He was barely home a week and Hank Metcalf had been a busy guy. There was something on his mind and Danny was worried because he wasn't doing much talking.
He thought it might have been because his friend wanted to ask Evelyn to the squadron party but she had accepted in his quarters the evening before, so it couldn't be that. It had to be the damn bad luck the squadron suffered on their last mission when two of their friends and fellow pilots were shot down. Neither of them survived and only one of the guys were recoverable.
Hank told him about one of the pilots and how he was off his right wing one moment and the next he wasn't. It was a hell of a shock to see and as Hank relayed to him, reinforced once again that they were at war and what they were doing were no longer training exercises.
Danny knew the death of the second pilot had been particularly hard for him to take because they'd become friends after they met each other at Wheeler. Mike Scott had been a couple of years older than Danny and Hank and was regular Air Force. He enlisted right out of high school and after basic training been accepted into flight school.
He married his high school sweetheart and they'd had a child. Their little girl couldn't have been more than two and after Mike was killed scuttlebutt around the base was that before he left for Okinawa he and his wife found out that they were going to have another baby.
It was difficult enough to lose two pilots but when one of them was a family man it made it even more so.
As for Danny, he was finally off of his crutches, for good. There was still no timetable for getting back in the air and he'd resigned himself to the idea that it was out of his hands. His leg had made a complete recovery and he continued with his rehabilitation as his doctor wanted but wouldn't release him just yet.
He and Hank began to run again on a daily basis but Danny needed to take it slow. He didn't have any strength in his legs and his stamina was non-existent. He was starting from square one but the impatience he felt after he'd come back from Tennessee was also non-existent. He'd accepted that it was going to take time to get back in the air and while the easy solution would have been to throw in the towel, Lieutenant Daniel McCawley made the decision to stick it out.
He was an Air Force Academy graduate and pilot and as tempting as the idea had been to trade it in for a quiet life in Tennessee, he'd worked too hard to get where he was and decided that he wasn't willing to give it up that easily.
Things with Ann were improving as well. They'd done a lot of talking at their grandparent's and made decisions about how their relationship needed to proceed if they were going to keep temptation at bay. He still didn't know why a tree was so important to her except that it would give her the opportunity to be alone with him and that was something that could have been dangerous. That's why he was more than happy to have Hank and Evelyn over to help decorate the tree Ann insisted that he get.
He didn't help things, however when he got some mistletoe with the plan to get her under it.
Danny had to admit to himself though that it wasn't something that he regretted. He hadn't given her a real kiss since they'd come back from Shelby and by choice, limited his contact with her afterward with a kiss on the cheek.
Those kisses had their own special quality because they still brought her in contact with him without the possibility of it leading anywhere. But the consequences of those chaste kisses left Danny more frustrated then he'd been before when he'd decided to do something with the aid of what Ann referred to as tree fungus.
He felt better than he had in months and remembering Ann's reference to the mistletoe made him smile.
"It's nice to see you smile McCawley." Hank's amused voice brought him up short. "It seems all I've seen on your sorry mug in the last few months is a frown. It's a wonder that your family could stand to be around you."
Danny shrugged because he knew that his friend was right. "The truth is, I couldn't stand to be around me sometimes. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself and what I had to deal with but when word came back that Mike and Phil were coming back in boxes that put things into perspective for me really quick. I came back alive and I don't think I fully appreciated that until after I heard about them."
"What makes the whole thing worse is that Christmas is two weeks away and Jeannie's packing up the house." Hank remarked with a sigh.
"You talked to her?"
"I talked to her and she's bound and determined to be off base and home with her parent's before Christmas. She told me that she and Mike never spent a Christmas on base after their daughter was born and she sure didn't want to start this year. She just wants to see Mike buried at Arlington and get herself settled back in Indiana with her parents."
"I thought for sure that she'd want him in South Bend." Danny was surprised at the decision of Mike's widow.
"I think she would have preferred it that way too but he made it clear to her that if something happened he wanted to be buried at Arlington. Mike told her that he wanted the opportunity to be with real American heroes." He explained.
Danny couldn't help but think that Mike's sacrifice had been pretty damn heroic but chose not to voice it. Instead, he thought he should change the subject before it became too maudlin. "Speaking of heroic, I thought that Evelyn was pretty heroic last night when she accepted your invitation. She sure took you by surprise."
"I still can't figure out why she did after all the months of putting me off." Hank seemed to wonder out loud and Danny saw his ears turn red.
"Did you ever stop to consider that she decided that she didn't want to anymore? It seems to me that she'd been fighting a battle with herself the same way you've been doing. And it might just be that she finally admitted that she wanted to give you a chance."
"She might regret it." He sighed and Danny shook his head.
"The only way she's going to regret accepting is if you behave like an ass and I would sure as hell hope that you'd have more respect for her than that." He reminded his friend.
"I won't be an ass." Hank looked at him with a frown. "I've got too much riding on this. After she accepted my invitation and then we spent the evening with you and Ann decorating your tree I finally had to admit to myself what I've been trying to avoid and that's how I really feel about her. It didn't help things that you got Ann under the mistletoe in the kitchen and all I could think of was that I wanted to do the same with Ev."
"You have time Henry, Christmas is still two weeks away."
"Do you know that she's the only person outside of my family who calls me Henry? You do on occasion, but it's usually when you're trying to make a point. She's never called me Hank." He mused and Danny wondered if he didn't like it.
