6
Raydon Army Airfield
Sunday, December 19, 1943
“Thank you, Santa!” Tony Rosario skipped up to Nick—yes, skipped like a little girl—grabbed him, and smacked a kiss on his cheek. “This is the very best Christmas gift ever.”
Nick laughed, shoved him away, and wiped his cheek.
Adler joined in the men’s laughter. “Too bad you didn’t bring planes for all of us.”
For now, one plane would have to do. Even if she was a war-weary RAF Mustang, she was still gorgeous, sunbathing under the blue sky in front of the control tower, sleek and lean, her RAF roundel still visible under a coat of olive drab paint.
“How about me, Santa?” Riggs said. “Do I get one too?”
“Nah.” Nick scowled and waved his arm dismissively. “You’ve been bad boys. Coal for the lot of you.”
“Coal? Did you say coal?” Rosario fell to his knees in front of Nick and threw his arms wide. “I’ve been bad. I’ve been very bad indeed. Give me a big, heaping pile of coal.”
Adler sauntered closer to the plane. They never had enough coal for the puny stoves in their Nissen huts, and the men were all freezing their tails off.
“Watch out, boys,” Nick called out over the clamor for coal in stockings. “Paxton’s going to take that P-51 for himself.”
“Not a P-51, a Mustang III.” Adler stroked the wing, hearing the roar and clank of factory equipment in his mind. “The Mustang III has a Rolls-Royce Merlin engine built here in England. The P-51B—the plane we’ll fly—has a Merlin built by Packard in the US.”
Luis Camacho slapped Adler on the back. “How’d you get a pilot’s manual?”
“Didn’t. Used to build these beauties. Well, the Mustang I and II, the P-51A. This model didn’t go into production until after I enlisted.” Working in the factory was the only good part of the darkest year of his life. As the repetitive work pounded the memories into submission, he helped these beautiful birds come into being. Life from death, structure from chaos.
“You worked at North American Aviation?” Nick asked.
“Inglewood, California. The assembly line.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Adler’s eye twitched. He’d ripped another hole, hadn’t he?
“Don’t worry, fellows.” Maj. Morty Shapiro caressed the Mustang’s white nose. “Colonel Chickering says more of these birds are coming. We’ll all get flight time, starting with the senior officers.”
Adler’s hand clamped around the aileron flap. As a wingman, he’d be relegated to the bottom half of the fighter group, although he was easily in the top quarter.
The seventy-five pilots of the 357th began to disperse. A lot of potential aces. Nick and Shapiro, of course, as well as “Kit” Carson, “Bud” Anderson, Tommy Hayes, Don Bochkay, Chuck Yeager, Jim Browning, Bob Becker, and several others. Strong competition.
“Ready to return to quarters?” Nick asked.
“Sure.” He grabbed a bicycle from the stack against the control tower, and he and Nick pedaled through the technical site, past workshops and offices.
“Interesting that you worked the assembly line.”
“Good work.” Adler swerved to avoid a sergeant pedaling the other way.
“Unusual for a man with a college degree.”
“I don’t have a degree.”
“Oh? I thought you’d mentioned college.”
Adler checked for potholes in the road and in his story. “Two years at the University of Texas was enough for me.”
Nick turned onto a tree-lined road toward their living site. “How long were you at North American?”
“Almost a year. Then I decided I’d rather fly planes than build them.” Time to deflect. “What made you join up?”
Nick studied the tree branches. “Saw how things were going with Hitler in Germany, with the Japanese. I wanted to be ready. I joined in 1940, the day after college graduation.”
“Surprised your wife let you.”
Nick chuckled. “I wasn’t married. Met her at training school.”
“She’s a pilot too?” Adler dropped a wink.
“Met her at church in town.” Nick shook his head and grinned. “As for being a pilot, don’t put it past her. If it weren’t for the baby, Peggy might have joined the WASPs.”
“Sounds like quite a woman.”
“She is.” Nick slowed down for a line of bicycles turning onto the road to the mess site. “I’m surprised you don’t have a girl.”
