The Secrets of Flight (17 page)

“God, I hope that stuff doesn't give me cancer,” Grandma muttered.

I glanced over at her and, without thinking, let the breath that I was holding on to turn into a mouthful of laughter. Grandma met my eyes with a sly smile, and I laughed even harder, especially when I remembered that I'd left my review book in the recovery room, and I wasn't going back for it.

June 1944

I
am flying through the night—without a plane, without an engine—over the Texas prairie, whose endless sky is full of shooting stars. I could gaze at them forever until it occurs to me my parachute hasn't been deployed; in fact, I'm not even wearing one. I'm falling fast, accelerating through space and time toward impact, my heart peaking in the back of my throat, when Murphee Sutherland suddenly barks, “Come on, ladies. Up and at 'em.” I open my eyes, briefly disoriented, and then exhale. Grace groans as she pulls herself out of bed and reaches for her boots, and Ana wonders if there will be powdered eggs for breakfast again, while Vera warily reminds us that today's the day we fly the Texan AT-6—the claustrophobia-inducing, closed-cockpit plane with the narrow landing gear. “Six hundred horsepower engine,” Ana reminds us with a grin, and Murph says, “Oh, baby.” As we pull on
our clothes and lace up our boots and step out into the wind, sunlight is just making its way over the horizon. It's marching time.

We are four months into our required flight hours, through primary and basic ground school and moving to the advanced phase of instrument flying, where we'll learn to rely only on the dashboard in the plane to guide us. At the end come two solo cross-country trips, one five-hundred-miler, in the Stearman—without a radio, without flying in formation—and a thousand-mile flight in the AT-6. If I pass, I'll get my silver wings at graduation in October before we receive our official orders, scattering us to air bases across the country.

That's the plan, anyway, until Captain Digby, a whistle dangling from his lips, hands me a letter after calisthenics. I recognize Mama's neat handwriting on the outside of the envelope.
I need you at home,
she's written.
Consider quitting the program
.

“The doctor says Sarah's not responding to the treatments,” Mama says later, after I beg a favor from Mr. Hendricks and use the telephone in the instructor's lounge.

“What are they giving her?” I ask, shivering in my government-issued shorts and T-shirt, still sweaty from the morning's PT.

“I don't know. I'm not there.”

“Is she—going to be okay?” Tears fill my eyes as the last word gets lodged in my throat.

“Of course, she'll be all right, but it would cheer her up, Miri, just to see your face,” Mama adds. “And I can use your help in the shop and taking care of Rita.”

Through the ready room window, I see the women heading out to the flight line, the first time we get to fly with a class
mate. Today's mission will take us a state away, to Oklahoma, where we'll stay overnight at the officers' quarters, and then ferry a different aircraft back to Sweetwater. “I can't just up and leave. There's a war going on.”

“The war is not in Texas,” Mama says, her voice sharp. “And you sound awfully happy these days,” she adds, making me wonder if Sarah's been sharing the letters I've written just for her.

“Do you want me to be unhappy?” I ask, a silly question, Sarah would say. As if happiness mattered to Mama. Were Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph really worried about feeling happy?

“What if something happens to you, Miri?” she adds, her pitch climbing. “You can't pretend it's not dangerous.”

“Mama, I know what I'm doing,” I say, and she is quiet for such a long moment that I wonder if we've been disconnected.

“Finish the job you've committed to,” she finally says. “Then come home.”

L
ATER THAT AFTERNOON,
M
URPHEE AND
I
ARE AT THREE THOU
sand feet, flying in formation toward an air base in Oklahoma, when a thick fog rolls in and completely shrouds the AT-6. I blame my mother for this sudden shift in the weather.

Behind me, Murph studies the instrument panel, while I'm the “safety pilot”—the extra set of eyes up front to make sure we're not following a false horizon. Except that in every direction, all I can see is white.

“Let's try to get underneath it,” Murph says, so we dip down five hundred feet, only to be met with endless, choppy white and more blindness.

What if we collide with another aircraft—the one carrying Ana and Grace flying parallel to us only minutes ago? My gloved fingers are numb, and my heart surges as if I'm back in the dream, on the verge of falling to earth just by the realization of my own weightlessness.

