Chapter 2 #2
The room was silent for a long moment after she finished. The chairman finally cleared his throat. “Thank you, Mrs. McQueen. I believe I can speak for every man among us when I say we will take your words to heart.”
Elizabeth nodded, accepting the dismissal. The moment was at hand. She left the room, heard the door close softly behind her, and sighed. Cliff Henderson was waiting for her outside the boardroom.
“It is in their hands now,” she remarked solemnly.
Cliff started to put his hand in his pocket, correcting himself at the last moment. “I greatly appreciate you making the effort to come and speak today.”
“I would have it no other way.”
“This derby has been a challenge to organize. Perhaps I bit off too much to chew by including the women.”
“The greatest challenges yield the highest reward,” Elizabeth was quick to answer.
“Women are voting now. It was women who united against the evils of liquor. If this nation is to be truly great, it will only happen through all of our efforts. Men and women. That is how we prevailed in the Great War. It is how we have escaped the economic crisis gripping most of the world today. Face forward. That is where the future is!”
“For what it’s worth, I have been concerned about the safety of putting actresses in the cockpit. But the studio heads were insistent. And as you know, money talks.” He added under his breath, “It was my idea to include mechanics who are qualified pilots in the planes with them.”
She murmured back, “I will be sorely disappointed if the board does not vote in favor of returning to the rules Pancho Barnes helped create.”
“It is out of our hands now.”
CALIFORNIA, THE BAKERY
“Yo, Pancho!” the bartender called over the laughter, loud talk, and a piano player pounding out a peppy ragtime tune. “Another one of your girls is here!”
“Thanks!” Pancho yelled back as she stood up. Through a blue haze of smoke, she waved both arms over her head to get the attention of the tall, pretty brunette standing in the doorway, looking around shyly.
As soon as Marvel Crosson’s gaze met hers and lit up, she started winding through the throng of pilots, starlets, and journalists.
Pancho turned to the bartender and shouted over the din, “Another round for the table! And an orange soda in the bottle with two shots of vodka added for Miss Marvel Crosson!”
The bartender nodded, and reporters’ heads lifted at the name of the famous Alaskan bush pilot.
You dumb donkey’s ass, Pancho chided herself.
She knew better than to bellow Marvel’s name like that and draw the attention of the ravenous pack of journalists dogging the pilots in the upcoming race.
She shoved through the crowd to rescue her fellow aviatrix, diving in front of a photographer just as his camera flashed at Marvel.
She’d ruined the picture. Unless of course, the guy fancied a picture of the back of her head.
“Take that camera and shove it where the sun don’t shine,” she told him jovially.
“C’mon, Pancho. I’m just doin’ my job here,” the photographer whined.
“No one wants a picture of us buying crumpets at this here bakery.” Pancho stressed the last word.
The men within earshot grumbled and covered their illegal spirits with their hands.
Officially, America was dry. But not everyone agreed with Prohibition being the law of the land.
Basements across the country were transforming into speakeasies.
With secret passwords and rough doormen who made sure what happened below street level stayed there.
The photographer lowered his camera and paled, realizing that he’d crossed a line.
“You, out! Upstairs!” hollered a burly bouncer by the door, pointing a billy club at the photographer.
“But all the action’s down here! I won’t do it again. Promise!” the photographer protested. He looked around for support from his fellow members of the press, but they just studied their drinks, clasping their fingers around forbidden mugs of beer.
Pancho shrugged. “No hard feelings, buddy. The starlets are all upstairs, where the light’s better, and there’s only fruit punch, anyway.” She plucked his nearly full mug of beer off the table. “Can’t take this with you. Enjoy yourself some of that weak tea the topside club serves.”
The bouncer smacked the billy club in his palm. “Upstairs or the alley. Don’t matter to me.”
The photographer groused under his breath on the way to the door, “None of those Hollywood dames upstairs could fly if they had wings instead of arms.”
As the kid slunk out, the bouncer looked the bar over protectively, making it plain there wasn’t going to be any photographic evidence on his watch of what was being served down here.
America was dry. In theory, anyway.
Pancho lifted the beer mug to her lips, but her appetite soured as a crowd of young women came down the stairs, giggling, and burst into the gin joint. Ugh. Here come the studio starlets.
The journalists leaped to their feet and mobbed the starlets the studios had entered in the air race.
