Authors: Gilbert Morris
Kat picked up the letter and read the return address, her eyes brightening. “It’s from International Missions. I sent them an application, but since they hadn’t answered yet, I thought they weren’t going to.” She read the letter silently for a few moments. “Ma, they’re offering me a position with them!”
“Is that so? Does that mean you’ll be a missionary?”
“It says here they want me to do medical work in England. They’ve got mission stations all over the world.”
“Don’t they have doctors of their own there?”
Kat was reading the letter more closely now. “I’d be working with very poor people off the streets of London. And their nurses also do some work in one of the large London hospitals.”
“Do you think you’d like to go there?”
“You know, ever since I applied, I thought this would be the mission organization that would take me. Of course I had no idea where they would send me.” She lowered the letter and shook her head. “You know, it’s the strangest thing. I
suddenly feel that this is exactly what God wants me to do. Oh, Mom, isn’t that wonderful!”
“It’s the Lord speakin’ to you, child. You’ve been seeking Him about your callin’ for three years or more now, and the Scripture says that everyone who seeks finds. Does it say when they want you to go?”
“Almost right away. In a month.”
“Reckon you know how much your pa and I will miss you. And the boys. They’re gonna plumb perish without you.”
“It’ll be hard for me too. I’ve never really been away from home before.”
“Well, you won’t be alone,” Missouri said with a smile.
“Yes. The Lord will be with me.” Kat put her arms around the large woman. “I’ll miss you.”
Missouri returned the embrace. “We’ll have to break the news to your pa. He’s gonna be awfully sad. Why don’t you go up and tell him.”
“I’ll have to tell the boys too. Maybe I’ll take them out to a movie or something tonight and tell them when we get home.”
“That Temple. He wants to see one of those awful gangster movies.”
“There’s another movie on—a cartoon called
Pinocchio.
It’s harmless enough, I hear. Maybe I’ll take them to see that.”
Kat went upstairs and found her father in his room. He had been lying down, but he sat up at once, propping a pillow behind his back. “Well, daughter, you’re home.”
“How do you feel, Dad?”
“A little better. I don’t think I have the flu, and I don’t need it.”
“I’m glad you’re getting better. Dad, I’ve heard from one of the mission boards that I applied to. They’ve accepted me.”
“That’s wonderful! Sit down and tell me all about it.”
She sat on a chair near the bed and read parts of the letter to her father. They talked about the types of conditions she might encounter in her new work and all that she would need to do to get ready to leave.
“I can’t tell you how proud I am, Kat. We Winslows have some missionaries over in Africa and other places, and now we’ll have one in England. I’ll miss you, though. We all will.”
She looked out the window for a moment. “I’m a little apprehensive.”
“About what?”
“Well, I’ve never been away from home before—not really. Just on short vacations. But now I’ll be far away from everyone I know.”
Lewis reached over and took her hand. “You’ll do fine,” he said warmly, his eyes approving. “You’ll be sharing the Gospel with people who need the Lord, and that’s what being a missionary is, whether it’s in Africa or in England.”
****
“I tell you, there ought to be more fellas around like that Rhett Butler,” Brodie proclaimed, taking his eyes off the road to turn to Kat. “He had the right idea.”
“That was such a good movie! He reminds me a little of you.”
“Me!” Brodie grinned. “Well, he’s not quite as goodlookin’ as me, but we’re probably about the same height.”
“I don’t mean the way you look. Nobody looks like Clark Gable.”
Brodie feigned a crest-fallen look. “Why, you sure know how to hurt a fella.”
“But you are a lot like Rhett. He joined the Confederacy when the cause was lost, and that’s what you did in Spain, isn’t it?”
Brodie seemed unable to talk about his own better qualities. “Shucks, I just wanted to go see what all the shootin’ was about. Found out too.”
“Weren’t you ever scared, Brodie? You don’t seem to be afraid of anything.”
“Oh, I’ve been scared of lots of things.”
“Tell me one.”
“You remember a couple years ago when Orson Welles did that program of his?”