“The fuel gauge is dropping,” she adds, as the plane lurches violently in the wind. “There must be a leak.”

She radios our coordinates, and as we wait for a reply through the static, Mama's fears, Uncle Hyman's disapproval, even Captain Babcock's disgust floods the engine inside my chest. Suddenly, the fact that I am here at all, barreling above the earth at twenty-five hundred feet, seems like an audacity. Gravity has to catch up to me sometime.

A voice comes over the radio, giving us the location of Altus Army Airfield, the nearest military base, one hundred miles north.

I turn the mixture valve, hoping for that ideal fuel-to-air ratio that will make the gas last a little longer, when the engine starts to make an ominous rumbling sound.

“Careful. You're running it rough,” Murphee says. “We're gonna stall out.”

“There's a storm from the east,” I hear Ana say over the radio from one of the other planes. “Visibility is zero.”

At last, new coordinates arrive: a civilian airfield not twenty miles away, in Vernon, Texas. All three of our planes are instructed to land when able.

As we level out at a thousand feet, the fog dissolves into gray pockets of heavy rain. Below us, the plains come into view and then at last, the grid of small-town streets.

“There's the strip,” Murph says from behind me.

“That's a road,” I say. “With cars on it.”

“We're nearly out of gas. If we stall out over a house—”

“I can make it. Just—hold on,” I add, spying the airstrip to the west. I'm not sure if I'm coaching Murph, the plane, or my mother, whose voice keeps lingering in my mind like a curse:
What if something happens to you?

At five hundred feet, I lower the landing gear, lock the wheels, and give the throttle some juice until the air speed indicator reads 95 knots. If the fuel gauge is accurate, we could lose the engine at any moment. Beginning our cross over loop, perpendicular to the direction of the wind as well as the strip, I radio: “Aircraft 6537 on final, gear down and locked,” and we make our approach for that final turn that will put us in line with the runway. Except that I make the arc too shallow—or maybe I just haven't accounted for the wind pushing us the opposite way and the fact that I can't back off the throttle so quickly in a storm—but suddenly we're flying off course.

“You're going wide!” Murph shouts, as I jam on the right rudder to yaw the nose back in the direction of the runway.

“Come on, come on,” I mutter, clutching the stick in my sweaty palm as we descend. If I break the glide of the plane too low, we'll hit hard and bounce, so I wait and wait and then right as we're nearing touchdown, I pull back on the stick, hard and fast. Instead of landing, the plane lifts up, rising skyward like a doomed balloon.

For a single moment, as the ground grows farther away, it's silent in the cockpit, save the strain of the engine on empty, the patter of rain against the hood, and the buzz of my self-doubt.
What if I can't—
I think and then stop, remembering Sarah.
Now is not the time
. There's no choice but to fly higher and circle around again.

“Steady!” Murph shouts over the engine. Between the whipping wind from the west and the diagonal sheets of water from the east, it's hard to keep the wings level and maintain speed at 75 knots as we cross over for another pass. One hundred fifty feet below, the ground is green and lush, beckoning and dangerous; it can save us or take us.

Sweat drips down the back of my flight suit. I think of the movie we watched in ground school, where cadets were advised to have a “light but firm touch” on the stick like “taking a pulse,” and realize I'm strangling the patient.
Let go, Miriush,
Papa says in my mind, and I ease up my grasp and exhale.

This time when I make the turn parallel to the runway, I get the approach right, descending in a straight path for the wet, grassy landing strip. The front wheels and back tail of the plane are perfectly aligned on all three points, and my feet are stable on the deck. At the precise point of touch down, I cut the throttle, remembering the Ten Commandments for Safe Flying, specifically number five:
Thou Shalt Maintain Thy Speed Lest the Earth Arise and Smite Thee.
That's what it feels like, too: an assault from the earth, as the right tire explodes and we find ourselves skidding in that direction. I jam hard on the left rudder but the tail wheel is already shooting out like a weathervane seeking the wind. My feet dance on the rudders, left and then right and then left, trying to compensate for the shifting tail, which sends us into a dizzying ground spin and makes my brain feel like its torqueing inside my skull. We skid one hundred and eighty degrees and then finish the length of the
runway backward, as I ride the brakes with all my strength, despite how many times we've been told to go easy on them. Just before slamming into the hangar, the plane comes to rest.

