The Girl in the Blue Beret - Bobbie Ann Mason [70]
While I was in Stalag Luft I, I found my strength in the Lord, and He helped me through the worst days. I’d say prayers every time we had a pinch of something to eat in that hellhole, or whenever we got mail and Red Cross packages. I think the others I bunked with—I was in with Campanello, you know—got tired of me making a fuss over Jesus. I’d say we had to share our rations with Jesus, and all sorts of stuff that must have sounded like claptrap, but I swear it got us through. Oh, we didn’t dig any escape tunnels, but we figured how to defeat our enemies by giving all the credit to Jesus. Man, that was a time.
After we got out, I was sent back to Missouri, and my shoulder had healed a little funny, so I had several operations at St. Louis. I think it turned out OK, just aches a little when it’s real wet. Life has been pretty good since. I got established with my business out in California, but I get back to Missouri, even though my parents died long ago. I’ve got so many relatives. My two sons live there, and my daughter’s in California. They’re all busy producing babies and they’re all doing well. This was the American dream, huh, Marshall? I can’t complain. We did good.
It’s sad to learn about the man who lost his life helping our crew, but it pleases me to hear how fondly the Belgian people remember us. I hadn’t given a whole lot of thought to them over the years, but now I see that they have been thinking of us ever since. It would be good to see you again, Marshall, and see the old crew, what’s left of it. Remember, the eyes of the Lord run to and fro.
Yours in Christ,
Al
Marshall lay sleepless in the heat, tossing on his new sheets, which were still stiff, even though he had had them laundered. They wouldn’t stay tucked, and he found himself wallowing on the bare mattress. Evidently he had bought two top sheets. Grainger’s letter preoccupied him. Al had dropped those bombs on their targets so gleefully. Hitler’s Focke-Wulf works was his favorite. Marshall had been surprised when Al became a lay pastor. Al, the evangelist bombardier.
The sheets were damp and twisted around his legs. He wondered whether Gordon Webb had ever panicked in an F-101. His father had panicked and Marshall had taken over. Only Chick Cochran obeyed the order to bail out. Marshall was glad Gordon hadn’t been very curious about his father. Marshall had seized control of the plane in a mutiny that lasted about twenty seconds—until he saw that Webb had been wounded. Marshall saved the crew. He was proud of that. But any good pilot could have belly-landed the thing. Webb was dead.
Marshall saw lightning flash, followed on the count of ten by muffled thunder. He imagined sitting in a cockpit, waiting for takeoff, watching the storm, waiting for clearance. Lightning hit his plane once, but it didn’t hit the fuel tanks. He remembered Saint Elmo’s fire dancing on his wings a few times. He liked spotting a glory in the clouds below—a rainbow ring with the plane’s shadow in the center. He heard himself as pilot, the instructor, telling the passengers, “Folks, on the left side of the aircraft you will see a magic rainbow.” It was a circle, seen from above. Telling Loretta. Her boundless enthusiasm.
The advantages he had had in his life as a flyer were still a marvel to him, but now he had no schedule. He had no flights, no logbooks, no maps to study, no uniform to keep in pristine condition. He didn’t know what to wear. He was trying new things—a load of langoustines. Caroline bothered him. Her pop-out breasts. And the fact that he was still thinking about her slim, seductive hips in those deplorable blue-jeans.
He turned the light on and sat up against the wall.