Authors: Jennifer Niven

Velva Jean Learns to Fly (25 page)

Gene said, “You wouldn’t believe the folks that play here.”

We ordered champagne and flautas, which were little corn flatbreads rolled up like cigars and filled with chicken and cheese, and the waiter brought chips and something green and thick that Roger said was “guacamole.” I thought it tasted like fresh-cut grass, or what fresh-cut grass would taste like if you were to eat it. We ate every last bite, and then the waiter brought us more and we ate that too. I decided getting divorced made me hungry.

I’d only tasted champagne once before, at the Tulane Hotel, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. The taste of it made me feel mean and happy all at once, but I liked the way the bubbles went up my nose.

We asked the boys questions about the Los Alamos National Laboratory, but the only thing they said was that it sat on the site of the old Los Alamos Ranch School, which was a private school for teenage boys, and that the work being done there was going to win the war and change the world forever.

Then the music started, and it was Count Basie and his orchestra. I’d never seen Count Basie before, but I knew his songs because he was one of the most famous bandleaders in America. He was a short colored man with a wide-open face and a great big smile. He wore a checkered suit and black tie and sat down at a white grand piano, facing his band.

I said to Paula, “Let’s get ourselves up to the front so we can see him better.” I wanted to get a closer look. We danced through the men and women who were suddenly filling the floor, looking young and colorful, just like pictures out of a magazine
.
They called out to us as we pushed through—Paula, me, Gene Gilbert, Roger Kiel. When we got to the front, Count Basie started to play “One o’Clock Jump,” and we spun each other around. For the first time in a long time I felt the worry melt away. I forgot why I was there, in this other country, in this particular town. I thought, I can’t go back to being Mrs. Harley Bright any more than I can go back to the seventh grade.

In between songs, Count Basie said, “This goes out to all the girls and boys who are fighting right now.” He nodded straight at me. He said, “Git up here, honey.”

I said, “Me?” Paula pushed me toward him.

He said, “You there, in that uniform. What are you? A WAVE? A WAC? Come sit up here and help me with this.”

Paula shouted, “We’re WASP!”

He said, “Pilots! Even better.”

He opened up sheet music and set it in front of him. He said to me, so no one else could hear, “Can you read music?”

I said, “Yes, sir.”

He laughed. “Good.” Then he signaled his orchestra and started singing a song called “Beyond the Blue Horizon,” which was all about saying good-bye to the things that bored you and saying hello to a new horizon filled with joy and sunshine.

When it came time for the last chorus, I sang with him. He looked at me like he was surprised and then he nodded. He let me sing the very last verse all on my own. They went right into “Jumpin’ at the Woodside” after that, but he winked at me as I walked away. People started clapping, and I took a little bow.

Paula said, “Holy shit, Hartsie. Where’d you get those lungs?”

We danced after that, the four of us, and as we danced the words to “Beyond the Blue Horizon” raced through my head over and over. It felt good to sing again. It had been much too long. I thought that when I got back to Avenger Field I might write Darlon C. Reynolds a letter just to remind him I was out there.

On our way back to City Hall, we stopped at a market where Gene Gilbert bought a bottle of tequila, and we all bought straw hats, and I bought a six-stringed mariachi guitar the color of sand. It was made of rosewood and had a starburst painted in the center, and it was the prettiest guitar I’d ever seen. As we climbed the steps to City Hall and walked down the hallway, turning and then turning again until we were in the same room with the same cracked marble, I thought of all the songs I’d write on my Mexican guitar. I could hear Count Basie in my head and me singing along with him. I thought that I was walking beyond my blue horizon right then, right that minute.

We waited in line at the same counter, and then the same man with the same mustache handed me a single piece of paper that said I, Velva Jean Hart, was now a divorced woman.

I wondered at what moment it had happened and why I hadn’t felt it. How could I not have felt it? Was I drinking champagne? Eating guacamole? Singing with Count Basie? Dancing with Paula and Gene and Roger? I stood there suddenly feeling like a soldier missing an arm or a leg. My phantom limb—the Mrs. Harley Bright that was cut off and gone.

