Born to Fly Read online

  Dad set Alvin down and hugged Margaret. Mom just stared like a statue. I was standing apart from the family. I didn’t understand why everyone was just letting this happen. No one else seemed to care. Why didn’t Mom make Dad stay?

  “Stop pouting, Bird,” Mom scolded me. She’d get mad whenever Dad tried to comfort me. “Don’t encourage her,” she said.

  “Come on, Bird,” Dad cooed, like a big father pigeon before he goes off to find worms.

  But I kept a stiff upper lip. I’d made up my mind an hour before, I wasn’t gonna let him see me cry.

  “I was saving this for your next birthday.” Dad pulled out a dog-eared pilot’s manual. “I won it from a guy in boot camp.”

  My eyes went wide as I read the worn cover: The Curtiss P-40 Warhawk. “That’s the same one the Flying Tigers used!”

  “The very same.” Dad huddled down close to me. “And you know what it says in there?”

  I shook my head.

  “Anyone who memorizes this book can fly a Warhawk. Anyone.”

  I took it and wrapped my arms around his neck, crying into the snowflakes on his shoulder.

  “But who’s going to believe me now?” I asked.

  He lifted my chin with his finger. “The only one who needs to. You.”

  The pushy conductor whistled a second time and the train wheels started to screech and turn. Maybe if I held tight enough, Dad would miss his train? But Dad pulled me off, turned to Mom, and said, “I’ll write to let you know when I get leave.”

  He hugged Mom real tight. Then he pulled his dog tags from inside his shirt and showed her his wedding ring safely looped onto the chain.

  “You know I love you,” she told him.

  “I was counting on it,” he said in her ear.

  Then they kissed, the way I had never seen them kiss before—a really long, sad goodbye.

  Without my realizing it, my two mittened hands found their way into Margaret’s and Alvin’s, and we all held tight. A cloud of steam swirled around, concealing our mother and father. We stood there for what seemed like forever.

  When the steam cleared, Dad and the train were gone.

  As I lay in my bed throwing bits of bubble gum at a newspaper cartoon on my wall of that stupid Jap who started the war, Emperor Hirohito, all I could think about was how the two months Dad had been gone felt like two years.

  Mom knocked on our bedroom door. When she popped her head in a few seconds later, I almost pegged her with a wad of gum.

  “Come on, you two,” she said. “Can’t miss the first day of spring.”

  Margaret ignored her and rolled over onto the curlers she had in her hair. She groaned, half asleep.

  I hated having to share a room with her. Sometimes, when Alvin had a nightmare, I got to sleep in his room (to keep the monsters out).

  I kept up my Hirohito target practice, even getting one shot right between the eyes, until something froze me dead in my tracks. It was a beautiful noise, a distant hum that was somehow strangely familiar, like a billion bumblebees swarming home to the hive. I flew out of bed and peeled the blackout shade from the window. Ever since the war started we’d had to keep our windows covered all night in case enemy planes came across the Atlantic looking for something to bomb.

  “Margaret, look!”

  She scrambled to the window. “What? What is it?”

  I pointed to the distant sky. “Airplanes.” Approaching from the airfield, five planes flew low in formation. “A whole squadron,” I told her.

  Margaret sighed, unimpressed, then marched out of the room. “Mother. When am I getting my own room?”

  I ignored her. She didn’t know what she was missing.

  Our house was a few miles from town and half a dozen acres from anyone or anything. It was a drafty yellow farmhouse that creaked like an old rocking chair whenever the wind blew. I think the reason Dad liked it was that it was the only house near Mr. Watson’s airfield. After Dad realized he and Mom couldn’t make anything grow (except some weird-shaped pumpkins in the garden), he sold part of our field to the Army. I think he had it in his mind all along to use our barn to fix up airplanes.

  When I finally dragged myself downstairs to the kitchen, Alvin was gulping down the last of his milk. He and I watched as Mom struggled with our temperamental furnace “grate.”

  “Daddy just kicks it,” Alvin told her.

  I shushed him. I tried not to bring up Dad too much around Mom, ever since I heard her crying in her room one night after Dad left.

