“Daniel.” Celia batted his hand and smiled as he shrugged and grinned.
Liddy’s body was stiff. Her hands were frozen in an empty clutch and her wrists and thighs ached. She tried to slow her breathing but was distracted from the task when she saw blood dripping down her jacket. Liddy pulled her fingers open against the stick and lifted her arms from her elbows. Pinching the fingers of her gloves between her teeth, she tugged the sweat-soaked leather from her hands and then dropped the pair to her knees where they laid pale and lifeless. She rubbed her impotent paws together until they begin to tingle and burn.
Back at the crowd, Hal and Buck, shotguns posted against their chests, pillared themselves on either side of Celia, and she tended to the line of winners.
Daniel skipped joyously out to the plane. He bounced onto the wing and cheered, “You did it! Can you believe it?”
Liddy lifted her head and turned to Daniel. Her goggles were cracked, her face deeply scratched and pale as paste. An ooze of blood ran from her left cheekbone to her chin. Her expression was unrecognizable to him.
“Liddy, my word. Are you okay?”
She couldn’t get enough air to speak and she reached over and set her hand on his arm. Daniel waited till Liddy shook her head yes and then helped her release her safety strap and carefully take off the cap and goggles. He supported her wobbly weight when she climbed out of the pit. Just as he helped Liddy to the ground, two Sheriff’s cars pulled through a stand of trees and onto the field, flanking the nose and tail of the plane.
Dust puffed from the earth as the rough horde ran to their cars, jumped in and sped away. Sherriff Squim calmly opened the door, stepped out of the car and sauntered over to the plane. He had no interest in any of the gamblers, just Liddy.
The pain didn’t flair up as long as Liddy laid stone still on the cot. Daniel was in the next cell, sitting on the concrete floor. His back was to the wall, knees up and his face was cradled in his hands—all of the unwanted possibilities had come crashing down.
Sheriff Squim walked down the hall and unlocked both cell gates, said nothing and left. The two jailbirds exchanged queries. Liddy rolled from the cot, left her cell and looked back at Daniel who hadn’t moved.
“You coming?”
Outside the office Liddy climbed into Crik’s truck and Daniel followed. Crik’s arms wrapped the steering wheel as he looked straight ahead and asked, “So, good day?”
“Had better,” Liddy answered.
“Tell me about it.”
“Scariest damn thing I’ve ever done.”
“How’d the Jenny do?”
“I landed her, but she’s sure to be pretty banged. I’m sorry, I really am sorry, Crik.”
Crik leaned back and took an appraisal of Liddy. “Not all that got wrecked looks like.”
“Why did Squim let us go?” Liddy asked Crik.
Crik slid his hand into his jacket, pulled out a Western Union and presented it to Liddy. “Russell Talbot pulled up with it right after you left this mornin’.”
Liddy opened up the fold and moved her eyes over the words: ‘AVIATION CADET EXAMINATION SUCCESSFUL PD ADVISE BY RETURN WIRE IF INTERESTED IN OPENING NINE MAY CLASS WASP TRAINING PD IF SO FURTHER PAPERS WILL BE SENT FOR COMPLETION SIGNED COCHRAN= ARNOLD COMMANDING GENERAL AAF.’
A tightness knotted high behind her chest bone as she read the telegram again. Liddy folded it back to its crease and looked at her uncle.
“Squim said he’d rather see you get on a train than have you loose, or even locked-up in his county anymore. ‘Let her be the Army’s problem,’ he said. Don’t think he was too sure what he’d charge you with anyway. And without the perpetrator he could hardly hold the accomplice.” Crik shot a look at Daniel who stared blankly out the windshield, lost in his distress. Crik picked up the envelope that was balanced on his knee and handed it to Liddy. “Celia asked me to give you this.”
Liddy thumbed the bills. “I’ll pay for the damage to the Jenny and—”
“Look, honey…” Crik squeezed Liddy’s hand. “…I’ve done my best to do for you and Jack, but it hasn’t been what I’da liked. I think you showed yourself a fool today with that stunt, but it’s done. Let’s consider what was taken out of the Jenny my contribution, okay.” He paused and Liddy saw his eyes fill with tears before he continued, “But you promise me, you go off and do this Army thing, you don’t go makin’ stupid. You’re a good pilot, and you can do better stuff than just about anybody, but some things are just too much. You hear me?”
Liddy wrapped her arms around Crik’s neck and squeezed. “I hear you, and I promise.”
The bridge affair was added to the book of tales and no one told it better than Crik. Liddy told Jack about it in bits, and she wasn’t sure if he believed her or thought she had learned to weave a good yarn.
In the weeks that followed, Liddy’s body healed, but she was left with a reminder of her deed in a two inch scar that underscored her left cheekbone. She spent the time before she had to report to the WASP base in Texas preparing to leave the only world she’d ever known. She made the rounds with her share of the bridge venture, beginning with the hospital, and then she made good on her account with Jerry at the airfield. At Tully’s she stocked-up on some familiars for Jack and was loading them in her car when she caught Rowby’s walk from her side view. He ambled to where she stood and leaned his hip against the driver’s door. “Did ya’ hear, I’m drafted?”
“I heard. Did you hear I’m leaving too, and I got the money to take care of things and for my train ticket?”
“Yeah, I heard about the stunt you pulled. Whole county’s talkin’ ‘bout it,” Rowby bragged, “It’s legend now.”
“Well the government doesn’t pick up my tab you know.”
“You’re a strange bird, Liddy Hall. Don’t know what I see in you. You’re paying to get into this mess and I’d do anything to pay to get out of it.”
“I’m sure you could if you wanted to—your family and all.” Liddy saw something she didn’t recognize in Rowby and tilted her head to study it. “But you don’t really want to, do you? You’re going to be fine, Rowby, just fine.”
He looked down at the ground and rolled some little stones under the tip of his boot.
“I was planning on seeing you at the farewell party tonight. Feels kind of funny to be lumped in with you soldier boys, but May insisted it was for me too. Buck, Harlan and two of the Wilson boys are leaving next week. Are you pulling out with any of them?”
“I don’t know, haven’t talked to ‘em.”
“Well you’ll see them tonight.”
Rowby forced a weak smile and nodded. “Yeah.”
“You’ll be there, right?” Liddy leaned over to catch his eye.
“Yeah, I’ll be there.”
It was strangely difficult to leave Rowby standing in front of Tully’s that afternoon. His vulnerability was nearer the surface than Liddy had ever seen it, and she saw a kind of surrendered desperation in his eyes that made her feel helpless for him.
She still had the shadow of his face hanging in front of her as she carried Jack’s rations into the hospital. Walking down the hall, she decided she was going to dance a slow one with Rowby Wills that night, maybe more than one. She set the box on the nurse’s desk in front of Ruth. “Don’t let him know you have this. He’ll make a raid and it’ll be gone in a week.”