A Memory Between Us (38 page)
“Yes, you can. May I call you Bobby?”
“Please,” he said, his voice choked.
“All right, Bobby. I’m going to go get some medication to relax you, help you sleep.”
His free hand clutched her arm. “No! Don’t leave me.”
She looked over her shoulder. Burnsey still lay across Sergeant Whitman’s legs. “Sergeant Burns, would you mind?”
“Not at all. I’ll be right back.” He made his way down the aisle past all the patients’ craned heads. Burnsey wasn’t all bad. She could count on him in an emergency.
Ruth sat back on her heels, glad she’d placed this patient in the lowest tier. She kept her hand on his head to reassure him. He wasn’t fighting anymore, but his muscles remained taut.
“Where are you from, Bobby?”
“Michigan, ma’am. A farm outside Grand Rapids.”
“Hmm. How nice. I always thought I’d like to live on a farm.”
“A city girl? I’m sorry, ma’am. I forgot your name. Lieutenant … ?”
Ruth smiled down at his bandaged face. Sergeant Whitman couldn’t see what she looked like. “Lieutenant Doherty,” she said, but her heart warmed to this polite and tortured young man, and she leaned forward to whisper in his ear. “If you promise to keep it quiet, you can call me Ruth.”
“That’s a pretty name. My sister’s name. From the Bible, you know.”
“I know.”
“Here you go.” Burnsey handed her a syringe and a vial.
She frowned and read the turquoise label on the vial. “Pentothal?”
“That’ll take care of him.”
Ruth’s presence had calmed Sergeant Whitman, but she had too many duties to stay by his side for the rest of the flight. Still, Pentothal wasn’t indicated. While it would knock him out in ten seconds flat, it only lasted half an hour. Besides, he needed sedation, not unconsciousness.
“Bobby, do you think you could swallow a pill for me?”
His bandages shifted. The poor man was trying to smile. “For you, I would.”
She returned the syringe to Burnsey. “Why don’t you put this back and bring me some phenobarbital, please? Half a grain.”
Ruth gazed down at her patient. Yes, she liked her men helpless—horizontal, bandaged, and sedated so they couldn’t hurt her. Jack had figured it out so long ago. She fought off a crush of grief and patted Sergeant Whitman’s arm. “Newfoundland. Have you ever been to Newfoundland, Bobby?”
Bury St. Edmunds Airfield
Tuesday, June 6, 1944
Today Jack wouldn’t have to cheer the men up. In fact, he’d have to calm them down.
Most of the thirty-nine crews in the briefing room chattered and fidgeted like kids on the last day of school. No one complained about the powdered eggs for breakfast, about the briefing at 0100, or about flying two missions in a single day.
Even Charlie would fly—and with Jack. In the seat beside him, Charlie grinned at Jack with cheeks as pink as ever. He wouldn’t be smiling when May found out he’d flown a combat mission. But how could Charlie miss it? How could any man in the Eighth Air Force?
Today was D-Day. Someday they’d tell their kids how they’d flown over the Normandy landing beaches.
Normandy. Still made Jack smile. All that bombing in the Pas de Calais area was sure to fool Hitler. It had fooled Jack. He’d had a few days’ advance notice since his crews required specialized briefing. H2X bombing through a solid undercast with landing forces less than a mile offshore was bold, brilliant, and a potential disaster.
“All right, men. Calm down.” At the front of the room, Colonel Dougher held up one hand. “Every detail is vital. Your lives and the lives of thousands of your brothers on the ground depend on your attention.”
“Ah, it’s a milk run,” the rookie in front of Jack whispered.
Jack tapped him on the back of the head and gave him a stern but humorous look. The rookie smiled sheepishly and turned back.
Sure, the men would think it was a milk run. The map on the slide projector showed Allied fighter coverage in a semicircle around Normandy and up to the English coast extending from the deck to thirty thousand feet.
Dougher showed a slide of a P-51. “Our aircraft have been painted with black and white invasion stripes around the fuselage and wings. Gunners, keep your eyes open. Do not shoot at any plane unless fired upon first.”
Jack settled back and took it all in. Today he’d fly his last two missions with the Eighth Air Force, and tomorrow he’d put in for a transfer. The day before, the Twentieth Bomber Command in India had flown the first mission ever in B-29 Superfortresses. New groups would head to China and to Pacific islands once they were secured. Just what Jack needed—a new plane, a new outfit, and a new locale.