“You mean the ‘War of the Worlds’ broadcast?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. Well, I might as well confess. I was over in Georgia doin’ some crop dustin’, and when I got home that night I was all by myself, having a few beers. My buddies hadn’t come in yet. I turned on the radio and heard this announcer. You know how it went. The Martian monsters were setting fire to everythin’, pulling up power lines and bridges. Then they were wadin’ across the Hudson River. Well, I was just drunk enough to believe it. It scared me pretty good. I thought they were gonna kill us all!”
“What did you do?”
“I went outside and looked north toward New York and waited for the end to come.”
“And you were really scared?”
“You might say I was plumb uncomfortable.”
“When did you find out it was a hoax?”
“Oh, when the boys come in a little later, I told ’em about it, and they laughed and said it was just a fool radio program.”
“I remember that. It scared me too.”
“I don’t know why it would,” Brodie said curiously. “You always say you’re ready to go meet the Lord. You shouldn’t be afraid of dying.”
“I’m not . . . but even if you know you’re saved and going to heaven, it’s different when you’re actually facing it. I guess death frightens everybody because we haven’t done it before. There’s no way to practice it.”
The two continued talking about the radio program until he pulled up in front of the house. As she had known he would, he reached over and tried to kiss her.
“Thanks for taking me to the movie, Brodie.” She fidgeted with her purse in her lap. “I’ve got something to tell you. I’ve been trying to think of a way to bring it up all night.”
“Are you going to preach me another sermon?”
“No. Not this time.” She hesitated, then said, “I’ll be leaving soon.”
He listened as she told him of her plans, and when she had finished, she said, “I really believe this is God’s will for me. It’s exactly what I’ve been waiting for.”
“So you’re going off and leavin’ ol’ Brodie, huh?”
“You’ll get along fine. It’s my folks I worry about—and the boys.”
He was quiet for a moment, absently running his fingers around the steering wheel. “I’ll miss you, Kat.”
“I’ll miss you too, but I’ll write. And you can write me back.”
“Well, I ain’t much on writin’ letters, but don’t forget me.”
He got out of the car and came around to open her door. He walked to the steps with her, and when she turned to him, he said wistfully, “I feel like an orphan.”
“Don’t be foolish. You go for months at a time without seeing me and you do just fine.”
He reached out and ran his hand over her hair. He said nothing for a time and then leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “Good-bye, Kat.” He turned and walked back to the car.
As he drove away, Kat was puzzled.
I expected him to try more than that when he said good-bye.
It was not like Brodie Lee to give up on anything as easily as he had this night.
She quietly slipped into the house, knowing everyone would be asleep. When she got to her room, she took her journal out of her drawer and wrote:
March 26, 1940: God has called me to England. At last I know what He wants me to do!
CHAPTER EIGHT
A Much-Needed Leave
The heat had caused towering cumulus clouds to rise from about five thousand to eight or ten thousand feet, and they were still climbing. As Parker Braden glanced down, he saw no enemy, but straight ahead, just behind a mound of clouds piled up like the Alps, he spotted a dozen Heinkel twin-engine bombers. They were going around in a circle, nose to tail, in the defensive position they sometimes took when they had no fighter escort.
Suddenly the radiotelephone crackled and delivered a message that was entirely too garbled to understand. Shaking his head with disgust, Parker scanned the sky for German fighter planes but saw none. It happened this way from time to time, but usually when bombers came over across the Channel they were heavily escorted with ME-109s or the two-engine 110s. Occasionally, however, bombers tried it on their own for some reason Parker had never been able to understand. As a rule a bomber without an escort was dead, and the Germans were well aware of this.
“Enemy straight ahead, Wing Commander,” said the mild voice of Bernie Cox, the leader of Blue One.
“I see them, Blue One, and I don’t see any fighters.”
“All right. Here we go. Pick your target.”
Parker glanced over at his wingman in the adjacent aircraft, Tommy Higgins, who had arrived only a week earlier. Parker had groaned when he’d learned that the young man had only fifteen hours’ experience flying Spitfires, and he had given
him a crash course. Higgins was willing enough but green as grass. “Stay with me, Tommy. Don’t go wandering off.”
“I read you, Wing Commander.” Higgins’s voice crackled with excitement, and he pulled his Spitfire in until his wing was only five feet away from Parker’s.
