Hope Takes Flight (17 page)

“Do you ever think about God when you go into a fight?” she asked curiously.

“Yes, I do. I don't know about the others. But, of course, my brother's a preacher, and my other brother, Amos…well, he's a fine Christian.”

“What about you, Gavin? Don't you believe in God?”

Gavin shook his head. “I don't know, Heather. I really don't. I'd like to, but there's something in me that says no. I look at all this death and dying and I wonder, if there's really a God, why does he let all this happen?”

He talked for a few moments about his beliefs, something he had never done with anyone else, and finally he said, “I wish we had more time, but the train's coming.”

Heather put out her hands, and he took them in his. Her hands were soft, but very firm and very strong. She squeezed Gavin's hands, smiled up at him, and asked, “Will you come to see me the next time you're in Paris?”

“Sure I will. But why don't you come out to the aerodrome and visit with us? You'd be a hit there. C'mon,” he urged. “It'll drive the rest of them crazy when they find out I've got an English girlfriend, I mean lady friend, who's a duchess or something.”

Heather laughed with delight. “Well, I'm no duchess, but I will come and see you. That's a promise.”

“All right,” he said. “All right!” When the train squealed to a stop, he had the urge to kiss her, but did not. He took a step toward the train, then shyly turned again in her direction, reluctant to leave. “Come on out, as soon as you can! This week! Or next!”

“It'll have to be next, I'm afraid. Next weekend, if I can manage it.”

She watched him as he boarded the train, smiling at him as he leaned out the window. She waved as she thought,
What a fine young man! I'll have to go out to that aerodrome. Maybe I can take Father with me. It would be good for him
.

H
ey, Gavin! Wake up! Wake up!”

Gavin Stuart, deep in a coma-like sleep after a late mission, pulled himself up out of the darkness and forced his eyes open, staring at the burly figure in front of him. “Go away, Thaw,” he mumbled. “Leave me alone.”

Bill Thaw's big hands gripped Stuart, ripping the blanket down, and jerking him out of bed as if he were a child. “C'mon, crawl out of there! Try to get some life into yourself, boy.” Thaw's face broke into a wide grin as he added, “You got yourself a visitor. A real pippin! It's that nurse from the hospital, Heather Spencer.”

All sleepiness fell away from Gavin instantly. He shoved Thaw away and grabbed his pants from a nearby chair. Pulling them on, he threatened, “If you're kidding me, I'll break your nose!”

Thaw laughed. “No kidding! She came in about an hour ago. Been looking for you.” He tried to assume a virtuous expression and failed completely. “Being a good friend of yours, old boy, I tried to keep the rest of these lechers away from her. But you'd better hurry up! You know how they are with women! I'll just go watch out for your interests.”

Gavin scrambled frantically into his uniform, gave his hair a few licks with a brush, then hurried out of the barracks toward the long frame building that served as a combination mess hall and officers quarters. As soon as he entered, he saw Heather surrounded by the flyers.

She looked up as he came in and waved. “There he is now. Hello, Gavin.”

As Gavin drew near, the flyers began throwing insults his way. Norman Prince, the most popular man in the squadron, looked at Gavin and then back at Heather. “I don't know what you want with a tadpole like this, Lady Spencer,” he said. “He has no manners whatsoever.” Prince was a slight and comparatively short man, but he had broad, powerful shoulders, blond hair, blue eyes, and a flowing straw-colored mustache. His expressive face was rarely without a genial smile, and he fairly oozed personality. His energy and enthusiasm were unbounded. He added smoothly, “Now, I, on the other hand, have learned how to treat an English lady. If you would just allow me to show you around the aerodrome…”

“Pay no attention to him, ma'am,” Victor Chapman spoke up. He was six feet tall with a finely shaped head, crowned by an unruly thatch of thick black hair. His deep-set eyes shone beneath bushy brows. He had a generous mouth where white teeth flashed in a frequent friendly smile. “I'm the official greeter of nobility around here. Don't pay any attention to these other chaps.”

Not to be outdone, Raoul Lufbery shoved his way to the front and said in his atrocious accent, “Why, dese are all babies! You deserve de ace of the Lafayette Escadrille, which iss
me!
”

Luf had a broad forehead and deep-set eyes. His squat figure was just a trifle over 5′6″, but he had muscles of steel and had cleared a path through the men as if they were weightless.

“Wait a minute! Wait a minute!” Gavin shouted. “Lady Spencer didn't come to see
you!
She came to see
me!
” He tried to elbow his way forward, but Lufbery simply picked him up and set him to one side as if he were a doll.

Heather laughed and said, “Gentlemen, please! I'll be here for several days, and I expect to get to know all of you better.”

