THE NEWS
In recent weeks, the girls were informed that radar stations had been set up on Haleakal¯a on Maui, K¯oke‘e on Kaua‘i and in P¯ahoa and Kahuku ranch on Hawai‘i. Local women of all backgrounds except Japanese had been recruited, crash courses were being given and churches and family estates turned into Information Centers. On Kaua‘i, with a smaller population to draw from, even high school girls were accepted into the WARD. General Danielson and Major Hochman spent much of their time island hopping and getting everyone up to speed. Having sites clear across the main islands provided a much wider net of security, and Daisy slept better because of it.
On a clear afternoon in late February, air traffic picked up considerably and the telephones started ringing like popcorn. Daisy and the WARDs were putting pips on the board as fast as they could.
Lei said, “This reminds me of being on shift at the cannery. You have to move fast or you could lose your fingers or even a hand.”
Lei’s parents worked on the plantation, and they somehow landed her a job at the cannery after school and during summers. Savvy and industrious, she’d worked her way up to supervisor by the time she was twenty. George had spotted her at a work party and wasted no time in marrying her.
“If these aren’t American forces, we could lose a lot more than our fingers,” Daisy said.
Fluff, who was in charge of coded chits to identify flights, scribbled madly to keep up.
16 IS BOMBER! 39 IS UNIDENTIFIED! 43 IS UNIDENTIFIED!
Nixon and the officers on the balcony circled together and spoke in hushed tones. Daisy stood up and pretended to stretch, moving closer and straining to hear. Whatever it was, something big was coming their way. Soon, she heard the words surface craft. Her pulse quickened. Twenty minutes later, Rascals from Kaua‘i reported an aircraft carrier on its way across the channel.
Betty stood up and twirled around. “The Enterprise! They’re coming home!”
All eyes went to the naval liaison, Ralph Cole, who sat with the phone smashed to his ear. The man had the best poker face in town, but Daisy detected a softening of his body, and creasing around his eyes. The news had to be good. When he finally hung up, he pumped his fist and yelled, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a victory with a capital V! The Big E is a little scuffed up, and we had some losses, but enemy ships were sank, planes shot down and installations destroyed.” He swallowed hard, eyes glistening.
The whole room erupted with cheers and squeals and hugs. Betty pulled Daisy in for a tight squeeze. Her cheeks were damp and she spoke into Daisy’s hair. “I just know our men are okay.”
Our men.
When the shift ended, two hours later, the girls raced home. A convertible roadster was parked out front of their quarters in the shade of a plumeria tree. The car had been the envy of every soldier and sailor on base, and Daisy recognized it right away.
When Betty saw it, she stopped in her tracks, going pale as milk. “I wonder why Elaine is here,” she said, turning to Daisy and Fluff with a look of alarm moving over her face. Elaine was married to one of Chuck’s pilot buddies, Ed, also on the Enterprise, though in a different squadron. Betty took off running.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Fluff said.
“Me, too.”
Daisy thought about Walker, and how he could die, and no one would notify her. The idea nearly strangled her. She and Fluff picked up the pace and arrived to find Elaine sitting with an arm around Betty on the couch, heads together. In the kitchen, Rita Dogwood was filling a glass of water.
Daisy was afraid to ask, but had to know. “What is it?”
“Chuck was shot down,” Betty said, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Shot did not mean dead, did it?
“Is he alive, honey?” Fluff asked.
Betty’s lip quivered and she nodded. “They don’t know for sure, but it doesn’t look good,” she said, gulping in air and folding over, sobbing.
The whole experience brought Daisy back to the day her father died. That sick feeling of knowing something was horribly wrong and your whole world was about to spin off its axis. And how the true agony of death was left to the living.
“What happened?” Fluff asked.
Elaine answered for her. “He was leading a division of dive bombers over an enemy airfield, bombing the crap out of them, and then he got taken down.”
Fluff’s face went pale. “Oh no!”
“Did he have time to bail out?” Daisy asked.
“Word is that he did, but in enemy territory.”
She tried to think of something useful to say. “From what you’ve told me, Chuck is a fighter. If he’s alive, he’ll get through it.”
Betty sat up with a faraway look in her eyes. “This can’t be real. My Chuck cannot be dead.”
Daisy had seen that look before on her own mother. It was the haunting face of loss. She squeezed in on the other side of Betty and wrapped her arm around her friend’s waist. Words were not enough. They sat like that for some time, with Betty alternating between rocking back and forth, wailing and asking, “Are they sure?”
“They’re sure,” Rita said, softly.
