Born to Fly (2 page)

“Roger,” Dad called out.

Dad and Margaret joined Alvin by the barn below me.

“She’s just pouting ’cause no one came to her stupid party,” Margaret said.

“Shut up,” I told her, and tried to hit her with a pebble.

“Margaret. Take Alvin inside,” Dad said.

Margaret snatched Alvin’s hand. It must have been sticky, as usual.

“What
is
that?” she shrieked.

Alvin licked his fingers to check.

“Chocolate, I think.”

She groaned and dragged him away.

Dad climbed the ladder to the roof. As he reached the top, a crop duster made a low pass on its way to our neighbor Mrs. Gorman’s cornfield.

“Staggerwing?”

“Uh-uh,” I told him. “Tiger Moth.”

“By gosh, you’re right.”

I knew he was just playing dumb, but it was sort of a routine we had. Like Abbott and Costello.

Dad sat down beside me. “Mom said you haven’t eaten all day.”

“If I keep eating, I’ll end up like Margaret. You know …” I cupped my hands below my chest, like boobs.

He smiled. “That’s the nature of things. Little girls become women, boys become men.”

“Margaret said women can’t be fighter pilots,” I told him. “So I decided I’m not gonna be a woman.”

“Hmm. I see.”

We sat there quietly, just watching the crop duster. It seemed like a long time, but Dad was a lot better than me at this. He waited me out. Eventually I couldn’t stand it.

“Aren’t you gonna make me?” I asked.

“Make you what?”

“Eat.”

“Nope. You’re eleven. You’re old enough to know when you’re hungry. One thing I will tell you—” But he stopped himself. “Oh, never mind.”

That was the worst, when Dad was about to say something but then changed his mind. It drove me crazy! I had to know what he was gonna say. “What?” I pleaded.

“Oh, what’s the point? The only one you listen to is Margaret.”

I sure didn’t like the sound of that. So I moved a little closer to Dad. That was how I usually got him to spill the beans. “What do
you
think?” I asked.

“Me? Well, I’ve only known you eleven years, so I could be wrong, but I think you can be whatever you want to be.”

“Really?” I said.

“Really. And I’m not just saying that ’cause I’m your father. You’re special, Bird.”

“Special.” That’s a code word adults use when they don’t want to admit that something’s not as good. Like the “special” shoes Alvin had to wear until he was three to straighten out his feet.

“I’m weird. That’s why nobody came to my birthday party. No one believes I saw the Genny in the bay.”

“I do,” Dad said.

I nudged closer and he wrapped his arm around my shoulder.

“Know something, Dad?”

“Hmm?”

“Since Wendy moved away, you’ve become my best friend. Actually, you’re my only friend.” I could feel my chest shiver and my eyes get full, like when you have to sneeze. Only I didn’t have to sneeze. I tried to hold it in, but I couldn’t. All those years spent showing people I wasn’t like those other sissy girls—and now this.

“Listen. You don’t realize it, but there’s someone out there right now, just waiting and wishing for a friend like you.”

“Where?”

“Where you never thought to look,” he said. My dad was smart and all, but some stuff he said didn’t make any sense.

“Then how will I find them?” I asked.

“Just be yourself, and they’ll find you.” He looked at me in that way he had, that somehow let me know things would be okay.

That is, until my mom let out a shriek from the house. “Peter! Peter!”

We could both tell from her panicked voice that it was serious, so Dad jumped right down off the roof (which seemed, from up here, like about a hundred feet). He started for the house, not waiting for me.

“Dad?” Without him there, I was kind of scared to climb down the ladder.

Then Mom yelled again, “Peter! Hurry!”

But Dad stopped and came back for me. “Go ahead,” he called out.

As soon as I saw him stay, I was no longer afraid. In fact, I felt ten feet tall. I shoved the ladder aside, and I jumped like my dad, landing on a small pile of hay. Dad didn’t wait as I dusted myself off.

By the time I stumbled into our living room, Mom, Margaret, Alvin, and Dad were all huddled around the radio.

“What’s the big deal?” I asked.

“Shhh!”
ordered Margaret.

“Shhh
yourself,” I told her.

“Bird!” Dad hollered (which made me clam up quick, because Dad never yelled at me like that). I heard the announcer say:

“… to bring you a special news bulletin. This morning, Japanese planes attacked the American military base in Pearl Harbor…. President Roosevelt spoke in an emergency address….”

Then the President came on:
“December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan…. With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.”

As the report continued, I watched Mom hold Alvin a little tighter. Dad wrapped his arm around Mom’s shoulder. But it was the look of worry on his face that frightened me the most.

On the coffee table was my birthday cake. Most of the candles and now
Bird
and the number eleven were one messy pink swirl of wax and frosting. I knelt down, lit the one remaining candle, took a big breath, and closed my eyes.

And all of a sudden I found myself wishing I was still ten.

F
ebruary in Rhode Island is cold and snowy like nobody’s business. I’m not sure what that means exactly, but it’s what Dad said every winter after the first snowstorm hit. We were at the train station all the way up in Providence, the capital of Rhode Island. It was a big city compared to Geneseo. I had only been to Providence once before, when we drove Mr. Ramponi to pick up his wife when she finally came over from Italy. But that was a happy trip to the train station. Trips like that usually are, when you’re picking someone up. It’s not the same when you’re
dropping someone off. Especially if that someone is your dad.

