Author's note: Thanks, everyone, for the reviews - it's truly a guilty pleasure to open my email and find your kind words and encouragement. This week's chapter is probably longer than it needs to be but sometimes I have a hard time stopping. Sorry, not sorry.

Chapter 3

My house has two full baths, one on the first floor and one on the second. I issued the guys their freshly laundered jeans and shirts and sent them off to clean up. I was at the kitchen table with my laptop, updating social media feeds for the show and trying to pretend my life was normal, when Jim walked into the room. He was wearing the new jeans and nothing else. He scowled and hiked up the waistband of the pants.

"Think they're too small," he said. "The fit's a little snug."

I bit my lip. Damn. They fit him just fine. They rode just below his waist and since he hadn't bothered with a shirt, that left a whole lot of smooth, bare skin to look at. He was still damp from the shower and the lingering sheen of water accented the clean lines of his upper body. His broad shoulders and lean stomach made a girl's mind stray.

"They're supposed to fit like that, not like your flight suits," I said, yanking my mind back to appropriate channels. "And waistbands sit lower now." I refrained from asking how the boxers fit. Sometimes I do know how to quit while I'm ahead.

"You sure we'll look all right wearing dungarees to a cocktail party?"

"We call them blue jeans and we wear them everywhere," I said, relieved at finding a safe topic. "Tonight's not really a cocktail party, it's pretty informal."

He made a noncommittal noise and left. Minutes later, he was back. He'd put on the T-shirt with the flannel shirt over it. He wore the utilitarian Midwest fashion well.

"Where are you from?" I asked impulsively.

"Texas and Oklahoma. Moved around a lot as a kid. Why?"

"Just curious." My mind was running wide open, simultaneously trying to figure out what I was going to do with these guys for the immediate future and how I was going to get them back where they came from. Jim's easy drawl and good old boy attitude would be accepted here in Iowa without question. Greg didn't have a regional accent but the sheer force of his personality would make him welcome. Combined, the duo were going to give Wings Over Autumn an authenticity it had never seen before.

I meant it when I said all they had to do was be themselves. I didn't doubt either man's ability to dish out the BS and pilots were such first rate yarn spinners, no one would know what was the truth and what wasn't. They wouldn't care, either. People came to the show to be entertained, not listen to an accountant talk about itemizing tax returns.

Greg came down from the upstairs bathroom and walked into the kitchen, toweling his wet hair. Damned if he wasn't wearing anything more than the jeans and damned if we didn't have the same conversation about how they fit. I swore the temperature in the room had gone up at least ten degrees and but what was I supposed to do – stare at the floor? No healthy, red-blooded American girl could pretend she didn't see those sculpted muscles standing right in front of her. Jim lounged against the counter, his mouth curved in a sardonic smile.

After Greg went back upstairs to finish dressing, Jim asked, "See anything you liked?"

Yeah, I had, but I'd seen it ten minutes earlier. The image of Jim's lean torso replayed itself in my mind, igniting a number of intriguing – and completely inappropriate - possibilities.

"Maybe," I held his eyes and didn't look away even as color rose in my cheeks. He could damn well guess what I meant. A little flirting never hurt anyone, no matter what century you were from.

The sarcastic smile softened. Maybe he appreciated my boldness.

"You got a steady?"

It took me a second to figure out what he meant. "A boyfriend? No."

He arched his eyebrows. "Why not? Girl who looks like you should have boys lined up around the block."

On the surface it sounded like a pick-up line but Jim said it with the casual ease of someone commenting on the weather so I took it at face value and moved on. I didn't think he would buy any crap about me being a career-minded woman who was too busy to date. That was the truth but it didn't change the fact I just hadn't clicked with any of the guys I'd gone out with recently. They'd been nice enough but things had ended with a dull thud when it came to chemistry. I'm not all about sticky sweet romance but I like a nice adrenaline rush when I kiss a guy. If it's not there with a kiss, it's not likely to be there for anything else, either.

"Guess I haven't found the right one. I've test driven a few, though," I managed.

Jim laughed, an open, honest sound that eased my self-consciousness even though my cheeks still felt hot. I should have asked if he had a sweetheart but that seemed like a rabbit hole I didn't want to jump into.

The men dropped their dirty laundry into the washing machine. I had a moment's panic, wondering how 1940s fabrics would hold up in a twenty-first century Maytag, then set it for a gentle cycle and sent up a prayer. God forbid the machine shredded or shrunk their flight suits. They weren't the kind of thing I could pick up at Farm and Home. I had another moment, this one of curiosity, directed at what my dad always called skivvies. These had buttons. Buttons. On underwear. Jim caught me studying them and I hastily shut the lid. He leaned against the dryer and crossed his arms.