“You heard her, you birds,” Bill Thaw said. “Now, let the pup here have some time with Lady Spencer.” He herded the rest of them away, some of them catcalling back with risqué advice to Gavin on how to treat a woman.

When they were gone, Gavin turned to face Heather. “They mean well,” he said, shrugging. “They just don't have many manners.”

“They're a fine group of men. I read about them all the time in the newspapers.” She smiled at him, asking, “Do you think me impertinent, taking you up on your invitation to come to the aerodrome?”

“Oh, no!” Gavin shook his head violently. “I didn't think you'd do it…but I'm glad you did. How are your parents?”

“Oh, very well. They instructed me to give you a strict invitation—a summons, really—to come back.” Her generous lips turned up in a smile, her eyes sparkling. She was like a breath of fresh air in the gloomy room, he thought. “They like you very much, Gavin.”

“Well, I don't understand that. I'm just a poor hillbilly from the hills of Arkansas.” He bit his lip cautiously, trying to phrase his thoughts. “I don't know what nobility—knights and ladies and all that—would be interested in me for.”

Heather took his arm saying, “Come on. Take me for a walk. Forget about Lady Heather. That's not really my title yet, anyway. Show me your airplane.”

For the next two hours, Gavin showed Heather around the aerodrome. When they came to his own ship, she insisted on getting into the cockpit. Looking at the machine guns, she asked innocently, “But wouldn't they shoot your propeller off?”

Gavin explained how the synchronizer gear had been stolen from a crashed German aircraft, enabling the French aviators to copy the assembly that allowed bullets to go between the propeller as it turned. “I'd like to take you up for a ride,” he said. “Would you like to go?”

Heather's eyes opened wide with surprise. “Is that permitted?”

Gavin grinned and ducked his head sheepishly. “No, it's not. But this outfit seems to find a way to do whatever it wants to do. It's not like the regular Air Force.” He tried hard to explain to her. “You see, all of us came from America—the Wild West, I guess you'd call it. We don't have a lot of discipline. The captain…he tries to keep us in line enough to prevent us getting thrown out of the French Air Force, and I guess as long as Luf keeps shooting down Germans, they'll let us stay. So I'll have a two-seater warmed up and we'll take a spin.”

Heather never forgot that flight. She found herself in the backseat of Gavin's aircraft, her hair hidden under a helmet, wearing a bulky flying suit. Everyone knew what was going on, but Captain Thenault merely turned his face the other way, whispering to Thaw, “If Lady Heather gets killed, we'll probably all be shot.”

“Aww, don't worry about it. Gavin's got a little sense; he won't take her near the front,” Thaw said.

And so they flew around the countryside, now low, now high. Gavin would turn and shout something to Heather and she would shout back. He could see she was having the time of her life.

When they landed and he helped her down, he said, “You'd better get out of that flying outfit. If anybody saw you, we'd all be thrown out.”

She put her hand on his arm. “Oh, Gavin, it was such fun! How wonderful to be a flyer!” Then her eyes darkened, and she bit her lip. “But this isn't what you do, is it? Your missions aren't joyrides like this.” The thought troubled her, and she dropped her hand, saying briefly, “I'll go change.”

He took her to the room where she had donned the flying gear and left her there. As he waited, he spoke to one of the mechanics about his aircraft for the next mission. He was so intense in his instructions that when the scream came—a woman's high-pitched scream—it ran up his back as if he had been raked with a bayonet. Wheeling, he saw that Heather had come out of the dressing room and was plastered against the wall, her eyes wide with fear, her hand over her mouth.

There, right in front of her, was a lion! His ears were back, his yellowed fangs wide open, and he looked like a giant cat who had cornered a mouse.

“Whiskey!” Gavin shouted and plunged toward Heather. He dropped to one knee and put his arms around the lion, grasping the ruff of his neck in one fist. “Don't be afraid! He's just a pet!”

To one side, Bill Thaw was choking back his laughter.

“It's not very funny, Bill!” Gavin snapped angrily. “It's all right to scare some poor mechanic to death, but you ought not to treat a lady like that!”

Repentant, Thaw came at once to stand before Heather, blinking in the fading light and spreading his hands apart. “I'm sorry, Lady Spencer. But he's just a big pussycat, wouldn't hurt a soul.”

Heather took a deep breath and put her hand over her breast, feeling her heart slow its frantic beating. She summoned up a smile. “Well,” she said breathlessly, “he did give me quite a start, you know.”

Gavin got to his feet. “Bill got him from a zoo in Paris when he was just a month or two old. Bill's right…Whiskey wouldn't hurt a soul, but he scares the daylights out of people. Would you like to pet him?”