Just about everyone at the station seemed sad. The snow sprinkled over the families saying goodbye on the platform like giant grains of rice at one of Father Krauss’s weddings. The conductor whistled and the soldiers and sailors reluctantly grabbed their duffel bags, kissed goodbye, and filed on board.

Dad set Alvin down and hugged Margaret. Mom just stared like a statue. I was standing apart from the family. I didn’t understand why everyone was just letting this happen. No one else seemed to care. Why didn’t Mom
make
Dad stay?

“Stop pouting, Bird,” Mom scolded me. She’d get mad whenever Dad tried to comfort me. “Don’t encourage her,” she said.

“Come on, Bird,” Dad cooed, like a big father pigeon before he goes off to find worms.

But I kept a stiff upper lip. I’d made up my mind an hour before, I wasn’t gonna let him see me cry.

“I was saving this for your next birthday.” Dad pulled out a dog-eared pilot’s manual. “I won it from a guy in boot camp.”

My eyes went wide as I read the worn cover:
The Curtiss P-40 Warhawk
. “That’s the same one the Flying Tigers used!”

“The very same.” Dad huddled down close to me. “And you know what it says in there?”

I shook my head.

“Anyone who memorizes this book can fly a Warhawk. Anyone.”

I took it and wrapped my arms around his neck, crying into the snowflakes on his shoulder.

“But who’s going to believe me now?” I asked.

He lifted my chin with his finger. “The only one who needs to. You.”

The pushy conductor whistled a second time and the train wheels started to screech and turn. Maybe if I held tight enough, Dad would miss his train? But Dad pulled me off, turned to Mom, and said, “I’ll write to let you know when I get leave.”

He hugged Mom real tight. Then he pulled his dog tags from inside his shirt and showed her his wedding ring safely looped onto the chain.

“You know I love you,” she told him.

“I was counting on it,” he said in her ear.

Then they kissed, the way I had never seen them kiss before—a really long, sad goodbye.

Without my realizing it, my two mittened hands found their way into Margaret’s and Alvin’s, and we all held tight. A cloud of steam swirled around, concealing our mother and father. We stood there for what seemed like forever.

When the steam cleared, Dad and the train were gone.

A
s I lay in my bed throwing bits of bubble gum at a newspaper cartoon on my wall of that stupid Jap who started the war, Emperor Hirohito, all I could think about was how the two months Dad had been gone felt like two years.

Mom knocked on our bedroom door. When she popped her head in a few seconds later, I almost pegged her with a wad of gum.

“Come on, you two,” she said. “Can’t miss the first day of spring.”

Margaret ignored her and rolled over onto the curlers she had in her hair. She groaned, half asleep.

I hated having to share a room with her. Sometimes, when Alvin had a nightmare, I got to sleep in his room (to keep the monsters out).

I kept up my Hirohito target practice, even getting one shot right between the eyes, until something froze me dead in my tracks. It was a beautiful noise, a distant hum that was somehow strangely familiar, like a billion bumblebees swarming home to the hive. I flew out of bed and peeled the blackout shade from the window. Ever since the war started we’d had to keep our windows covered all night in case enemy planes came across the Atlantic looking for something to bomb.

“Margaret, look!”

She scrambled to the window. “What? What is it?”

I pointed to the distant sky. “Airplanes.” Approaching from the airfield, five planes flew low in formation. “A whole squadron,” I told her.

Margaret sighed, unimpressed, then marched out of the room. “Mother. When am I getting my own room?”

I ignored her. She didn’t know what she was missing.

Our house was a few miles from town and half a dozen acres from anyone or anything. It was a drafty yellow farmhouse that creaked like an old rocking chair whenever the wind blew. I think the reason Dad liked it was that it was the only house near Mr. Watson’s airfield. After Dad realized he and Mom couldn’t make anything grow (except
some weird-shaped pumpkins in the garden), he sold part of our field to the Army. I think he had it in his mind all along to use our barn to fix up airplanes.

When I finally dragged myself downstairs to the kitchen, Alvin was gulping down the last of his milk. He and I watched as Mom struggled with our temperamental furnace “grate.”

“Daddy just kicks it,” Alvin told her.

I shushed him. I tried not to bring up Dad too much around Mom, ever since I heard her crying in her room one night after Dad left.

Mom got a sad look on her face and even little Alvin realized he had said the wrong thing. Mom got up and she let her frustration out with a good swift kick. And what do you know, the old grate actually coughed up some heat.

“That’s showing it who’s boss,” Alvin said. This made Mom and me share a laugh, which didn’t happen much. It was too bad, because she was really pretty when she laughed. I wished she did it more often.

“Those stupid airplanes woke me up this morning,” Margaret whined as she cleaned up after breakfast.

“Father Krauss said they’re turning the old airstrip into some kind of military flight school,” Mom told us.

Suddenly Margaret’s eyes lit up. “Airmen? Here in Geneseo?”

It figured. She was more interested in the pilots than in the planes.

I slid off my chair and grabbed my books, all the while
tugging at my itchy new outfit. Mom had insisted I wear this new dress she made. You could tell by the way the buttons didn’t exactly line up with the holes that Mom wasn’t the greatest seamstress.

“I told you it would fit,” she said.

Fit?
Couldn’t she see that the sleeves were two different lengths? “You’re not really gonna make me wear it?”