Prickles rose. “I told you about my fiancée.”
“How long ago?”
“Two and a half years.” He winced. Those prickles poked a second hole, a dangerous one.
“Hmm. The way you talk, I thought it was more recent.”
“If Peggy died, how long would it take to get over her?” That came out sharper than intended.
Nick’s face grew pensive. “Don’t know if I ever would.”
“Exactly.”
Something about Nick’s voice made Adler soften, made him want to remember the woman he’d loved. She wasn’t responsible for everything that happened. “Seven years.”
“Seven!” Nick’s front wheel wobbled. “That’s a long time to date.”
“No kidding. Her daddy didn’t trust me. Thought I was a cocky young fool—not that he was wrong.”
His friend chuckled. “Made you wait, huh?”
“Three years for us to finish high school. Another two years while I worked for my dad—to prove I could support her. Another two years while I was away at college—to prove I could stay faithful. We were supposed to get married that summer.” His vision clouded. She’d died wearing his ring. Was she buried with it? He’d fled before her funeral. His heart seized.
“You earned her father’s trust. That must mean a lot to you.”
Adler swallowed hard and focused on the road. “Yeah.” He’d been faithful to her.
Until . . .
No! He tried to shove that memory back through the holes, but there it was—heated, fumbling, foggy kisses.
No, that didn’t count. That was after Oralee died.
Only hours after she died.
His brother Clay’s rage roared through the pinpricks in his shell.
Yes, it counted. It counted very much.
“Seven years.”
Adler looked up, panting, his upper lip tingling. “Huh?”
“Seven years.” Nick turned onto the path to their living site. “Like Jacob working for Rachel in the Bible.”
“Only I never got my Rachel.” His voice ground out hard, and he pedaled harder, right up to their Nissen hut. He let the bike clatter to the ground and stomped inside.
“Mail came.” Riggs, the only man in the hut, sorted envelopes by his cot. “Package for Santa from Mrs. Claus. Nothing for Paxton again.”
Adler grabbed a Zane Grey from the crate by his cot. “Want to make something of it?”
“Lay off him, Riggs,” Nick said.
“Fine.” Riggs sauntered out. “I’m getting a drink at the officers’ club before dinner.”
Adler sat on the cot, leaned back against the iron headboard, and drew up his knees. Zane Grey would help. In his free time in Inglewood, Adler had watched Westerns, read Westerns, and numbed the memories.
Nick pulled stuff out of the box. He tossed something onto Adler’s cot. “For you.”
A long flat box wrapped in green paper. “For me?”
“From my wife. I told her you were estranged from your family.”
Adler couldn’t stop staring. He hadn’t received a gift for . . .
“How long has it been?”
“Two and a half years.” A third hole, too close to the others.
“About the same time your fiancée died.” Nick’s dark eyes narrowed in thought. “About the same time you left college and went to California.”
Adler’s life shred open in a long gash between the three holes. Connected. Connected forever, and Nick saw it. No deflection shot would do the job this time.
His breath came faster, harder. “My brothers and I—we had a big blowup that night, the night Oralee died. I had to leave.”
A blowup? Two blowups.
Through the gash a scene flashed. Wyatt crouching by the ravine where Oralee had fallen, blood trickling down his cheek from the rock Adler had hurled at him. Adler towering over him with a bigger rock, ready to bash Wyatt’s brains in.
Then a second scene, hazier, murkier, darker. Adler crouching on the cold garage floor. Clay towering over him with a tire iron, ready to bash Adler’s brains in.
“What happened?” Nick asked.
Adler bolted to his feet. The book and package thumped to the floor. He held up one hand to Nick and marched out of the hut.
Outside, he kept marching, sucking in cold air, but it wasn’t cold enough to freeze the memories, to numb the pain.
Where had he gone wrong?
The flow of cold air reminded him. The Queen Elizabeth. Violet Lindstrom’s soft blue eyes. Her innocent questions. He’d told himself it was harmless to talk to her.
How wrong he was.