Authors: Thomas Fleming

Conquerors of the Sky (17 page)

BOOK: Conquerors of the Sky

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“Adrian's different. He's not your average flyboy. They think a woman's only good for one thing.”

Amanda saw new darkness, new perils in Tama's soul. Tama inhaled her cigarette. “You're lucky.”

Amanda's heart almost broke. Tama was explaining her fate to herself. Amanda wanted to offer her some consolation. “But you've got an important job.”

“Nah,” Tama said. “They just hired a man to be my boss. Some yo-yo from the
LA Times.
Adrian was nice enough to try to explain it to me, at least. It's a man's business. As if I didn't know that. It's a man's world. Even if you're Norma Shearer. You've still got some SOB studio executive telling you what to do.”

Amanda saw how hopeless it really was. “Thank you for the roses,” she said.

“Hey, it's the least we could do. You've gotten us more publicity this week then we've had in a year.”

The next day, a totally unexpected figure filled the doorway: Frank Buchanan. He carried a gigantic white rabbit and a huge bouquet. “What a wonderful surprise,” she said.

He kissed her hand. “Are you happy?” he said.

“Yes,” she said. “Are you?”

He shrugged.

“I thought the good news about the plane would make you happy.”

“That's my consolation. Not the same as happiness. I designed it for youâand this little creatureâas much as for myself.”

Suddenly she wanted to scream, rage at him. “I don't know what you mean,” she said, her voice empty and cold, her eyes averted.

“I would never have come back for any other reason. Adrian said he'd spent every cent he borrowed from your brother to buy the company. Everything you owned was at stake. I'm glad I came now. Consolation is better than nothing.”

“I still don't know what you're saying!” she cried. She meant of course that he was not explaining the most important thing.

“What happened was entirely my fault,” Frank said. “Aâlamentable swinishness on my part. I deserve everything I've suffered for it. I only wish you hadn't suffered.”

Suddenly nothing mattered, the child, Adrian's adoration of his daughter, the possibility of a happy marriage. Nothing mattered but the memory of that morning when Lindbergh was flying the Atlantic and she had taken Frank Buchanan's hand.

“I'm through with suffering!” she raged. “We're going to be very rich. I'm going to enjoy myself.”

“I hope so,” Frank said.

For the rest of the day, Amanda waited for Adrian. She wanted him to smile at Victoria again, to tell her more good news. But Adrian never appeared. She tried to feed Victoria but the baby could not get enough milk from her small breasts. “I knew she'd have to go on a bottle,” the Valkyrian floor nurse said and carried the baby triumphantly away to the nursery.

Amanda lay alone in the white-walled room, watching darkness fall. She thought of Tama's despair, Frank's defeat, Adrian's smiling lies. She thought of her helplessness, her mother's madness, her brother's greed. When, how, could it change?

Darkness crept into the room. She did not bother to put on her bed lamp. She lay there, listening to wails and whimpers and random voices in the hall. When, how, could it change?

Califia could change it. Her mother sat beside her, wreathed in the golden light of Eden, telling her about Califia, when Amanda was five. What if Califia came by night to challenge the vile rule of men? She could enlist a million women like Tama, women who had been used for only one thing. A new army of Amazons would arise to reconquer California and restore the kingdom of women.

“Mrs. Van Ness. What in the world are you doing, lying here in the dark?” asked the floor nurse.

“I was thinking,” Amanda said.

“There's only one thing you should think about,” the nurse said. “Getting some milk in those breasts. I've brought you an extra glass for supper. Drink it all. If you can't nurse your baby, you don't feel like a woman. After all, it's what nature intended us to do. I've never seen a bottle baby who's been happy. They cry all the time.”

Obediently Amanda gulped two huge glasses of foaming milk, while her keeper nodded approvingly. Califia was gone. But not forgotten.

BOOK THREE

MEN AND BOYS

Birdsong and sunlight. A beautiful spring morning. Half awake, Frank Buchanan imagined himself wandering through the green ravines of Topanga Canyon with his golden labrador, Winston. He wondered how long this unspoiled wilderness so close to Los Angeles would last if half the unemployed in America persisted in moving to California.

Wham wham wham
. A fist was pounding on the front door. Winston was barking thunderously. Frank pushed himself up on one elbow. Jesus. There was a woman in his bed. What the hell was her name? Gladys? Gloria? She was a blonde. They were always blondes, in memory of Sammy. Never russets or even redheads. His pathetic way of honoring his chaste love for Amanda.

Where had this woman come from? Oh, yes. He had spent the weekend in Palm Springs, a little town in the Mojave desert, at a meeting of the Conquistadores del Cielo, the club Adrian Van Ness and other company presidents had organized to try to mold the airframe and engine makers and airlines into a group that could have some impact on the American psyche. Adrian had suggested the title to emphasize the airframe makers' largely California originsâand the grandeur of their ambitions. The conquistadores Frank had met in Palm Springs struck him as the biggest bunch of drunks he had ever seen. They had spent the weekend consuming immense amounts of booze and lamenting their imminent bankruptcy.