Heather looked at the huge cub that was now yawning, exposing a mouthful of pointed teeth. “Thank you, no. I believe I'll stick to my cat at home.”

“Here, let me take him.” Thaw picked up the lion as if he weighed two pounds and carried him off, chastising him. “You shoulda known better than to scare a lady like that.…”

Gavin was embarrassed by the whole thing. “I'm sorry. But Bill thinks it's funny. Are you all right?”

Heather had regained her sense of proportion now and, to Gavin's surprise, giggled slightly. “Yes, I'm all right. And it was funny,” she said. “Wait'll I tell Father. He'll love it.” She hesitated and asked, “Do you think it would be all right if I brought my parents sometime to visit? Father, especially, would love to see all of this.”

“I don't see why not. Everybody else comes. There's practically no security at all on this base.” He grinned. “Well, what shall we do now? No more flights for you today. How about mess with all the flyers? Think you could take that?”

Heather was a good sport and, of all the meals the flyers ate in that mess hall, it was that one that stuck in their minds. April had been a bad month. They had lost many friends to German guns. Later that night, when dinner was over and the humor had turned to seriousness, Kevin Rockwell brought up the fact that they were losing men more quickly than they could be replaced. “Most of it can be blamed on von Richthofen,” he said glumly. “That fellow is becoming a real pest.”

Prince said, “I'd like to get him one-on-one somewhere. I think I can take him.”

“From what I hear he's quite a scavenger,” Thaw said thoughtfully. “It's said that he lays back and lets his flag go in until somebody gets in trouble. Then he goes in for the kill. Got no respect for a bird like that!”

“Pay no attention to dat,” Luf said suddenly. “I have seen dis man. He is a killer and de best flyer dose fellows have.” He paused solemnly, looking around the group. “Never get yourselfs involved wid him one-on-one.” He smiled slightly and added, “Leave dat to me. I vill take care of him…dot Red Baron!”

The talk ran around the table, and Heather listened quietly, saying little. After the meal she and Gavin went for a walk. The stars shone brightly in a clear sky. A full moon rode high in the sky, and a soft April breeze touched Heather's cheeks, blowing the tendrils of hair about her face. They strolled around the airfield, and she noticed that Gavin was intensely aware of her—but was just as aware of the sounds of aircraft that came occasionally.

Gavin couldn't help but remain aware of Heather. She was wearing a scent that was somehow elusive, almost impossible to identify, and yet it was there, very mild, very sweet…and very feminine. By the light of the full moon he admired the brightness of her eyes and the smoothness of her cheeks and once again found himself wondering what there was about this woman that made her so different from all others he had met.

“Tell me about your family,” Heather said. “I'm fascinated by them. Do you want to go back to the farm when the war is over?”

“I guess not.” He shrugged. “It was a good place to grow up, for the most part, but I want to fly for the rest of my life.” He looked up, hearing the sound of an airplane limping back to base. “One of ours,” he said, then turned his attention back to her. “I've told you about all my family, I guess.” He hesitated. “Except for my sister Lylah. She's…she's…an actress.”

Heather laughed. “You say that like you might say, ‘She's an ax murderer.' There's nothing wrong with being an actress, Gavin, is there?”

“No, I guess not.” They walked on, their steps making little noise against the bare earth. Then he spoke even more hesitantly. “I never told anybody this…but she's in love with a German.”

Heather waited for a few moments, then said with gentle understanding, “I'm sorry about that. It makes for a bad situation, doesn't it?”

“Yes, it does. And what makes it even worse, he's…” Gavin was about to mention von Richthofen's name, but something held him back and he only said, “He's a flyer. Like I am.”

Heather grasped the situation immediately. “Oh, how terrible! For your sister, I mean. She loves both of you, and one day you two may meet. That is a terrible, terrible thing! I'll pray for her. And for you, too, of course,” she added.

“And for him too? The
German?
” Gavin demanded. “How could you pray for him? How can you pray for any of those people over there? They're the ones who started this war.”

“I can't explain that, Gavin,” Heather said softly. She looked up at the bright April moon and tried to put into words the struggle that had been hers, as it was his now. “I can't hate the Germans. I think, really, they're just like us except for very bad leadership. If I were a German girl, I'd probably have been exactly like they are. You know, the German soldiers go into battle with ‘Gott Mit Uns' on their belt buckles, which means ‘God With Us.' They think they're doing God's will just as we do.”

She stopped walking and turned to face him, putting her hand lightly on his chest. “I do know one thing. The Germans are God's creation. And anything God created is worth something. So I will pray for him just as I pray for you, Gavin.”

As he stood there for a moment, he had an impulse that he could not resist. “Would you mind if I kissed you?”