The five-mile journey to the Everglades Club was a beautiful drive through West Palm Beach. As they crossed the channel bridge, Bobby stared out the open-topped jeep at the big, round reflection of the moon in the water below. “What’s the moon got to do with it, anyway?” he asked.
“You’ll see,” Jack responded.
The at-home event of the Everglades Club was like nothing even Bobby had ever seen. It was a bigger, louder, classier high school prom, for starters. The clean white walls of the Grand Ballroom glistened with silver-framed photographs of members having fun on the beach, on tennis courts, and on golf courses. Crystal chandeliers cast warm, sparkling light over hundreds of champagne bottles; scores of exotic flower arrangements; and a dozen brass trumpets, trombones, and saxophones. Cigar and cigarette smoke twisted in a sultry dance toward the high arched ceiling. Below, couples young and old bounced back and forth in energetic fox-trots. Everyone was smiling, everyone was happy, and even Bobby had to admit that the women looked delicious.
Their chiffon, silk, and rayon evening gowns were folded into pleated petals that swept the ballroom floor. The girls’ bodies were like the stems of inverted flowers. And what bodies they were! Halter tops formed plunging necklines and revealed bare backs that left little to the imagination. Ribbons, sashes, and belts cinched narrow waists, emphasizing the curve of hip and thigh. Cream, rose, and white cloth contrasted with Palm Beach tans. Blonde, auburn, brunette, and raven hair, carefully rolled back in curling waves, revealed even more sensuous skin on necks and shoulders, the visual feast of flesh broken only by the glitter of choker necklaces and flashing diamond earrings.
Jack had already cornered two of the prettiest specimens, confidently leaning forward with his arm propped against the wall behind them, effectively pinning the girls like beautiful butterflies in a framed display. Their names were Mollie and Ellen—the former, a perky auburn beauty, and the latter, a sultry brunette who reminded Bobby of Karen. The two girls were cousins, twenty and nineteen, respectively, and were down for the weekend from college, chaperoned by what they described as their “wild aunt.” By their own admission, they were having the time of their lives.
Jack was right about the wings. Neither Mollie nor Ellen could keep her eyes off the chrome pins that marked the boys as pilots. Ellen even reached out to run her fingers over Bobby’s silver wings, and he felt a thrill when she withdrew her hand and accidentally brushed her fingers against his neck.
“Why’d you join up?” she asked innocently.
Bobby was tongue-tied. What was happening? Had he had too much champagne? No, that wasn’t it, he suddenly realized with shame. It was because he couldn’t tell her the truth. Telling the truth would mean telling her about Karen. “Just, you know, felt it was my duty and all that.”
“My brother joined the naval reserve,” Mollie bragged.
“He’ll be good, too,” Ellen added. “He was the club sailing champion last summer.”
Jack laughed. “I don’t think the navy uses sailboats anymore.”
Ellen reddened with embarrassment. “I know. I just mean he’s a natural on the water, that’s all.”
“I’m sure he is,” Bobby reassured her.
“He just hopes there’ll still be fighting left for him when he graduates from college,” asserted Mollie. “He figures we’ll whip the Japs inside of six months.”
“Sure,” Jack agreed. “The Japs can’t beat us in a stand-up fight. But the Huns, they’re a different story. We’ll lick ’em eventually, but it’ll take a little longer.”
Bobby picked up on Jack’s braggadocio. “But we’ll be sure to leave a few for your brother.”
“How about you?” Mollie asked Jack with a flirtatious smile. “You joined up to fight the Germans?”
Jack suddenly looked serious, almost brooding. “No. I joined up to fly. Fighting’s just a bonus.”
“What’s so great about flying?” Mollie asked.
“Everything,” Jack insisted. And he left it at that.
A few hours later, Bobby found himself in the back of the jeep, his arms wrapped around Ellen’s lithe body, feeling her stomach spasm as she laughed deliriously. Jack was behind the wheel, Mollie in his lap, and the ocean flowed beneath them all. The jeep cut into the surf like a speedboat, parting the water into two rooster tails of spray that glowed in the moonlight. Jack spun the wheel left, then right, and as the warm water splashed over him, Bobby realized that his friend was intentionally trying to soak the girls.
Jack finally pulled out of the surf onto the sand and put the jeep in neutral. “Maybe we ought to get you out of those wet clothes,” he boldly suggested to the girls.
Mollie slapped him and climbed out of his lap into the passenger seat. Bobby inwardly groaned. Maybe he should have warned Jack about rich girls, after all.
Mollie straightened her wet evening gown indignantly. “I think you should take us home.”
But Bobby had underestimated his new friend. This was all part of Jack’s plan.
“I only thought, you’d want to learn to fly,” Jack said with mock innocence.
Mollie looked at him, uncertain and wary. “What do you mean ‘fly’? I’ll have you know I’m not the kind of girl—”
“I mean really fly, in an airplane. Bobby and I could teach you.” He glanced over the seat at Ellen. “We could teach you both.”
Now it was Bobby’s turn to stare, mouth wide in wonder. How far was Jack planning on taking this farce?
Mollie looked intrigued, but still she was cautious. “Isn’t it hard?”
“No,” Jack assured her, “it’s not hard. I could teach you easy. Heck, I taught myself.”
“I thought the army taught you,” interjected a skeptical Ellen.
“Naw, the Army Air Forces didn’t teach me anything. I knew how to fly before I joined up. Isn’t that right, Bobby?”
“It’s true.” So it was true. Jack had never admitted it until now, and Bobby was fascinated. What was Jack up to?
“Oh yeah?” quizzed Mollie, arms crossing her chest for protection. “Then who taught you?”
“Like I said, I taught myself.”
What followed was a story that Bobby could never verify but Jack insisted was the gospel truth. Jack claimed that he learned to fly when he was fourteen. That was when his father died, leaving him with a biplane, a crop-dusting business, and two younger brothers to feed.
Jack’s mother decided to sell the plane and use the money to move to Chicago. She spent the last of their savings to put a “For Sale” ad in the paper and locked the biplane in the barn. Jack didn’t want to move to the city. He just wanted to fly. He’d loved the wind in his face and the goggles over his eyes and the stomach-wrenching acceleration when his father dived low to the earth before releasing the pesticide. Jack knew what that felt like because he’d always begged his father to take him, and his father seldom refused. Jack had been in the plane so often, and he’d watched his father so closely, that he was absolutely certain he could take the controls himself.
Which was why, on an evening he’d specially chosen for its full moon, Jack crept out of bed, snuck out of the house, and cut the barn’s padlock with a pair of his father’s shears. The World War I–surplus Curtiss Jenny inside weighed thirteen hundred pounds. If Jack taxied it out to the field, the sound of the engine might wake his mother. So he hitched the plane to Bess, the family dairy cow, and forced the unhappy creature to help him move the airplane out.
The improvisation worked until Jack started the engine. The racket of the eight cylinders spooked Bess, and she disappeared into the neighboring woods. Jack decided to ignore her for the moment, turned the biplane into the slight breeze, and gunned the throttle. As he took off, he cleared the woods on the edge of the fallow field and caught sight of black-and-white Bess trotting away from him in terror. Jack banked and rolled and dived, buzzing Bess and sending the cow into a panic. She leaped and turned like a prize bull at a rodeo before bolting back in the direction from which she’d come, back onto the family’s land. With his impromptu herding done, Jack decided to climb into the sky and enjoy the moonlit view.