  Mom got a sad look on her face and even little Alvin realized he had said the wrong thing. Mom got up and she let her frustration out with a good swift kick. And what do you know, the old grate actually coughed up some heat.

  “That’s showing it who’s boss,” Alvin said. This made Mom and me share a laugh, which didn’t happen much. It was too bad, because she was really pretty when she laughed. I wished she did it more often.

  “Those stupid airplanes woke me up this morning,” Margaret whined as she cleaned up after breakfast.

  “Father Krauss said they’re turning the old airstrip into some kind of military flight school,” Mom told us.

  Suddenly Margaret’s eyes lit up. “Airmen? Here in Geneseo?”

  It figured. She was more interested in the pilots than in the planes.

  I slid off my chair and grabbed my books, all the while tugging at my itchy new outfit. Mom had insisted I wear this new dress she made. You could tell by the way the buttons didn’t exactly line up with the holes that Mom wasn’t the greatest seamstress.

  “I told you it would fit,” she said.

  Fit? Couldn’t she see that the sleeves were two different lengths? “You’re not really gonna make me wear it?”

  “You can’t expect to make friends if you don’t try to fit in.”

  “But I look like Minnie Lashley,” I said.

  “Minnie’s a fine young lady,” Mom said.

  “Maybe. But she throws like a girl,” I told her with disgust. See, everybody thinks girls can’t throw, which isn’t true, because I’m a girl and I threw better than any of the boys except Tommy Rogers. But thanks to girls like Minnie, you never want people to say you throw like a girl, take my word for it.

  “That’s enough, Bird. You’ll wear it and like it. Now I want you to take these to the Widow Gorman.” She handed me a tin of cookies. I sniffed them hungrily. I couldn’t remember the last time Mom had made cookies for me.

  “But I thought you couldn’t stand her.”

  Mom seemed hurt by what I said. Like I’d made fun of her hairstyle or told somebody how old she was. Maybe she’d forgotten how much of a busybody the Widow Gorman was, always gossiping about other people’s business and saying stuff she knew wasn’t true? Like when she told her bridge club that Mom had trained possums to pee all over her vegetable garden just so the widow’s prize tomatoes wouldn’t grow big enough to win at the county fair anymore.

  “It’s different now with the war,” Mom said as she looked out the window. “She’s lost her son.”

  “Is that why she’s got a gold star in her window?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she answered softly.

  I took the tin from Mom and stepped up on one of our kitchen chairs. I closed my eyes and kissed the blue cloth star hanging in our window. Blue meant that Dad was gonna be okay. “For luck,” I said.

  Then Mom got all sniffly and pushed me out the door to school. “Get going. And none of your shortcuts or you’ll be late.” Mom never let us see her cry.

  I dropped off the tin of cookies at the Widow Gorman’s. Compared to our house, hers was awfully quiet. When I got there she was just sitting on the front porch swing in the same black dress she’d been wearing for two months. Her eyes didn’t even move. They just stared down at this portrait she clutched of her son, Charlie, in his white Navy uniform.

  “These are from my mom,” I told her.

  She didn’t say anything back, so I set the tin down on a nearby cha
ir. I stared up at the gold star in her window. It wasn’t as pretty as you’d think. Normally, you’d figure that gold is better than blue—but it wasn’t to anyone who knew what a gold star meant. I bet the Widow Gorman would have given everything in the world to trade that gold star for a blue one, if she could. When I looked down, I noticed something wrong with her shoelace.

  “Hey, your shoe’s untied.” I bent down and carefully tied it for her. A double knot, the way my dad had taught me. “You don’t want to trip and fall, do you?” I wasn’t sure, but I thought she gave me a hint of a smile. I smiled back just in case.

  The land Dad sold to the Army started a couple acres south of our house, right next to the Widow Gorman’s cornfield, and stretched across the ravine, from Moorewood Hill all the way to Johnson’s mill. I was shortcutting across Mrs. Gorman’s back field, reading my P-40 pilot’s manual, when I spotted Eleanor sticking her head through the boards of a new fence.

  “Hiya, Eleanor.”

