SEVEN

Sally made a slight correction of stick and rudder to keep the PT-19 pointed arrow-straight toward the runway that waited approximately a mile ahead. This was her make-it or break-it moment at Avenger. Instructor Battles could advance her to larger, faster, and more sophisticated basic trainers, or he could send her packing.

She forced herself to loosen her grip on the PT’s stick. All she had to do was plant what surely was the world’s friendliest airplane onto the same big runway that she’d lifted off of less than an hour earlier. She instinctively advanced the throttle a smidgen to keep up her airspeed and the engine’s oil temperature. Only moments separated her from what surely would be a perfect landing. Nothing could go wrong now.

But a blast of air, supercharged to cataclysmic speed by unseasonable moisture and a sun that was said to fry rattlers in their own skin, snatched the PT-19 suddenly and shook it like a mouse trapped in the maw of a gigantic monster. Sally counterattacked using throttle and stick and rudder, weapons that pilots too often found inadequate to stop nature from snapping a nose down, a wingtip up, and flipping and weathervaning a fuselage while hurtling it toward the ground. But as unexpectedly as it appeared, the assault ended and the little airplane once again settled meekly onto its path toward the earth. In the earphones that connected her via the gosport to the front cockpit, Sally heard Instructor Battles make an unintelligible sound.

The tinny quality of the speaking tube was the only thing that her new instructor shared with Bayard. Battles was an ex-airline pilot who’d retired but found he couldn’t stay on the ground. He was too old for the military, so he’d come to Avenger. The rumor was that he’d cut his teeth on wire-and-cloth aviation, that he’d known the Wrights and had flown with Lindbergh. This was her fifth time up with him. She’d found him to be a no-nonsense, but steady and fair, instructor who believed in giving his students as much latitude as was safely possible, in order to maximize what they learned. Just now, at the height of the turbulence, she had felt him position his feet and hands on the controls. But he hadn’t interfered. He’d sensed that she was controlling the emergency, and he hadn’t taken the airplane away from her.

The tires met the runway with a chirp and a rumble, and the PT slowed. Minutes later, she pulled into their assigned parking space and switched off the fuel. The propeller snapped to a stop. She quickly completed the short list of tasks inside and outside of the cockpit that were necessary to securing a PT and joined Battles at the tail of the aircraft. She knew she had performed well, but she still had butterflies in her stomach.

Sally hadn’t been impressed when they first met. He was a bald, slightly stooped figure in his middle-to-late sixties, whose expressionless, round, pink face and pudgy middle instantly reminded her of a potato stuffed into a zoot suit. He’d introduced himself, and told her where they would be flying that day and what he expected of her. Then, after showing the scantest interest in watching her preflight the PT, he had crawled into the front seat where—except for an occasional instruction to perform a maneuver—he hadn’t uttered a sound until they landed and she’d finished tying down the airplane. Then he’d told her every mistake and near-mistake she’d made from the instant she’d approached the airplane. He never lifted his voice. In fact, he barely moved his mouth, or for that matter, any other part of his body. But his observations had been as precise as a surgeon wielding a scalpel. She realized then that she was in the presence of greatness, and from that moment had hung on any utterance that he cared to share.

He looked at her solemnly. She’d never seen him show the slightest emotion. In fact, other than for his critiques, she’d barely heard him speak. She suspected that Battles was one of those men who needed little more than a sandwich and an airplane to be happy. She had met others like him when she and Tex were flying together. For them, four words were a conversation.

He signed her logbook. Then, suddenly, he stuck out his hand. She was so surprised that for a moment she wasn’t sure what he was doing.

“Fine flying. Congratulations, Ketchum.”

She was holding the book in her right hand. She quickly shifted it to her left and awkwardly clasped his fingers. The contact lasted only moments before he broke it off and turned and walked away.

She stood there for several minutes, too happy to move. She had passed Primary Trainers; she had wiped away the stain of her crash with Bayard. And John Battles respected her enough to have a conversation, if only one of four words.

She headed for class. She felt like skipping. Today was wonderful, no matter what else happened.

