the nameless pilot
The sand smelled of pearls and the ocean glittered like a thief had dropped his bag of diamonds. Everyone was smiling into the canopy overhead that blazed blue like a lucky girl's eye. A ukulele's strum was on the breeze like a hummingbird just at your ear. The sand was soft under bare feet. Glasses of brandy sweated in the July sun. Soldiers ready to relax or serve their country, whichever came first, drove slowly past giggling girls. Pearl Harbor was one shining oasis, and Danny Walker's best friend was dead.
Evelyn hadn't even spoken. She didn't cry. In fact, Danny didn't even have to tell her. Not about the dogfight; not about the dark ocean that had sprayed into the air like a geyser and sucked Rafe under. Evelyn's big green-blue eyes had just stared up at Danny like she already knew. She knew why he was there in a stiff uniform, why he hadn't smiled, why Rafe hadn't answered her letters.
"He always answered my letters," was all she had managed. It was the first thing either of them had dared to say. The sun was setting as Danny took her slender frame into his arms. The cotton of her blouse slid under his hands, palms sweaty and uneasy, his stomach churning with bad news.
They had both lost someone.
They were both lost.
Evelyn had muttered something vaguely, something about needing to hang clothes to dry. Then she turned with her eyes like blank slates and went inside, drifting away like a ghost. Danny waited for the screen door to swing shut, thin and paper-like in the salty breeze. She didn't come back out with any laundry.
The sun was nearly down, pulled into the seas with the skeleton of Rafe's plane. Danny turned and faced the quiet road. There was an army jeep waiting for him, whirring quietly. Another soldier sat in the driver's seat, silent and irritated to be out on a Friday night delivering death notices.
Danny couldn't think of anything worse, right then, than sitting next to that blond man again. He had a Yankee accent and seemed to always have candy in his mouth that clicked against his hard teeth. He checked the rearview mirror too often, like somebody was threatening him. No, Danny would not sit with that soldier again. Instead he just started walking. He didn't know where he would end up, but wherever it was would be bright and sunny in the morning. Right now it was purple-gray with a disappearing sun.
The man only watched him leave. He didn't call out, didn't ask him where he was going; nothing. Then he shifted into gear and rolled away, looking inconvenienced for having to drive out to Evelyn's in the first place.
These were the men fighting for this country; dying. These men were nothing like Rafe, yet were still carelessly grouped alongside his name on lists of casualties.
Rafe is dead.
The word was hollow. It was overused, meaningless and incapable of the right description. Dead.
A car zoomed past, and Danny's eyes lifted tiredly to the road. Evelyn's small beach house was far behind now, and he had no idea how long he'd been walking. The car kicked dust and sand into the air, and it settled onto his pristine uniform. He was the disheveled, lonely soldier that was supposed to be poring over a tonic and gin, if all clichés were had. Instead he was trekking down a lonely road. It would do.
The sun had set and thunder was rumbling gently in the distance. Across the water lightning illuminated the slowly building clouds. Danny stopped and watched.
He and Rafe used to play outside in storms, when they were young. They would hide in the cornfield at Danny's farm, dripping with mud and rain, playing soldiers. Cowboys and Indians. Bank robbers. They were kings and knights and renegades for hours on end, and nobody could tell them otherwise. Then they'd dry off in the barn and hang their legs from the hayloft window, kicking their feet like boys were meant to.
The dusky air was suddenly cracked open by the horn of an oncoming car. Danny's pupils dilated in the angry headlights, appearing as fast as the lightning. Aimlessly, he had walked into the other side of the road, into oncoming traffic. Danny barely reacted, and the car swerved just in time. All that he did was close his eyes and wait, but for what, he didn't know. There was the loud screeching of brakes on sand. It seemed to go on for hours. Then there was silence.
Danny hadn't budged. His hands were trembling, and he pulled off his uniform cap to rake one through his dark hair.
The hell is wrong with me?
He turned his eyes to the cream colored convertible, stopped only feet away from a telephone pole. The headlights were still on, two long beams in the swirling dust and sand. A few more feet and somebody could have been in the hospital or worse.
"What were you thinking, standing in the road like that?" The driver was a young woman, Danny realized. She sounded terrified and definitely English. "Are you drunk?"
"No," he mumbled. He doubted that she even heard him over the engine that rumbled like a frightened cat.
His eyes had adjusted from the blinding headlights and he could see her, slouching in the driver's seat. A hand was to her chest as thought to keep her heart from falling out. The car was still running. A blue handkerchief was tied around her coppery head.
After several moments of silence, she turned and studied him. "Is there something… wrong with you?" Her accent was a stark contrast with his Tennessee drawl. When Danny only looked at her blankly she said, "I mean, you aren't like, mental are you?"
"I'm walking," Danny said, and started off again. Down the long, straight road.
She studied his uniform and his retreating back. "To where, the hanger?"
He didn't respond.
"You're not walking all the way over there," she said with a firm shake of her head. When Danny looked at her skeptically she gestured offshore and said matter-of-factly, "It's about to storm."