Toppling back in my seat, I gasp with relief. There's a high-pitched ringing sound in my ears, along with rain quietly drizzling against the hood.

“Well,” Murph says, peeling off her helmet. “That was fun.”

O
NCE THE OTHERS ARE SAFELY DOWN, WE USE THE AIRPORT
phone to call back to base for instructions. Jackie Cochran gives us a name of a local hotel within walking distance and says she'll send an army bus to pick us up in the morning. “You'll get vouchers for the rooms and meals, and whatever you do, stick together and don't tell anyone who you are.” We know the drill: women pilots are an experiment. There are no insignias on our flight jackets for a reason.

After making sure the planes are securely chained down to the metal loops on the ground, we wait for the rain to let up and then walk back toward town, a conspicuous group of six women in pants. “What if we get picked up by the sheriff?” Grace asks. We've all heard the story of the women in a class ahead of ours who were arrested under similar circumstances for wandering out to look for dinner—arrested on charges of solicitation simply because they were wearing pants and there weren't any men with them.

“Fine by me—just as long as he drops us at the nearest restaurant,” Ana says. “I could eat a horse, and I'm sick of walking.”

“To hell with 'em,” Murphee says. “If they arrest us for wearing pants, Cochran will bail us out.”

We find the hotel easy enough, a narrow, three-story estab
lishment on the main street of Vernon, which looks like a town from the set of an old western movie. Eyeing us nervously, the owner slips us the keys to our rooms, as if this is a holdup. I have a suspicion that he wouldn't have let us check in at all if Jackie Cochran hadn't called ahead. Ana asks him about where we might get some grub, and he points to a swinging wooden door—the entrance of the hotel restaurant. The moment we walk through it, wearing our pants and flight jackets, conversations trail off and utensils stop clanging against plates. I feel like we're the six Lone Rangers.

It's a tiny, ten-table establishment with sprigs of flowers and flickering votive candles on the tables. Grace points to the sign, which says,
SEAT YOURSELF,
and so we do, taking it upon ourselves to push two tables together. I quickly rescue the centerpieces, as everyone continues to watch us.

“Welcome to Vernon, ladies, what brings you to town?” the waitress asks, handing out menus once we're seated.

We glance at each other. “The storm,” Grace says.

“I could sure use a drink,” Murph adds, and then orders a double. “What?” she says, after the waitress leaves. “It was dicey up there.”

“Too dicey,” I mutter, feeling like Vera.

“You sound like me after my first fight with Teddy,” Grace says, amused. “Spooked.”

“I thought you two never fought,” Ana says.

“Not with an ocean between us. But that's how you get stronger,” Grace says, looking at me, and I glance up from my menu and exhale.

“I just—hated to have to land.”

“We all gotta come down sometime, somewhere, so why not
here?” Murph asks, perking up as the waitress returns with a tray of drinks and a basket of rolls, still warm from the oven.

“Here—keep this to yourselves,” she says quietly, releasing a tiny handful of cubes near the breadbasket.

Vera gasps. “Is that—?”

The waitress holds up a finger to her lips and then gives us a conspiratorial wink before she walks way. Grace tosses one foil pat of butter to each of us.

With happy anticipation, I slather the rationed butter onto my roll, barely noticing that one of the patrons, portly and red-faced—reminiscent of my uncle Hyman—has approached the table.

“Excuse me, ladies,” the man says, thick Texan accent, and we all look up. “Sorry to interrupt your meal. My wife and I have been taking bets, and I think I'm right. Are you a baseball team?”

Murphee coughs so hard on her roll that Vera has to swat her on the back.

“That's right,” Ana says, “we're a baseball team.”

“Because my wife here thought you were German spies, and some other fellas over there thought you might be prisoners of war.” The man hitches his pants up, reminding me of Humpty Dumpty.

“Nope. No, sir. We're a baseball team. Here to entertain the troops.”

“Isn't that right? I knew it, honey!” he turns and calls over his shoulder.

We are one of the best-kept secrets of the war, and we don't even know it yet.