Mr. Alexander, a tiny balding man with a parrot nose, whose thin black suspenders and bow tie gave him the appearance of dressing for a funeral, tapped the blackboard with his pointer. “So you see, because the wing’s upper surface is curved, air is forced to move faster across the top of the wing than across the bottom. Since air pressure decreases as its velocity increases, there is less pressure on the top of the wing than on the bottom. So in reality, what an airplane does as it moves through the air is create a failure to maintain equilibrium in pressure above and below its wings, with the result that the top of the wing is literally sucked upward, i.e., lift. And that’s why an airplane flies.”

The crude airplane that he had drawn an hour earlier was littered now with arrows and numbers and graphs. Each had been put there to illustrate some fact of lift and the apparently endless forms of drag. On an easel to his right, a four-color poster showed the same information plus a multitude more in exploded view. Sitting here and there on the various surfaces of the easel-aircraft were an army of good and bad gremlins who were engaged in either helping the craft stay in the air or working to plunge it to a fiery destruction. They did this through a variety of means, some blowing hurricane winds against the tail to help the plane along, while others used their Herculean strength to try to rip off wings or disconnect control cables or vent hydraulic fluids. Someone in the Pentagon had apparently decided that the little cartoons were a good way to illustrate difficult-to-understand principles, and so they appeared now in practically every piece of technical literature issued by the Army Air Corps.

Sally found this new world intriguing. Her training under Tex had been pretty much limited to the common-sense skills of keeping an airplane from killing her. Now to also learn the science of flight was to peek into a dimension that was as new as it was exciting.

Her first weeks at Avenger had been a roller coaster ride of excitement and frustration. Every moment spent in the air had been better than the one before. But much of her classroom work, and the homework that kept her busy until the barracks lights were turned out, was frustrating. The list of subjects that the army expected her to master was daunting: Military Law; Weather Flying, Clouds & Fog; Plotting & Shooting Bearings; Antenna Use, Tuning; First Aid; Survival, Arctic; Survival, Desert; Survival, Tropic; Camp Sanitation; Pyrotechnics. The list went on and on, and the instructors made it clear that each must be mastered before graduating. There would be no exceptions. A girl could be the finest pilot in the world, but if she couldn’t plot a course or perform any of the myriads of other tasks that went into flying the Army Way, she would be sent packing.

Sally now realized how poorly her country education had prepared her for some of the skills that she would need as a WASP. She had already embarrassed herself in front of her navigation class when she forgot how to perform what turned out to be a simple calculation. A handful of girls had already been sent home. Her nightmare was that she would join them.

Mr. Alexander put down his pointer. “That will be all for today. You may take your break.”

The big room, the same one they’d assembled in on the first morning, suddenly filled with noisy chatter as the class moved outside to the Coke machines. Sally drifted with them, her mind still afire from her flight with Battles.

The Coke machines were located inside a little open-air shelter. The temperature under the crude pine roof quickly skyrocketed with the rush of bodies eager for a cold drink. Finally with Coke in hand, she pushed her way free of the crowd and walked toward Dixie, who’d found a spot under a tree. Twila and Geri were behind her. The two had begun to spend virtually all of their time together. What Twila saw in Geri, Sally couldn’t imagine.

Dixie wrapped an arm around her. “Congratulations on passin’ Battles, hon. Everybody with any sense pretty much knew you’d ace him.”

“Thanks.” She grinned. She was still reliving her performance.

Dixie pointed her Coke at the near-brawl taking place around the machines. “Do you believe that crowd? The government’s missin’ out on a great way to pay for this war. All they’d have to do is put out more Coke machines.” She swabbed at the sweat running down her neck. “I bet I pay for a whole bomber all by myself by the time we get out of here.”

Sally nodded. “Mark me down for an entire bomber group.” She leaned against the tree and rotated the heavy green glass Coke bottle across her forehead, letting its coolness soak into her skin.

Dixie drained her bottle. “Naw, on second thought, it’d never work. The politicians wouldn’t be happy until they’d slapped another tax on the taxes they’ve already got—until they taxed themselves right out of the Coca-Cola business.”

