Millie and Frankie

A work of fiction

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This is a work of fiction and therefore any similarities to persons real or fictional who dumped a Lockheed Model 10 paid for by Purdue University into the Pacific Ocean on a warm July day over eighty years ago is purely coincidental. Besides, the end of this story is much nicer than what likely happened.

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In the story Millie is contemplating her upcoming 40th birthday, Frankie is a few years older.

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"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than the dolphins because he had achieved so much- the wheel, New York, wars and so on- whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water and have a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man- for precisely the same reasons." -Douglas Adams

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*And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda (1971) Eric Bogle (Anachronistic, but the song is ostensibly about Gallipoli, a horrendous battle that took place in 1915 as told by a survivor of Suvla Bay.)

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Millie slowly turned the yoke to the left lining up the sleek silver Lockheed Electra Model 10 with the small cape extending from the tropical island in front of her. She leaned back in the left seat and with her right hand gently tapped Frankie's left shoulder as he bent over the aircraft's tiny navigators table.

"Look."

The island was there, of course it was there, it was right where Frankie had said that it would be. Nobody could use a sextant or plot a sun line like Frankie. Frank, her seasoned navigator who would probably be blamed for their loss when they didn't arrive at Howland Island later today. Or was that later tomorrow. Which is to say later today, tomorrow or maybe even yesterday with respect to Lae, New Guinea where this flight had originated.

Frankie finished drawing a pencil line on the map and turned to her smiling. He knew it would be there and he was confident that his Millie would find it, but it was still something special to be able to actually see it. He half-rose in the low cockpit and leaned over the leather covered left seat and kissed his Millie on top of her head. Then he spent a few minutes there with her just looking at the island as it grew larger before returning to his seat as she slowly put the sleek twin engine airplane into a gentle left bank in order to circle the island in a counter-clockwise direction.

"Home?" Millie said.

"Yes, assuming you still want to do this. We still have fuel remaining onboard to make..."

"No, Frankie, lets stick to the plan."

They spent the next several minutes circling the island, noting the position of its prominent features. Valuable landmarks for orientation for the completion of their upcoming journey. Later when they would be paddling or swimming, wading and walking. While dragging a skid weighted down with their supplies. Millie looked around the Electra's cockpit, at the control panel and said a silent poignant "goodbye."

It was going to hurt to put Hall and Lloyd's aluminum creation into the ocean and watch it sink. It was going to be a big adjustment, flying had been about half of her life up to this point. It was the only reason anyone outside Atchison, Kansas or Hyde Park, Illinois knew her name. If everything went according to the plan she might never see, let alone pilot another airplane.

"Ready?" She asked.

"Want to do another circuit?"

"No, we can save the fuel and the daylight."

"I know this is going to be hard."

"Yeah, but it's for the best."

"I love you Millie."

"You better, you're pretty much stuck with me now."

Love... She was going to be forty before the end of next month. While she was currently married and before that she had been engaged to another... And being a modern twentieth-century woman she did not deprive herself... She had had lovers, wonderful lovers in her past. Love, anachronistic true one-on-one committed to each other forever-till-death-do-you-part love, that was a territory every bit as uncharted as the island beneath them right now.

"I'll go back and get the rafts ready," Frankie said, "just yell when you are ready."

Her Frankie currently making his way to the back of the cabin past the racks of fuel cans, he was unique she thought. He didn't say "I love you" as so many did lightly and without meaning. He mostly spoke by way of his deeds and his actions. He had saved her life back on Sumatra, where she nearly died. Caring for her and listening to her maniacal ravings as she fought her daunting demons both mental and physical.

He 'gave' her this island as a gift. This island that he had explored as a potential Clipper stop while working for Juan Trippe at Pan American. He calmed her down and helped her figure out how they could save themselves. How she might save Netta, Edith, Jackie and Eleanor. Now he was getting their essentials ready for the trip ashore. Preparing their rafts and the big fishing net to be filed with those loose fuel cans. Unbolting their two floats, those empty cabin fuel tanks filled with other essential supplies.