“One thing to be proud of is that everyone’s talking about how Chuck and his division wiped out an entire airfield on one of those islands—Roi, I think it was. Then on his second pass he encountered a pair of irate Japanese fighters intent on revenge,” Elaine said.
Betty tried to smile. “Sounds like my boy.”
“Were any others lost?” Fluff asked.
“There were others. I’m not sure how many.”
Daisy kept thinking about how for every man down—on either side—there were loved ones smacked with the brutal truth of war. She wished there was some way to help ease the pain, but time was the only remedy for that. And even then, it never left you completely. Betty had a long road ahead.
To add to the bleak afternoon, Daisy was worried about Walker. There had been no mention of him, and it wasn’t as though she could phone his house and say, “Hey, it’s me, Daisy Wilder, calling to see if Walker made it home okay.”
When it was time for bed, Daisy and Fluff pulled Betty’s mattress into their room and slid it in between their beds. The minute they had the sheets on, Blanche sauntered in and started making biscuits smack in the center, then curled up, purring loud as a motor.
“Excuse me, young lady, you’re taking up the whole bed,” Fluff said.
Betty flopped down next to Blanche and curled her body around the cat. She was still wearing her uniform. “Let her stay. I want her here.” Blanche sniffed her hand and then licked it with her rough pink tongue.
Once they were all tucked in, the night seemed eerily quiet. Warm. Not a stitch of breeze. Somewhere just outside the window, a cricket buzzed. Daisy rolled to the edge of the bed and looked down at Betty’s dark outline. While she had been completely unequipped to help her mother grieve, she vowed to do whatever it took to see her friend through this. Not that she was an expert, but she knew that having someone by your side could make all the difference.
In a small voice, Betty said, “You never think it’s going to happen to you, you know? You fret like mad, but some corner of you always believes it will be someone else’s husband or father or brother. But no one is immune.”
Daisy reached down and rested her hand on Betty’s back, lightly stroking. Betty shivered under her touch. “I know it seems impossible right now, but you’re going to get through this,” Daisy said.
Betty whimpered. “I just want to go to sleep and never wake up. Why would I want to be in a world without Chuck? Tell me.”
Daisy had no answer.
The following day, Betty insisted on working her shift. Overnight, enough tears had been shed to fill a swimming pool. But in the morning, Betty disappeared into the shower and came out of the bathroom forty minutes later with her hair neatly pinned up and her face made.
“I’m going to work. Do not try to talk me out of it,” she announced.
Daisy admired her courage. She’d heard it said that grief came in a thousand shades, and this was clear evidence of that. While some people might collapse, others buckled up and marched on. Grief was akin to fingerprints, no two the same.
News had spread like wildfire about Chuck. When Daisy and Fluff and Betty walked in, the room fell into a hush. Then all the girls swarmed around Betty, hugging, squeezing and filling her with enough love to choke Daisy up. When the women had finished, Major Oscar and all the men took their turns. Even Nixon gave his condolences, and surprisingly, his hug was the longest.
“I think Nixon was crying,” Fluff said later in the break room.
“I doubt it.”
“No really, his eyes were all watery.”
He knew a thing or two about loss. “Maybe this will soften him up,” Daisy said.
Still no word about Walker, and the pit in her stomach had turned into a deep well. To confuse matters, today was Peg’s day off, and Thelma had switched shifts with Ella Wong. Ella had no idea why. Try as Daisy might, focusing on plotting was nearly impossible.
“Now would be a good time to ask Nixon about Walker,” Fluff suggested over a cold Coke and leftover manapua.
“Nixon is the last person I would ask.”
“Want me to ask him for you?”
“You would do that?”
“I have nothing to lose. That man will never take me seriously. At least you have a chance to impress him with all those speedy calculations that are always 100 percent accurate. He seems to almost like you,” Fluff said with a shrug.
“He does not.”
“Oh yes he does.”
Back in the control room, Fluff marched right up to Nixon and said, “Excuse me, Colonel, we’re worried about Peg’s brother, Walker Montgomery, and wonder if you could tell us if he made it back in one piece.”
He paused for a moment, then said, “From what I hear, his whole squadron is intact.”
Fluff clapped her hands together and did a little jig. “This is wonderful news. Thank you, thank you, thank you!”
Nixon actually came close to smiling, then turned his attention back to his notebook. A few of the other girls had been listening in, and when Fluff passed Daisy with a look of glee, she felt self-conscious. Nevertheless, a whole garden of flowers had taken bloom under her rib cage.
Walker was alive!