"Are you sure we have to go to this shindig?" he asked.

It was a legitimate question. I'd briefly considered the possibility of hiding both men in the house until we came to some kind of collective grip on the situation but the two battle-weary Corsairs sitting at the airport would raise too many questions if there weren't pilots connected to them. The men would draw more attention by being conspicuously absent than by anything odd they might do or say. The best way to hide their true identities was to put them in plain sight. They'd blend in by merit of expectation. People see what they want to see.

The evening was a social event for the show exhibitors and local sponsors – the folks paying the bills so the proceeds could go to charity. I thought I could keep Jim and Greg out of trouble for a few hours, then hoped the natural momentum of the weekend would take over and smooth out any glitches.

"You're expected to be there," I said. "Don't worry. You'll be fine."

I glanced at my watch and went to get ready. Technically I was still on duty this evening or I would have gone the T-shirt and flannel route myself. Instead, I traded my button-down oxford for a soft, rose-colored sweater with a lace-up V-neck, added small gold hoop earrings and re-touched my makeup. I kept the jeans and boots because you can never go wrong with jeans and boots. I dampened my hair and scrunched it, then let the loose curls tumble over my shoulders.

The men looked up when I came back into the room - they'd actually stayed where I left them for once - and their eyes ran over me without apology. It wasn't the kind of creepy ogling guys do today, like when they start buying you drinks because they think you'll go home with them. It was simply appreciation without any expectation and it was oddly refreshing. Women have fought so long against being objectified, sometimes I think we've forgotten how to be admired.

I couldn't call them out on it, in any case, since I'd done the same thing not thirty minutes earlier. And I didn't have any problem doing it again. The two of them packed a lot of testosterone into one room. It was more than their physical presence or military bearing. It was that undefinable something that surrounded them both in spite of their modern cut jeans and T-shirts and the rough hint of five o'clock shadow. I wondered if this aura was only apparent to me, since I knew who they really were, or if anyone else would pick up on it. I doubted it. People see what they expect to see and no one would ever expect the truth.

The men were still studying me.

"Don't women wear dresses anymore?" Greg asked.

"They do," I replied, "but mostly only for special occasions."

"Huh," he said and that was the end of that conversation.

I pulled on my denim jacket, we got back in Big Red and set off for the airport. Both men kept their hands off the dashboard this time, although Jim amused himself with the power windows and locks. We passed a group of teens walking to the football game. Without exception, their noses were glued to their phones.

"Does everyone have those little gadgets?" Jim asked.

"Cell phones? Yeah," I answered.

"Why do kids that age need to carry telephones around with them?" he queried.

"They aren't just phones," I said. "They use them for other stuff, like texting and the internet."

This yielded blank stares. No surprise there. I grappled with a way to explain the explosion of technology that encompassed the globe. I settled on a single word. "Communication. You can voice call or text message anyone from anywhere these days." I wasn't going to start on cat videos and Baby Yoda memes.

"But they aren't talking on them, what are they doing?" Greg asked. "Following maps so they don't get lost?"

"Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Messenger, Snapchat and God only knows what else," I said. Not surprisingly, this got another blank look. "Don't ask. We don't have that much time."

I stopped at an intersection and the herd of teens moved across the street in front of us, eyes still on their phones.

"Do they ever walk out into traffic because they aren't paying attention?" Jim asked.

"Occasionally," I said. "I think it's Mother Nature's way of thinning the herd."

We passed through the business district, the lights of the store marquees glowing in the early autumn dusk. Then men watched without commenting until we passed the town square. The stars and stripes of Old Glory, the vertical tricolor bars of the Iowa state flag and the black and white POW/MIA flag were illuminated by a spotlight at the veterans memorial.

"What's that?" Greg asked.

"It's a memorial honoring all the men and women from this county who have served in the military," I said. I looked at the clock on the dash. We had time. I whipped Big Red around in a tight U-turn. The maneuver caught both men off guard and there was a moment of awkwardness as they sorted themselves out again.

"You drive like TJ flies," Jim muttered, one hand clenched in the grab handle.

"Genetics," I said, not apologizing.

I found a parking spot and pulled in. We got out and walked into the park.

"How many wars have there been since Emperor Hirohito and das Fuhrer's little party?" Jim's tone was serious in spite of the sarcastic twist to his words.

