Chapter 2 #3
Pointing at the intense young woman at the far end of the table, Pancho finished up the introductions with, “Last but not least, that’s Louise Thaden.”
Marvel ducked her head shyly. “Sorry about breaking your altitude record.”
Pancho threw back her head and laughed heartily. “Aww, don’t feel sorry for Louise. She can afford to share a record with the rest of us now and then.”
Marvel shrugged. “I already lost it, anyway. Phoebe Omlie broke my record a month after I got it.”
“She’s in the race, too, although she hasn’t flown in yet,” Pancho commented.
“Isn’t the sign-in deadline in a few hours?” Marvel asked. “She’s cutting it pretty close.”
“We’re all cutting it close. Three months isn’t very long to get an airplane built,” Louise commented.
“Not to mention convincing someone to pay for it,” Marvel interjected.
“I heard you got a special clipped-wing single-seater with one of those new Wright J-6-7 engines. Rumor says it was clocked at a hundred and sixty-eight knots . . .” Amelia eyeballed Marvel, looking for confirmation.
“All true, but if I eat even one crumpet, I won’t fit in the cockpit,” Marvel declared.
Louise leaned in to talk about her new plane.
“I only had time to take mine around the airfield once before setting off. Nearly passed out from carbon monoxide flying to Fort Worth. Lucky for me, Walter Beech came along with me in his own plane. He rigged up a pipe on the edge of my engine cowling into the cockpit. Gives me a good flow of fresh air.”
There were serious looks all around. Anyone who’d flown an open-cockpit plane seated just behind the big radial engines knew the dangers of inhaling too much carbon monoxide.
Taking in some was inevitable, but the trick was to stick one’s head over the edge of the cockpit every few minutes and grab a few lungfuls of fresh air.
Louise waved her hand dismissively. “We’ve all been there.
The way I heard it told, my face was blacker than night when I climbed out of my plane.
The cockpit was catching every bit of the engine’s exhaust. When I took my goggles off, folks said I looked just like a raccoon.
What a sight I must have made . . . passed out cold beside that pretty blue-and-gold Travel Air with my name on it!
Now that is a picture for the history books. ” She let out a silvery laugh.
Smiles reappeared around the table. They all took chances. But this race was all about celebrating their breakthroughs.
The bartender came around with shots of whiskey for everyone and an orange soda bottle with a straw for Marvel.
Louise took a sip of her whiskey and grimaced. “Speaking of passing out, when I broke the world altitude record last year, I nearly fainted at twenty thousand feet. How’d you pull off twenty-four thousand, Crosson?”
Marvel replied modestly, “I got up there as fast as I could and, if I passed out, counted on coming to before I hit the ground.”
A couple of the members of the press were near enough to overhear Marvel. They turned alarmed looks her way, but Pancho and the other women sent her glances of admiration mixed with just a little jealousy. After all, the desire and daring to fly was usually accompanied by a competitive streak.
“I like your grit,” Pancho declared stoutly.
Marvel blushed but seemed pleased. “I admit, it is nice to get recognition my peers now and then.”
There was a collective toast in response.
Pancho gazed around the table in awe. Those butterflies were still in her belly, and she wasn’t in any hurry for the sensation to subside.
To sit with these women, to be one of them, was something they’d all earned by spitting into the wind.
These were the only people whose opinions of her really mattered.
They understood the risks it took to break the records they collectively held.
Sometimes she wondered if it was worth pushing the boundaries of flight so relentlessly.
Thing was, to fly at all, one had to challenge fate.
The trick was to figure out how far you could push your luck before you got kicked in the teeth.
That was what Pancho was addicted to: balancing on that knife-edge.
She’d spent more than one hour in the middle of the night pondering whether there was something wrong with her.
But now, she realized, she was not alone.
Louise set her glass down, abruptly serious. “Let’s get this meeting started. This race was supposed to be about showing the world that women are real pilots. Pancho, you were on the planning committee for the race. How come you let them stuff it with actresses whose mechanics will do the flying?”
Pancho scowled into her whiskey. “They waited until I left to add that twist. Didn’t hear about the starlets until I landed at Clover Field a few weeks back. Seems some investors from Hollywood think getting pretty faces plastered across the front pages of newspapers will make them more money.”
“What it will get them is crashes galore,” Amelia pointed out.
“Called him up the moment I caught wind of it. I talked myself blue in the face,” Pancho continued.
“Honestly, I thought Cliff Henderson was listening to me. But it seems this Hollywood scheme is still on.” She pointed at the actresses clustered across the room.
“I don’t think any of those gals are over twenty.
They think this is their chance to break into the big time.
But they’re being lined up for the slaughter. ”
Amelia lifted her drink in a toast. “I’m the oldest of us all. Thirty-two years old. A milestone I wasn’t sure I’d see, considering I like to fly.”
They all clinked their glasses. Louise was the baby at twenty-three, and the rest of them were in their mid- to late twenties—old enough to have a good deal of flying experience and air sense, but young enough to embrace the extreme risk of what they did.
Pancho sighed. “I don’t think it’s Cliff behind all this foolishness. There are other men on the committee who don’t like the idea of having women fly in derbies. The way I see it, this is our chance to dig our heels in against patriarchy.”
“Count me in,” Amelia said bitterly. “Sacks of potatoes. That’s all they want women to be in aviation. Well, I’ve done my time as a passenger. I came here to fly.”
They traded frustrated looks with one another. They’d all run into brick walls when seeking permission to do what the men did in airplanes or, heaven forbid, fly alongside the men.
Louise grumbled, “I’ve been angling to get hired by a commercial airline, but they keep saying women are too prone to hysteria to fly passengers safely.
With the amount of press this derby will get, I know we can make a dent in that attitude.
Goodness knows, there’s plenty of flying work out there to be had.
Eighty corporations are operating in air travel now, and there are twenty-seven transcontinental routes, cutting transportation time by seventy-five percent.
We can get paid to fly if we can just get past this idea of women having hysteria once a month. ”
That earned a collective “Hear! Hear!” from the others.
Louise added, “I’m not going home until I . . . we . . . prove them wrong.”
Pancho leaned in so her words wouldn’t carry.
“The organizers think we’ll just keep quiet like nice girls and go along with their dumb rules.
That’s why I wanted you all to come to this meeting.
The top women pilots in the world are sitting at this table.
If we boycott the race together, we can make a stink about it.
” Her eyes narrowed, and she stared briefly at each of the women in turn.
“Fact is, we have the planes and the sponsors. We’re not just going to let them slide others into our race. ”
Amelia responded immediately, “Count me in, Pancho. I say we call a press conference and make the biggest flap anyone’s ever seen. Let’s demand a change to the rules. No men in the planes, and every pilot, a real one, flies solo.”
Pancho was relieved to see nods all around. “We’re agreed then? We’re boycotting the race?”
A unanimous chorus of ardent yeses rang out.
“All right then. I’ll make the call.” She turned around to ask the barkeep if she could borrow his phone, but darned if he wasn’t already holding one out to her and saying, “Phone call for you, Mrs. Barnes.”
Startled, she pressed the earpiece tight against her ear. A garbled voice said something unintelligible. The piano man was pounding out a ragtime tune to get the starlets to dance, to the loud delight of the customers.
“You’re gonna have to shout!” she yelled into the mouthpiece. “It’s a madhouse in here!”