Cynthia Cartier - Wings

Liddy returned to New Castle and flew for her country. Sitting in the cockpit after Bet’s death, she ran through her check and stopped before she said it and thought about whether she would. But it had to be a good day to die, she knew that, otherwise she wouldn’t be free. And she had to be free. She had to live without fear. To live was to fly. So she said it and then rolled down the runway.

The months of flying filled her with purpose, but her heart had some room. She picked up her mail less and less often. When she did, part of her still hoped to see a letter from Reid, while the other part had let him rest with Bet.

Jenna had written to Ellis and asked if he had heard any news of Reid. When she received an answer back, she waited until a two day leave to tell Liddy what he’d said. Major Reid Trent had been shot down over the Nazi controlled countryside in France. What was left of his squadron confirmed that he hadn’t chuted out. The plane was behind the German line, so it couldn’t be recovered, but the crash site could be seen from the air and was burned to the frame.

When she received a bundle of letters in her handwriting to Reid, stamped deceased, both sides of Liddy let him rest. She quietly reconciled her spirit to the unbearable wreckage that life can offer up.

Liddy wished she knew Reid’s family and could tell them how sorry she was. She wanted them to know how much he meant to her and that she meant something to him and wanted them to be sorry for her too. Liddy wanted someone to know what they meant to each other, but no one really knew. It was all letters. Letters and talks with Louise. Only she and Reid knew. No one had seen it or felt it but them.

She hadn’t answered Louise’s last three letters, so she sat down to cement the reality of it all—the reality that something almost was, but now it wasn’t, and it was really over.

June 27, 1944

Dear Louie,

How are you? How are the Prince and Princess? Did they enjoy their trip to the Grand Canyon with your parents? Tell them I said hi and that I love them. Sorry I haven’t written in awhile. Louie, he’s gone. Reid was shot down in March and he’s dead. I kept hoping, but he’s gone. I can’t talk about it more than that right now, but I’ll write more later. I promise.

I’m okay, really. Please, please don’t worry. I’ll write soon.

Love Liddy

It took over a half an hour to get out the few lines and Liddy’s tears had soaked the paper. She tore off another sheet from her writing tablet and rewrote it so that Louise might believe she was really okay.

It was a sunny October afternoon when Liddy returned from a Ferry mission and reported to the ready room where it seemed every WASP at New Castle was in the room and red-faced. In hushed tones, they shouted to one another and some of them just sat and cried.

Liddy spotted Jenna who was in a heated discussion with Teresa Hinton and some other WASPs. She didn’t want to ask, but forced herself and walked over and interrupted the group, “What now?”

“We’ve been deactivated,” said Jenna.

“What?”

“It’s over. They’ve sent us packing,” said Teresa.

“But the war’s still on,” said Liddy.

“Doesn’t matter, December twentieth, at midnight it’s over.” Jenna looked at Liddy with tear-filled eyes. “Pack your bags, Hall.”

“But why?” Liddy asked.

“Who knows, politics, public opinion that wants to put us back in our place. There’s been a line of people waiting for us to fail. Guess they got tired of waiting.” Jenna tore a flight map in two and let it fall to the floor.

Liddy couldn’t make the words fall into place in her head, and the disbelief mixed into an irrational concoction that rolled and bubbled inside her. A smile drew itself across her face as a muffled chuckle forced into the air and soon it was followed by an all out roar.

The room fell silent except for Liddy’s howl. The women watched her face cover with tears as she laughed and cried with her whole body. “They’re discharging us and we were never charged. All this time, I was waiting for militarization, to be the real deal. It never occurred to me they’d end it, altogether end it. Why’d they bother even training us?” Liddy’s voice vibrated with the laughter.

“She’s lost it,” said Teresa.

“We’ve all lost it,” said Jenna.

It was December 19^th and New Castle had offered up a full dress review to honor the WASPs. Other bases hadn’t been so gracious. Some even locked the women out as soon as they heard the program would be disbanded. New Castle had sent the women up till the last hour and was sad to see them go. The WASPs who hadn’t already left, including Jenna and Liddy, were preparing to leave. “What are you going to do?” Jenna asked Liddy as they sat in the officer’s club.

“Well, it doesn’t seem I’m going to have what I wanted, so I think I’ll try to want what I can have.”

“And what’s that?” Jenna asked.

“I’m not exactly sure, so I’m gonna spend some time figuring that out.” Liddy finished her last entry in her flight log and flipped it closed. “I’ve got me a cushy little instructing job all lined up back home, for now. What about you?”

“I don’t know yet. I wish Ellis…. When he gets back home, maybe I’ll have a baby. See how long I can tilt a rudder with one in the oven.” Jenna pressed her face in between her palms. “Liddy, I’m so disappointed I can hardly breathe.” Tears rolled down Jenna’s cheeks.

Teresa Hinton walked into the room. “Hey, ladies, there’s a couple of hush-hush planes that need to be picked up from the factory and delivered for shipment overseas by 2200 hours. Everyone’s gone or ready to go home and they can’t find anyone who’ll take them.”

“Good, they can go to Hell,” said Jenna.

“I’ll do it.” Liddy pushed her chair back and stood up.

Jenna looked at her, surprised. “Really? Why?”

“Our boys need those planes, Jenna. This is still our country, isn’t it?”

Jenna dried her face and then she set her palms flat on the table and stood up to face Liddy. “Okay, Liddy. Me too, I’ll go with you.”