"There was Korea in the 1950s, then Vietnam from the late 60s to the 70s, the Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan . . ." My faulty grasp on history failed me. "The U.S. is tangled up in a bunch of hotspots around the world but they're not like a world war. Right now the big thing is the war on terror." Seeing they didn't understand, I added, "Terrorists." That didn't clarify matters any.

We stopped in front of the memorial. The black granite gleamed under the floodlights. One section of the plinth was engraved "Sept. 11, 2001 Never Forget," with a laser carving of an American flag waving from the wreckage of the Twin Towers.

"What happened there?" Greg asked.

"An Islamic terrorist group highjacked four jetliners and flew two of them into the World Trade Center towers in New York City. They flew another one into the Pentagon. The fourth was supposed to crash in Washington, D.C., but the passengers got the cockpit door open and stopped the hijackers. They crashed anyway, in a field, but that plane didn't hit its target. Almost 3,000 people died and thousands more were injured. It was the single largest attack on American soil by a foreign enemy since Pearl Harbor."

"So you know what it feels like," Jim said.

"What it feels like?" I asked, uncertain.

"To see America attacked."

I'd been eight years old on 9/11. I remembered the sense of shattered security as news broadcasts replayed the horror over and over. I didn't understand why one group of people hated Americans so badly they would kill so many innocent people to make a point.

"Yeah. I do," I said.

"So people are still trying to kill each other?" Greg asked.

"They are. But America keeps fighting to protect the people who can't protect themselves."

Both men saluted the flag and we got back into the pickup.

The evening event was staged on the apron in front of the main hangar. It was an informal affair, with snacks and drinks while the exhibitors mingled and talked shop.

Rob waved from near the bar when she saw the three of us. She'd changed into jeans with a forest green fleece pullover that accented her eyes and set off her long, auburn curls caught loosely back in a clip. Greg indicated he was going to talk to her about repairs to the planes and took off.

Jim offered me his arm as we approached the crowd. Surprised, I slipped my hand into the crook of his elbow, delighted at the old-fashioned gesture. His smile was pleasant but I felt tension radiating through him.

I squeezed his arm. "Just be yourself, I'll take care of the rest."

"You flyin' high cover for me, darlin'?" he asked.

"I'm not sure what that means," I said, hesitant to commit to something I didn't understand.

"It means you've got my six."

I didn't know what that meant either but was interrupted before I could ask.

"Alexa!" Gene Thompson's voice boomed. "There you are!"

I groaned inwardly and turned to see the mayor bearing down on us. It wasn't that I didn't like Mayor Gene but I knew what was coming. He would inevitably trot out my ancestry and I was still too stunned by Jim and Greg's revelation to balance the war hero revered by Cedar Junction with the version of TJ Wiley who'd shot down not only his own wingman but his commanding officer.

Gene was accompanied by his wife, Maisie. The woman reminded me of a faded prom queen trying to recapture her youth. Her jeans were too tight, her hair was too blonde and her gravity-defying boobs, courtesy of the finest cosmetic surgery money could buy, were on full display, courtesy of a low-cut blouse more suited to August than October.

As the mayor's wife and chair of every social committee from the hospital auxiliary to the library foundation, Maisie Thompson thinks it is her God-given right to know everything about everybody. Even a casual chat with her is like being interrogated by the FBI. I forced a pleasant expression.

"Gene was telling me about meeting your pilots this afternoon, Alexa," she began. "We're so very pleased to have new exhibitors join our show this year."

Great. Now they were my pilots. I decided to cut her off before she got too interested in the fact they were staying at my house. The best offense is an evasive maneuver, or something like that.

"Maisie, I'd like you to meet Captain Jim Gutterman. He flies with the Black Sheep in the Solomon Islands." I smiled charmingly up at Jim. "Where is the 214's base, Captain? You told me but I've forgotten the name of the island."

He took my lead and ran with it.

"We're stationed on Vella La Cava, ma'am. Pleased to know you," he said and shook Maisie's extended hand.

She beamed. "Oh, I do love it when our pilots stay in character. It makes the experience so real for the visitors. Have you done many shows like this?"

"Greg – Major Boyington – and I have flown a lot of missions together but this is a new style of campaign for us. Feels more like R and R," Jim said.

His eyes flicked from Masie's face to her prominently displayed breasts. In his defense, it was hard not to stare, even for me, and I'd encountered them before. I pinched the inside of his elbow and had the satisfaction of feeling him flinch. I smiled politely when he cut his eyes to me.