Cathy Lee Smith, one of the girls from their barracks, joined them. Short and chunky, she’d already gotten a reputation for being too loud, too clumsy, and too dense. “I bet I buy a whole air force.” She laughed shrilly before tilting her bottle. She remained oblivious to a sizeable dribble on her chin.

Most of the people who’d met Cathy Lee were betting that she would be among those shipped home soon. Sally wondered why Cathy Lee had even volunteered for the WASP. All she ever talked about was how much she missed her extended family back in Colorado and how much they loved cooking for her. She obviously didn’t enjoy flying and had little talent for it. She complained constantly about how unfair the instructors were and how hard the PT-19’s were to fly. Her insistence at laughing at what wasn’t funny and restating what needed no explanation had distanced her from even the friendliest members of the class. So far as Sally could tell, the only thing that Cathy Lee excelled at was eating. For some reason, she loved the food at Avenger and often went back for second and even third helpings.

“Look!” Twila yelled suddenly. She pointed to the sky.

Low on the horizon, coming in almost wingtip-to-wingtip, were two silver specks. At first Sally thought they were trainers, but then she saw that they had twin tails and were moving too fast.

“Those are P-38 Lightnings!” Dixie hollered.

“He’s on fire!” Cathy Lee shrieked.

The right engine on the nearest speck had begun to trail smoke. At first, only a puff could be seen. But that quickly turned into a solid black trail.

The normal sounds of the base were broken suddenly by the shrill wail of emergency sirens as fire engines and ambulances raced for the runway.

Everyone got a better look as the specks banked toward the runway. The P-38’s fuselage was a delicate, slender pod suspended between its wings. A streamlined nacelle protected the powerful engine in each wing, trailing back into a graceful tail. In the European and Pacific theaters, the plane had gained a reputation as one to be feared, not only by the enemy but by the men who flew it, for it was a fast, agile fighter that demanded much of its pilot. Allies and enemies alike called the P-38 “The Forked-Tail Devil.” Sally pictured herself at the controls of this one, which soon would either be safely on the ground or broken into a thousand burning pieces. Mentally, like a doctor watching an operation from the sidelines, she began to work its controls. The pilot had shut down the stricken engine and the propeller hung lifelessly. The second P-38 moved into a hovering spot slightly above and to his right, as if trying to help.

A gasp of fear came from Cathy Lee’s throat.

“I’m prayin’ for him, too.” Dixie whispered.

Suddenly out of the pencil-thin belly and wings of the stricken craft, three dark specks appeared.

“His landing gear’s down!” Geri shouted.

“Let’s just hope it locks!” Dixie warned.

“I hope he makes the runway,” Twila added. “If he lands short, he’ll flip for sure!”

Cathy Lee covered her eyes, and then spread her fingers.

Only a few feet of space remained between the burning aircraft and the ground. Smoke from the right engine left a black, boiling scar across the sky. They could see flames around the cowling. Sally imagined the pilot’s intense concentration, and wondered if his fear was as great as her own.

The escort P-38 suddenly pulled away. The plane seemed to zoom straight up. At the same moment, the stricken P-38 settled onto the runway with the grace of a ballerina recovering from a high flight of fancy. With one engine burning, fire trucks and ambulances racing and screaming, and now virtually the entire base watching in fascination and frozen horror, the pilot steered the craft to a stop.

People began to move, a great wave of humanity, running wildly toward the burning aluminum silver sculpture that had been saved by superb piloting skill. Sally’s feet suddenly seemed to have a mind of their own. They took her with the crowd.

Overhead, the other P-38 stood on its wingtip. Sally heard the bark of the engines as the pilot worked the throttles viciously, causing the engines to load up with fuel and backfire. He was lining up to land and wasting no time.

They were past the hangars now, a giant blur of arms and legs and streaming hair beneath a blistering sun. Ahead was all open fields and runways and the waiting P-38 with its broken, burning engine and the screaming fire trucks and ambulances. Sally vaguely heard the chirp of rubber as the other Lightning touched down.

The pilot of the stricken craft had thrown open his canopy, and some of the firefighters were helping him from the tiny cockpit, while the rest started a flow of water onto the engine. In less than a second, it seemed, huge men in ungainly fire suits had put out the fire, muscled him free, and led him to safety.

