never have talked like that before she’d known Jay. He’d taken some of her civility along with her innocence, and she hated him as much for that as for anything else. And she’d been taught not to hate anyone.
“Sorry,” said the lieutenant. “You’re right. It’s none of my business what name you—”
She didn’t want to say any more, but something bottled up inside her kept rising. “You think I’m an easy mark?”
Alen’s eyes avoided hers, his gaze now shifting out, looking at the swirling snow. “Yeah, I
“Lieutenant?” she called.
He turned, shut the door, hand still on the handle, flecks of snow in his sheepskin collar. “Yes?”
“Maybe some other time,” she said.
“Sure.”
When he left the Quonset hut, Lana felt drained; a conversation like that with a man these days was harder on her than the hospital’s night shift. She always thought she’d be able to handle it better after knowing Jay, but her confidence had been so badly shaken by him, it penetrated any brave front she presented.
Arriving on the ward, she was told the head nurse wanted to see her. A rush of apprehension took hold of her. The last time a head nurse, the “Matron” in Halifax, had wanted to see her, it had been the disciplinary hearing about Spence, followed by exile to the godforsaken islands. Lana already felt guilty as she made her way around the potholed blacktop of the quad to the head nurse’s station on the first floor, snow melting the moment it landed on her cape, the thought that each snowflake in the world was different comforting her. To date, the head nurse at Dutch Harbor had given no sign that she was a dragon, like Matron, a prune-faced, portly woman who acted quickly to dampen high spirits the moment anyone looked like they might possibly be enjoying themselves, if such a thing was possible on the Aleutian bases. Still, Lana knew that all head nurses, by bent of their responsibilities, were usually sticklers for rules and regulations, and as she entered the Quonset hut, she was trying to think of which one she’d violated. The clock above the reception desk showed she was five minutes late for her shift.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but the snow—”
The head nurse waved her apology aside and gave her the notification from the Department of the Army that her kid brother David, a member of a rapid deployment force, was missing in action—”somewhere” on NATO’s central front.
They all thought she took it very well. The truth was, however, that as much as Lana wanted to cry — crying for her having always acted as a tranquilizer — she couldn’t, for the simple fact was that she and David weren’t that close. At twenty-four, being the youngest of the family, David hadn’t seen much of Lana, who, though she hadn’t finished college because of Jay, was in her third year when he was still in high school. There was simply too big a gap between them, so much so that they hardly ever wrote to one another, the only news between them passed on by her mother and father in his letters home before he’d been wounded. Yet in other families, different ages didn’t seem to make a difference. Why was it? she wondered. Was it because of her father, a kind enough man but of the old “when the going gets tough, the tough get going” school? The boys had always been dissuaded from wearing their emotions on their sleeve. Or had it to do with their expectations, the difference of what they each wanted in life so disparate, David in political science before he joined the marines, she in the jet set world of Jay La Roche. Perhaps the lack of communication on David’s part had more to do with his disapproval of Jay La Roche. He had said nothing about her leaving La Roche — whether it was desertion or disapproval, she didn’t know.
As she walked back from the head nurse’s station and into the ward, she felt as if she were suddenly in a goldfish bowl. Everyone clearly knew about her brother missing — how did news travel so fast? — expecting the gung ho “I can take it” exterior. It was a strain accepting the condolences. She felt smothered by everyone’s sympathy, wishing they would just go away. She wanted to be alone, away from the island, a chance simply to sit, think for herself.
She dialed the pilots’ quarters.
“Lieutenant Alen please?”
She heard whistling at the other end of the line and ribald laughter. She almost hung up, but he was on the line. His voice reminded her a little of Frank Shirer. From the noises she could hear in the background, he was taking a ribbing about talking to her, but he was polite, clearly refusing to be suborned by the grunts of the macho pack in the background.
She paused for a few seconds. “I don’t know your first name,” she said with some amazement.
“That’s all right. It’s Rick.”
“When are you scheduled to go to Adak?”
“In the morning. Oh five hundred.”
“Kind of early.”
“There’ll be a break in the weather then — or so they say.”
“Okay, but if I come along, I’ll have to be back for the dog watch. You think that’ll be a problem?”
“No problem at all. Ah — Lana?”
It was the first time he’d called her by her first name.
“Yes?”
“Sorry about your brother.”
“Thanks.”
When he got off the phone, Alen stiffened his right arm from the elbow up, slapping his left hand hard down on the bicep, driving the rigid forearm into the air. “In like flint!”
There was a chorus of encouragement: “Way to go!” and someone yelling, “Rick the dick!”
He grinned boyishly, and immediately felt ashamed.
“Better strap her down, Rick. Could be a rough ride.”
Everyone wanted to be copilot, but the assignments hadn’t changed — nor had the forecast for a break in the cloud cover around five in the morning.
“Gobble, gobble!” shouted a navigator.
That night Alen slept fitfully, but he didn’t worry. Sometimes when he was bone-weary, against all common sense, he got so hard, it felt like steel. The only thing that worried him was that if she touched him, he mightn’t be able to wait. The closer it got to the 0400 preflight call, the more relaxed and sleepy he became. When he did doze off, he was in a dream — the plane on automatic pilot, the commanding officer of Adak now bawling Alen out for his violation of orders — bringing a Wave on a “goddamned joyride” in the middle of a combat zone. And Alen with no pants on, telling the CO that Lana was merely fulfilling the requirements of her posting — putting in at least thirty hours as required by Waves for the purposes of ATF— air time familiarization — which the pilots called “airtime fucking. “ Alen also pointed out Washington’s rationale — that in the event of the Aleutians being attacked, the Waves would have to help the pilots ferry back the most seriously wounded to either Dutch Harbor or beyond to Anchorage in Alaska, and yet the only flight time most of them had was on the civilian flight from the lower forty- eight states.
At 0407 on the morning of October 17, Alen was feeling so thick from lack of sleep, it took three cups of coffee to pump him awake. The weather report was holding, though in the “caldron of storms,” as the volcanic Aleutians were called, the projected rise in barometric pressure could very quickly disappear. When he got to the fogbound airstrip, the latest weather posting, only an hour old, still called for clearing. But Lana was nowhere in sight.
“Come on,” said the copilot, “let’s go.”
Alen looked plain miserable as the AC-130 E Hercules’ four turboprops sputtered to life, throwing off curls of exhaust into the pea-soup morning. He glanced anxiously at his watch. The most he could delay on preflight recheck was ten minutes. And the weather was getting worse.
“Goddamnit!” said Alen, looking past the copilot at the fog-shrouded runway. “C’mon, c’mon! What the hell’s she doing?”
“Checking her diaphragm!” shouted the copilot.