"I'm sure you'll have a grand time this weekend," the mayor's wife said. "Alexa is doing a fabulous job with things, isn't she? With her lineage, she's a natural."

"Yes, ma'am," Jim replied, pointedly keeping his eyes on her face. I didn't know if he was agreeing with the assumption he had no other pressing obligations this weekend – like finding his way back through the wormhole of time so my sainted great-grandfather didn't buy the farm during a major military campaign – or the assumption I had things under control.

"Where has the major gone?" Maisie peered around the crowd. "I simply must meet him."

"Greg's talking to the line chief about repairs," Jim said. "We, uh, took a little damage on the flight in."

Gene nodded. "I see him over there with Roberta."

Maisie turned to her husband. "You must introduce me." The Thompsons excused themselves and I breathed a sigh of relief.

When they were out of earshot, Jim asked, "Were those real?"

I didn't have to ask what he was talking about. "Depends on your definition of real. They're bought and paid for."

I was starting to recognize his scowl as an indicator of confusion, not irritation.

"Implants. Breast augmentation," I explained.

"What did she have implanted, melons? And why?"

"Squashy silicone gel thingies to, uh, make them bigger." I stopped, unable to explain it with any kind of grace. I'd always been content with the size and shape of what God had given me and had never given much thought to what drove women to go under the knife in pursuit of reshaping their bodies.

"Women do that voluntarily? Sounds painful." Jim's gaze dropped to my chest and lingered.

"Stop that," I said and elbowed him. "Not all women. Just some."

"Why?"

"Maisie likes men to look at her. She decided her original set wasn't doing the job anymore."

"And her husband lets her bounce them around like that in public?"

"I imagine he's as proud of them as she is," I said. "Come on, let's get a drink." I led him to the bar set up just outside the hangar door and asked for two beers. The bartender pulled two bottles of Busch Light from a tub of ice and wiped them with a towel. He popped the tops off and handed us each one.

"That'll be eight dollars," he said. Jim sucked in his breath. I handed the bartender a ten, dropped the change in the tip jar and we turned back to the crowd. I slipped my arm through Jim's again. I kind of liked it and it meant he couldn't wander off and get in trouble. We continued to stroll among the mix of exhibitors and town notables who'd been invited.

"Eight dollars for two beers?" Jim lifted the bottle and inspected it. "Is there a gold nugget at the bottom?"

"Would you have rather have had one of the craft beers? Millstream Schildbrau was six dollars a bottle, last time I checked."

"Schildbrau? That sounds German." He scowled.

"It is. It's a local microbrewery. And the Germans are our allies now," I said, smiling in greeting as one of the city council members and her husband wandered past.

Jim sipped the beer and pulled a face. "It doesn't have much giddy-up."

I didn't know what the alcohol content of beer was seventy-five years ago but the modern version evidently paled in comparison.

"Behave yourself and you can have more Scotch when we get home," I said.

"Say, you're one of the boys who brought in the Corsairs this morning, aren't you?" A voice boomed from behind us.

I turned and recognized one of the men with the crew of the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk staged adjacent to my unexpected late arrivals. Preston Aldridge was a stout, balding gentleman who had flown Bell Huey helicopters in Vietnam. Now in his 70s, he'd retired from a civilian job in ag aviation and joined up with the Warhawk's crew as a blend of company clerk and supply sergeant. His wife's name was Betty, they'd been married fifty-two years, had seven grandchildren and lived in Ohio with a Pembroke Welsh corgi named Beauregard. I knew all this not from Derek's meticulous notes but because Preston loves to talk.

He doesn't believe in brief conversations but I'd liked him immediately when he came into my office to check in the Warhawk's entourage. I prayed Preston would play along with Jim's historical re-enactor charade.

I made introductions, the careful weave of truth and fabrication rolling off my tongue now with practiced ease. I wasn't above using my credibility as show manager to make sure no one looked too closely at the men's credentials. Given that there were no other WWII vets on the exhibitor roster, I thought their credentials were damned near gold plated.

"I noticed you got some damage on that rudder," Preston said. "Vertical stabilizer looks a bit chewed up, too."

"Hit some rough weather on the way in," Jim said. "Got tossed around a bit."

"Just a bit?" Preston chuckled. "Looks like you've got a few bullet holes in that old girl, too."

Jim didn't miss a beat. "Those were from earlier this morning." His straight-faced delivery sounded like he was rehashing a mission with a fellow pilot at the officers' club.

Preston stared at him for a minute, then burst into a hearty laugh. "Next, you're going to tell me you mixed it up with a flight of Zeroes over Bougainville."