Parker nosed his Spit downward and felt a brief moment of pity for the crews of the Heinkels. There had been a time when he had felt exhilarated at such moments, but that was gone now. All that lay before him was the unpleasant job of killing human beings. He felt washed clean of fear as he led the squadron toward the hulking slab-winged bombers. Each one of them had five guns, and although they blazed away continuously, they had little chance of hitting the Spitfires, which fell on them like lightning.
He picked his target and, when he was four hundred yards away, hit the trigger under his thumb. The tracers marked the path as the ammunition raked the Heinkel.
Scratch one Heinkel and four or five lives.
The Germans were tough, and they broke formation when they saw that they had been jumped. All should have gone well, but suddenly Parker saw Tommy Higgins head directly toward two of the Heinkels that were trying to flee. He yelled, “Break off, Higgins! Break off!” But Higgins, if he heard the warning, paid no attention. He had slowed his Spitfire, probably to make his aim better, and the combined guns of both Heinkels blared, hitting him dead on. Black smoke poured out of the small fighter plane, its canopy completely shattered.
Parker flipped his plane over and came up from underneath the Heinkels, aware that Sailor Darley was beside him. The two had no need for speech. They had flown together long enough to know exactly what to do. He used the last of his ammo to destroy the Heinkel and saw that Sailor had wiped out his plane also.
“Regroup,” Parker said wearily, not even looking at the Heinkels that were plunging toward the earth below. When
Eagle Squadron was back in formation, he commended his men. “Good show. Let’s go home now.”
As he led the squadron back toward the field, Parker felt the great weariness that had become a part of his life settle on him. Glancing out, he was aware of the beautiful blue sky, the towering white clouds hanging over the earth like fairy-tale castles. The blue sea crawled steadily beneath him, always moving, meeting up with the white cliffs of Dover with their pristine beauty he loved so. As always, the sight touched him.
But hard on the heels of that came the thought of Tommy Higgins, now a bloody corpse sinking beneath the sea in the wreckage of his plane. It had become almost a vigil with Parker to struggle with the twin aspects of his life, the beauty that he saw when he flew and the ugliness of the job that always involved death. His hand tightened on the stick, and for one moment he had the wild impulse to turn and fly away anywhere except to the airfield, where he knew as soon as he landed he would begin getting ready for the next rendezvous with the enemy.
The impulse passed quickly, and he shook his head to clear it. He forced himself to think of beautiful things. He resolutely thought of his two stepchildren, Paul and Heather, and as the Spitfire roared toward the field, the leader of Eagle Squadron was thinking not of Germans or of ME-109s but of sitting on the floor and letting the two-year-olds crawl over him, pulling his hair and squealing as he tickled them. This was the other world that Wing Commander Braden chose to live in whenever the killing was done.
****
As Parker climbed out of the plane and stepped to the ground, he was met by Denny Featherstone, his early crew chief. “Go all right, sir?”
“Fine, Denny. No holes for you to patch up this time.”
Featherstone’s second-in-command, Keith Poe, had been scurrying around the plane. “Did you have any kills, sir?”
“Yes. We had good luck. Got a whole flight of Heinkels. Six of them. They had no fighter cover. Don’t know why. The blighters came alone.”
Featherstone and Poe were called “plumbers,” as all of the members of the ground crew were. They and ten others serviced the Spitfires and usually grew incensed when the planes took any battle damage.
“Sir,” Featherstone said, “me and this lunkhead here are havin’ an argument.”
“Nothing new about that.” Parker’s flight suit seemed to be pulling him down. He pulled off his helmet and said, “What is it this time?”
“Well, I say that Hitler is the Antichrist,” Featherstone said, glaring at the smaller crewman. “And this muttonhead here says he ain’t. Now, I ask you, sir. Who else would be the Antichrist if not Adolf?”
Despite his weariness, Parker smiled. The two men were devout students of biblical end-time prophecy and spent as much time arguing about minor points of Scripture as they did working on the Spitfire. “Who do you think it is, Poe?”
“Well, I’m not exactly sure who it is, but I’m sure who it ain’t. It can’t be Hitler.”
“Why not?” Parker asked curiously.