Cloud Nine by Luanne Rice

Author:Luanne Rice [Rice, Luanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2016-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

14

George Talbot watched Will Burke brush the snow off his plane the way some other guy might clear his station wagon and knew he was looking at a man after his own heart. A man’s man, did things the big way, the hard way. No making excuses or looking for shortcuts. Will did right by his plane. He swept it off stem to stern, shoveled out the snow around the wheels, undid the tie-downs, then pushed the plane back so George could plow the runway. Then Will started her up, made sure the engine wasn’t dead, let the propellers wag around. When all the work was done, he put her back and secured her down proper.

‘Got yourself a nice plane,’ George said.

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘What’s flying, your hobby?’

‘It’s my work.’

‘Thought maybe you just did it as a favor to Sarah.’

‘I own a little aviation company in Fort Cromwell. Corporate charters, mainly. There are lots of big companies relocating around Wilsonia, in the valley.’

George nodded. He lit his pipe and puffed away. His rheumatism got cranked up in cold weather like this, and there was nothing like a good pipe to soothe the rough spots, ‘Lucky man, to get paid for what you enjoy. Time was, I spent quite a bit of time in the air.’

‘Over in Europe?’

‘Yep. I flew forty-two missions. Cologne, Dresden, Normandy. Some of the big ones.’

‘Forty-two is a lot.’

‘Seventeen more than I was supposed to,’ George said, grateful that Will would know that. He didn’t get to talk about the war much anymore. Rose had been the only one he’d ever told the whole story to. She would listen for hours, anytime he felt like talking. Shoveling out a plane with a young navy man made George feel more like himself than he had in years.

‘Why so many?’

‘We had a lot of bombs to drop. They’d pump us up on coffee and reds, send us up and out. We’d no sooner get back than they’d send us up again.’

‘Did you ever get hit?’

George nodded. ‘Got shot down over Alsace. Hit the silk and landed in a tree. But that was nothing.’

‘You lost friends,’ Will said. It was a statement, not a question. He knew, just like all good soldiers knew. Even if it hadn’t happened to you, you knew someone destroyed in the war. Your best friend, your bunk mate, your pilot, your medic: killed in action.

‘My first crew,’ George said. ‘We trained together one entire year, flew ten missions once we got to England. Then for some crazy reason I got promoted to navigator-bombardier in the lead plane.’

‘Sarah said.’

‘Proud daughter,’ George said. But he didn’t smile. He didn’t feel proud of what had happened, not like it was any achievement of his own. It was wartime, and he’d gone where he was needed. Not willingly; his new crew had had to carry his cot and things and him into his new hut. ‘The very first mission they flew without me, they got hit, went down over Helgoland. Little island, no bigger than this, in the North Sea.

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