By Air Mail Ch.03

"But ..." she looked behind herself at the closed door, "There's a window in the door back here."

"So what?" he asked over his shoulder as he walked, "Nobody can see in unless they've got their faces pressed up against the glass. And if that happens, I'll shoot them. I don't think there are that many Peeping Toms in Dodge City that there'd be one out there right now in the rain. Get moving."

"I'll bet they prolly got binoculars up in that tower," she objected.

"They do," he said, "for sure.

But they don't use them to look for pretty women changing in aircraft on dark, rainy days. They only do that on the sunny days and every other Thursday unless it's Christmas.

Do you want the money or not? I'm the only one who can even see you and I'm not looking. Let's go."

Emmy stood there in disbelief, but he was already gone. She turned and almost shouted.

"You promise not to –"

He nodded, still walking, "Think about it. If I looked and you saw me, would that get us off the ground any sooner? I doubt it." He disappeared through the open space onto the flight deck.

"Do you know what I am?" she hollered in his direction as she took off her wet coat.

There was a pause then.

"I dunno," he replied, sounding a little like he was in a tunnel as he replied from the other end of the aircraft, "Beautiful?

What do I win if I get it right?"

Emmy could have been knocked down by a feather as she gaped for a moment, but she recovered quickly.

"I'm one-half white trash," she called out. "The rest of me is Kiowa. You so much as try to peek at me Quinton, and I swear that I'll scalp you – and without the right training for it, I just might get mixed up and start at the wrong end before I guess my mistake!"

"Ouch," he said with a chuckle, "Fair enough, Emmy."

"Hey, there's no warm air coming out of this thing up here!" she called out to him as she hung her clothes.

"And there won't be," he called back over his shoulder, "until I get the engines started. I can't run the heater until then without flattening the batteries. The longer you take, the colder you get, alright?

Let's go Emmy, chop-chop! Just hurry the hell up, willya?"

--------------------------------

He glanced at the wind-up chronometer on the instrument panel and shook his head.

"I don't want to have to file our flight plan three times over for the same trip, Emmy! CAN WE GET GOING PLEA-"

"I'm right here," she said, facing away from him as she stood with her back to the flight deck, "I can't get it on. My back is too wet, my hair gets in the way, and ... Could you help me a little?"

Quinton was up and turned around in a heartbeat, "Sure. Uh, sorry for the yelling, but we gotta go. Hold still, and I'm NOT looking, alright?"

He could see from her shoulders down her bare back to the swell of her bare hips, but he said nothing.

Emmy nodded and held still as he lifted her hair and grabbed the overalls by the shoulders. It was little effort, but he knew how it could be to shuck them on sometimes and he also knew that she wasn't used to them. As she began to do the buttons up at the front, he moved her hair again.

She turned around and thanked him as she began to do up the buttons in more of a hurry.

"I wish that I'd known that this would happen, you flying with me today. I'd have gotten you a warmer set –with a long zipper. Why aren't you wearing anything under that?" he asked, looking serious.

"I thought you said that you weren't looking," she said, with the same expression.

"I wasn't," he said, "until that moment. Then I noticed how you are in there. I didn't see anything but your back. I was just wondering, that's all."

"I ... I don't have much for underwear," she said, "and what I had on was all wet from sitting on my ass in the wet grass in the park, not that it was my idea. I don't have money for a proper brassiere. All I got is a long cloth to use for that – and it's wet too. Sorry for saying it if it's wrong or anything, but there's almost nothing worse to a girl than cold bosoms."

He still looked serious as he reached for something over the back of his seat, "It can get cold in aircraft sometimes, like now. You said you're in for the job, so that makes you aircrew as of now. I won't have you catching cold if I can help it. This job can get cold enough sometimes as it is. Here, put this on. I don't want you even the slightest bit cold until you're at least dry."

"I already am cold," she said with a shrug.

"I know it," he said with a little concern evident on his face, "I hope this will help."

"Don't you ever get cold, Quinton?" she asked, looking up, "I think that I could believe that you're a real cowboy if you told me yes."

His expression turned very questioning for a moment, "You can believe what you like, Emmy. Have you got some idea that cowboys are so used to living outside that they don't feel cold or something like that?"

"Something like that – I think," she nodded, "I think that maybe I have that impression from seeing cowboys sometimes .They never complain about feeling cold."

"They don't complain because for one, what the hell good would it do if you lose some of your body heat telling somebody else who's just as cold as you are and two, if there's nobody else to complain to, then you're complaining to a horse. Neither pursuit is exactly what I'd call a constructive use of your time, which could be better put to use shivering," he said.

He turned away and she heard him say to himself that this was the coldest place that he'd been at this time of year for a long while. She wondered what he meant by that. She looked down.