Amazed, admiring voices rose from the crowd.

“Did you see that?”

“What a pilot!”

“God!”

The voices were broken exchanges wedged between huffs and puffs of exertion.

The whole great, sweating, panting crowd arrived as one. Like a stampede cornered in a box canyon, they rushed to a dusty, milling halt, most not even noticing the arrival of the second plane, whose pilot had coasted to a stop near the crowd. So intense was the focus on the incredibly skilled hero figure dressed in a flying suit and parachute straps that the world could have stopped and most wouldn’t have noticed.

An ambulance driver worked to unsnap the pilot’s helmet. The soft leather, attached to headphones and goggles and wires, pulled free easily, setting loose a mane of blonde hair.

“She’s a WASP!” Sally’s throat clogged with surprise, joy, relief, pride.

“Good god!” Dixie said.

The crowd had fully circled the planes and the women flying them. The crippled ship’s pilot waved to her companion, a redheaded girl who shouldered her way through the mob. Sally was startled to see that the two pilots looked her own age.

“Did you see me, Judy? Smooth as silk. Just like the eagles do it.” The face of the girl who’d brought in the burning P-38 was pumped red from adrenaline.

The redhead grinned. “Any eagle would be proud, Dotty. Especially if her tail feathers were burning.”

They giggled and threw their arms around each other.

Sally didn’t know what she had expected P-38 pilots to look like, especially now that she knew they were female; though she imagined they would be different. But Dotty, who’d saved her plane with such extraordinary skill, was short and a little dumpy. Judy was neither tall nor short nor chubby nor lean. Neither looked much different from any ordinary American girl in her early twenties, who could be found in any malt shop in any town in America on any Friday night. Except that these two American girls had just landed two of the hottest airplanes in the world under circumstances that could have so easily ended in a deadly fire-ball, killing one or perhaps both of them. She swallowed the lump in her throat and caught her breath. Dotty and Judy essentially looked no different from her. She knew that, given the proper training, she could have done the same thing.

A girl in the crowd hollered, “You are WASP, aren’t you?” The yearning, worshipful reverence in her voice suggested an eight-year-old meeting Babe Ruth.

“Sure are, honey,” Judy answered. “And you must be a newbie.”

Startled by the question and flattered by the unexpected attention, the girl said, “How’d you know?”

“Because your zoot suit’s still new. The seat and the knees will be worn out by the time you graduate.” Judy laughed, and the eager crowd joined her.

Sally looked over her shoulder. She half expected to see a disappointed Waterman, armed with his photographer and a reporter to record the carnage that hadn’t happened. But he was nowhere in sight. Nor was Bayard. She had seen him only once since their hearing before the board, and that had been from a distance. The rumor was that, true to his word, Skinner was keeping him busy day and night practicing his flying skills—or more accurately, developing some. For the moment, the magic that these two WASP had performed belonged entirely to them and to their rescuers and to the throng of adoring, worshipful trainees.

Everyone started asking questions at once.

“What happened?”

“Weren’t you scared?”

“How many hours do you have?”

“Are pursuits hard to fly?”

“What else have you flown?”

“Where did you take off?”

Grinning, Dotty held up her hands. “One at a time. We picked up these P-38’s at Lockheed in Burbank, out in California. We’re taking ’em to New York. They’ll probably be shipped by boat to Europe.”

“Why don’t you just fly ’em over?” someone yelled. “They’d have the range, wouldn’t they, with extra gas tanks?”

“Because we’re women and the army won’t let us,” Judy answered. “I think the Allies could be out of planes entirely, and they wouldn’t let us fly to Europe.” She smiled hollowly. “I think they’d really rather lose the war than let us do the same thing that men are doing every day. The Russians are our allies and we ship P-39 Airacobras to ’em all the time, but they have to meet us in Alaska. That’s as far as we’re allowed to go. By the way, the Russians have women flying for their army, too, and I don’t mean just ferrying. They’re flying combat! I handed off a P-39 to a Russian gal last week. She told me her best friend had just shot down a German Messerschmitt while she was six months pregnant.”

The crowd gasped.

