Cynthia Cartier - Wings

Bet looked apprehensively from across the room in Liddy’s direction. Strom finished listing the assignments and Bet approached him. “Excuse me, Mr. Strom, about my buddy assignment?”

“Is there a problem, Bailey? You put in for these assignments two weeks ago. I believe this was your first choice.”

“Well, yes it was, it’s just that I—,” Bet stammered as she saw Liddy watching her.

“You just what, Bailey?”

“Nothing, sir. No problem, sir.”

Bet had the map out and only spoke to Liddy when she needed to give her a navigation lead. On the return leg of their flight, Liddy sat in the front pit listening to the report of the engine, and carefully reading the wind and the grayness of the clouds. She was going to do everything she could to make sure the flight went smoothly.

Bet watched the instruments in the rear pit. “Okay, now head… Oh, brother.”

“What is it?” Liddy asked.

“Look right, about three miles.”

Flames licked the roof at the corner of a ranch house in the distance. The pilots circled over and saw a woman, waving frantically, holding a baby and two small children were wrapped around her legs.

“We have to help,” Bet insisted.

“We’re not authorized for a landing until we get back to base. And what about the time? They’re tabbing us.”

“You can gun her and pick it up.”

“Bet, think about this.”

“I am, Liddy. Let’s get down there. We have to see if we can help.”

Liddy landed the plane and the two women burst from the cockpit and ran to the woman. She was frantic and Liddy and Bet ran inside and came out less than thirty seconds later with a toddler they found hiding under a bed. Just then two trucks pulled up and five men jumped out, grabbed a ladder from the bed and leaned it on the house. Liddy and Bet joined a bucket line that was formed from the well and the water was tossed on the roof.

“We might as well be pissin’ on it,” said one of the men, and then they started to break from the line in defeat.

Bet yelled at them, “We can’t just watch it burn.”

“Did you feel that?” Liddy asked.

Everyone looked up just as a canopy of clouds burst open and dumped on the land. Texas weather was as unpredictable as a roll of the dice and it rarely came quietly.

The help was encouraging and Liddy called to Bet, “Let’s go.”

Bet filled buckets and Liddy climbed the ladder to dump them. The men rejoined the effort, but the flames were defiant. A section of the roof collapsed inside itself and the ladder jolted forward.

“Liddy,” Bet screamed.

Liddy jumped off the ladder as it fell into the flames and she landed on her rear in the mud. Bet helped Liddy to her feet, and they stood back and watched the showers roll billows of smoke off the flames that shot from the broken structure.

Bet and Liddy cried with the woman as she stood with her children and watched her home disappear, as the rain clouds blew off into the distance as fast as they had appeared. The house was left in a smoldering black pile of mush. Mother and children were helped into a truck, and Bet and Liddy slopped back to the plane. It was surrounded by a mud bog.

“There’s no way we’re getting out of here without picking up a ton of mud. They’ll know we landed,” said Bet.

“Yes they will.”

“This is the end of us, Liddy.”

“Get in!”

“What are you thinking?”

“Do you want to get back to base and drag this muddy evidence all over the strip?”

“No, I can hear it now.” Bet tilted her chin forward and said in a low voice, “You’re not firemen, you’re pilots, dammit.”

“Trust me then?”

Bet gave her a nod and they climbed in.

Liddy got the plane back in the air and headed for the storm clouds that had flushed themselves on the fire. “Hang on!” she called to Bet. Liddy gunned it and sailed under the cloud taking a couple of slow rolls through the downpour. The shower rinsed the mud off the wheels and over the sides of the body and then Liddy pushed the nose up, topped over the storm and headed back to the base.

To this day, stories are passed around Nolan County about phantom pilots: a farmer’s sick child was flown to the Fort Worth hospital, medicine was picked up and delivered, and there’s one about two pilots who swooped down and pulled a child out of a burning building and then flew straight into a rain cloud.

When they got back to base, Liddy and Bet were soaked to the bone, but they were on time and the plane looked like it had been spit and polished. When they reunited with Joy Lynn, Marina and Louise that night in the barracks, Bet shared the adventure with breathless enthusiasm. The near-death crash of her first night-fly eventually became part of Bet’s repertoire too, and Liddy wanted Crik to hear how the little redhead told the tales; he might learn something.

The camaraderie returned to the modest abode and Liddy and Bet were knit again, and nothing ever changed that. A great flyer once said, “A pilot’s ability grows with experience, smart don’t cut it.” Bet became fearless and she no longer dreaded the unknown but called it out, strapped it on and marched.

Liddy laid pretty low as she finished up her last days of training. Getting up at midnight for night-flies took the thrill out flying in the dark for a lot of the women, but not Liddy. The quiet of it, the peace of it, however, left her mind to wander where she didn’t want it to go. And waiting for her orders brought the reality that it would be a good long time before she was to live among Crik and Jack again, if ever. The graduates would be given a ten day leave but then it would be on to a command or more training.

The week before graduation and the week the orders were to be handed out, Marina and Bet came running to the flight line and told Liddy that Louise’s husband had showed up and was making a scene. Liddy threw off her chute, dropped her gear and sprinted across the base. When she got there, Louise’s husband was screaming at her, “You stupid whore, you think you can run off and abandon my kids and I’m gonna let you get away with it? Get your ass in the car, or I swear I’ll beat the living daylights out of you.”

