Someone handed me an ear set, and when the engine started, Iwas glad my ears were covered. The roar was like standing by the tracks when a train raced by, only twenty times louder. My stomach dipped as the plane began to move. I stared out the window as we lumbered down the runway, gaining momentum. We were going fast, then faster still—fast as a train. I saw the lights of buildings rush by as we raced on and on. I was beginning to think we were too heavy to lift off—how could something so large and heavy ever get off the ground? Oh dear God—we were going to plunge into Lake Pontchartrain! I closed my eyes and prayed, and then my stomach seemed to hit the back of my spine.
When I opened my eyes, I realized the floor was no longer level. We were going up! I peered out the window. Sure enough, the land was falling away, the view looking more and more like it did on the D. H. Holmes escalator—slanting away below me. The lights on the land were getting further and further away.
“We’re flying!” I yelled. There was no one around to hear me—the radio operator, navigator, engineer, pilot, and copilot were all at the front, and the engine was so loud that words would have been impossible to understand—but I was airborne, and Joe was the reason.
•••
The next hour passed in an adrenaline high. We flew over the city, and then over a black void that I guessed was either swamp or Lake Pontchartrain. The full moon and the stars above were the only way I could tell we weren’t just sitting in an airplane hangar—that, and the bumping, rocking, and vibrating.
I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around. Ted motioned for me to put on the oxygen mask. I nodded and complied, my stomach a knot of nerves, but after the first few pulls of air, I realized all was well. Ted returned to his seat somewhere in the front of the plane.
We flew over some lights again. I lost all track of time, but at length I saw a streak of light in the distance. My fingers itched fora camera. Dawn was breaking. As night faded, the view grew more miraculous. We were floating over clouds! They were beneath us, and above us was sky. A second later, the clouds thinned, and I could see water. We were over Lake Pontchartrain. We flew back over land again—I think it was New Orleans, but it might have been Slidell—and then, after a while, I saw the river. The mighty Mississippi curved through the land just like on a map. The houses and buildings all looked like toys.
It was jarring, how clearly everything was laid out—how the streets and blocks and crops were all so clearly divided and platted. This must be how God sees the world, I thought. I couldn’t begin to imagine how he could know everything that was happening in every house, in every car, in every person’s mind—and this was just one city in one state in one country on one planet! All those other stars and planets out there—and he knew what was happening there, too.
As the sky lightened, the plane slanted downward. Everything grew larger. My ears popped as the engines roared louder. The ground rushed up at me, and as it got nearer, I closed my eyes, my stomach tight with terror. I felt a bump and a bounce, then another, and then...
We were on the ground. The plane raced like a locomotive, causing me to fear, once again, that we would run into the lake. Just when I was certain something was terribly wrong with the brakes, the plane slowed, and then slowed some more. At length it turned and headed back to the buildings. It stopped on the tarmac, about a hundred yards from a hangar. A moment later, the engines quit. The silence was nearly as deafening as the engine’s roar had been a second before.
I twisted in my seat to face forward but I stayed seated, figuring someone would tell me when it was time to leave. After a few minutes, I saw Joe walking toward me over that narrow bridge in the middle.
“What did you think?” he asked.
“Oh, it was wonderful! Beyond wonderful.”
He looked at me and grinned, as if whatever he read on my face pleased him immensely. He reached down and unbuckled my seat belt, then helped me to my feet. My knees wobbled. His arm circled around me. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” I leaned against him, feeling the hardness of his body. I couldn’t tell if it was the adrenaline from flying, or the nearness of him, but I was trembling.
He rubbed his hands up and down my arms, as if to warm me, then pulled away. “I have to do a debriefing. Carl and Ted will take you home.”
He headed to the front of the plane. A few moments later, Ted came back and guided me down the bridge over the bomb bay, then helped me out of the hatch. Carl was waiting outside in a Jeep. They once again tucked me under the tarp in the back for the short ride to the hangar. Carl left, and Ted politely turned his back while I peeled off my jumpsuit. A few minutes later, Carl returned to the hangar, this time driving a beige sedan. Ted opened the back door for me.
I hesitated. “Don’t I need to hide?”
“Nah. The guards don’t care who leaves the base, just who gets in.”
I closed my eyes as we passed the guard station, pretending to be asleep. Lord only knew what kind of girl the guards must think I was, being taken home at dawn! On the ride home, I learned that Carl was Joe’s best friend, and that his esteem for Joe bordered on hero worship. Carl had some kind of health condition that made him occasionally pass out. He’d hidden it from the authorities so he could join the service, but he’d been discovered. He’d been pulled from active duty and was now a bombardier instructor at the New Orleans lakefront flight facility.
I was polite, but I didn’t really want to talk. I just wanted to replay the evening in my mind, to burn it all into my memory.
As we neared Lucille’s house, I asked the men to let me off a block away. It was nearly six o’clock in the morning, and there was a real risk someone would see me. I made up my mind to say I’dawakened early and gone for a walk if I ran into anyone, but I made it back to the house without incident. I let myself in with my key. To my almost unimaginable good luck, both Marge and Lucille were still asleep.
I crept into bed, and although an hour remained before I had to be up for work, I couldn’t doze off. The thought that I’d been a mile or more up in the sky chased through my veins. It was a toss-up which thrilled me more: the hour’s ride in the B-24, or the fact I’d been with Joe.
14
hope
Eddie had arranged for both occupational and physical therapists to work with Gran a few times a week, and the next morning, one of them arrived as Gran and I were finishing breakfast. Gran shooed me out of the house, so I grabbed the sketch of the girls’ room I’d stayed up half the night drawing and headed to a coffee shop I’d spotted downtown.
It was located in what had once been the newspaper office on the town square, and it had a green-and-white-striped awning withThe Daily Grindemblazoned in black script. The rich scent of coffee enveloped me as I opened the door. The interior was rustic and funky, with high ceilings, exposed beams, and a redbrick back wall.
Most of the tables were full, and several people were in line ahead of me. A pretty redhead about my age worked behind the counter. She was petite and slender, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, over which she wore a green restaurant bib apron emblazoned with the cafe’s logo. She chatted with the customers as she filled their orders, apparently well acquainted with them all.
She handed a large paper cup in a cardboard sleeve to the man in front of me. “There you go, Mike. Say hello to Joan for me.”
He nodded. “Sure will. Do the same to Sam.”