"Nope," Jim returned, "just routine morning patrol over the Slot. Meatballs got the drop on us but it didn't take long before we had 'em running home with their tails between their legs."

Preston howled with approval and I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Put pilots together and all they wanted to do was tell stories, no matter what decade they were from.

"Alex, do you mind if I take this young man off your hands for a few minutes?" Without waiting for an answer, he continued, "Come here, son, and meet my mechanics. I think we could help you with those repairs if your crew chief doesn't mind."

"That would be mighty generous, sir, seeing as how our crew chief wasn't, uh, able to make the trip." Jim glanced at me and raised his eyebrows. I nodded. Preston's interpretation of a minute was likely to stretch to an hour and since the conversation was focused on airplane repair, it was unlikely things would get too awkward.

"What! You're flying those ships without a mechanic on standby?" Preston looked impressed. "Ya'll are either heroes or damn fools." He looked over his shoulder and addressed his wife, a pleasant, white-haired woman. "Betty, go find Charlie and Ben. We gotta help this young fellow out or he'll never get back home."

You don't know the half of it, I thought. I squeezed Jim's arm. "Will you be all right for a minute? I'd better go rescue Greg and Robbie." I nodded toward the bar, where Gene and Maisie Thompson had them backed, literally, into a corner.

"Go on," Jim nodded. "I reckon I'll be fine."

I crossed the hangar and bit the inside of my lip to keep from laughing. Maisie was firing questions thick and fast. Greg was doing an admirable job of keeping his eyes on her face in spite of the prominence of her anatomy. Robbie caught my eye and silently mouthed, "Help."

I put on my best PR director's smile and stepped neatly into the middle of it just as Maisie asked Greg what he did for a day job.

"I'm so sorry to interrupt but one of the exhibitors has offered to help fix the damage these boys sustained on their flight in this morning," I said. "He and his mechanics are waiting to speak with Greg."

"Nice save," Robbie muttered as we extricated ourselves from the Thompsons.

Jim's tall figure was easy to spot at the edge of the crowd and we made our way toward him. He was part of a small entourage that now included Preston and Betty Aldridge and the aforementioned Charlie and Ben. Charlie was tall and cadaverously thin. Ben was shorter and about as big around as he was tall. They were all engaged in an animated conversation with a lot of hand gestures I presumed represented the extent of damage. It was decided we should all troop out to inspect the plane in person.

Temporary power poles strung with bare lightbulbs illuminated the line of planes, eerily recreating the images I'd seen in photos of flight lines on jungle island bases. The evening air was cool and the sound of the high school marching band playing at halftime of the football game, drifted on the breeze. I should probably be back at the reception, working the crowd and troubleshooting for tomorrow. Then I decided the social gathering could just run itself. As long as the bar didn't go dry, no one would miss me.

Robbie was deep in conversation with Charlie and Ben and there was more pointing and hand gesturing as they circled Jim's battered plane. I caught snatches of conversation involving sheet metal and welding. I hadn't known what a rudder or vertical stabilizer were before tonight. I hadn't known circa 1943 Marine Corps issue skivvies came with buttons either. I wondered what I'd learn next.

The group came to a consensus, topped by Rob saying, "If that doesn't work, we'll just wrap it with hundred-mile-an-hour tape." Jim and Greg laughed with the group but I was pretty sure they hadn't fixed anything with duct tape in 1943.

"How far do you boys have to travel to get home?" Preston queried.

"It's not so much the miles as it's the conditions," Greg said. Preston seemed content not to pursue the logistics of their return trip and the conversation drifted to the P-40. Greg said it was as fine a plane as any if you needed to steal one and make a get-away. This segued into another tale about running out of fuel and dodging oxen while making an emergency landing in a farm field. I'd have found his imagination as uproariously funny as Preston did, except I knew imagination had nothing to do with it.

I wandered back around to the side of Jim's plane and gazed up at the cockpit. His name was stenciled in white, with rising sun flags under it. Kill flags. He was already an ace and I felt a rush of gratitude he'd taken my great-grandfather under his wing, literally.

"What do you think of her?" Jim appeared at my elbow. His voice held a quiet pride, absent – for once - any arrogance or sarcasm.

"I think she's one tough girl," I said, craning my neck back.

"Climb on up," he said. "Take a look."

"Really?"

"As long as you don't fire her up and take her for a spin."

"Smart ass."

He grinned at me and pointed out the toe holds. It's a good thing I'm tall and have long legs or I never would have made it. Whoever designed the Corsair put a lot of effort into the plane's lethal power and not so much consideration into the ease of getting in and out.

