Blue Skies Tomorrow Page 21

  Helen shivered and set aside her Bible. Maybe she’d go straight to prayer. She prayed for Ray among the stars and for Jay-Jay among the wolves. She prayed for Carver and the other men in prison, and for Esther, as alone as any widow.

  Restlessness prickled her legs and arms. She stuffed her feet into her slippers and pulled on her bathrobe and coat.

  Helen padded downstairs and onto the front porch. Fog blurred the houses across C Street, the thick “tule” fog that clung to the ground in central California and the Delta each winter. Somewhere behind the fog, the sun was rising.

  Helen bounced her legs against the damp chill penetrating her pajama pants. She sat in the wicker rocker and set it in motion to warm up, hunching over her crossed arms. Half an hour remained before she had to get dressed and get Jay-Jay up.

  The stillness of dawn didn’t hold its usual peace.

  She wanted out. But how? She had a year to pay off her debt, a year before she could free her salary for rent and necessities to set up house. Papa would never help her. He’d made that abundantly clear. And where else could she stay? Betty was expecting another baby, and her house would be jam-packed come May. All her friends had filled their extra rooms with boarders. She was stuck.

  Helen rocked harder.

  Motion on the lawn caught her eye. The Scalas’ orange tabby strutted along, an affectionate cat. Helen clucked her tongue to get his attention, the sound amplified in the fog.

  The cat stopped and turned to Helen—with a bird in his mouth.

  Ray had written about a feline gunner who failed to bring down his aerial prey. The Scalas’ cat had succeeded.

  “ ‘Thence will I bring thee down.’ ” Helen tugged her coat against a shuddering chill.

  28

  Over Germany

  Ray let go.

  Sky and plane and clouds tumbled around him. In panic, he groped for the security of his plane.

  No. It was a false security. He forced his mind to remember his training. He had to clear Ascalon’s falling debris.

  When clouds appeared in his vision, Ray flung out his arms and legs spread-eagle. His body rocked on the air currents, but now his plane fell faster than he did. Without any reference point, the only evidence of his fall was the frigid air howling past.

  Count to ten. He was supposed to count to ten. How could he remember his numbers with nothing but clouds between him and solid ground?

  Ten seconds must have passed. He gripped the ripcord on his left shoulder harness and squeezed it tight in his gloved fingers. If the parachute didn’t open, he’d be with Jesus in less than two minutes.

  A firm tug. The chute whooshed out, snapped open, yanked him hard around the groin and chest. He coughed from the impact. But the wind’s whistle ceased.

  Ray’s vision darkened. How long had he been off oxygen? He felt around his left thigh pocket, found the green wooden ball on the release cable of the bailout bottle, and pulled it.

  He drew deep drafts until his vision lightened. His breath came hard and his heart whammed in his chest, but what did he expect? He hovered four miles high with only a circle of white silk to save him.

  Ascalon tumbled in flames into the cloud bank, surrounded by chunks of debris. Two parachutes billowed ahead and beneath him. Two? Probably Casey and Rogers from the nose. But only two? No others?

  “Oh Lord.” For the first time in his life, words for prayer escaped him. The other men never made it out, never had a chance.

  Ray descended into the clouds and took one last glance above, where the silver trail of B-17s left him behind. They’d report the fall of Ascalon and the sighting of three chutes.

  Only three. Jack would assume he was dead. Dad and Mom would receive a telegram that he was missing in action, but Jack would send a letter with details. Everyone would think he was dead until his name appeared on the prisoner of war list, which often took months.

  “Oh no. Helen.” She’d mourn him, and worse, she’d blame herself. In her last letter, she wrote that she’d driven Jim into danger and she’d done the same to Ray. But she hadn’t. He’d mailed his reply, hadn’t he?

  Her plea tugged at him. “Please take care, Ray.”

  His heart felt as heavy as the cloud around him. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”

  When he broke out of the clouds, he floated over a picturesque landscape of snowy fields, gentle hills, patches of woods, and small towns centered around churches. But this was not the way he wanted to see Germany. Instead of cruising the Rhine, hiking the Alps, and touring Heidelberg and Neuschwanstein castles, he’d sleep in a Stalag Luft for the duration of the war.