Millie banked the Electra making a long final approach, "truly final," she said to herself, to the calm blue-green water beside the sandy beach. A final resting place that if they had planned it right, they could later salvage from their airplane those useful items they could not put on the rafts now. She lined the doomed silver plane up using the waves breaking on a small reef as a point of visual reference and brought the flaps to 'full down' while repressing her training to lower the landing gear.

"Get ready." She yelled back to Frank.

As she crossed over the cape, she pulled engine power and allowed both of her props to windmill. Pulling back on the yoke, flaring as she entered ground effect to gracefully 'smoosh' the airplane into the warm tropical lagoon's salt water. Unstrapping her four-point harness, she climbed from the Electra's left seat... Any left seat... All left seats for the final time and walked quickly past the fuselage's extra fuel tanks to join her fellow cast-away near the cabin door.

"A perfect landing," said Frankie.

"They might not think so back in West Layfayette, Indiana."

"Can't please everybody."

No, she thought as Frankie opened the cabin door, you really can't. But if this was not a good plan, at the very least it was the least bad out of all her available options. It would keep her from being the instrument used to destroy anybody that she cared about.

As they threw the loose fuel cans out the door into the lagoon, she thought of their many preparations for this moment. How they had sent all of the scientific experiments and the accompanying documentation of findings along with their sizable diaries back to Purdue University from Lae.

Most importantly due to their considerable weight they had sent Jay's cameras on ahead. They were currently at the Kamehameha School at Itascatown, waiting for an airplane that would never arrive because right now it was slowly beginning its final decent in the blue-green water of the lagoon to its sand, rock and coral base. Jay had his precious cameras therefore he would not have to come looking for them.

As Frankie threw the net over most of the floating cans and she wrestled with a raft she thought that anyone looking for them would be looking on the oh-five-seven-degree azimuth from Lae. They would know that Frank having been a navigator for almost thirty years could shoot a sun line. They would never think that we had made a ninety degree turn then a one-thirty-five, a forty and then two sixties to get here. Avoiding settlements, inhabited islands and shipping lanes.

Frankie grabbed the other end of the raft and together they threw it out through the open cabin door. Their plan, it had all come together on Sumatra, where racked by dysentery and delirium she thought that she was going to die. Then she decided that she actually wished to. Given her most recent conversations with Eleanor and with Jay's smug well-dressed button-men she thought that a death from dehydration on Sumatra would have been her least reprehensible option. But Frankie had intervened twice making that fate unnecessary.

He had nursed her back to health using his accumulated knowledge from twenty years at sea, and more importantly his sweet inexplicable compassion. He had listened to her and he had actually heard what she was saying. More significantly he considered her words and he therefore heard what she wasn't saying. What she was afraid to say. What made her 'her.' What terrified her. In that shared experience they had really bonded.

Together they threw the other raft out of the slowly sinking aircraft. Millie jumped out into the lagoon and Frankie pushed the two fuselage tanks cum floats out to her where she lashed them to the net. Frankie stepped into the warm tropical water as Millie lashed the rafts to the net. Then they towed it to shore after swimming around to corral the loose cans and get them inside of the net. The slow swim gave her a lot of time to think.

It was to be a final gift to her friends that she just disappear to be lost in the immense Pacific Ocean. She hoped that it would not be a bad result for Frank either. It was a good plan they would just be gone and that way nobody could get hurt by that megalomaniac Jay. Purdue would get back more than they had invested in her journey.

After her second intentional ground loop, the one in Sumatra, the mended airplane was stripped of all possible weight. Reconfigured by her Frankie, it's two rearmost fuselage tanks disconnected, emptied and modified to serve as hiding places for necessary supplies. The 'heavy' diaries, notes, experiments, 'chutes, cameras and even one radio set and its attendant loop antenna shipped from Lea on ahead to the landing strip in the Phoenix Islands.

