She crawled up on the couch and nestled in next to me, again. “Nathan, as far as I know, I only have one real fear—a small and probably female fear of growing old. I won’t feel so completely cheated, if I fail to come back.”
“I don’t want to hear that kind of talk.”
“Nathan…”
“It’s fatalistic bullshit.” I held the little flag out to her.
“I don’t want it. Take it with you.”
She took and refolded it, placed it back in her pocket and was clearly hurt. Which was fine with me.
“What’s got you thinking like this?” I asked her.
“Nothing.” She had her arms folded now, and was still next to me, but not nestled, her back to the sofa. “I don’t really have misgivings…except maybe for Fred.”
“Fred?”
“Fred Noonan.”
“Oh, yeah. He’s your navigator?”
“And co-pilot if necessary, though I’ll do all or most of the flying myself.”
“What about that other guy—Manning?”
“He dropped out after Honolulu. Scheduling conflict.”
I bet that conflict arose about the time the Electra went skidding on its belly trailing sparks and fuel down the runway at Luke Field.
“So what’s the story with Noonan?”
“Paul recommended him. He’s experienced, easy-going…I like him well enough.”
“So why do I still sense misgivings?”
Her response was unconvincingly chipper. “He has a background in ocean navigation, and a great reputation for putting that to use in air navigation.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“He’s really a remarkable man…a merchant marine as a kid, joined the British Royal Navy during the war; one of the first flying-boat pilots for Pan Am, navigator on the
I said, “Answer my question.”
“What was your question?”
“Don’t play dumb.”
The blue-gray eyes went hooded. “…He’s a drinker.”
“Ah.” Teetotaling Amy of the cups of cocoa, the little girl who’d been slapped by her drunken father, did not suffer drunken fools gladly. “Has it been a problem?”
Her smirk was humorless. “I think he got drunk the night before the Honolulu takeoff.”
Actually, it had been an attempted takeoff, but I thought not correcting her was the gentlemanly thing to do.
“Was he in some way responsible for the crackup?”
“No. No. Not at all. And he seemed quite clear-eyed and sober and lucid, that morning.”
“That’s all you can ask.”
“He and his wife…he got married recently, to a lovely girl, Mary’s her name…. Funny, ’cause that’s what he calls me, too. It’s my middle name…Mary. Anyway, driving back from their honeymoon, in Arizona someplace, they had this head-on collision with another auto.”
“Good God.”
“He wasn’t hurt, but his wife suffered some minor injuries, though not, thank goodness, the woman driving the other car…or her toddler. Fred was cited for driving in the wrong lane.”
“Was he drunk?”
She wouldn’t look at me. “Well, drinking, anyway.”
So I tried a conciliatory tone: “He just got married. Maybe he was celebrating.”
Now she looked at me. “Or maybe he was still upset about the Honolulu crackup. I know that upset him.”
“Why, if it wasn’t his fault?”
“Pan Am fired him for drinking. He apparently views this round-the-world flight as a last chance to vindicate himself…and make himself employable again. He says he has the backing to open a navigation school, if we pull off this flight.”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “Amy, can’t you find anybody else? Or is it that, you can’t bring yourself to fire somebody who needs this job so bad?”
“He’s really very good. Paul thinks the world of him.”
