Chapter 16 #2
Lunch didn’t waste nearly as much time as she hoped.
She lingered over her chicken salad sandwich, but there was only so much time a person could spend taking tiny bites and staring at their food.
She spied Ernie out of the corner of her eye playing chess with Thompson on the other side of the room.
Filled with restless energy, she strode to the front of the hotel and looked at the progress of the digging. There was now a path out of the hotel to the main road, which had been dug out as well. She was out of things to do indoors, so she decided to go for a walk.
Upstairs, she changed into her pilot’s garb—a union suit, pants, a thick wool sweater, a fur-lined leather jacket, and her fur-lined aviator’s cap.
As she walked out the front doors of the hotel, she felt as if she was escaping prison. The fresh, crisp air smelled like freedom and possibility. The sun shone down, making the snow nearly blinding to look at.
She couldn’t go far. Only one block of the main street had been dug out, and it seemed like every young man in town was out with a shovel, chipping away to carve a path through the snow drifts.
Deciding to brave the untrampled snow out to the airstrip, Millie tromped her way through powder up to her knees.
As expected, the airstrip was covered end to end.
Two mechanics were busy brushing the snow off the frosted airplanes.
Another three men with shovels arrived while she looked on and started the long process of digging out the runway.
“Don’t just stand there staring. Pick up a shovel and help,” yelled one of the mechanics, spying her. Bundled up as she was, no one would know she wasn’t a man. They’d never ask a lady.
Deciding she had nothing better to do, she pitched her voice as low as it could go and asked, “Where’s a shovel I can use?”
“Shed,” the man said, pointing.
So she tromped over to the shed and started digging. It was hard work, but at least it distracted her from thinking about Ernie. It felt like a sort of penance for the night before. If only she could dig out the runway, she could fly away from her mistakes and leave them behind.
After about half an hour, two more men tromped through the snow. As they approached, she realized her peril. It was Ernie and Thompson. But what was she going to do, drop her shovel and run? How foolish would that look? No, she would stay right where she was and keep her head down.
“Took you two long enough to come out here to help,” one of the mechanics called out. “Grab a shovel from the shed and help us out.”
Soon, the two men joined their little group, huffing and puffing as they hefted shovel after shovel of snow off the runway. In the afternoon sun, the snow began to melt a bit, and the powdery snow became wet and heavy. Millie’s arms and back were starting to ache from the effort.
She stayed as far away from Ernie as she could manage, but only fifteen minutes in, he asked, “Millie? Is that you?”
Resting against her shovel, she turned and gave him a frosty look. “That’s Aldrich to you.”
It was embarrassing how much she liked the sound of her name on his lips, but she could hardly allow familiarity in front of an audience.
“Aldrich, no one expects you to shovel snow. You should go back to the hotel and stay warm.”
“What? She’s a lady?” said one of the men she didn’t know who had been digging with her. “She’s been digging like a bulldozer over there for at least half an hour. Never would have thought a lady had it in her.”
The man looked her up and down as if she was some sort of exotic bird. “Never seen a lady dressed like that neither. What kind of dames you got over there in New York anyway?”
“Aldrich is a most unusual woman, I assure you,” Ernie answered, giving her a wink that made her grit her teeth.
“Lady, you should listen to your friend here,” the man said. “Go back to the hotel. Let the men take care of the heavy labor.”
“No, thank you,” she answered. “I would like to get out of this godforsaken town as soon as possible, which means digging out this runway.” She turned back to her work, ignoring the others.
“Oooooh,” the man said loudly. “She must be that lady pilot I heard about. Give women the vote, and they think they can do anything.”
Millie ground her teeth, trying to hold back the torrent of arguments about women and their capabilities that was flooding her mind. No. This man wasn’t worth it. Taking deep breaths, she focused on her digging.
“Well, Aldrich here can do anything,” Ernie said. “She’s a damned good pilot, one of the best I’ve seen, man or woman. And I think she’s just proven she can dig snow with the best of us. There are very few things she couldn’t do if she set her mind to them.”
Warmth bloomed in her heart at his words, much to her consternation. Why did he have to come to her defense like that and make her feel all warm and fuzzy?
She dug into her work with renewed vigor. She couldn’t get out of here soon enough.
The man shrugged. “If she wants to dig, who am I to stop her?”
They all lapsed into companionable silence as they continued the agonizingly slow work of digging out the runway.
By the time they stopped, the winter sun was low in the sky. Millie’s arms felt like rubber bands, and everything in her ached.
“Hey, Jack,” Ernie said as they walked back to the hotel together. “I bet you couldn’t hit that tree over there with a snowball.”
“Of course, I could.”
They paused. Thompson threw and missed.
“I could hit it,” Millie volunteered, instantly regretting her words. She wanted to get away from these men, not spend more time with them.
She packed herself a snowball, aimed, and threw.
Bullseye.
“Hot damn,” Ernie murmured.
Thompson whistled.
“Where’d you learn to throw like that?” Thompson asked.
“My father wanted a son. He got me instead. He taught me a lot of things a young lady shouldn’t know.”
“Like flying an airplane?” Thompson asked as he took aim at the tree again, determined to redeem himself.
The snowball grazed the side of the trunk. A hit, but barely.
“I learned that from his friend, but yes.”
Ernie took a turn, packing his snowball, winding up, and then letting it fly.
By God he was a lovely man in motion.
The snowball hit home, exploding against the trunk.
“Miss Aldrich, would you join us for dinner?” Thompson asked. “You’re a very interesting woman, and I’d like to get to know you better.”
Millie and Ernie exchanged a panicked glance.
With an all-too-knowing look, Thompson said, “We all just spent several hours together in hard labor. Surely, we can survive one dinner like civilized people.”
Oh, God, he suspects.
Still. There was no graceful way out of this. “Dinner sounds lovely.”