Her 'arrangement' with George had always been business, not that there wasn't deep friendship and affection, including physical affection between them. Sex. But they were modern, exclusivity was outdated. It wasn't the dark ages where a man and a woman came together for life. George gets back more than he invested. Their travel journals to be published by his cousin's imprint. Paramount can hire a screenwriter and make a film or three from their journals. A full-time engagement if he wants it, George can promote her legacy. A perfect 'business arrangement.'

Frankie would leave everybody better off as well. Beatie would get the money Frank had been promised for this trip without then having to invest the money in a school she didn't want to run. Josephine whom Frankie felt considerable remorse for... Josephine had after all married a sailor, that he had been absent for most of their marriage was not surprising. Josephine had been well taken care of in their divorce settlement, much to Beatie's chagrin.

As an adult Mille had never been religious, so while it might have been a vision she had on Sumatra... It was to her mind more likely to have been a long-forgotten sermon from her childhood. A sermon recalled during her delirium and fixed in her mind by Frankie saving her. Just as God had in their old age anointed Avram and Sarai with new identities Abraham and Sarah, they were no longer Frank and Amelia they were Frankie and Millie.

In her altered state she had told Frank how her sister Pidge had called her Millie growing up and he had adopted the name. It was such a little thing, but it meant so very much to her that he remembered it. He adopted it as his private name for her but only used it when they were alone together. In turn he became Frankie, her Frankie when she was with him.

Even better they had developed a plan, a desperate but completely workable plan, one heck of a way for Frankie to stop drinking. While she knew that they were both smart enough to know how to distill the bounty of the island into ethanol. She also knew neither of them ever would, what need would there be. It was an equally abrupt way to adopt the archaic concept of monogamy. But she would have to, if she wanted the touch of another it would be Frankie's touch. He must really love her... A sailor and adventurer deliberately marooning himself on an island, with her.

But Frankie was alright, actually much, much better than alright. He was unique. In her delirium she had talked about Netta and Jackie and Eleanor. Frankie wasn't appalled at her stories of Sapphic love like her mother had been. Nor was he a voyeur, he was just genuinely interested. He wondered if she had found something in life that he in his many travels had not. Then he shared his deepest feelings with her. Frankie had not been disgusted when he should have been, not even by the requirements made of him when she was wracked with dysentery. Not when she was a raving lunatic in the throughs of delirium.

She hadn't offered him anything, but he made sure she recovered from both her physical and mental afflictions. She told him how much it hurt her that George did not care for her smile. Her Frankie, he had simply asked her to smile, and then he sweetly kissed her gap tooth smile. He accepted her for who she was and did not ever ask her to change or pretend to be different. Perversely that instilled within her a desire to change at least one thing in her life. To try to have an archaic coupling with just one male lover, so far it had been pretty nice.

Frankie had been around the block a few times or more accurately around the globe under sail a few times. That could be fun, she thought, a little sailboat just the two of them and she hoped that a little island just for two would be an acceptable substitute. It would certainly be an adventure.

The thing with Jay was that in his mind there were no Democrats and no Republicans. There were two groups of people inhabiting this Earth. There were the people Jay could destroy because he had dirt on them, and there were the people his suit-clad minions were investigating so that they might soon join with the former. No person in their right mind would give Jay a throne. So he would just make himself the power behind the throne.

Howard and Juan were ostensibly Republicans and Eleanor was obviously a Democrat but to Jay they were just powerful people he had dirt on. People who would do what he told them to do when he told them to do it in order to survive. To someone with a conscience Edith, Netta and Jackie weren't even players, they were spectators and should have been 'off-limits.' But to Jay boundaries did not exist, to Jay they were fodder.

Now she was free of that weight. As well as the weight of being looked up to just for being herself. Sure, she loved the attention what woman doesn't, but it was getting to be restrictive. So perversely she had become free by stranding herself on a tropical island. She hoped that her Frankie felt the same way as she thought, because "to avoid me he would have to drown himself in the sea." That was no lie. But it was followed by an awful thought, "what would it say about me if he eventually made that choice."