  She didn’t say anything, just kept grazing like a big old dairy cow ought to. I slipped through the fence and cut across the old grass airfield, past some sign that read NO TRESPASSING—U.S. ARMY AIR CORPS TRAINING AREA.

  The sound of my new dress swishing as I walked made me sort of itch. As I got near the center of the field, my feet crossed the rim of a big white circle painted in the grass. Suddenly I heard a far-off buzzing sound approaching from behind me. It grew to a roar. As I recognized the sound, I spun around in disbelief. There, diving down at me, was the greatest fighter plane ever, a P-40 Warhawk!

  “Hey!” I started jumping up and down, waving my arms.

  The plane tipped its wings, like maybe the pilot was fighting to see past the oil blowing on his windshield (I had read in the manual that the plane was known for leaking oil on the cockpit). Then the P-40 dipped its nose and started bearing down like a dive-bomber. I couldn’t figure out what the pilot was doing, since the runway started way at the other end of the field. Suddenly I looked at the grass under my feet, and realized: I was standing in the center of a giant bull’s-eye! I was the target! I waved my arms more frantically and started to run.

  The last thing I saw before the Warhawk flew over was a large white bomb plummeting toward me. Running at full speed, I hit the dirt facedown as the payload exploded all around me.

  I woke up in a cloud of white. Was I dead? I lifted my head to see my new dress covered with a fine white powder. Somehow I had survived the blast.

  The P-40 pulled out and disappeared into the clouds. I dusted myself off and coughed up some of the white dust. I tasted it. It was flour. Then I remembered that the manual mentioned that they used flour bombs to train the dive-bombers. I looked over at the bull’s-eye. Not bad, but this pilot was off by about ten feet.

  Like they did every morning before the bell rang, all the kids from town were screaming and carrying on as if these were the last ten minutes of freedom they were ever gonna get. Laughing at dirty jokes they didn’t understand, using ponytails for the only thing they’re good for (pulling), and checking to see whose mom made the worst lunch. This was my world in the yard outside Wilford Geneseo Grammar School. It was a small, four-room, redbrick building, where nine months of the year they bored us to death with decimals, times tables, and made-up spelling rules (that weren’t really rules because there was always some exception). It was probably the pressure of all those silly rules that drove kids to bet their allowance that Bill Shabbing wouldn’t eat the dead sea slug we found under the teeter-totter two days ago. So in the middle of all the chasing, ponytail pulling, and sea slug eating, even though I was caked with flour and dirt, no one noticed me sneaking in the utility door.

  I turned down the hall and spotted Farley Peck and his green-toothed toady Raymond at the drinking fountain, playing keep-away with little Timmy Spencer’s lunch bag. Farley’d had to do the second grade over again, so he was older and bigger than all us other fifth graders. He was even bigger than most of the sixth graders. His hair was always dirty and hanging in his eyes, like he was two months overdue for a haircut. And he stuttered sometimes when he talked, which made some kids laugh (you couldn’t help it, but that gave Farley plenty of excuses to start fights). He’d pick fights with anyone. Even girls. Especially ones who wanted to be fighter pilots.

  Unfortunately, Farley and Raymond were standing between me and the girls’ room. When I’d had Wendy it was a little safer. At least there were two of us. Now it was just me.

  Raymond held Timmy while Farley dumped out the kid’s lunch bag and found a Hershey bar.

  “Chocolate?” Farley said.

  “Number one on the ration list,” said Raymond. Because of the war, everything was running out: metal, rubber, meat, eggs. So everything had to be rationed. The government passed out coupons you had to use when you wanted to buy something that was being rationed.

  “What if the Japs got hold of this?” Farley asked him. “We’ll have to c-c-confus … confusk …”

  “Confiscate it?” Timmy piped up helpfully.

  “Steal it,” Farley barked back as he took a big bite out of the chocolate bar.

  Then Raymond discovered a folded letter in Timmy’s pocket. “What’s this? A love letter?”

  Timmy lunged to retrieve it. “Give me that!”

  “Why should I?” Raymond said.

  “It’s from my father,” Timmy cried.

  Suddenly Farley snatched the letter away from Raymond. I figured now was the time to make my move to try and sneak past.

  “What gives?” Raymond said.