I maneuvered myself awkwardly into the cockpit, settled my butt on the hard leather seat and looked around. Holy cow. The control panel made my pickup look like a piece of cake. And I could barely see over the proverbial steering wheel.

"How do you see where you're going?" I asked.

Jim vaulted up next to me and leaned into the cockpit.

"Tail end comes up on takeoff and things level out," he said, as if that explained everything. "Makes carrier landings and takeoffs a little lively but we're a land-based squadron so it don't matter much."

"Much? If you had to land one of these things on a moving target, I think it would matter a lot."

"We get it done. Keep your wings level and pray you catch the wire and don't bounce." He laughed. "Your great-grandpappy's been known to need a few wave-offs before he gets it right."

I ran my fingers lightly over the myriad of knobs and levers, feeling an inexplicable connection to this piece of living history.

"You gotta touch everything you see?" Jim asked. I didn't have to look at him to know he was smiling.

"Yes," I said unapologetically and went back to my tactile examination of the plane.

My great-grandfather, at age 20, had left college and volunteered for the war effort. Had he set out to become a pilot or had he been tossed into flight school as the result of an aptitude test designed to capitalize on traits he possessed?

By pure chance, he'd been in the right place at the right time when Greg was recruiting for what became the hottest fighter squadron in the South Pacific. There, he joined a cadre of seasoned pilots who shared their knowledge. Through Greg and Jim's combined tutelage, Thomas Joseph Wiley of Cedar Junction, Iowa, was rising to his potential but if those two men didn't get back, his chance to finish that journey could be cut short. It was a loop of logic I didn't want to think about.

I lifted myself out of the cockpit. Jim leaped nimbly to the ground and I negotiated my way back to the wing. I knelt to drop back to the tarmac but he surprised me by wrapping his hands around my waist and swinging me down before I could protest.

"Thanks," I said, a little breathless, and tugged my sweater straight. "How much training did you get before you deployed?"

"Not nearly enough," he said. "Learned most of it on the job. I joined up early in '42, after Pearl."

"Have you been flying with Greg since then?"

"Nah. He didn't form the Black Sheep until '43. By then I'd been bounced out of a couple of squadrons for, uh, disciplinary reasons."

"Disciplinary reasons? You?" I said drily.

"Now who's the smart ass? Seems my commanding officers thought I didn't have any and they were convinced they should install some."

"How'd that work?"

"Not so great until Greg got hold of me."

Greg joined us. Robbie was still talking to Preston. The older pilot grinned at the memory but rubbed his jaw. "If I remember right, you got hold of me, Gutterman."

Jim looked slightly abashed. "I might have thrown the first punch but you threw the last one."

"And the rest of those yahoos stood around making bets and drinking TJ's Scotch," Greg said with what could be described as a fond smile. This brawl was apparently a cheerful memory.

"That Scotch is what got TJ into the Black Sheep in the first place," Jim said. "If he hadn't slugged that transport captain for trying to commandeer it, he'd never have been facing court martial."

"Wait!" I interjected. "My great-grandfather was facing a court martial?"

"Oh hell, darlin', we all were," Jim said.

That did it. I needed another beer. Preston and his crew drifted off with promises of assistance the next day. Robbie rejoined us and were all angling toward the bar when someone called my name.

"Alex! Hey, Alex!"

Nick O'Meara was striding toward us, camera on a strap around his neck. Nick works for the local paper, The Cedar Pioneer-Journal. He's my age, medium height with a wiry build, light brown hair and a tendency to laugh at inappropriate things. He occasionally joins me and Robbie when we get together for a drink after work. I'd been feeding him press releases about the air show for the last six weeks and he'd been putting them on the front page of The Pioneer-Journal. The show was getting great publicity.

I'd been bugging him for weather forecasts, too, since he's a total weather geek. He's a member of Iowa Skywarn and the Iowa Storm Chasing Network and goes tornado hunting with a team in the spring and summer. He's invited me to go with him a couple of times but I've never done it. Nick had told me about the weather system that produced the Thursday night electrical storm several days before it happened and he assured me there would be clear skies for the weekend. So far, so good. He's not just a weather geek, he's an accurate weather geek.

"Nick, this is Jim Gutterman and Greg Boyington. They're late arrivals, so they're not on the exhibitors' list I sent you yesterday but they're re-enactors." I tried not to stress the last word too much. "Jim, Greg, this is Nick O'Meara with The Cedar Pioneer-Journal." I gave Greg a pointed look and added, "He's the press corps."

