wingman was able to radio your location. Ground forces moved in and found you. They tell me you were a mess.”
“But I got my fourth kill, did they tell you that? One more and I’ll be an ace.” Maybe not the first woman fighter ace, or even the second. But she’d be one.
David didn’t smile. She felt him draw away, as the pressure on her hand let up.
She frowned. “What?”
He didn’t want to say. His face had scrunched up, his eyes glistening—as if he was about to start crying. And here she was, the girl, and she hadn’t cried once. Well, almost once, for her plane.
“Raisa, you’re being medically discharged,” he said.
“What? No. I’m okay, I’ll be okay—”
“Both your legs are broken, half your ribs are cracked, you’ve dislocated your shoulder, you have a concussion and been shot twice. You can’t go back. Not for a long time, at least.”
She really hadn’t thought she’d been so badly hurt. Surely she’d have known if it was that bad. But her body still felt so far away … She didn’t know anything. “I’ll get better—”
“Please, Raisa. Rest. Just rest for now.”
One more kill, she only needed one more … “Davidya, if I can’t fly, what will I do?”
“Raisa!” A clear voice called from the end of the row of cots.
“Inna,” Raisa answered, as loud as her voice would let her.
Her wingman rushed forward, and when she couldn’t find a chair, she knelt by the cot. “Raisa. Oh, Raisa, look at you, wrapped up like a mummy.” She fussed with the blankets, smoothed a lock of hair peeking out from the bandage around Raisa’s head, and then fussed with the blankets some more. Good, sweet Inna.
“Inna, this is my brother, David.”
Her eyes widened in shock, but Raisa didn’t get a chance to explain that, yes, “missing” sometimes really meant missing, because David had stood in a rush and offered his chair to Inna, but she shook her head, which left them both standing on opposite sides of the cot, looking at each other across Raisa. Belatedly, Inna held out her hand. David wiped his on his trouser leg before shaking hers. What a David thing to do.
“Raisa’s told me so much about you,” Inna said.
“And she’s told me about you in her letters.”
Inna blushed. Good. Maybe something good would come out of all this.
She ought to be happy. She’d gotten her wish, after all.
Raisa stood on the platform, waiting for the train that would take her away from Voronezh. Her arm was still in a sling, and she leaned heavily on a cane. She couldn’t lift her own bags.
Raisa had argued with the military about the discharge. They should have known she wouldn’t give in—they didn’t understand what she’d had to go through to get into the cockpit in the first place. That was the trick: she kept writing letters, kept showing up, over and over, and they couldn’t tell her no. In a fit of fancy, she wondered if that was what had brought David home: She’d never stopped writing him letters, so he had to come home.
When they finally offered her a compromise—to teach navigation at a training field near Moscow—she took it. It meant that even with the cane and sling, even if she couldn’t walk right or carry her own gear, she still wore her uniform, with all its medals and ribbons. She still held her chin up.
But in the end, even she had to admit she wouldn’t fly again—at least, not in combat.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right?” Inna had come with her to the station to see her off. David had returned to his regiment, but she’d overheard the two of them exchanging promises to write.
“I’m fine, really.”
Inna’s eyes shone as if she might cry. “You’ve gone so quiet. I’m so used to seeing you run around like an angry chicken.”
Raisa smiled at the image. “You’ll write?”
“Of course. Often. I’ll keep you up to date on all the gossip.”
“Yes, I want to know exactly how many planes Liliia Litviak shoots down.”
“She’ll win the war all by herself.”
No, in a few months Raisa would read in the newspaper that Liliia was declared missing in action, shot down over enemy territory, her plane and body unrecovered. First woman fighter ace in history, and she’d be declared a deserter instead of a hero. But they didn’t know that now.
The train’s whistle keened, still some distance away, but they could hear it approach, clacking along its tracks.
“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” Inna asked, with something like pleading in her eyes.
Raisa had been staring off into space, something she’d been doing a lot of lately. Wind played with her dark hair, and she looked out across the field and the ruins of the town to where the airfield lay. She thought she heard airplanes overhead.
She said, “I imagined dying in a terrible crash, or shot down in battle. I’d either walk away from this war or I’d die in some gloriously heroic way. I never imagined being … crippled. That the war would keep going on without me.”
Inna touched her shoulder. “We’re all glad you didn’t die. Especially David.”
“Yes, because he would have had to find a way to tell my parents.”
She sighed. “You’re so morbid.”
The train arrived, and a porter came over to help with her luggage. “Be careful, Inna. Find yourself a good wingman to train.”
“I’ll miss you, my dear.”
They hugged tightly but carefully, and Inna stayed to make sure Raisa limped her way onto the train and to her seat without trouble. She waved at Raisa from the platform until the train rolled out of sight.
Sitting in the train, staring out the window, Raisa caught sight of the planes she’d been looking for: a pair of Yaks streaking overhead, on their way to the airfield. But she couldn’t hear their thrumming engines over the sound of the train. Probably just as well.
Joe R. Lansdale
Prolific Texas writer Joe R. Lansdale has won the Edgar Award, the British Fantasy Award, the American Horror Award, the American Mystery Award, the International Crime Writer’s Award, and six Bram Stoker Awards. Although perhaps best known for horror/thrillers such as The Nightrunners, Bubba Ho-Tep, The Bottoms, The God of the Razor, and The Drive-In, he also writes the popular Hap Collins and Leonard Pine mystery series—Savage Season, Mucho Mojo, The Two-Bear Mambo, Bad Chili, Rumble Tumble, Captains Outrageous—as well as Western novels such as Texas Night Riders
