Fifteen

LOTTIE STOOD ON THE beach, feeling the sand between her toes, trying to understand how Hawaii could feel so different from California.

Both of them had beaches and palms, and balmy breezes. Both of them had stunning sunsets, like the one that was starting to paint the sky she was looking at now, across the seemingly endless stretch of silver and blue water, with fabulous splashes of pink and gold and lavender.

Both of them, at least in her experience, were crowded with Navy military personnel.

But somehow, Hawaii felt different. Maybe it was the crenellated, deeply forested mountains of the island of Oahu, where Pearl Harbor nestled in a natural arch in the shoreline. Maybe it was the lushness of the vegetation and the steam that rose from the forests in the early mornings, in contrast to California, which always seemed a little parched. Maybe it was that so much of the natural beauty of Oahu was still preserved, while San Diego, at least from the base where she’d trained, was wharves and city as far as the eye could see.

Maybe it was the simple fact that, just about anywhere you stood on Oahu, once you got out of the shelter of the harbor, you could tell you were on an island. Before she got here, Lottie had always taken it for granted that the land she stood on stretched as far as she could see, even when she was standing on a beach at the edge of the continent. But here, no matter where she looked, the land was always giving way to the ocean, which curved in around the island on every side. It was a kind of thrill, to be so perfectly cut off from the rest of the world. She’d wanted to leave everything behind and start a new life, and this was even farther than she’d ever expected to get in her wildest dreams. But all that water, and the sense that she was only standing on a tiny scrap of land, gave her a strange feeling.

After living a life where she was almost always at the center of everything, it was strange to discover herself out on the edge of the world. For once, she felt so small.

It felt freeing, not to have all eyes on her, not to have everyone think they knew everything about her, or her family, before she even opened her mouth. It left her with a lightness, as if she wasn’t quite sure what she was made of or who she was. But also hope, that now she might have a real chance to find out.

“Palmer!” Maggie’s familiar voice called from behind her. “You planning to swim back to the mainland? At least have a hot dog first.”

With a grin, Lottie turned around.

In the few minutes it had taken Lottie to walk down to the water and dig her toes into the sand, the other WAVES she’d come with had transformed the beach they’d all just arrived at, after commandeering a small fleet of jeeps. The base itself was nothing but piers and concrete—not the kind of place you’d want to relax in a bathing suit.

But it had only taken a drive to reach a pristine beach, where other WAVES had decided to throw a barbecue, for a suite of reasons that included welcoming the new women who had just arrived on the base the day before and the fact that it was Friday.

As Lottie had been staring at the water, the other women had already filled their quadrant of the beach with Navy blankets and tarps, and gotten several respectable fires going in small metal barbecues.

“I’m waiting till you have a beer,” Lottie shot back. “And then I’m going to convince you to swim home, and hitch a ride.”

Maggie raised her eyebrows in respect for this rejoinder, and Lottie sank down beside her and another young woman, whose smooth black hair was tied back in a blue bandana that made a patriotic contrast to her bright red bathing suit.

“I’m Carmen,” she said, sticking out her hand.

Lottie reached over Maggie to shake it.

“Nice to meet you.”

“She’s a yeoman,” Maggie explained. “Like me.”

Carmen smiled. “What’s your assignment?” she asked Lottie.

“I’m a machinist’s mate,” Lottie said.

Carmen grinned. “She’s a pharmacist’s mate,” she said, pointing to a woman in a smart black bathing suit who was using a pair of bellows to warm up the coals in her barbecue, to great effect. Then Carmen dropped her voice. “But I think I’d rather mate a machinist, myself,” she joked.

Lottie shook her head. The girls who worked in bookkeeping and administration had trained in big groups, with dozens of them together at the same time. And when they got to base, they were still with other women.

They seemed to think that the girls marooned out in other jobs, where it was just them and a bunch of men, were living in some kind of romantic film. But the reality of Lottie’s life couldn’t have been farther from that. The last thing any of those men in the mechanics department had wanted, she thought, was to marry her. Most of them had wanted her to disappear.

Her first day in aircraft repair here in Pearl Harbor wouldn’t be until Monday. But she doubted it would be any different here.

“Oh, oh!” one of the girls shouted before Lottie had to come up with something to say in reply. “Incoming!”

For a second, Lottie looked to the sky, feeling a sickening sense of dread. But when she heard the other girls laughing and shouting, she looked to where they were pointing, down the beach, and saw a group of young men, dressed for working out, but in telltale navy blue, jogging down the shoreline.

“Just ignore ’em,” Carmen muttered. “Maybe they’ll go away.”

“I don’t find that tends to make them go away,” Maggie said.

By this time, the men had caught sight of the WAVES. In their pedal pushers and bathing suits, the women weren’t wearing nearly as much telltale blue as the men. But perhaps they were given away by the Navy blankets spread all over the sand. Or perhaps it was enough that they were a big gaggle of young and attractive women.

In any case, without anyone seeming to give any kind of direct order, all the men in the group, about fifteen of them, seemed to break out into catcalls at the same time, a combination of whistles, whoops, and specific observations about the merits of the women’s figures, faces, and bathing suits.

Some of the women smiled. Some of them frowned. Some of them looked away.

But Lottie stared straight back at them. And when she did, she recognized one of them: Pickman. Her heart sank. She had hoped to leave him behind, just like she’d left Captain Woodward and the rest of them. It wasn’t the best news she’d gotten that day, but she held out hope that he’d be assigned to a different shop.