  Life in a prison camp. Cold and hunger, captivity and deprivation. He’d have to make the best of it. At least he’d have plenty of men to minister to.

  Soon he made out people and vehicles and farm animals. He unfastened one side of his oxygen mask, and it flapped to the side.

  People rushed around below. One of the parachutes collapsed as Ray’s crewman landed. A German ran up to him, took something from him, then backed up and pointed. A retort, and the airman crumpled.

  Ray gasped. They shot him! Shot him with his own pistol.

  The other parachute collapsed. A mob surrounded the officer with flailing fists and sticks. They were beating him to death.

  Ray’s breath came faster, harder. He had to get away. He tugged his parachute cords and shifted his course hard to the left.

  “Lord, lead me. Lead me to someone who’ll turn me in.”

  A snow-blanketed field, a barn, a thick wood to his left, and no people in sight. Maybe he could hide in the woods until nightfall, make his way to town, to a church, where he wouldn’t be lynched.

  Ray raised bent legs and gripped the straps overhead. The ground rushed to him. The jolt shuddered through his body. He fell flat on his face in the snow, knocking out his breath.

  For a horrific moment, he couldn’t breathe. With great effort, he forced open his ribs like a bellows and sucked in air.

  He pushed himself up onto wobbly legs, only to stumble as a breeze caught his billowing parachute. Ray pulled the cords to draw it in.

  “Hände hoch!”

  Ray obeyed and thrust his hands high. “I surrender. Ich ergebe mich.”

  An old man in a patched, padded jacket ran to him and brandished a pitchfork. “Terrorflieger! Terrorflieger!”

  Terror flyer? “Nein. Ich ergebe mich. Ich ergebe mich.”

  The man jabbed his pitchfork toward Ray’s stomach. “Terrorflieger.” He spat at Ray, then launched a furious diatribe in rapid speech and unfamiliar dialect. Something about bombs and a house and a daughter.

  Compassion and regret flooded through Ray. He never wanted to hurt civilians. He tried his best to avoid it, but here was evidence of what one errant bomb could do.

  Ray settled his softest gaze on the poor man. “Es tut mir leid. Ich meine es nicht böse mit Ihnen.” He tried to assure him he was sorry and didn’t mean for anything evil to come to him.

  “Nicht böse?” The man shook the pitchfork. “Sie sind böse.”

  Evil. The man thought he was evil.

  “Ach!” An elderly lady stood at the entrance to the barn with a brown scarf around her hair and hands over her mouth.

  The couple had a spirited discussion, and Ray glanced around—still no one else.

  The man motioned Ray toward the barn. “Bring eine Leiter,” he called to his wife.

  A ladder?

  She trotted inside. “Und ein Seil?”

  A rope?

  “Nein, er hat seinen Fallschirm.”

  He had his Fallschirm? Fallschirm? Fallen meant to fall, but Schirm? Ray didn’t know that word. Regenschirm was an umbrella, however.

  Ray’s veins froze. His parachute. They planned to hang him with his own parachute.

  Voices sounded ahead and a car’s motor, and the man’s face brightened. He’d have help, probably from the mob that had murdered Casey and Rogers.

  Ray spoke the language,
though not fluently, and he had the best intentions, but against rage like this, negotiations would fail.

  He gritted his teeth. Lord, guide me. I’m not afraid to die, but I can’t bear for Helen to grieve, to blame herself. Dad and Mom, Jack and Walt—I want to live for their sakes.

  Resolution hardened his muscles.

  The farmer glared at Ray and leveled his pitchfork at him.

  Ray jerked his head to the left as if he’d heard something.

  The man snapped his attention—and his pitchfork—in the same direction.

  With his left hand, Ray grabbed the pitchfork, and he swung with his right, a hook punch to the man’s ear.

  The man splayed to the ground, and Ray apologized. “Es tut mir leid.”

  He unhooked his parachute harness and shrugged it off. It’d slow him down.

  The voices grew louder, and Ray sprinted for the woods. What good would it do? How far could he go? Could he actually hide?

  Ray burst into the woods, dodged trees, leaped over logs, barged through snow-covered underbrush. Shouts rang out back on the farm. They must have found the poor old man, and they’d come after Ray with a vengeance.

