down at the paper in his hands, and all he could think about was Irene. He ceased to hear anything that was happening around him. What about Corby? He thought that none of them was ready to go yet. Corby was not ready to go yet.
“Hey! I’m talking to you.” Jack smacked the side of Em’s head. “There’s one more thing.” Jack looked down at Em and said, “Meredith knew one other thing. Before her dad left, she heard him talking about his new mission. Whatever it was, even she could tell it was classified and extremely important. She heard him talking to Sergeant Cannon about Florida and Kentucky. He said that they were going to be important. She didn’t know what he was talking about. She said all this while she cried. I got to hold her hand.” This started his ego to rise again. “She was practically all over me, Em. She said she was so scared she was never going to see her father again. That’s when I told her I would take him a message.”
Em could not believe his ears. “You didn’t tell her about us, did you? Tell me you didn’t, Jack.”
“Well, not about you,” Jack said meekly.
Em covered his face with his sweaty hands. “Oh no! C’mon. Let’s go!” He jumped up to his feet and started across the hangar toward the exit. “We have to tell Corby what’s going on.”
When they got back to the barracks, Sergeant Cannon was in his office. The rest of the flight was still enjoying their free time. Several of the other airmen were using their time to get caught up with their writing home. At least ten guys were lying on their bunks writing letters. Obviously, no one had heard what Jack had heard. Jack and Em walked quietly through the barracks in the direction of the common room between the two bunk rooms. They had to make their way past Sergeant Cannon’s office. The only window was a two-foot square hole in the wall. As they made their way by the window, they instinctively looked inside. It looked deserted.
The next moment, Em jumped sideways when he heard Sergeant Cannon’s voice. “Turner! Story! Get in here!”
Em ran into Jack, pushing him into the opposite wall. His first instinct was to keep walking as though he had not heard. Then Jack pushed him back. His unwanted momentum was carrying him toward Cannon’s door.
He straightened himself and looked back at Jack. With an equal look of befuddlement on his face, Jack also had righted himself and was following him. They stood outside the door and looked at each other. “What’s going on?” they asked each other simultaneously.
“C’mon in, boys. Have a seat. I’ll be out in a minute.” They heard Cannon, who was obviously inside the inner part of his office. They walked into the outer office and sat down in the only two chairs on their side of the desk. Em looked immediately at the eagle clutching the rabbit and felt the same as he had felt on his previous visit here. He saw other things on the shelf this time. He noticed there were no pictures, not one. Everything looked like it could belong to anyone. The eagle was perhaps the most personal thing in the room.
“Psst.” Jack nudged him. “Look.” Jack gestured toward the inner doorway. Cannon was pulling on his undershirt. The scar ran from his shoulder, down across the middle of his back. It was at least one half inch wide. Em turned back around as Jack continued to stare into the doorway. “What the heck is that?” Jack whispered.
“I don’t know.” Em sat in disbelief, and thoughts were racing in his mind.
Jack said, “Here he comes.”
Cannon emerged through the doorway looking as crisp as he had on day 1. He walked to the door and closed it. He pivoted and, with his left hand, pulled the door down that closed the hole in the wall. “Relax, boys. You look a little nervous. Really. Relax.” Cannon was calm. His calmness easily put Em and Jack at ease. Cannon started by asking them what they had heard about the previous day’s events concerning the war.
Em suddenly felt comfortable talking to Cannon and knew then and there that he would tell him everything that he and Jack knew. However, before he could process his thoughts into words, Jack was spilling his guts. He told him everything, even who had told him. Em was astonished. Jack surprised him every day in one way or another.
Cannon sat very still and listened to every word. The serious look on his face was testimony that it was all true. Em feared what Cannon would say when he did decide to speak.
“Listen, boys. What you’ve heard is true. Things are going to change around here real fast. Training programs will quickly change to on-the-job training programs. People are going to be on the move. I’m not trying to scare you. First of all, I don’t think this will affect the two of you. Your new assignment will not be altered in any way. Although I still remind you that neither of you are under any obligation to proceed with this. I want you to think things through and make your own decisions.”
He continued to talk. They hung on every word. He told them that each member of their flight, excluding him and Jack, would be in Europe within six weeks. That was when Em faded out for a minute. Corby was going “over there.”
Em drifted for a few more seconds, thinking about Corby, before he heard Cannon say, “The two of you will be leaving a little early also. Probably within the next seven days.”
Em looked at Jack, and Jack was smiling. Of course, he’s smiling, Em thought. He had no one here that he’s close to. Em supposed that Jack really could not wait, but as for himself, he did not know what to do. If he changed his mind and refused this opportunity and took his chances to stay with Corb, how could he be sure that they would remain together?
He wanted to ask so many questions that he could not concentrate on what Cannon was saying. “And I’ll be flying with you at least part of the way.” Em barely heard the words Sergeant Cannon was saying.
All this was just too much to take in at one time. Em felt overwhelmed to a point of high anxiety. Things were happening much too fast. He could not process the thoughts racing through his mind. He couldn’t tell Irene where he was going. He couldn’t tell Corby where he was going. And what would Corby think when Em couldn’t tell him where he was going?
“And both of you will have a California mailing address. You will tell your families that you will be at a new facility in Monterey, California. You will tell them you are studying jet mechanics.” Cannon continued to talk for ten more minutes. He tried to explain what would happen to the rest of the flight. He assured them that none of them would be near the front lines. He even smiled when he said, “How could we repair the planes if we were at the front?” Cannon knew how Em felt about Corby. He also knew about the way Em had tried to ensure Corby’s well-being.
Cannon finished by telling them how proud he was to know them and how he felt that Turner and Story would one day look back and remember this as one of the most crucial decisions of their lives. He dismissed them by ordering them to locate the entire flight and assemble them in the common room before five o’clock in the afternoon. As they were walking through the doorway, Cannon said, “Oh yeah, one more thing.” Then he pointed a finger at Jack and said, “Stay away from Meredith.”
Jack paused. Cannon just turned and walked back into the inner office. “Was he serious?” Jack looked at Em.
“He sure looked serious,” Em replied.
After spending twenty minutes recruiting the letter writers to aid in locating the rest of the flight, they spent the next sixty minutes rounding them up. It seemed every flight on base was trying to reassemble their groups. As they scampered across the base, they heard more stories about June 6. It was quickly becoming an infamous date. The reports said the president was going to address the nation at five