Louise’s 5’ 9” frame had shrunk and she cowered under the humiliation. Apparently, the divorce papers had finally caught up with the man and his little fling had started to sour. So the louse went back home to discover Louise gone and their children in the care of their grandparents. When he got out of a neighbor where she was, he took off after her and was planning to take Louise back to Colorado.

Liddy, Marina and Bet took Louise by the arms and started to guide her away, which incensed the lunatic, and he lunged through the women and got a hold of Louise’s neck. Captain Charles, Major Trent and some of the instructors dashed around the corner as Louise fell back and hit the ground. Her husband looked like he was stuffed with feathers when the base staff pulled him off of her. He got locked up in the county jail, and someone must have done something to the man because he never again bothered Louise after that. Joy Lynn was in the air at the time, and one couldn’t help but wonder what the creep’s fate might have been if she had got to him first.

Louise never shed a tear that day, but Liddy heard her cry beneath her covers that night, and a few nights after that. But when the orders came, her strength returned and she sprung back even taller than before. The friends stood in line together for their assignments but made a deal that they wouldn’t look at them until they got back to the bays. It was like Christmas morning when they each took turns opening their orders. Marina took her nail file and carefully slit the top of her envelope.

“What did you get?” Bet asked Marina before she had even removed the contents.

Marina unfolded her orders, and read to herself. Then she waved the papers jubilantly. “March Base, I’m gonna be working out the boys in gunnery school. Buzzing, speed and sunny California.”

Marina tossed the nail file to Louise who slit, then read, then announced with joy and relief, “Bomber training in Colorado.”

“Near your kids, that’s great Louie,” said Liddy.

Louise tossed the nail file to Joy Lynn who caught it in the air and fell off the bed. When she opened the envelope, the gals were still laughing and Joy Lynn was still on the floor where she had landed. Every word was read aloud and by the last line she had risen to her full Amazon height. She would be joining Louise in Bomber training. “B-25s and men too, I’m gonna float away.” Joy Lynn touched the back of her hand to her forehead and fell onto the bed.

“Give me the file. It’s my turn,” Bet ordered. She practically tore the envelope in two as she charged it with the blade, and then she read the words with wild eyes, “Alabama, I got Maxwell field, engineering and repair depot testing. That’s where Carla’s going.”

Liddy had forgone the file and her orders were already out of the envelope and folded in her lap.

“Well, Miss HP. Let’s hear it,” said Marina.

As Liddy read the words she remembered the day she sat in Crik’s truck reading her acceptance telegram from the WASP, and she remembered the day she left Holly Grove and the drive to the train. This was another beginning, which meant an end and she was overwhelmed. Her vision was blurred with tears by the time she finished the last word, “Pursuit School in Palm Springs.”

“Well, well, Miss Hot Wings, we knew you’d get ‘em. Gotta say, I like bein’ the best, but I at least can say I slept with the best,” drawled Joy Lynn.

“Here, Here!” cheered Louise.

And then the others joined in. “Here, Here!”

Joy Lynn bolted from her bed and dug to the bottom of her locker and came up with a bottle. The brew was contraband, but the gals learned the men didn’t rummage through the lockers when doing inspections, for fear of stumbling on female things. The room was scavenged until a menagerie of mugs and glasses had been assembled, and they filled their cups and raised them to the sky.

“To no more inspections or morning reveille,” said Joy Lynn.

“Or nightmares about horny cows.” Marina laughed.

“To no more studying, heat stroke or marching,” added Liddy.

“You’re going to Pursuit School remember, in Palm Springs,” Louise pointed out.

“Well, to no more marching then,” Liddy raised her cup again.

“No more checkrides,” said Louise.

“You’re going to Bomber training remember,” said Liddy.

“Well no more marching then,” Louise laughed

“Or…,” Bet looked around at her friends.

Together they yelled out, “And no more ZOOT SUITS!”

Liddy stood up and gave the final toast, “To the hottest HPs ever to grace the air above Avenger Field. We’ve made it, girls. WINGS!!!”

“WINGS,” they all shouted.

Dr. Bradley arranged for Liddy to make a collect call to the hospital in Holly Springs. She held the receiver to her ear and listened to the static that popped through the line as she waited. Her new dress uniform lay in the crook of her arm and she fingered the space where her WASP wings would be pinned. She tapped her foot to the tune of Deep in the Heart of Texas playing over the rec hall radio. She smiled and thought, Not for long.

“Hello,” Liddy heard Jack’s voice.

“Hey, Daddy, it’s me. How are you?”

“Kickin’, honey, how are you?”

“Great, I got my orders. And I just bought my dress uniform and—”

“So, did you get the fast little buggers?” Even on the phone Liddy couldn’t complete a sentence before Jack jumped in.

“Yeah, I got the fast little buggers.” Liddy smiled and soaked in Jack’s voice.

Jack Hall warned, coached and prodded his little girl for the next ten minutes, and it was all food to Liddy. After her phone call, Liddy found Louise in the bay putting things in order.

“Did you pick up your uniform?” Liddy asked.

“No, I was gonna head over in a bit. Can’t believe I’m gonna be wearing something tailor made for me from Neiman Marcus.”

“That Jackie Cochran doesn’t spare the bucks when it comes to our fashion or our wings.”

“Not too surprising when you think about her strutting across the base in her heels and furs when she drops in for a look-see at her Avenger girls.”

Bet entered the bay carrying a glossy white box. Pink ribbon and tissue were hanging out the sides.