  Where could he hide? How? He climbed over a recently fallen tree, a large evergreen with long draping needles.

  He crawled next to the trunk, wormed under the boughs, tunneled as deep into the snow as he could, and arranged long branches over his body.

  Snow prickled his cheek and pine-scented needles tickled his nose, but he lay still and tried to calm his heaving chest. Lord, cover me, shield me, hide me.

  The shouts drew nearer. They’d seen where he went, of course.

  “Warten Sie hier.” Not the farmer, but a man with an authoritative voice, and the crowd listened to his command to wait where they were.

  One set of footsteps in the crackling underbrush, straight toward Ray. Footprints. He’d left footprints in the snow.

  Ray shrank low, but it was a lost cause. Lord, let him be a good man.

  “Kommen Sie hier,” the man said.

  Ray didn’t come as commanded. Perhaps he could stay hidden. The man wouldn’t order him to come if he knew where he was.

  “Sie sprechen Deutsch, nicht wahr? Das ist gut.”

  Why was it good that Ray spoke German?

  Footfalls came closer. The branches over Ray rustled. The man kicked him hard in the stomach. “Stehen Sie auf.”

  Ray curled up in pain but then struggled to his feet and raised his hands. “Ich ergebe mich.”

  The man pointed a pistol at him. He wore a Nazi greatcoat, some local official in his fifties with dark, calculating eyes.

  Ray tried to look brave, although he’d never looked down the barrel of a gun before. Surely this man would be bound by law to treat him as a prisoner of war. “Ich ergebe mich.”

  “Sie haben mit dem Bauer gekämpft.”

  Ray sighed. Yes, he fought with the farmer—because the farmer wanted to kill him. “Er will mich kühlen.”

  The Nazi’s gaze took him in head to toe. “Sie sprechen mit Akzent, aber Sie sind klug und stark. Gut.”

  Why did it matter that Ray had an accent and was smart and strong? Ray didn’t understand. “Ich verstehe nicht.”

  A twitch of a smile. “Have you a pistol?” he asked in German.

  “Nein.”

  The official gave him a skeptical look. With his gun trained on Ray’s head, he unbuckled Ray’s life preserver. Then he unzipped Ray’s flight jacket and patted down his chest, where many airmen wore a shoulder holster. “No pistol.”

  Under pressure, Ray struggled with German word order. “Always I tell the truth.”

  “That could be dangerous.” The Nazi jerked his pistol to the side.

  With hands overhead, Ray retraced his steps out of the woods.

  When he emerged, a dozen people cheered with raised fists. Conversation flew that Ray couldn’t pick up, but the Nazi settled them down with a raised hand and a promise to deal with Ray as he’d dealt with the others.

  The renewed cheering made Ray’s gut twist. They wanted him dead. They wouldn’t cheer if they thought the official would turn him in safely to the Stalag Luft.

  The farmer’s wife held Ray’s balled-up parachute. “Bitte, darf ich ihn haben? Er ist aus Seide.”

  Yes, it was silk. Why shouldn’t this poor woman have it? Ray didn’t need it. “Wollen Sie ihn? Ich brauche ihn nicht.”

  The woman’s eyes rounded.

  “Nein.” The Nazi took it in his free arm. “Er braucht ihn für sein Leichentuch.”

  His shroud. Ray needed it for a shroud.

  His heart sank deep into his belly. The pistol jammed his spine, and Ray lifted his hands—they must have sunk as well.

  The Nazi marched him to the road.

  Soon, not one man from Ascalon’s crew would be alive. Ray could bolt, take a bullet in the back, and die a quick death. Or he could do as told and die a torturous Gestapo death.

  No one back home would know which choice he’d made.

  Ray gazed up to solid gray clouds. “I’ll know, Lord,” he whispered, his jaw tight. He hadn’t come this far to make a cowardly decision at the end.

  Antioch

  A thump on the porch, and Helen jumped.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Carlisle. Didn’t mean to scare you.” Down at the curb, Donald Ferguson straddled his bike with a canvas bag slung over his chest.

