Her Last Flight(109)
As for the proud man who holds the hands of these imps before the Hanalei school gate, he is unmistakably my father.
Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)
May 1937: Spain
Irene could see from George’s expression that the scene was terrible. She knew she had bled heavily; she still didn’t realize how badly Sam had been hurt too. So there was blood everywhere, like the remains of some brutal murder. Irene could smell the blood; it hung so thick and coppery in the confined air of the Potez, she had almost forgotten it was there.
George stopped short, looked this way and that, stumbled back outside the airplane and was sick in the sand.
“Thank God you’re here,” croaked Sam.
“Mother of God,” whispered Raoul. “What has happened here?”
“Irene was hurt in the bombing at the Bilbao airfield. I was evacuating her to Valencia but the fuel tank’d been strafed, we didn’t see the bullet hole because it was dark, and we ran out of fuel.”
George climbed back inside, pressed a handkerchief to his mouth and nose, and knelt next to Irene. “Can you talk, sweetheart?”
“She needs water, for God’s sake!”
Raoul had already unstrapped his canteen and held it to Irene’s lips. “She has had the baby?” he asked quietly.
“Yes,” said Sam. “Back in Bilbao. He lived for thirty-two minutes. I buried him with my own hands.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said George, “but it’s probably for the best.”
Sam stood up on his knees, hauled up George by his collar, and drew back his fist. But he did not punch. His left leg crumpled underneath him, and he collapsed on the metal deck next to Irene.
George straightened his collar and knelt back down. “Darling, we’ll get you out of here, I promise. I’ve got a doctor waiting in Valencia—”
“What about Sam?”
George glanced at Sam. “I’m afraid someone will have to come back for Mallory. The airplane won’t take a fourth passenger.”
“But Sam’s hurt. He needs a doctor too.”
“We’ll leave water for him. I’m sure this fellow will be back in a jiffy. Won’t you, Velázquez?”
Raoul was checking Irene’s bandage and didn’t answer.
“George, you should stay. You’re not hurt. Sam—”
“Damn Mallory! That—that bastard there, he’s the reason you’re dying in this godforsaken desert in the first place! The reason you’re not safe on an ocean liner heading back to America. He’s going to kill you one of these days, don’t you realize?”
Sam spoke up. “Irene flew to Spain on her own, Morrow. She flew here to escape you, as a matter of fact. You and that prison you’ve built around her—”
“Prison? You’ve got a nerve, you son of a bitch. I’ve set her free! Free to fly on her own, instead of second best to the goddamn magnificent flying ego of Sam Mallory! Do you know how frantic I’ve been? Held back the damned press, chartered a flight to Alicante, bribed a dozen officials to track her down on the crazy chance that—”
“Gentlemen,” said Raoul, “I’m afraid Miss Foster has fainted.”
Raoul carried Irene aboard the airplane they had flown from Valencia. Mallory watched them go, watched Morrow jump down from the broken Potez and into the sunlight. He dusted off his hands and stuck his head back inside.
“I imagine you already know this, Mallory,” he said, in a kind voice, “but there will be no airplane sent back to rescue you. You’re on your own. And if you do survive, by some miracle, you stay the hell away from my wife from now on. Is that clear?”
Mallory spoke through cracked lips. “Go to hell, Morrow.”
Morrow shook his head and turned away. As he walked across the sand, he called back, over his shoulder, “Just remember, this was your doing, Mallory.”
Hanalei, Hawai’i
November 1947
In the summer of 1946, I was in Nuremberg, that half-ruined city of ghosts and lawyers. My hotel was lousy; the food was worse. The daily evidence of man’s perfidy accumulated in what I had begun to imagine as sedimentary layers, grotesque upon grotesque, and I meanwhile suffered from some stubborn, unspecific gastric illness that was melting the flesh from my bones.
Miserable and starved, I sat at the bar of my hotel one evening in July, enduring the heat through a succession of whiskey sours and American cigarettes, when a fellow showed up and asked if I could possibly direct him to Miss Eugenia Everett, the photographer. He wore the uniform of an RAF squadron commander, the same uniform Velázquez had worn, so I told him I was Miss Everett, who wanted to know?
He removed his cap and sat on the stool next to me and placed a worn, yellowing envelope on the counter between us, seam side up so I couldn’t see the name written on the back. He introduced himself as Captain Alfred Hawley and said that he had flown with a certain Captain Raoul Velázquez de los Monteros of the No. 56 Squadron in January 1945, out of the Volkel airfield in The Netherlands; did I perhaps recall Captain Velázquez?
I said I recalled him very well.
Captain Hawley said he was sorry to have taken so long to find me, but his duties with the RAF had not allowed him to pursue any personal errands until recently. He said that he had known Velázquez well during their time together at Volkel, and that about a week before his final flight, Velázquez took him aside and said he’d had a premonition of his own death, and if he should die and Hawley survive, he asked that Hawley deliver a letter to a photographer for the Associated Press named Eugenia Everett. Hawley had said of course, though he assured Velázquez that they would both survive to toast Hitler’s defeat. In any case, there was the letter. Hawley was glad to have found me and discharged his obligation to a brother officer, which had weighed heavily on him during the long, hard months since the loss of Velázquez, a tremendous flier and a damned fine chap.