Frank's only pleasant moments had come when he watched Adrian trying to compete in the macho games the Conquistadores playedâskeet shooting and archery from horseback, lancing targets Ã la the knights of the round table, running races with one leg strapped to a partner (Frank and Adrian had been matched andâpredictablyâcame in last). But the gloom pervading the aircraft business far outweighed the droll moments.

After growing at an astonishing rate in the first half of the 1930s, defying the
otherwise depressed national economy, the airlines were now in a fearful slide. Buchanan had boomed along for a while on a flood of orders for SkyRanger I and recently celebrated the rollout of SkyRanger II, bigger, faster, with a pressurized cabin. But Boeing and Douglas had both came out with competing models and Lockheed's Electra was also in the brawl. The future of SkyRanger II was uncertain at best. All they had so far was an order for ten copies from TWA.

If the rumors swirling around the company were true, SkyRanger II might be the last plane Buchanan would produce. Frank remembered Amanda's defiant prophecy about getting rich, five years ago. He wondered what she felt now, on the edge of bankruptcy. Most of the time he tried not to think about Amanda. It was too painful.

To console themselves, the floundering Conquistadores had flown in a covey of girls for the last night of their desert conclave. Each was a beauty, selected by their companies for their willingness to brighten the proceedings for an hour or two. The blonde in Frank's bed had obviously been one of them.
Wham wham wham.
The fist pounding on his door was not going away. Frank pulled on a pair of pants, telling himself he had to stop this drinking and random screwing. He flung water in his face and stumbled to the front door, as the fist continued to pound. Who could it be? A bill collector? They usually pursued Adrian Van Ness and good luck to them.

Wham wham wham.
Had he made his monthly payment on his car? He depended on his secretary for those details. Was that her in bed? Marian? She was blond too.

He flung open the door and found himself face to face with sixteen-year-old Billy McCall. Literally face to face. Billy was no longer the cheerful chubby boy Frank had visited in Laguna Beach. He was almost six feet tall with solid shoulders and a craggy face that blended innocence and disillusion in a way that troubled Frank every time he saw him.

“I just had another go-round with Tama,” Billy said. “I've had it with that bitch. I want to move in with you.”

“Why sure. Butâ”

“I won't cramp your style. I just need a place to sleep. I got friends with wheels. I don't need an allowance. I got a job at the Long Beach airport.”

“What about school?”

“The hell with school.”

Billy was going to the public school in Westwood, one of Los Angeles's best. He studied just enough to stay one step ahead of expulsion. He was currently on his spring vacation.

“No deal,” Frank said. “If that's why you're fighting with Tama you're going to have the same fight with me.”

“I'm not fighting with Tama about school. I've had it with her lousy remarks. She never stops trying to make me look like a bum. While her big handsome momma's boy Cliff is always
wonderful
.”

Frank waved him into the house. “You had any breakfast?”

Billy shook his head. Frank led him into the kitchen and began cooking bacon and eggs. As he was about to serve them, the blonde wandered in wearing his old army bathrobe. “Hi,” she said. “Who's this?”

“My nephew, sort of,” Frank said, winking at Billy. “I hate to admit it but I've forgotten your name.”

“Sylvia. Sylvia Sydenham. My real name's Jones. You got some coffee? What the hell were they putting in those drinks?”

“I think it was gin.”

The telephone rang. Tama Morris McCall's angry voice bored into Frank's throbbing skull. “Is Billy there?”

“Yes.”

“You tell him to get the hell home here and simonize our cars. It's his turn. Cliff did it last month. If he doesn't have them both finished before sundown I'm going to tell his father what he called me.”

“What did he say?”

“Never mind. It's too disgusting to repeat.”

Tama had grown more and more proper as her movie career receded over the horizon. She could sound as straitlaced as a Midwest Methodist these days. Although her sex life was apparently still steamy. When Buzz married her, he had made it clear that he reserved the right to enjoy other women. Tama soon demonstrated two could play the reservations game. She had personally escorted Buchanan's contingent of beauties to the Conquistadores party.

“Give him until tomorrow on the simonizing,” Frank said. “I'll take him for a ride in SkyRanger Two and calm things down.”

“That's no way to teach him discipline,” Tama said. “You're going to ruin that boy, Frank.”

“He doesn't look that bad to me.”

“Put Sylvia on the line.”

Sylvia came alive when she heard Tama's name. “Hi,” she said in her brightest actress voice.

Her kewpie-doll face darkened. “Gee, Tama, I don't feel so hot. Does it have to be tonight?”

Sylvia sighed. “Okay. I'll be there. The Biltmore at six.”

She slammed down the phone. “One of your goddamn airline big shots wants some more entertainment after he sees your wonderful new plane.”

Billy shoveled down his ham and eggs. Frank avoided his eyes. Sixteen-year-olds should not be hearing the unlovely details of the way planes were sold.

“That SkyRanger Two sounds like some plane, Pops,” Billy said. “Where we going in her?”

Billy thought, ate, slept, drank, dreamt planes. He never read a book or magazine about anything else. He never stopped badgering Frank and Buzz to teach him to fly.