England held nothing for him anymore, not a promotion or love or even friendship—Charlie was busy with May and his job. Besides, the action would shift to the Pacific. Germany would be defeated soon, now that the Allies had air superiority and, later today, a foothold on French soil.
“Men, your attention please.” Dougher tapped the pointer on the wall, where a slide showed the flight route.
Jack’s gaze followed the rectangular path he had committed to memory. Assembly over Bury St. Edmunds, south over Gravesend, cross the English coast near Beachy Head, hit the target at Caen, head straight west over Normandy, swing around the Channel Islands, then back over England at Weymouth.
Dougher’s pointer traced the route. “Any deviation will draw friendly fire. Our ships and fighters have been ordered to shoot down any planes flying outside the corridor or against the stream. All aborts must be made before we leave England. If you experience problems after that, you must continue with the bomber stream.”
Jack crossed his arms. Even if the Luftwaffe failed to show and flak was light, this would be no milk run. The assembly of masses of bombers in the dark, the strict route, the novel flight formation, and the rigor of radar-guided bombing so close to ground troops would make for a demanding mission.
Harmon Field, Stephenville, Newfoundland
Ruth’s shoes crunched over the tarmac in the still darkness.
On the rare occasions she had a Remain Overnight at Stephenville, she enjoyed seeing the fishing boats on St. George’s Bay, the whitewashed homes on the rocky slopes, and the giant bounding dogs unique to the island.
Tonight she had only a few hours before the return to Prestwick. A shuttle system had started recently. The squadrons based at Prestwick brought patients to Newfoundland, and then the 822nd MAETS based at Harmon Field took them to La Guardia. While Ruth would have preferred to accompany Sergeant Whitman to New York, the 822nd promised to send an extra nurse on the flight.
Ruth wandered about the airfield. It was 2300, or two-thirty in the morning in Scotland, since Newfoundland’s time zone was three and a half hours behind Greenwich Mean Time. The other nurses napped, but Ruth couldn’t sleep. How could she when the only thing she could see was Jack’s devastated, resigned face?
From the moment she’d seen him after church and wanted to smother him with kisses and knew she wouldn’t flinch, she realized she had to shove him out of her life forever.
Why? Wasn’t that what she’d prayed for? She should have been elated, but she was terrified. Her secret and her aversion had stood in twin guard over her heart. Now both had been dismissed, and her heart lay unguarded. If Jack knew, he’d take possession, and she couldn’t let him do that.
“Why?” Ruth whispered as she meandered around the planes. “I trust him.”
With searing pain in her chest, she knew it was a lie. She only trusted him partway, not with her heart and not with her family. She didn’t want to. She could take care of her family. She could take care of herself.
“That’s an even bigger lie.” Ruth ground gravel beneath her foot. In the past year she’d learned how much she needed both God and friends.
A chill gust of wind made her wrap her arms around her middle. Maybe she could inventory her medical chest, which had been transferred to a cargo-laden C-54 from La Guardia.
A faint light glowed from the open cargo door. Ruth frowned. The base slumbered. Had someone left on a flashlight?
She climbed the stairs. No one was inside, but a lantern sat on a stack of boxes about halfway forward. Ruth went to investigate. Below the lantern, Burnsey’s typewriter sat on the floor with an invoice sheet rolled in and flopping down the back. Another invoice lay next to the typewriter—an Air Transport Command form, signed and dated June 5, listing the cargo loaded on the plane. Why did Burnsey have that? It had nothing to do with his business. She lifted the paper in the typewriter, also an ATC invoice. “What on earth?”
Ruth knelt and compared the two forms. They were identical in every way, except the one in the typewriter listed three fewer items—two cases Camel cigarettes, one case Wrigley’s spearmint gum, and one case Hershey’s chocolate bars.
“What?” She glanced at the boxes around her—Camels, Wrigley’s, Hershey’s, all with shipping labels from Samuel Burns to Staff Sgt. William Burns. Burnsey’s cargo? But the invoices …
Ruth looked closer. The lowercase
e
’s on the labels were set too high, and so were the
e
’s on the invoice in the typewriter, but not the invoice in her hand, the real invoice.