He turned and saw the angry clouds nearing. The woman leaned over her seat and pushed open the passenger door. Then she sat back and watched him expectantly.
Danny opened his mouth several times to decline her, but couldn't bring himself to. Mostly he didn't feel like arguing. He didn't feel much like anything, in fact. Silently he trekked around the car and slouched into the leather seat, closing the door heavily. For a moment the girl studied him, though he only continued to stare ahead, unresponsive.
At last she shifted into gear and pulled slowly from the sandy grass. The ride was silent, except for when she asked several questions—the kind that screams an uncomfortable politeness. Danny didn't care much for manners then, and answered her questions "So you're a pilot?" and "How long?" with the shortest answers.
Far behind them the storm clouds had reached land and the rain fell in a blur, from their distance only a dark smudge between sky and ground.
At last she turned to him. "What's the matter, you look like you just lost your best friend."
He looked at her stonily and after a moment she gasped.
"Oh God, I'm so sorry, I didn't…" she stopped pressed her lips together. "That was stupid. I'm sorry."
Silence interrupted them for the rest of the ride. The girl drove too fast and took turns too sharply, apologizing and muttering about American roads being backwards. Danny was silent and stared out over the ocean. The storm was growing closer.
A glance from the corner of her eyes told her that he was just staring out the window, without really seeing. She felt awful about what she had said. But how was she supposed to know? Again her cobalt eyes went to him.
He was so quiet. Like death.
They at last reached the hanger where Pearl Harbor's boys laughed and smoked, and some of them actually worked. She pulled the car to a stop and shifted uncomfortably in her seat. It was painfully silent. He began to reach for the door handle.
"You haven't told me your name," she ventured.
He didn't respond, maybe she didn't expect him to. Either way, she tipped her head to the side as if brushing off his silence. "I'm Gemma Carhart."
"Thanks for the ride," he muttered as if she had never spoken, and opened the door.
She watched as he climbed out of the car miserably. When he disappeared she sighed and flexed her grip on the steering wheel. Over her dashboard, the nameless pilot headed into a small building to the side of a hangar. A man in uniform called to him but he didn't respond. She waited until he disappeared through the door.
What dark eyes.
It took a few weeks for Danny to smile again. Most of the time he just worked hard, to keep his mind off of things. He wasn't much of a drinker, so bars were useless. Instead he poured all his waking thoughts into mechanics and wrenches and barrel rolls. Maybe part of him wanted to discover what Rafe had done wrong—Rafe, one of the best pilots he knew.
Danny didn't speak much for a while, and when he did it was to Evelyn. He saw her one morning in a grocery store, pushing an empty cart down an isle. She wasn't even bothering to look at the shelves; just staring ahead, going through routine. Danny had timidly nodded his head, and they shared a solemn greeting. That pitiful conversation that mourners strain to have, when they meet by chance. All the pleasantries ("How have you been?" and "How's the hospital?") without the smiles.
He spent a lot of time at a restaurant downtown, just sitting. Sometimes Evelyn would join him, because they could remember things together. Things about Rafe. Danny told stories of their childhood so Evelyn could learn to laugh again. She always bought him coffee and never noticed that he didn't drink it, and it was that thought that he kept reminding himself of.
If she had any interest in you, she'd notice something like that.
At first it seemed that their constant meetings were entirely by accident. But then it came to the point that Danny spent more time getting ready before heading to the smoky restaurant. It came to a point where he watched out the windows and his heart skipped a beat every time he saw a girl with chestnut curls on the sidewalk. A point where Evelyn started to put her makeup on again.
It came to a point where Danny began to feel guilty when he remembered Rafe.
"I miss him," Evelyn said one night, surprising him. The glass mouth of her coffee cup was perched on her red lips.
Danny's eyes shot up from the tablecloth: printed flowers that had paled in the sun through the window. Evelyn just stared over her mug at nothing. She was either starting to cry or the steam was misting her rainforest eyes.
Danny swallowed. He was no good with women and had accepted that he never would be. "I know," he murmured. "I miss him too."
Evelyn didn't respond and Danny knew that he hadn't said the right thing. He had said what someone who didn't really know Rafe would have said. Danny cleared his throat.
"He'd be proud of you," he said slowly. Evelyn's eyes lifted to him and he could see the glassy tears. Danny lowered his gaze; he rarely could keep eye contact with women. "I mean you're getting along well. I think that's what he would have wanted. For you to smile more."
Her gaze went out the window and Danny thought she might burst into tears. He opened his mouth several times to fix the words he had somehow managed to mess up, but no sound came out.
Evelyn turned to him, her eyes smiling once more. "Thank you."
He nodded, feeling a lump welling up inside his throat. Her eyes went to the table.
"You haven't touched your coffee," she noted.
Danny grinned boyishly, tilting his chair back on two legs. "Can't stand it."
Evelyn laughed. Really laughed. Danny felt a weight falling from his shoulders.
"Well, at least I didn't buy it this time," she said, looking at the waitress who had passed earlier and given Danny a free cup and a grin. "I guess that's the price you pay for being handsome."
Danny felt his ears redden and the smile spread further across his face.
