Free Fly Boy by Eric Walters Page A

sending me—
    Outside the office, I skidded to a stop. There was a reason. I’d been found out. It had to be that. He knew who I was—and who I wasn’t . For the first two weeks at Manning that was all I’d thought about, but since then it had been nothing more than a passing idea. I just figured, if they hadn’t found out yet, they weren’t going to—unless, of course, my mother had somehow stumbled onto my plot and contacted the authorities.
    I stood there, frozen in place, paralyzed by the thought that I’d been discovered. Part of me wanted to go back to the barracks, gather my stuff, and climb out the window that Johnnie always used for his escapes. But I knew that was even crazier. If I had been discovered, there was no place to run, and certainly no place to hide. And if I hadn’t, there was no point in keeping the CO waiting.
    The waiting area outside his office was empty. The corporal who had come to get me, his clerk, who usually sat at the desk outside the door, wasn’t back yet, and the door to the inner office was closed. I thought about taking a seat and waiting until either the corporal returned or the door opened, but I was too anxious to sit there and stew.
    I knocked on the door.
    “Come!” came the reply from behind the door.
    I opened it, stepped in, and saluted. “You wanted to see me, sir !”
    He returned my salute. “At ease, McWilliams. Take a seat.”
    “Yes, sir!” I replied sharply, and sat down in the chair right in front of his desk.
    “Cigarette?” he said, holding out a package with two cigarettes poking out.
    “No, thank you, sir.”
    “Don’t you smoke?” he asked.
    “No, sir.”
    “Do you mind if I do?”
    His question caught me by surprise. “No, of course not, sir.”
    “Good.”
    He flicked open a fancy silver lighter and lit his cigarette. He inhaled deeply and then let out a big puff of smoke.
    “I’ve got to tell you, McWilliams, that I have a lot of respect for you men who don’t waste any time in enlisting. Do you know you’re the youngest man in the program?”
    “Yes, sir, I thought I might be.” Actually, since I was only seventeen, I was completely certain I was the youngest person who’d ever been through this training school.
    “And despite that, your marks have been nothing short of excellent.”
    “I have good instructors, sir.”
    “Everybody here has the same instructors. Some people just have more of what it takes.”
    Obviously, I wasn’t being washed out, nor had I been discovered. I could feel my shoulders relax, and I realized that they’d been somewhere up around my ears.
    He picked up a manila file folder that was on his desk. “Your marks in all areas have been excellent … radio transmission, friend-or-foe recognition, basic airmanship, regulations, weaponry, and the dynamics and physics of flight … all excellent.”
    “Thank you, sir. I’ve been working hard, sir.”
    “But in some areas they are even better than simply excellent. Your marks in mathematics, understanding of compass directions, navigation and orientation, and the use of maps have been, without exception, without error. You are not only the top student in your group of aircraftmen, you are, in fact, the highest-scoring trainee we have had in the four-year history of this program!”
    I tried to stay formal and focused, but I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. “I didn’t know that, sir.”
    “I imagine you didn’t. What you also didn’t know was that the test you were administered yesterday for navigation was different from the one given to every other student in your program.”
    “It was? But why would … I mean no, sir, I didn’t know that.”
    Come to think of it, it had seemed like a very hard test, and I’d wondered how the rest of the class had done.
    “If I may ask, sir, why would my test be different?”
    “The purpose of any test is to probe the ability of the persontaking it. You are, no doubt, aware that you have received perfect