The WASP quarters had already been filled with new male cadets and male civilian pilots who would be trained to take the place of the fly girls, so Liddy and Jenna had to store their luggage in the office.

Once geared up, they checked out and were dropped at the factory. As they were escorted into the hangar, they were handed manuals that were both typed and handwritten for the ships they would be flying.

Circling the planes, their eyes widened at the sight of the phantom aircraft. Smaller than anything they had ever flown, the ships only resembled what they knew to be a plane. The way the engines were mounted, or rather molded into the metal, made them look like they were growing out from beneath the wings. The sides of the cockpit were low and the rudders, or what looked like they might be rudders, could be seen through the canopy. The skin had the look of crushed coal and if the body had a seam, you couldn’t see it.

Jenna and Liddy read the manuals as they suited up for the flight. Reading plane manuals like they were recipe books was a familiar practice, but this plane was a different animal and the pressure to lift-off was unnerving.

“What’s the landing speed?” Jenna asked as she zipped her jacket.

“I don’t know,” Liddy said. She flipped and scanned the pages. “Did you find the check list?”

“Page twelve. Let’s run it together.”

The women watched as the canopy didn’t track back, but lifted like it was going to float away. A crew of engineers and military personnel watched as the pilots climbed ladders and lowered themselves into the cockpit. The men winced with each move the women made as if the plane was made of fine crystal and they were waiting for it to crack. Liddy and Jenna would never know for certain, but they had a feeling none of this was because they were female pilots.

Ferrying was never done at night, and this trip would be flown across the country in complete darkness. Both women had an eerie sense that choosing a WASP, instead of a male pilot for this assignment, was a calculated decision. Were the ships unstable? The Army had come to rely on the WASP pilots to willingly take up anything they were assigned. This was sometimes to convince male pilots a plane was safe, and too, they didn’t want to waste their cream.

Or was it that the women were somehow seen as less of a security risk? Liddy and Jenna had to sign a statement that they wouldn’t ever talk about the planes they were about to fly—something they had never been asked to do before. Liddy figured the Army was banking that if they did talk, who would believe them? This was also the first time Liddy had been asked to present her pistol and they even wanted to see that it was loaded. The whole thing was a curious end to their association with the military.

Liddy snugged her gloves between her fingers as she scanned the instrument panel and studied the manual that lay on her lap. She put on the headset.

“And the radio is? Eeny-meeny…” Liddy flipped a switch that blasted a piercing signal into the cockpit and she quickly adjusted the neighboring dial. “You there, Law?”

“I’m here.” Jenna’s voice toned in. “Never seen so many bells and whistles in all my life.”

“What is this screen for do you think?”

“I don’t know. Hope we don’t need it.”

“Us, we don’t need any of it.” Liddy flipped the pages stacked in front of her. “Ready to run the check?”

“Not sure it’ll mean anything, but sure, what the heck,” answered Jenna.

The planes were towed out of the hangar, and the women taxied to the runway. Take-off was smooth and the plane fit so tight, Liddy felt like she was wearing it. And it was fast. How fast? Nothing in the thrown-together manual noted top speed, an indicator the plane had never been tested. The weather was pretty punchy from take-off and boiled over as they neared the coast, so they decided they wouldn’t push it. But they were definitely fast.

The night sky had completely settled in and Jenna’s plane was just a shadow. Liddy spotted darker skies and thicker storm clouds in the distance. Over the radio, she called to Jenna, “See that?”

“Yeah, think we can miss it?”

“If we go too far around we’ll lose too much time. If that aircraft carrier has to wait for us… Listen, I don’t want to give them one reason of justification for booting us out. We’re bringing these babies in on time.”

They bounced like Bingo balls in a tumble cage. Rain washed over the canopies, making a blur of the view, but when lighting split the darkness, Liddy could see Jenna’s plane and it looked like a huge raven in the sky.

“There you are, Law. Glad you’re still with me.”

“Me too. This is like flying in a bubbling pot of stew. We’re gonna have to take it down.”

“Twenty more minutes and we got it.”

“Liddy, this is bad. Let’s take it down till this passes. I saw some lights northeast. This is farm country, let’s find a field. We can make up the time when it passes.”

“Alright, I’ll follow you in.”

By the time they found some level field over the Salinas Valley, the planes were being pushed violently from side to side and the women had to stack themselves to keep from being thrown into one another. Liddy circled while Jenna landed, then she rolled through the mud and joined her in the field where they could see lights glow from the windows of a farmhouse in the distance. The women tried to call in the landing, but the storm was blocking the transmission.

“We’re gonna need to see if these people have a phone,” Liddy called to Jenna over the radio.

“Let’s go. There’s lights on.”

“You go. I’ll stay with the planes.”

“That’s crazy, they’ll be fine.”

“I’m staying.”

“Liddy, don’t be a jackass.”

“I’m staying, Jenna.”

“Okay, I’ll be right back.”

Jenna hopped down and sloshed through the mud toward the house. Liddy saw glimpses of Jenna when the lightning lit up the sky, and then saw her silhouette in the light that spilled from the house when the front door was opened. Jenna stood outside the doorway for quite a while before she gave Liddy the a-okay wave and went inside.

Liddy closed her eyes and listened to the rain slap against the canopy. Then she opened them and watched the water rush down the glass like God was shedding unbridled tears. She joined him and it made her feel all cleaned out. When she was completely drained, she leaned back in the seat and stared into the darkness.