Trophy for Eagles by Walter J. Boyne

themselves to high speeds. Putting along at thirty miles an hour was better suited to the quiet contemplative mood in which Bandy and Millie found themselves. Murray had been there in the morning, and a radio was slung under the dashboard. As they idled along the roads, the trees still in leafy prepubescent spring green, they listened to the speaker putting out "Old Man River." When the song was over, Bandfield snapped the radio off. He drove carefully, reining in the gutty power of the Stutz so he could hear Millie.
    "You should join the Book-of-the-Month Club. It's great—makes you read the books everybody is talking about."
    He nodded assent. Back in Salinas, people didn't talk too much about books, but he'd join anything she wanted him to, the Elks, the Masons, anything.
    "Did you read The Sun Also Rises? Hemingway is so powerful. I'd love to meet him. Maybe you'll meet him in Paris."
    Bandy doubted it. "If—when—I get to Paris, I'd rather meet some French flyers than some fat old American writer. And I want to go see the battlefields."
    Seeing her disappointment, he countered, "I read Beau Geste, though. Did you? It's about the French Foreign Legion. P. C. Wren wrote it. A grand story—it would be a great movie."
    Literature was important to Millie; in the past a reply like Bandy's would have turned her away from one of her suitors in college. But somehow this handsome aviator, rough-hewn though he was, had an appeal that extended beyond books.
    "This is the farthest I've ever been from home. How about you?"
    "That's the best thing about flying—always on the go."
    "We go to St. Louis a lot to see my cousins and watch the Cardinals. And we went to New Orleans once."
    He took the lead, and told her about San Antonio, and Mexican food, and the chill high beauty of the Rockies. "I used to have to fly to Albuquerque once in a while—no passengers, just some mail or special freight. I'd fly along just above the mountaintops, and there would be herds of antelope, bounding along the valleys. There are pretty lakes up there, too, probably full offish. It was gorgeous. And the Midwest is beautiful too, miles and miles of farmland."
    She seemed to draw a little closer.
    "It's really the only way you can see America. You know, flying is just like a lens. It's a big telescope that you can focus on the countryside."
    When she nodded, the curls bounced on her forehead. He'd never seen anything so devastating.
    "You know, when you see hills on a map, it's just squiggly little lines, and even when you see them from the ground, they're just flat bumps on the horizon. But from the air, you see how they're laid out. You see any lakes or dams, and how the valleys run, and if there are any passes."
    She said, excited, "Just imagine if they'd had a plane when people were going west, a plane to go ahead and scout the passes."
    "Yeah, and the Indians and the buffalo, too."
    They were silent, happy to have found each other, unaware that each was playing the other masterfully, content to chatter and content to be still.
    She liked the fact that he took her seriously, that he didn't patronize her the way the boys back home did. She took a chance.
    "Do you know why I want to fly?"
    He shook his head.
    "Two reasons: fairy tales and Jules Verne."
    "Jules Verne?"
    "You know, Around the World in Eighty Days, the one about the balloon flight. Every time I read it, I wanted to fly, to get away from Green Bay, and just see the world."
    He liked talking to her better than to anyone, better than to Lindbergh, better than to Hadley. And unlike most smart people he'd met, she listened well, asking intelligent questions.
    "I love listening to you. You always know what to say, and I don't have to pry things out of you."
    "Like you have to pry the abalone out of their shells?"
    She meant it only as a wry comment, but it was wildly funny to him. He liked her sense of humor, brisk and allusive, even if he had to listen closely to tell when she was kidding