Nick stuck out his hand. "Good to meet you."

"Good to know you," Jim returned.

"I won't hold it against you," Greg said, shaking Nick's hand.

I couldn't stand it any longer.

"What is your deal with the media?" I blurted. Greg's initially frosty response to me had thawed within minutes but I could see Nick had set him off again.

"They never get anything right."

"Let me prove you wrong," Nick countered. "Give me an interview." Greg's irritated dismissal of his profession didn't bother him at all. Typical Nick. He rolls with it.

Greg considered this. "You buy the next round and I'll think about it."

"Karla will crap a weasel if I start expensing out beer," Nick said, naming the paper's notoriously frugal editor. He counted heads. "Be right back."

"He's a good guy," I said to Greg. "Give him a chance."

Greg folded his arms across his chest and looked doubtful.

Nick returned with five bottles of beer. He and Greg had an amiable argument about doing an interview, which I think they both enjoyed. In the end, they decided Nick would sit down with both men during the show tomorrow and they would give him a first-hand account of what life was like as a fighter pilot in the South Pacific. The story angle had been my idea, a way to focus on not only the planes but the men who flew them. Nick had no idea exactly how first-hand this account was going to be.

The reception was over by 8 p.m., so it wasn't late when we got back to my place. I unlocked the door and my stomach growled embarrassingly as we entered the kitchen. The only things I'd put in it since lunch were a generous tumbler of Scotch and a couple of beers. It was a wonder I was still on my feet. There'd been snacks at the reception but cocktail wieners and potato chips only go so far.

"Are you guys hungry?" I asked. That was a rhetorical question since Jim had opened the door of the refrigerator and was surveying its contents. He was out of luck. I'd been so busy with the show, I hadn't bought groceries this week. Aside from bottled water, Coke and a couple of forlorn-looking take-out containers, it was empty.

"I'll take that as a yes," I said as he examined a bottle of water. "I'll order a pizza – what do you guys like?"

This got me another one of those looks and I floundered on the shoals of the seventy-five year generation gap.

"Never mind, you'll like it, trust me," I said, crossing my fingers, and called the local delivery place. Twenty minutes later, the doorbell rang and I relieved the driver of a large pepperoni with extra cheese.

"You have a machine to wash your clothes and people who deliver food to your house so you don't have to cook. Are all women as lazy as you are?" Jim asked.

"I am not lazy!" I started to pull paper plates out of the cupboard, then decided that would be setting myself up for commentary about not washing dishes. I grabbed three real plates instead and the men followed me through the dining room into the living room. I set the pizza on the low table in front of the couch, handed each of them a plate and told them to help themselves.

"We're eating in the living room? Is your table broke?" Greg asked.

"I usually eat in front of the television," I said a little defensively. To be honest, the only reason I had dining and kitchen tables was because they came with the house.

"The television?" Jim asked doubtfully. "That little movie screen?" He gestured at my flat panel TV.

"Yes." I flipped it on and the screen filled with a scene of nude, writhing limbs from Game Of Thrones.

"Oh shit!" I yelped and flipped the channel. That didn't improve anything, since AMC was running a The Walking Dead marathon for Halloween weekend. The undead snarled menacingly as they ripped apart human flesh. Hastily I flipped to The Weather Channel. I didn't want Jim and Greg's impression of modern American entertainment to be based on human bodies – no matter what was being done to them.

It was too late.

Jim waved a hand at the remote, grinning. "Go back to those folks having at it. That looked interesting."

"Absolutely not." My face was burning. Four-hundred channels and that had to be the first thing that came on. First, Maisie Thompson's boobs and now this. I gestured toward the screen where Jim Cantore was reporting on a late season hurricane slamming the Gulf Coast.

"This is what I usually watch," I mumbled. Truth is, I'm as much of a weather geek as Nick. I just don't go chasing around after storms that could blow me into next week.

"Don't the censors get a little excited about that, uh, other sort of thing?" Jim looked genuinely curious.

Clark Gable's 1939 declaration to Vivian Leigh that frankly, he had no damns to give had set the movie-going public on its ear so I could only imagine how HBO's finest moments must have looked. I balked at starting a discussion about modern moral behavior after the day I'd had but there was nothing for it.

"People having sex in movies isn't a big deal these days." The men's expressions told me they begged to differ. I soldiered on. "Besides, there are lots of other things to watch – weather, sports, travel, cooking shows."

"Cooking shows?" Jim raised an eyebrow. "You watch people cook but you don't do it yourself?"

