Fighter Pilot's Daughter by Mary Lawlor

Author:Mary Lawlor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

All this drama went on far beyond the range of our knowledge, and it wouldn’t be until much later that I’d see the Air Medals and the citations for Dad’s actions in Southeast Asia. Back in Columbus, by the second week of June we finally knew where Dad was, although we didn’t know what he was doing there. As the weeks, then months wore on, it became clear he wasn’t just delivering aircraft as the newspapers implied. He had been gone too long. There was no word he was on his way back. What was he doing all this time?

The Georgia heat and the waiting made us impatient. We were thin-skinned, hurt, angry. Frannie’s high-strung, brittle manner made everything worse. To add to her worries, the twins, in high school now, were pushing the usual limits. They’d made friends at school and wanted to go out with them, with boys too, without the restrictive curfews Frannie imposed. She was too distracted and unavailable to deal with the problem effectively. Sarah and I stayed way back, especially from Mom. One morning, I let her get too close. Frustrated at my taking too long to get breakfast out of the oven, Frannie shut the door on my arm and burned it. I can still see the scar.

In the early fall, the dull heat and humidity of Columbus showing no signs of letting up, his letters stopped coming. They had been turning up about once a week. For weeks, then a month, and longer still, no letters came. Frannie tried calling the unit’s liaison office at Fort Benning, but there was no information. She tried the Red Cross. Nobody could tell us anything. Then Jack’s checks stopped coming. We were mystified and scared. If Frannie knew or guessed anything, she didn’t shared it with us. She was brittle and nervous all the time.

The nightmares are hard to remember now. There were jungles, like the swamps around our house, but the leaves were huge. Everything was constantly growing. Treachery waited in the silent mist, ready to spring. Somewhere in the background the downed plane smoked. Fate swayed in and out of his path. He would be caught, captured, taken away blindfolded. What would they do to him? The dreams never got beyond this.

Shortly into the period of the missing checks, Frannie got a job selling dresses at a local department store. Davidson’s was the only business in the area that could be called elegant, and Frannie turned up for work dressed like Jackie Kennedy. She wore the classic Kimberly Knit suits she’d bought in Monterey. They were too hot for the endless heat, but the store was air-conditioned. She was out of the house for six days of the week. The job loosened her up a little, and we were grateful for that—and for having time in the house without her. Davidson’s reminded her a little of the Saks days, and she talked about those times again. There was a man she liked, a buyer.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.