"Sure she has." He contradicted his friend. "When I was in the hospital she always came by to visit and on one of those visits, she kept calling you Hank and I don't think she realized it. I just remember thinking how odd it sounded. Would you prefer it if she would?"
"I don't know. I'm not sure if I would like it if she started calling me Hank because that's what everyone else calls me." And then he laughed at the apparent contradiction. "I guess as long as she acknowledges me I can live with that."
"I wonder if she has any idea of what she's getting herself into." Danny couldn't help but laugh and was relieved to see Hank smile.
"No more than I know what I'm getting myself into. Evelyn Ahern is a difficult woman to figure out sometimes."
"I'm sure she feels the same way about you my friend. But that's what dating someone is all about, figuring someone out and deciding if you like what you discover." He smiled and Hank laughed.
"You've only had two girlfriends and suddenly you're the big expert on dating."
"I'm not an expert." Danny commented and tried not to sound defensive. "I'm just trying to give you the benefits of the mistakes I've made and what I've learned from them. I like you and Evelyn and I want you to be happy."
"I appreciate that. But just like you and Ann had to do, Ev and I will have to find our own way through this." He put a hand on Danny's shoulder. "You're a good friend and I know that you're only looking out for me but this is something that only we can do."
"I know Hank, I guess it's just that with everything you've already been through with my sister and balking at doing anything about Evelyn I want to see this work for you."
"So do I, Dan." He nodded. "So what happened with you and Ann? You were keeping her at arm length for too long and it was making you pretty unhappy. What's changed that you decided to pursue her again?"
Danny never told Hank about his encounter with Ann when she helped him with his sponge bath and wasn't sure how much he should tell him now. "We got closer than we should have, again. It really scared the hell out of me and just seemed easier after that to keep my distance. But with Mike and Phil getting it the way they did, it put more than my own troubles into perspective. It put what was happening with Ann into perspective too and I knew that she needed to know that I still loved her."
"I don't think she's ever doubted that."
He shook his head. "She never said as much, but I think she did for awhile."
"And you almost left the Air Force, didn't you?" Hank mentioned casually and Danny was perplexed. They hadn't seen much of each other in the last couple of months because while he recuperated and then spent Thanksgiving in Tennessee, Hank was away flying missions. He'd missed their talks a lot and wondered how he'd figured it out.
"It was something that crossed my mind more than once." He confirmed his friend's question with a nod. "I honestly didn't think that I would have anything to worry about once I recovered. My plan was that I would get back in the air and get back to doing what I was trained to do. But because my leg was taking so long to heal and the longer that I was grounded because of that, I started to think that maybe it was happening for a reason. I couldn't help but think that maybe it was some kind of a sign that I wasn't meant to have a career as a military pilot. But it's like I said, at least I came home alive."
"You've thought about this a lot, haven't you?" The look on Hank's face was amazed.
"When we were back in Tennessee I was on my bad leg doing a lot more work than I should have done. The physical labor helped me think but it probably slowed down the healing too." Danny sighed. "I liked being back there because it's such a peaceful place and it gave me a lot of time to think. Of course that got me to thinking that maybe I was meant to be there and start a whole new career."
"Bring it all full circle." Hank finished.
"That never really crossed my mind." Danny shook his head in disagreement. "I just knew that I felt better physically than I had since I was shot down and I really started to think about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life."
"So if Mike and Phil hadn't been killed you might have ended up being a farmer."
"I don't think so. It was a tempting idea and I gave it a lot of thought but it kept coming back to something I'd wanted to do ever since I could remember. And I'll admit that I was having a lot of doubts about getting back into a cockpit but it wasn't something that I could completely give up on." He tried to explain. "It's helped that the flight surgeon cleared me a couple of days ago for limited flight hours. I haven't been cleared to fly a jet just yet but he thinks that I have enough strength to fly the P-40 and it can help me readjust to flying again."
"Does Ann know any of this?" Hank asked him. "It seems to me that you should be telling her this."
"She knows. We talked it all out while she was helping me pick out a Christmas tree." He smiled as he thought of the newly decorated tree that stood in the corner of his living room.
"How is she doing with school? She was having a hard time there for awhile."
"She's going to take the next term off. She talked to her parent's about the struggle she was having and how she wasn't enjoying school, so they told her she could take the next term off provided that she get a job." Danny tried to clarify the situation. "She's promised them that she'll finish out with passing grades and her dad told her that she could live on campus next year if she wanted to."
"Is she going to pass?"
"She hasn't talked to me about school in awhile, so I don't really know. But if her parent's didn't think that she would I don't think they'd let her go with me to the squadron party on Friday."
"It comes back around to that." Hank smiled and Danny wanted to laugh as his friend's ears began to turn red, which could only mean that he was thinking about Evelyn.
"Bringing it all full circle, as you said earlier." He did laugh then and Hank grinned. "So are you ready to take a walk with a gimpy friend?"
"I'll have you running by Christmas."
Danny wasn't ready for that and Hank knew it. "Get me to a slow jog and I'll consider it a success."
"I can do that." And he glanced down at Danny's pale legs. "You need to get some color on those legs Dan. If people around here didn't know you, they wouldn't have any idea that you were born and raised here. Those skinny, pale legs are an embarrassment to the United States Air Force."
"Thanks for pointing out the obvious Hank." He laughed. "I wouldn't have noticed if you hadn't told me."
Hank grinned back at him. "I wouldn't be your friend if I didn't tell you these things. So let's walk and if you feel like jogging a bit, we can do that too."
"Let's take it a step at a time Metcalf." He said as they headed down to the sandy beach.