“Congratulations,” the man said, but he was already waving the next customer up to the desk. I wondered how many divorces he oversaw each day and if he himself was divorced or if he was happily married. Maybe he had a wife he went home to each night. Maybe he climbed in bed next to her and held her close and told her how lucky he was, how lucky they both were to have each other.

On the drive back to Fort Bliss, Gene Gilbert passed the bottle of tequila back to me. He said, “Congratulations, Velva Jean. To being beyond the keep.”

The day after we got back from Mexico, I went up by myself in the AT-6 and I sang as loud as could be. It was a day of blue sky and white clouds, which hung low and didn’t get in the way of the sun. The sunlight caught the plane and turned it from silver to white, shining it from nose to tail, wing to wing.

As I flew I sang marching songs and songs from the radio and one or two of my very own songs too. I sang “Beyond the Blue Horizon” three times in a row, making up words when I couldn’t remember the real ones, and then I sang “The Unclouded Day.” How long had it been since I’d sung like this? Not since Nashville. Not since flying in the Aeronca. I sang into the airplane radio and thought about Judge Hay and Darlon C. Reynolds and wished somehow they could hear me.

After landing, I climbed down from the plane and walked across the runway and suddenly I heard the sound of whistling and clapping. Paula, Mudge, Sally, and the other girls were standing around in their zoot suits and turbans or baseball caps. They were all cheering. “You been holding out on us, Hartsie,” Sally shouted.

I stopped right there and said, “What are you talking about?”

Paula said, “That radio goes straight to the control tower, honey. As soon as you started song number two, they put you through the loud speakers.”

It wasn’t the Grand Ole Opry, but without knowing it I’d just given my first concert since singing with Travelin’ Jones and his band two years ago. I pulled off my helmet and pulled off my turban. Just then a man walked up and he was carrying an enormous camera, so big it looked more like an accordion. He had gray hair and wore sunglasses, and a black string with a badge hung around his neck. He said to me, “You there. I’d like to take your picture up on that plane.”

I thought about how I must look. No makeup, lipstick faded, my hair in a ponytail because this kept it out of my face when I was flying, dressed in my zoot suit, sleeves and pants rolled up. I said, “My picture?” The other girls were staring at him, staring at me. Mudge was rummaging around in her pockets, and she pulled out a lipstick and held it out to me.

He said, “No no—like you are. I want to catch you just like that. Up on that plane you just flew.”

I handed my helmet to Sally and then I climbed up on the plane, up on the wing, and sat there, my legs swinging off the side. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I didn’t know whether to smile or look serious. No one had ever taken my picture before, except the photo booth next to Bootsy’s in Nashville. I hoped I wouldn’t look silly.

The man said, “I want you to act natural. Sit there, just like you are, and let me worry about the photograph.”

I swung my legs and tried not to fidget, and then all of a sudden there was a roar overhead and a Beechcraft AT-11 went zooming past. I forgot about the camera and the man with the gray hair and raised my chin to watch it go. I would never get enough of flying—the power of the planes, each one so different, the rush of feeling, the race of your heart as you started climbing and went faster, faster, faster, higher, higher, higher. I closed my eyes and felt the sun on my face and listened to the engine roar as it headed away, beyond the keep, beyond the blue horizon.

“Perfect,” the man said.

I opened my eyes and remembered where I was, and there was the man with his accordion camera and my friends standing around behind him.

He said, “Thank you, little lady.” And then he set off toward the mess hall.

I called after him, “Wait a minute. What’s this for?”

He stopped and called back, “
Life
magazine.” Then he turned around and kept walking.

September 9, 1943

Dear Harley,

I need to write this right now because if I don’t I will keep carrying you around inside me where I don’t want you. I truly loved you or felt I did. I loved you the best I could. When I married you, I did it with my whole heart. I loved being Mrs. Velva Jean Hart Bright, Harley Bright’s wife.

Then something changed, though it’s hard to say when. It’s like we were on this happy ride together, side by side, enjoying it all, and then the next minute I was looking over my shoulder to see where you’d gone.