Frankie he was interesting, he had so much to offer but wasn't full of himself. He was into her, making her react, he was teachable, so she taught him what she really liked. The first time he went down on her he was drunk, but not the third, fifth or thirty-fifth time. He cared and he tried and he got really, really good at it. They say women are better because they are more familiar with another woman's anatomy. That may be true in the main. There are exceptions and there are exceptional lovers, fortunately she had for herself one of the latter.

She taught him how she adored having her lover just accept her as she was. To slowly undress her to kiss her gap-toothed smile, to kiss her far less than humongous breasts, to savor the gift of them. To love them without reservation and proclaim their wonder. To be happy making their nips stand tall. To not be appalled at the hairs that grew naturally upon her. To kiss and to love her pits and her tits. To love and to make love to the curly hairs framing her sex.

To kiss, to gently bite on to nibble the lips that protected the entrance to her body, her innermost being and perhaps the entrance to her soul for the right lover. To pull those feminine appendages into her lover's mouth and to manipulate them to her great pleasure. To not eschew them for being oh so natural and protected by their lovely mane, but to adore them with all of their accoutrements. To love the greasy, fragrant, lubricating secretions issued by and coating her sex.

In actuality it had not required that much instruction Frankie had the knack. But it was a wonderful feeling that he was so interested in her and so willing to be instructed. That he selflessly wanted her to be happy. He gladly placed four upright fingers on her swollen quim, there gently massaging and pushing onto but not into her. Not until she was totally ready and then slowly pushing one, two, gently three, eventually four and finally five digits into her very being.

Frankie kissing, nibbling, sucking on... Devouring the physical attributes of her femininity. Frankie playing with her pearl's protective structures and enticing her pleasure center to show itself and receive direct stimulation. Frankie, coated in her juices and not leaving her afterward to bathe, not being appalled by her essence. Frankie loving every single thing about her.

Frankie... Frankie kissing and licking her bud as five of his fingers made her explode...

That bastard Jay was blackmailing her, the old poof. Mr. Kettle calling out all of the other kitchen implements for being black. Most certainly she was an American, and what was happening in China was truly awful. But Jay was not the Office of Naval Intelligence. Jay would use what she gave him for his own personal gain, not to save American or Chinese lives. He had Eleanor, or more correctly Franklin, in his sights.

As they drug their supplies ashore on the warm sand of the beach on this island, their new home, Millie thought to herself that she had successfully escaped that horrible fate. To be used to destroy those whom you care for. Without my presence everything is mere supposition, just nasty rumors.

She laid exhausted on the sand and remembered working with Pidge in that Toronto veteran's hospital during the 'Great War.' Such a 'Great War' it was too. The hospital filled with young Canadian boys, how did that poignant song go, "the armless, the legless, the blind and the insane..."* Many maybe most of them thinking, "when I awoke in me hospital bed, and saw what it had done, I wished I were dead, I never knew there were worse things than dying."*

Why had they survived when others had not, she wondered. Those young Canadian boys... Her Frankie, they had tried to kill him in that 'Great War.' He had three merchant ships torpedoed from under him, forcing him into the frigid water of the North Atlantic. But they had both survived before, and they Millie and Frankie survived today's adventure dare she hope...

Perhaps, she thought it was just the stress coming from all of the recent changes in her life. Happy changes are still stressful. It could be nothing or a really big deal, her 'monthly visitor' was usually very timely. But that visitor was like herself at Howland Island, currently overdue. Through time Millie had some very mixed feelings about children. As a young woman she had not wanted any, not wanted to be relegated to life as a mere brood sow. Coming of age at the same time that artificial contraception became widely available, she availed herself of that great scientific and social achievement.

But talk about a cruel joke, for all of her efforts to prevent pregnancy to then discover that she could not conceive. Her concerted efforts to prevent gametes from meeting had been completely supliferous. Then naturally she wanted most what she knew was simply not available to her. But much had changed, what if it had not been delirium but it had been a vision, that would be too much to hope for. Would there, could there be a tiny little Isaac on his way for Millie and Frankie in their old age. She would not hope only to be destroyed later.