She was holding a leather flight jacket. It was a little scuffed and weathered and had probably seen better times in it's day. But it was a sight better than sitting naked in too-large overalls, so she smiled and thanked him as she pulled it on, noticing that the sleeves of the overalls were too long on her, so she rolled them over the cuffs of the similarly over-long jacket sleeves. She sat down and he began to fasten the belts while telling her how to undo them when she wanted to. He closed a few of the snaps on the jacket and Emmy asked why.

"I can see your cold bosoms fairly well through the gaps in your overalls, and Emmy, I hear there's not much worse than that. Why, it's gotta be a crime at least some damn place in the world today for that to happen."

She looked at him in a little shock, but he wasn't smiling, "I didn't have anything to do with you getting wet and cold. The least that I can do is try to help you warm up a bit."

Then he was gone, getting himself situated in the pilot's seat.

Emmy looked at the jacket, seeing some patches sewn on and she tried to read the bigger ones, though they were upside down, since she was wearing it.

"7th Fighter Wing" one of them read.

"6th Night Fighter Squadron" another, larger one said under a spinning propeller and a human skull. On the other side, there was another one. She saw that it was a fairly new one and it read, "Pacific Air Command."

He leaned out of his seat and handed her a set of headphones, "Put these on so we can hear each other. The little blob on the cord there gets clipped to your collar or you can just let it lie against your throat. I clip it because it bugs me against my neck."

As she got it done, he set a few switches and cranked one of the engines over. It caught with a roar and then he settled it down some and began to work at doing the same thing on the other side. She watched him work from a list very thoroughly and then he began to set other selectors and even more switches.

She felt a little heat beginning near her feet, and then a few moments later, she watched as the area under the wing on her side lit up and then the glow moved forward mysteriously over the grass and away toward the front. She looked over at him.

"Landing lights," he said, "They light up and swing down into place."

"But we already are landed. I thought we were gonna be taking off," Emmy said, looking confused.

"Same thing," he smiled," I've only got one set for both things. I had to cut a few corners somewhere. I couldn't afford landing AND take-off lights."

Emmy thought about that for a second. Then she noticed his expression.

She stuck her tongue out at him and he laughed.

When he looked to be at least a little satisfied in going through his list, he said, "This is gonna be a part of your job. There are times when it's really important that you read from this list and others like it for me so we don't forget something important."

She nodded as he began to tune the radios. Emmy looked straight ahead.

In front of Quinton's seat, there was a dashboard like there was in a car, only with lots more stuff on it. But in front of her seat, all that there was appeared to be a strange kind of steering wheel hanging out in space somehow. Beyond that, there seemed to be a small passageway or something toward the nose of the plane. She pointed when he looked as though he had a moment.

"What's down there?"

He grinned, "Oh that? It's the root cellar."

She made a slightly annoyed-looking expression to him and he held up one hand, "I'll tell you in about ten minutes. Then he spoke to the windshield for a moment.

Emmy could hear the controller in the tower giving Quinton permission for something.

A moment later, the engines began to roar before they settled back down.

They were moving.

"Next to your seat," he said," Between it and the wall, you'll find a couple of folded-up, thick paper bags just about lunch-sized. I'm going to be busy for the next little while. If you feel sick, throw up in the bag, alright?"

She reached for a bag and took it out. Looking from it to him, Emmy nodded.

Things looked a little unreal to her as she sat in the moving aircraft. They weren't going very quickly and she tried to watch what he did closely. At length, they slowed to a stop where he made first one engine almost howl for a few moments and then he did it to the other one. They moved forward again, just as slowly and with an ungodly roar from the engines, he turned them to face the long runway. Quinton consulted another card with another list.

He made a few adjustments to things, seeming to reach all over everywhere to get it all done.

He turned to her, "Last chance to back out. You ready?"

She nodded, feeling a little odd about it and he smiled back at her. "Say goodbye to Dodge City, then."

He called the tower again and they told him that he could take off. Quinton pushed some levers forward and the engines roared even louder.

They seemed to be stuck on something for a few seconds and then she saw him lift his heels a little and they were rolling. The ground just outside began to grow a little blurry and they were moving fast in seconds, and they were still accelerating.

Emmy was a little startled to feel the tail of the plane lifting. It hung in space for a moment and then the ground began to fall away under them. She looked at the gray horizon ahead of her and saw it shifting in height as she looked.

She heard and felt three distinct thumping sounds and looked over.

"Landing gear," he smiled, "Just like the birds, we pick our feet up and tuck them in once we don't need them to hold us up."

Then the horizon tilted and they were turning left. Emmy looked down at just a sliver of the outskirts of Dodge City as she'd never seen it before in her life.

It looked a lot smaller to her suddenly, and before she could really process that thought, it was gone and she was looking at sky, pretty much.

The turn continued until they were facing west. They were still climbing and Quinton was making some adjustments here and there. As they climbed still higher into the sky, she saw the sun peek out at her from a little crack in the clouds and Emmy-Lyn began to feel a bit of trepidation, uncertainty and even a small thrill of fear in her.

Overall however, she felt free.