Sally was shocked. She had never seriously thought about flying combat, nor, she suspected, had the other trainees, and certainly not while pregnant. She hadn’t even known that the Russians had a program like the WASP. The knowledge that their women were fighting the German Air Force in air-to-air combat, virtually with a gun in one hand and a baby in the other, gave her a new respect for them.

Cathy Lee asked, “What’s a P-39?”

Judy laughed. “One hell of a ride!” The crowd laughed, too. The two WASP could have told their audience the sky was green and every head probably would have obediently nodded in agreement. “It’s a little fighter made by Bell Aircraft,” Judy said. “The engine’s in the rear, behind the pilot. The cockpit’s got doors, like a car. The problem is that in an emergency, the pilot has a tough time getting out, because the top of the cockpit doesn’t open. More than one pilot’s gone home in a box because those doors got in the way.”

Cathy Lee stared at her in disbelief.

Judy chuckled. “But you’ll get used to that. Pretty soon, you won’t even think about it. American pilots don’t fly the ’39 much because they don’t perform very well at high altitude. So we give ’em to the Russians, and they love ’em. They use ’em to blow up German tanks!”

“They sound dangerous.” Cathy Lee wrapped herself in her arms.

Judy’s grin became wolfish. “They are! And fast and fun! Anything that flies and is fast is fun, so far as I’m concerned.”

Two dozen throats roared their approval.

A girl yelled, “If these two ’38’s are new, how come yours caught fire?”

“Just because they’re new doesn’t mean they’re any good,” Judy said. “A lot of times we get planes that’ve barely been test hopped, and sometimes not flown at all, though we’re not supposed to. When that happens, we just hope for the best.”

The trainee looked puzzled but didn’t ask anything more.

“I’ve heard that WASP are delivering bombers. Is it true?” Sally almost didn’t recognize Geri’s voice. It literally dripped adoration.

“That’s right,” Judy said. “We’ve both flown B-26’s and B-25’s, but no one’s gotten their hands on a B-24 yet. The army thinks women won’t be strong enough to handle the ’24 if an engine quits.”

A voice called, “How many hours do you have?”

Judy looked at Dotty. “Oh, about five hundred now, I guess. How about you?”

Dotty nodded. “Yeah, I guess about the same.”

A hundred-plus voices cried, “Wow!”

As the two talked, Sally noticed things that she’d missed at first. While both women were still young and pretty, deep crow’s feet already sprouted from around their eyes, and their faces and arms and hands were red and dry, testament to many hours spent inside hot cockpits exposed to the sun. But she was struck the most by how tired they looked. She wondered if she would come to look like that, too—old before her time; and if so, how soon.

Twila asked, “Everyone says we’re going to be militarized. Do you think we will be?”

Dotty shrugged. “Who knows? I’ve been hearing that ever since I joined.”

Judy nodded. “Yeah, me, too. But I’m not holding my breath.”

Someone hollered, “Don’t you think we should be?”

“We’re doing the same work as the men,” Judy replied, “plus sometimes more. But they’re getting more money and benefits. Damn right, I think we should be militarized! If we were part of the army, the army would have to treat us like everyone else.”

A chorus of voices cheered their approval.

“Of course, it may soon be a moot point,” Dotty added. “I guess you’ve all heard that Congress is trying to decide whether to disband the WASP.”

A near-desperate voice asked, “You don’t think they will, do you?”

Dotty shrugged. “I don’t know. They just might. The army and the navy still need planes, for sure. But an awful lot of good combat pilots are being rotated home. And an awful lot of men in high places don’t like the idea of women in cockpits.”

“Ira Waterman, for one.” Sally bit her tongue. She’d promised to put what had gone on inside the review board behind her. She hadn’t even told Dixie everything.

“Especially him,” Dotty agreed. “He’s on a crusade to single-handedly ground us all. He shows up everywhere I fly, it seems like.”

“What about the rumor that it costs a lot more to train a WASP than a male pilot?” Sally asked.

“Yeah, right.” Dotty laughed thinly. “I read that in the Washington papers. The washout rate for WASP is exactly the same as for men. And they pay us less, so it actually costs less to make a WASP than some hotshot headed for fighter school.”