  Farley threw the letter back to Timmy.

  “You turning sappy?” Raymond said, without thinking (as usual).

  That wasn’t the kind of thing you said to Farley. Raymond quickly tried to distract him—and that was when he noticed me. “Hey, Farley. Look what the dog dragged in.”

  “It’s ‘cat,’” I said. “Look what the cat dragged in.” I should have kept my mouth shut but I couldn’t help correcting such dim-witted tormentors. Even bullies should have standards.

  Farley jumped at the opportunity and cut me off. “Is that you under there, Birdbrain? In a d-d-dress?”

  I knew this was gonna happen the moment I put the thing on.

  “Maybe she’s getting married?” Raymond said.

  I tried to pass, but Farley blocked my way with his grimy arm.

  “Just let me by, Farley,” I said.

  “Be my guest,” he said, stepping aside.

  But as I passed, Farley swiped my P-40 manual right out of my hand.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Give me that!” I demanded.

  But Farley was a good head taller than me and easily kept it out of my reach.

  “You want it? Go get it.” And with that, he kicked a door open and tossed the book deep into the boys’ bathroom.

  I hesitated while I weighed my options.

  “What’s the matter?” Farley said. “I thought you wanted to be a boy.”

  I shoved him out of my way and made a quick rush to retrieve the book. But as soon as I was inside, I heard the squeak of a chair as the two punks quickly jammed the door from the outside.

  BRRRING, the morning bell rang. I slammed my shoulder against the door, fighting to free the chair, but Farley and Raymond held it fast. So I let loose with fists and feet, pounding and kicking the door.

  “Farley! You jerk! Open up!”

  Suddenly, a toilet in one of the stalls flushed. I realized I wasn’t alone in the boys’ bathroom. I pounded more frantically.

  “Raymond!” Slowly, the stall door creaked open … and I was horrified to find myself face to face with a real live Jap—in a cowboy hat!

  “Ahhh!” I screamed.

  Incredibly, he screamed right back at me, “Ahhh!”

  And before I realized it, I had knocked the chair free and I was racing down the hall at the speed of sound.

  I skidded into my classroom, past my teacher, Mrs. Simmons, whose flabby
arms were busy flapping as she wrote on the blackboard.

  “Miss McGill, what did we say about running?”

  Between gasps I spit out, “Mrs. Simmons! There’s a big … with a knife and …”

  “Good heavens, Bird, what happened to your dress?”

  I looked down at my flour-covered frock. “One of our fighter planes bombed me by accident.”

  She gave me that look, like when I told everyone about the Genny “Bird. You have to stop these ridiculous stories.” Mrs. Simmons ushered me to my desk.

  “But there’s one of them, in the bathroom,” I protested.

  “One of whom?”

  “The enemy!”

  “Of course there is,” Mrs. Simmons said blandly. “And that’s why we wash our hands.”

  I plopped down in my seat as the last of my classmates filed in. There was a knock on the door and Principal Hartwig called Mrs. Simmons into the hall.

  Farley sneered at me, figuring I had tattled on him. “T-t-traitor.”

  “Takes one to know one,” I snarled back.

  Farley took out his grammar book and began to stuff it down the back of his pants, in case he was gonna get paddled again. “I’ll get you for this, Bird,” he said.

  Mrs. Simmons stepped back into the room. “Class, I want your attention.”

  She seemed nervous. Everyone started to quiet down. Maybe they’d found the Jap?

  “We have a new classmate. His name is Ken-ji Fujita.”

  Everybody started muttering: “What?” “Who?” “What kind of name is that?”

  Then Kenji Fujita stepped in—and all the muttering stopped dead.

  I jumped to my feet and screamed. “That’s him!”

  Kenji Fujita was the big Jap I ran into in the bathroom. Except he wasn’t very big (probably two or three inches shorter than me), and he didn’t have a knife, and to tell you the truth he looked kind of startled by my outburst. Then Mr. Fujita, a lobster trapper who fished with Father Krauss and who was, up until then, the only Jap in all of Geneseo, stepped into the room with Principal Hartwig. Mr. Fujita said something in Japanese that seemed to calm Kenji.