But at the same time, the stubborn determination that had spurred her on to beat him in the shop challenge began to form in her heart now.

“Ah, honey!” he called with a long wolf whistle. “I like that red suit! Whoo-ee!”

Maybe he thought it was a compliment, but beside Lottie, Carmen curled up like something had stung her.

Lottie’s blood began to boil.

“Hey, Pickman!” she yelled back. “Is that how your mama taught you to talk to a woman?”

Pickman was so startled to hear his name that he stumbled in his jog, craning his neck to see which of the women knew his name. By this time, the pack of guys had pretty much drawn up to where the women had spread their little picnic and were about to run past them, on down the beach.

But when Pickman caught sight of Lottie, he didn’t just stumble. He stopped dead. The guy behind him almost crashed into him, lurched around him, then came to a stop himself and turned back to see what in the world was going on.

Lottie took in Pickman’s running garb with a quick glance: a pair of ragged gray shorts and an ill-fitting navy tank top.

“Wow, Pickman,” she said, raising her voice and doing her best to imitate the tone the men had been using with the women. More of Pickman’s band of runners began to double back down the beach, to see why their buddies had stopped. “Nice shorts. I really like the way you fill them out.”

Pickman must have made it through basic training at some point, but he hardly had the build of a working seaman. All the hours he’d spent crawling around under airplanes hadn’t done anything to improve his tan—or his physique.

He looked down at his pale, skinny legs.

To Lottie’s satisfaction, he looked like he’d have done just about anything to curl up on himself and disappear. It was exactly the same kind of expression that had appeared on Carmen’s face after he’d catcalled her. And thanks to her, both the women and the men were now staring at him.

When she saw that, Lottie couldn’t help feeling just a little sorry for him.

And apparently she wasn’t the only one. Because as she and Pickman stood there, facing off, Lottie’s hands on her hips and Pickman trying to sink into the sand, some woman Lottie didn’t know called, “You boys hungry?”

Suddenly, the awkward standoff was broken. The guys whooped and began to trickle over toward the girls, the catcalling forgotten, now introducing themselves politely and thanking the girls who scooted over on the blankets or handed them cold bottles of beer.

As the sun set and the stars came out, brighter than Lottie had ever seen anywhere on the mainland, because there was no light at all coming off the vast ocean to compete with them, the little picnic turned into a real party. A couple of the guys made a foray back to the base and returned with another big case of meat and potato salad, along with a couple of volleyballs that they kicked around, swatted at each other, and sometimes overshot into the ocean, where someone would have to swim out into the dark water to retrieve it before the tide carried it out forever.

And as the evening went on, as the new women met the ones who had been stationed there for months and strangers became friends, it was actually Pickman who came over to talk to Lottie, carrying a bottle with him.

“Cold beer?” he asked.

Lottie smiled and shook her head. “Not while I’m working,” she said.

“Oh, you’re working now?” Pickman said with a grin. “I guess that’s how you got so good.”

Lottie looked at him in surprise. “I never would have thought I’d hear you admit that,” she said.

Pickman shrugged, looking out at the ocean. “I’m not as stupid as I look,” he said. “I just want to see us send our boys up in the best planes we got. No matter who does it.”

“Hm,” Lottie said, watching him out of the corner of her eye. Pickman had hassled her so much, for so long, that she was waiting for the other shoe to drop—some big twist of the knife. She’d have been a fool to think about letting down her guard.

When Pickman looked over at her, she was sure that was what was coming.

“Besides,” he said. “You’d have to be pretty damn good to ever beat a mechanic as good as me.”

It took Lottie a minute to realize what he was saying.

“Be careful, Pickman,” she said. “Someone’ll think you’re paying me a compliment.”

“Naw,” Pickman said, waving her suggestion away. “Everyone knows I’d never do that.”

She smiled at him, for perhaps the first time, and looked out onto the blackness of the ocean.

Then he glanced at her again. “So what do you think the shop’ll be like here?” he asked. “I’ve been trying to think how it’ll be different.”

Before Lottie could answer, a terrible shriek filled the night. It had the strange rise and fall of an ambulance or a police car racing down some street in the distance, except that it was about a hundred times as loud, so much sound that it felt like no matter how far Lottie ran, she would never be able to get away from it.

All around her, women and men clapped their hands to their ears. The new ones, like Lottie and Pickman, looked at each other, dumbfounded.

But others began to scramble to collect anything in reach: blankets, bottles, baskets. A few of them started to dump the barbecues out and bury the cinders in the sand.

In the melee, Lottie could see Maggie pull away from the fray to come find her. Then the two of them raced, along with everyone else, back to the cars.

When they were safely sheltered within the metal and glass of the jeep that had brought them there, the siren was still deafening but muffled enough for them to communicate.

“It’s an air-raid warning?” Lottie guessed.

The woman at the wheel, Anne, nodded grimly. Then she began to back the car out of the parking spot, into the dark lot.

“The lights!” Maggie said, warning her that she’d started moving without turning them on.

But all around the lot, Lottie realized, all the other cars had started to move without turning their lights on as well, even though all the headlights had already been painted over, except for a tiny slit.

“No lights,” Anne said over her shoulder in a clipped tone. “We don’t want to give them a target they can see from the air. But we’re not going to sit on the shore and wait for them to come.”

As she slipped into the darkened line of traffic, Lottie looked back over her shoulder at the dark water, which had seemed like the perfect playground just a few minutes before.

Were there really enemy planes coming for them out of that darkness now?

This wasn’t a game.

It wasn’t even training.

This was war.