A middle-aged mechanic dressed in greasy coveralls wedged his way through the crowd. His work shoes and pants legs were wet from crawling on the damaged P-38’s wing. He tipped his cap to Dotty. “Happy to see you’re OK, ma’am. We won’t know for sure until we finish the teardown, but my guess is we’ve found the problem. Come over here.” He motioned for her to follow him to the stricken aircraft’s right engine. The cowling had been lifted, and the scorched and blackened metal underneath was exposed. He pointed a work-hardened finger to a broken fixture. “Lookee here. There’s your problem, right there. Someone cut into your fuel line.”

“Sabotage?” Dotty didn’t sound surprised.

“Oh, yes, ma’am, for sure. But they didn’t cut deep enough. ’Course, all it takes is a little cut and the line’ll rupture eventually. It’s under pressure. And when it goes, fuel hits that hot engine, and whoosh.” He used his hands to illustrate burning gasoline. “I guess they never expected you to get this far. I’ll betcha that if we check the other engine, we’ll see it’s been monkeyed with, too. And maybe that one over there as well.” He motioned to the other Lightning.

“You mean, someone tried to make you crash?” Disbelief and alarm covered Cathy Lee’s face.

Dotty didn’t bother to look up from her inspection of the fried goo on the engine. “Yeah, it happens a lot. Someone found a bottle of acid in a parachute a couple of weeks ago. It’d almost eaten through the top of the container. Lucky we found it in time; it would’ve gotten the silk. We’ve got orders now to check our chutes regularly. We’re not supposed to let ’em out of our sight while we’re on duty, not even when we’re in the latrine. No one seems to know for sure who’s responsible. Probably it’s enemy agents, but it could also be workers with a grudge.”

“It’s not just airplanes, either,” Judy chimed in. “We’ve heard stories about all kinds of things that’ve been sabotaged, including trucks and tanks.”

Cathy Lee was so taken aback by the revelation that she might get killed in this war that her mouth fell open.

“Hey, Ed. Look at this.” A mechanic standing on the wing of Judy’s plane pointed to its exposed engine. “This one’s cut, too. Probably wouldn’t have lasted another hour.”

The elder mechanic pulled a piece of greasy waste from a rear pocket of his coveralls and wiped his hands. “Well, that’s it, then, miss. I’m afraid you’re stuck here. It’ll take some time to get a replacement for that engine. It may or may not be all burnt up inside; we can’t tell without pulling it apart. But sure as hell, I wouldn’t fly behind it. And somebody’s gonna have to replace these lines and check everything out. The army’ll have to send its own people to do that. We don’t have the parts.”

“Or the time,” the other mechanic added sullenly.

Dotty made a face. “Oh, no! I remember the food here. It’s just terrible!”

A sudden handclap cut through the conversation. “Alright, girls, time to go back to work.” Mrs. Teetle, though tiny, had somehow moved through the throng like a soldier atop a charging warhorse. Four steps behind her, and nearly running to keep up, was Sergeant Crawford. The sergeant was sweating heavily and looked badly in need of rest.

“Hello, Mrs. Teetle.” The two WASP came more or less to attention. Neither looked happy to see their former supervisor.

The little woman studied them, obviously trying to remember their names. Up close, she looked even more like a bulldog than she had in the auditorium on their first day at Avenger, Sally thought. Apparently her natural expression was anger, a condition that was exaggerated by the thrust of her chin, which seemed to be challenging the world to a fight. Her hair was prematurely streaked with gray and she looked tired and haggard. But whatever her failings, she was certainly hard-working.

“Judy Peveto and Dotty Leguenec.” Mrs. Teetle allowed herself no congratulatory joy for resurrecting their names from her obviously harried mind.

“Yes, ma’am.” They answered as one.

“How are you girls?”

“Fine, ma’am.”

“Where are you stationed?” Mrs. Teetle obviously was in a hurry and maneuvering toward an end to these pleasantries.

“Palm Springs,” Judy answered.

“How do you like it?”

“We don’t!” Dotty said. “It’s hotter’n Hades down there.”