  The Ledger. Helen picked it up and waved to the paperboy, who was too far away to see how her smile shook. “Good throw, Donald.”

  “I wanna play baseball for Antioch High. My dad played for Riverview.”

  Riverview High, where Ray Novak and Bill Ferguson played ball together, before Ray went to college and Bill somehow ended up marrying Ray’s girlfriend.

  Helen groaned at how she’d added to Ray’s list of failed romances.

  She stood and opened the Ledger. The headline read “Fall of Manila Expected Soon.”

  Back in the house, she laid the newspaper on Mr. Carlisle’s armchair and headed upstairs to dress for work. With the convicted men imprisoned at Terminal Island in San Pedro in southern California, and with Carver Jones’s appeal filed, Victor’s job had trickled to busywork. The complaints from black sailors had decreased since the Navy integrated some services and vessels in October, and encouraged promotions on the same basis as for whites.

  After she changed into her new wine-colored suit, she went to wake Jay-Jay, but his bed was empty. Helen required him to dress before breakfast, but he loved to sneak down and eat in his pajamas. If his grandmother didn’t cater to him, Helen might make progress.

  She sighed and trotted downstairs.

  “For the last time, where’s my paper?” Mr. Carlisle’s voice pierced the kitchen door from the inside.

  “I—I don’t know,” Mrs. Carlisle said with a sob. “It wasn’t there when I went out.”

  “Stupid sloth of a woman.” A slap. “Lazing in bed while someone steals my paper.”

  She whimpered. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m lazy. It won’t happen again.”

  Helen stood frozen in the hallway. Everything warned her to flee, but she alone knew the truth and could stand up for the poor woman. “Lord, give me courage.”

  She pushed open the door. Mrs. Carlisle cowered by the sink, and her husband loomed over with her hair in his fist.

  Helen raised her chin. “Your paper is on your armchair.”

  Mr. Carlisle released his wife and sauntered over to Helen with eyes of blue-hot flame.

  Her soul recoiled at the familiar sight, but she stood tall. “I got up early. I happened to be outside when the paper came, so I brought it in. It’s not her fault.”

  The slap came from nowhere and spun her head with stinging ferocity.

  She cried out, clapped her hand over her cheek, and averted her face. That was best. That was always best.

  “No one—no one talks to me that way. My paper belongs on the kitchen table at my place. No one reads it before
me.”

  “Yes, sir.” Helen hunkered down, turned inside, and shrank. She caused this mess. She ruined everything. She deserved the punishment.

  The door slammed. Helen looked up through her hair, and truth wrestled its way to the surface—truth revealed through opening her memory bin and through listening to Ray’s counsel and the Word of God. She shoved back her hair and the lie. She’d done nothing wrong and didn’t deserve to be slapped. No one did.

  She turned to her mother-in-law. “Are you all right?”

  Mrs. Carlisle ran water over the frying pan. “Of course. I got what I deserved.”

  “No.” Helen laid a hand on her thin shoulder, the twitching muscles. “Neither one of us deserved it. I made an innocent mistake, and you had nothing to do with it. And it’s never right for a man to hit a woman, especially the woman he claims to love.”

  Mrs. Carlisle spun to face her. “You think you’re so high-and-mighty, don’t you? The doctor’s daughter with her blasphemous thoughts. It’s a husband’s God-given duty to keep his wife in line. I’m glad we taught Jimmy right. I’m glad he hit you.”

  Helen’s eyes stung as she stared into the contorted face. Over twenty-five years of a warped marriage had poisoned her mind. Would Helen have ended up like that if Jim had lived?

  A fork clanked on a plate.

  Helen whirled around. At the kitchen table, Jay-Jay hunched in his chair with wide eyes.

  “Oh, baby.” He’d seen the whole thing. She dashed to him and took him by the shoulders. How could Mr. Carlisle do such a thing in front of a boy not yet three years old?

  “Mama?” He placed a hand on Helen’s cheek, making her wince in pain. “Pease don’t make Gampa an-gee.”

  Her vision swam at his tenderness. She clutched him in her arms. She needed to get him out before this house sucked away his compassion.

  It was time to give up her heart’s work. She had to give up the work she loved most to save the person she loved most. Why did life force such cruel choices?

  29