“Oh my goodness.” Burnsey had taken blank invoices and blank labels, and routed the supplies to himself. All this time, all those goods he said he got from his uncle—he did get them from his uncle, his Uncle Sam. He claimed he sold them at cost, with no profit whatsoever. What a lie. He made 100 percent profit.
“Can’t sleep?” Burnsey stood behind her with his elbow on a stack of crates.
Ruth jumped to her feet. The invoice fluttered to the floor. “I just—I came to inventory the—the medical chest.”
He studied the scene. Fear flickered on his face and drove all fear from Ruth’s heart. For months, he’d had the power to destroy her, but now she had the power to destroy him. Triumph lifted her smile. “Now don’t you wish you’d treated me with respect?”
All his usual charm returned. “It’s not too late. You want me to pretend you’re an ugly old hag like Lieutenant Shepard? Sure, I can do that. Just pretend you didn’t see this. After all, it’s only a little entrepreneurial enterprise.”
She met his amused eyes in the yellow lantern light. “Entrepreneurial?”
“Sure. This is what we’re fighting for. Capitalism. The American way.”
“It’s stealing.”
Burnsey shook his head. “This is government property—government of the people, remember? My tax dollars.”
“And mine, and—”
He laughed and crossed his ankles. “You have no idea how much money I made before the war. I’m a first-rate salesman. First-rate. My brother’s a lousy salesman, but he’s making a fortune in this war. Got out of the draft on a 4-F because of a bum knee. Now me, I serve my country. Very noble, very patriotic, very unprofitable. Why should I lose out because my knees work?”
Ruth gestured at the boxes. “But—”
“But what?” He patted a case of cigarettes. “I only sell luxury items, not necessities, and I charge no more than the PX. I run a fair business.”
She stared at the typewriter. This wasn’t a business. It was—
“Listen, I’m willing to cut you a deal. You’re always short on cash, right?”
Ruth raised her chin at him. “I do fine.”
Burnsey huffed. “I’ve heard you talk. All those kids to support, and no money for yourself. Wouldn’t you like a treat for a change? A reward for your hard work?”
“I don’t need that.” But her voice came out soft.
“You could have it. Buy yourself a book, a record, maybe a record player.”
“I don’t—”
“What about your family? You could provide for them in style.”
College. Aunt Pauline. Her chin lowered a bit. “I do fine.”
“Sure, but you can do better, and I can help.” He leaned forward, his eyes bright in the lantern light, but not leering. Perhaps he could treat her with respect. She didn’t dare turn him in. Wouldn’t Lieutenant Shepard love it if Ruth lodged one last complaint? And they probably didn’t trust Ruth enough to investigate her claim. No, turning him in was too risky.
“Listen, this is what I’m willing to do for you. I’m looking to take on a partner. Now, this requires no work on your part whatsoever. None. All you have to do is distract Quartermasters if they get nosy. For that you get the deal of a lifetime. I’ll give you two hundred bucks in advance, then 20 percent of the profits. If we keep running flights this often, you could clear a hundred bucks a month.”
Ruth gasped. A hundred divided four ways—no, three ways. Chuck graduated this month.
Burnsey grinned. “Yeah. Think what you could do with that.”
“That’s a whole lot of money,” she whispered.
“Sure is. Solve all your problems. Let you have a little fun for once. More important, you’ll be independent. That’s important to you, isn’t it?”
Ruth nodded. She could meet Aunt Pauline’s demands, start a college fund for Bert and Maggie, and buy a few things for herself. Not many, just a few.
For the first time.
Jack took one hand off the control wheel and worked his gloved fingers as if playing piano scales. He had to keep his fingers relaxed so he wouldn’t lose his feel for the plane.
He checked the clock on the instrument panel and put the plane into a left-hand turn, peering into the black murk for the Aldis lamps in the tail of each B-17. Every once in a while, a “dot-dash” flashed in the clouds, the letter A for the 94th.
Two minutes later, he pulled out of the 180-degree turn. In six minutes, he’d turn again. Each rectangular loop assembled the elements, then the squadrons, and then the group into formation.
“Radio to pilot,” Marvin Cox called on the interphone. “Adjust heading one degree south.”
“Roger.” Jack nudged the wheel right. Back in the radio room, Cox had his ear tuned to Buncher Twelve, the radio beacon over Bury, which guided the 94th in assembly.