“No place in particular. Our savior and leader, Adrian Van Ness, wants to
know how much money it will cost to fix some problems. We're going to run a few tests.”

Frank regarded Adrian Van Ness with an unstable mixture of hostility and respect. He had rescued Buchanan Aircraft from oblivion. Adrian had also reclaimed the only woman Frank Buchanan had loved since Sammy. He struggled not to blame Adrian for that fact. But every time Frank saw Amanda at a company party or rollout of a new plane, she looked unhappy. That made Adrian harder to like.

Frank gave Sylvia twenty dollars for a taxi and drove to the factory in his Ford. Billy fiddled with the radio and soon they were listening to an announcer describing an air raid on Madrid. “What about this civil war in Spain?” Billy asked. “Do you think the Russian planes can handle those German and Italian jobs? That Messerschmitt One-oh-nine sounds like quite a plane.”

“The Polikaparpovs are pretty good fighter planes. The Russians have some first-class designers. I think they'll do okay.”

“Who's gonna win the war?”

“The Loyalists, I hope.”

“You mean you're for the Communists? Buzz says anyone who's for the Reds is a traitor.”

“The loyalists aren't all Communists.”

“Do you think we're gonna get into a war with the Germans or the Russians, Pops?”

“I hope not. People get killed in wars. I lost a lot of friends in the last one.”

“You don't get killed if you're good enough. That's what Buzz says.”

“I don't agree with him. We were lucky.”

Billy looked disappointed. Buzz's bravado was much more appealing to a sixteen-year-old. “Buzz says if we don't start building some decent planes fast, we're gonna get wiped out. He gave me that book by Billy Mitchell. What do you think of it, Pops?”

“I'm afraid Buzz and the general could be right.”

Last month Frank and Buzz and Adrian Van Ness had flown to Milwaukee for Billy Mitchell's funeral. He had died of heart disease but believers in air power like Buzz preferred to call it heartbreak. Frank had always felt uneasy about Mitchell's vision of the plane as the supreme weapon of war. But he knew too much about aerodynamics to ignore the progress the Germans and the Russians had made in designing fast, powerful fighters and bombers.

At the airport, Frank ordered the chief mechanic on duty to gas up a SkyRanger II. While they were waiting for the tanks to fill, Frank got a motion-picture camera from the hangar. On the SkyRanger's wings were one of Frank's newest ideas, flexible flaps that could be extended to add lift in short takeoff airports. They were going up to shoot some film of how the flaps behaved in flight. They had developed a flutter problem during recent tests.

As they talked, Buzz McCall pulled up in his white Chrysler convertible with seventeen-year-old Cliff Morris beside him. Buzz parked the car beside the hangar and walked out to the plane with Cliff. The contrast between Cliff
and Billy was remarkable. Billy was so blond and fair-skinned he sometimes looked bleached. Cliff had his mother's olive skin and black hair. He too was over six feet, with a Latin profile that had half the girls in Santa Monica palpitating, his mother claimed.

Frank liked both boys. Their personalities were as different as their looks. Outwardly nonchalant and easygoing, Cliff wanted badly to be liked. Billy seemed indifferent to everyone's opinion but his own and occasionally Frank's.

Buzz strolled up to Billy and without saying a word drove his left fist into his stomach. Billy gasped and bent double. Buzz clipped him with a right-hand uppercut that knocked him under the fuselage of SkyRanger II.

“What the hell was that for?” Frank said.

“Stay out of this,” Buzz said. He dragged Billy out from under the plane by his shirt front. “Don't ever call your stepmother a name like that again, get me?”

“I get you,” Billy said, blood trickling from a split lip. He glared at Cliff. “Did you tell him, you fucking momma's boy freako?”

“No,” Cliff said. He was clearly baffled by Billy's dislike, which began the day they met.

“Tama told me. She was shaking and crying when I came home,” Buzz said. Frank sighed. It never seemed to dawn on Buzz that even a mediocre actress like Tama could make a man believe almost anything with a carefully calculated performance. Frank could practically hear Tama declaiming:
that kid is going up in your new plane after insulting me while my son sits home? What kind of a father are you?

“Let's get going.” Frank said.

He beckoned Billy into the copilot's seat and taxied out for takeoff. The big plane leaped from the runway in thirty-two seconds while Buzz took pictures of the flaps extended. “The goddamn things are vibrating a foot and a half minimum,” Buzz said.

Frank circled the field, touched down and took off again three more times, while Buzz took more pictures. “We may have to reposition the damn things,” Frank said.

“Adrian'll shit a brick,” Buzz said. “It'll cost at least fifty grand.”

“That's cheaper than a new plane, if the wings come off,” Frank said.

“Worse things could happen,” Buzz said. “Maybe Adrian'd finally wise up and get into the right end of the business.”

For at least a year Buzz had been urging Adrian to start building military planes. He had persuaded their designated leader to attend Billy Mitchell's funeral to introduce him to Army Air Corps brass.

“Could the wings come off now?” Cliff asked.

“No. We're putting the flaps up,” Frank said, throwing a switch that raised the flaps level with the wing's trailing edge.

BOOK: Conquerors of the Sky

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