about. So as long as no one created a reason to step in, no one did. Liddy flew at such a young age without a license, and over farm and field, that the need to get one had never come up and there was the issue of money. So her flying time had not been logged.

When she had learned what was required to qualify for the WASP, she set about to line things up. She would need a license and thirty-five hours of logged flight time. At Clayton Airfield, in the next county, she found that strong stands about female pilots were the norm. Common opinion was that it was fine for a woman to fly, just not their planes and not in their air.

Jerry Bluff was the only one to give her time and he took some heat for doing it. He only went up with her once and then cut her loose. He realized he couldn’t teach her anything she didn’t already know. It was just a matter of logging hours and he scheduled her in. Even with Jerry’s support the task was difficult. Airfield flying was expensive and the $4.60 an hour was hard to come by. Liddy flew the occasional show and worked at the diner to scrimp and save everything she could. She didn’t let on to Jack how thin she was spread. If he knew money might keep her out of the program, there was no telling what he might do.

The goal of the WASP program changed everything for Liddy. Not having had a license, and wanting to stay close to home, kept the urge to fly long distances from her dreams. But once she had that license, her boldness grew. She craved the journey and couldn’t wait to take it in the Army. The weeks that followed sending the application to the WASP dragged, so Liddy tried to focus on spending time with Jack and making money. When she received word back that she could interview and undergo a physical examination for a spot in the program, everyone banded together to make it happen. Jerry flew her to St. Louis where he guided her in her first big city airport landing. Crik chipped in for the fuel, but Liddy knew it didn’t cover what it cost Bluff Air. Daniel and his girlfriend Celia surprised her with a hand-me-down blue-gray suit that had belonged to Celia’s older sister. It was new to Liddy, fit her perfectly and she loved it.