We finished the pizza down to the last slice. I guessed they either liked it or were just hungry. So far, twenty-first century America had not been a resounding hit.

Greg got the bottle of Scotch off the dining room table and poured a round.

"Nightcap," he said and handed me a glass. I nursed it cautiously. If I slammed it down too fast I'd topple over, plus I was reluctant to get lit up with two virtual strangers sitting in my living room. But they didn't feel like strangers because they knew Great-grandpa Thomas.

And if they didn't get back to 1943 and keep him alive until he became the ace pilot my town worshipped, I wasn't going to exist. I supposed if TJ didn't make it through Operation Cherryblossom, the major offensive against the Japanese set to launch in three days, my sudden non-existence would be painless. I would simply not be here and neither would my mom or my grandfather.

"Have you given any thought to how we're going to get out of here?" Greg asked as if reading my mind.

He made it sound like he and Jim were stuck in a locked room and I held the key. Maybe I did, but I didn't have a clue where it was or how to apply it.

I shook my head. The topic had been leaping around in my skull like a crazed rabbit since the moment I'd realized what was at stake but it wasn't like I'd summoned them by magic. I couldn't just reverse the spell and send them spiraling back through the abyss of space and time.

"Tell me more about where you were headed and how you, uh, got here," I said.

"We got sucked into a storm cell that blew up on our way to Espritos," Jim said.

"Where's Espritos?"

"It's the Navy rear area on another island in the theatre," Greg said. "The weather report said it was a slow-moving system, so we took off. Thought we could outrun it and set down before things got hairy."

"The damn thing picked up speed and caught us thirty minutes out from La Cava," Jim said. "I thought we'd bought the farm. The next thing I knew, I'm dropping below the cloud base and looking at Greg on one side and a cornfield on the other. Your little gem of an airport popped up and even though your tower wasn't too pleased about it, we were sure as hell happy to see them."

"So you don't know what happened between the time the storm caught you and you got here?" I asked.

"No." Greg rubbed a hand over his face. "Could have been five minutes, could have been five hours. I blacked out. When I came to, my temperature gauge was on red-line and I was running on vapor. Jim's bird had taken damage and neither of us were going to stay in the air much longer. I figured it was easier to ask forgiveness than permission." He shrugged. "We were setting down one way or the other."

He said it with a matter-of-factness that reflected the calmness both he and Jim exhibited. If the tables had been turned and I'd been dumped into their universe, I'd have been losing my shit six ways from Sunday.

On the television, Jim Cantore was talking about the hurricane's impact on weather throughout the United States. Nick had assured me the weekend would be clear and cool, perfect weather for the show, with changes coming early in the week. It looked like his forecast was right on target.

I studied both men. In spite of their outward calm, there was tension in their eyes and the set of their mouths. They had to be exhausted on top of everything else. A good night's sleep wasn't going to fix everything but it might give us all a better perspective on what to do next.

"Okay, time for bed," I announced. This was going to be awkward. Did I mention my house has four bedrooms but only one bed? I'd sold Great-Aunt Eleanor's ancient rickety bedsteads and hauled the sagging mattresses to the dump when I cleaned out the house. Then I bought a brand new pillow-top mattress and box springs for the sole remaining decent iron bedframe. I said as much and added, "You guys can share the bed or flip for it. The couch is comfortable, so one of you could take that. I can sleep on an air mattress."

"Nah, it's not right to turn you out of your own bed," Jim said. "I'll take the air mattress and Greg can have the couch."

Jim stood an easy six feet. There was no way he'd be comfortable on that air mattress. The couch was a big, sprawling thing but if Jim took it, that relegated Greg to the air mattress and that didn't feel right either.

"That's very chivalrous but no," I said firmly. "You guys flip for the bed. Loser gets the couch. I'll take the floor. I'll be right back."

I went to the linen cupboard at the top of the stairs and came back with the self-inflating sleeping pad and an armload of blankets and pillows.

"Looks like I'm bunking here." Jim waved at the couch. "Greg pulled rank. He gets the bed."

I threw a pillow at him and tossed a couple of blankets on the foot of the couch. "Make yourself comfortable."

I tossed the sleeping pad on the floor as far away from the couch as I could get. It seemed awkward to sleep next to a guy I'd only known a handful of hours but it would be anti-social to go sleep in another room. It would be just plain weird to sleep on the floor of my own bedroom. With my luck, I'd get up in the night to use the bathroom and crawl back into bed without thinking.

That was assuming I could fall asleep in the first place.

To be continued . . .