Paired with male “mechanics” who would ride in the planes with them and actually fly the race, most of the attractive young women posing for pictures by the bar’s entrance had only ridden in an airplane a time or two, let alone actually flown one.
Marvel ducked and dodged to avoid ending up in a photograph while Pancho rolled her eyes.
The starlets vamped it up in leather aviator jackets cropped so short they couldn’t possibly keep a person warm at altitude.
Their wide-legged pants, while fashionable, would be completely impractical around a propeller.
And their high-heeled shoes just made Pancho shake her head.
Catch one of those suckers under a rudder pedal at the wrong moment, and you’d be toast.
There wasn’t a grease stain or an experienced pilot among the lot of them.
The way she’d heard it, the studios had gotten these girls a few hours of flying lessons and paid flight instructors to stuff their logbooks with fake flying time.
Maybe a few of them could even take off and land an airplane on their own.
But fly three thousand miles across the country with nothing but a road map, a compass, dead reckoning, and guts?
Not a chance. The starlets were a publicity stunt, plain and simple.
The promoters of the inaugural Women’s Air Derby were doing their best to turn it into a danged media circus.
Airplanes were flimsy and highly flammable under the best of circumstances, and more things than she could shake a stick at could go wrong in an instant and kill a pilot—hard facts she would bet none of those actresses had been told by their agents.
The movie executives didn’t give a rat’s tail about any of the women or about the reputation of women aviators in general.
She and the experienced female pilots gathering to race in a few days had worked darned hard to prove women belonged in the skies alongside men.
But sending up pretty actresses with next to zero flight experience to steal the spotlight in this race could set real women pilots back by years in gaining the recognition they deserved.
Pancho slammed the mug back on the table, heedless of the beer that sloshed out.
She wasn’t the sort of person to sit back and let her herself get trampled by anyone or anything.
Action was her creed. Hands-on, full-throttle action.
And she was about to enlist her fellow aviators in staging a revolt.
One she planned to shove up the movie executives’ noses.
She grunted, surprised, as Marvel wrapped her in an enthusiastic bear hug, declaring, “I’m so tickled to finally meet you, Pancho. You look just like your pictures.”
“For better or worse,” Pancho replied humorously. “C’mon. Most of the gang’s already here.”
Marvel turned her loose. “Wowsers. Have I missed the meeting?”
“We’re just getting started.”
Marvel nodded. “Good. Because I’ll warn you here and now, you’d better plan on cutting me in on all the action.”
Pancho snorted. “I’m counting on you, kiddo.” She led the way to a table she’d commandeered earlier. “This is Marvel Crosson, girls. Do you know all these gals, Marvel?”
“Well, of course I recognize Miss Earhart. I’m honored to—”
“For heaven’s sake,” the gray-eyed blonde to Pancho’s left interrupted, “call me Amelia.”
“Just don’t call her Lady Lindy,” Pancho warned drolly, “or she’ll throw her drink at you.”
Marvel frowned. “But you earned the title, fair and square, Miss . . . Amelia. You are the first woman to fly across the Atlantic.”
Amelia scowled darkly. “My manager made me ride along as a passenger.” She spit the word out as if it were filth.
“I thought I’d get a turn at the controls, but no such luck.
A sack of potatoes. That’s all I was.” She added forcefully, “I’m not planning on letting the Women’s Air Derby turn into a potato race. ”
A round of nods came from the rest of the women. Several rapped on the scarred tabletop with their knuckles.
Pancho continued the introductions. “Next to Amelia is Ruth Nichols, our resident blue blood.”
The elegant brunette murmured a polite greeting to Marvel but rolled her eyes at Pancho.
It was an ongoing debate between Pancho and Ruth over whose family was wealthier.
Ruth came from old East Coast money, but Pancho’s grandfather, Thaddeus Lowe, had made a massive fortune as an inventor on the West Coast.
Pancho continued, “This is our movie star, Blanche Noyes. Of all the actresses entered in the race, she and Ruth are the only real pilots. Blanche was one of us before she was one of them.”
The languid blonde drawled, “Not a one of those girls has more than three hours total flying time. It’s a marketing stunt, plain and simple.”
“Either way, it’s dangerous,” Amelia declared.
The other women murmured in agreement. They knew better than anyone the folly of not taking flying seriously.