Mrs. Teetle, her foot already engaged in a hard right turn, her body screaming of the importance of more pressing matters, snapped, “There is a war on and we all must do our part. Both of you had better come with me. You need to report, and the army’ll want to get someone out here to fix those planes. I’m sure our own people are too busy to be of much help. We’ll find room for you until you’re on your way.”

The two WASP grabbed their chutes and followed, first at a walk and then at a trot.

Obviously relieved to be left behind, Sergeant Crawford fell into the familiar role of herding. “Back to class. Back to class. Back to class.” His weary voice carried across the flight line and the featureless plateau beyond. He waved his arm over his head as if spreading a lasso to snap back any strays. The mob of chattering young women fell obediently into step.

“Well, I can tell you one thing right now,” Dixie said to Sally. “Rationin’ or no rationin’ , I’m not goin’ up in another one of these damn airplanes without drenchin’ myself first in some kind of lotion. Did you see their skin? I’ve seen overcooked chickens that looked better!” Dixie’s mouth was set, her brow worried.

“I’ll trade dry skin and a few crow’s feet any day of the week for the chance to fly a P-38,” Sally said.

Twila intervened. “Oh, they’ve probably been flying a lot and just ran out of lotion. I’m sure being a WASP doesn’t mean we’ll wind up looking like scarecrows.”

Dixie’s jaw jutted. “Well, it had better not. Because this war can’t last forever. And when it’s over I expect to get back to doin’ what I was doin’ before it came along. And I can tell you right now that there’s damn little call in the modelin’ business for women who look like overcooked chickens!”

Sergeant Crawford barked, “Hey, you! Get to class!”

They looked behind and saw that Cathy Lee was the straggler. She hadn’t moved from the damaged P-38.

“What’s wrong with her now, do you think?” Twila asked.

“What’s not?” Dixie said. She had taken to calling Cathy Lee “The Little Blonde That Couldn’t.” More than once, she had suggested that Cathy Lee was really a German agent sent to break or eat everything in sight.

Cathy Lee wasn’t moving, in spite of the sergeant’s shouts.

“I’ll get her.” Sally started back. “I’ll catch up to you, Dixie.”

Dixie growled, “You sure you don’t want to take along half a steer and a sack of potatoes for protection?”

As she approached Cathy Lee, Sally could see that something, indeed, was wrong. She touched the girl’s shoulder. Her muscles were hard as rocks. A wind had come out of the north and was kicking up little tornadoes of grit that stung the nose and ground the eyes. The heat and dirt were evaporating Cathy Lee’s tears almost as fast as they slid down her cheeks, leaving behind jagged little trails of mud.

“What’s wrong, Cathy Lee?”

“I can’t.”

Sally looked around, but no one was in earshot. They were completely alone, except for the two P-38’s and a handful of mechanics who were too busy with the planes to notice them.

“What can’t you do?”

Cathy Lee stared at the burnt airplane. “I couldn’t do what Dotty did,” she whispered. “I’d have crashed. I’d be dead.” Her tears were outrunning even the dirt and the heat. They dripped off her cheeks and disappeared into her zoot suit. “I’m not like you and the rest. You can do anything you put your mind to. You don’t let anything or anyone stop you.” She cried harder.

“I’m sorry, Daddy.” She sank to the ground. “I’m sorry, Daddy.” She closed her eyes.

Sally put an arm around her. Cathy Lee finally had come clean with herself. She would never fly a P-38. Sally suspected she hardly had ever flown a Piper Cub. She was the last to recognize the truth about herself that the rest of the barracks had known all along. Today, tomorrow, sometime soon, the army would have sent her home, anyway. At least now she wouldn’t have to face that embarrassment. By this time tomorrow, Cathy Lee would be back in Colorado, where she could eat all that she wanted of whatever she wanted, and her family would love her and protect her from the world.

Sally felt a pang of jealousy. Cathy Lee would never fail at anything again because she probably would never again risk anything. Her family, extended to numerous aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews, would shield her for as long as she lived. A bile taste crept into her mouth. Cathy Lee had everything. Luck had handed her the sweet life on a platter. She could even have been a WASP. But she was too much of a child to appreciate it.