Trophy for Eagles by Walter J. Boyne Page A

and when she wasn't.
    "You must be a good teacher. Do you like it?"
    "I like it, but it's not enough. It won't take me anywhere. I'm dying to see the mountains the way you've seen them, to fly the oceans. Life is so short, and there's so much to do."
    He squeezed her hand.
    "Anyway, teachers are so underpaid, it makes me mad. Half the women who teach with me are dried-up little Min Gumps who never had a boyfriend, never had a vacation, never laugh. I'm not going to wind up like that."
    He shrugged and laughed. "You don't think there's any money in flying, do you?"
    "No, but there's a thrill in it. I don't care if it pays anything, just enough to live on, but I want to get on that old magic carpet and fly everywhere. That's why people love movies. They take them every where, even if they know it's just an illusion. Besides, as soon as I stop getting sick, I know I'm going to enjoy it, and I'll do the flying myself. I want to go solo, to fly along the beach, just above the waves, to fly through the clouds."
    "That can be dangerous—you don't know which way is up in the clouds."
    "Good! That's what I want to get away from, a world where everybody knows what's up and down, good and bad. I want to get into the air where there's only me and God and the wind."
    He agreed fervently. He would have agreed with her if she'd just recited the alphabet.
    "Besides, if I stay a teacher, I'll work for some smelly potbellied old principal till I die a dried-up virgin in Green Bay."
    The word virgin was hot stuff, the first overtly sexual signal she had sent. He tried to think of some clever way to capitalize on the opening.
    She was quiet for a moment, and then said with a diamond intensity, "I'll make Uncle Jack proud of me." She waited half a beat and whispered, "I'll make you proud of me."
    With a muted roar, the Stutz's ninety-two-horsepower Vertical Eight engine carried them from Hempstead to Hampton Bays, then over to Orient Point, where they parked the car on the beach to picnic out of the hamper the valet had provided.
    Bandfield was amazed at her appetite. She matched him sand wich for sandwich, pickle for pickle, cup for cup of milk. They sat holding hands at the end of a derelict pier, feeding gulls that curled in a tight clockwise traffic pattern around them. Bandy tried to stall the gulls out, tossing pressed chunks of bread in high arcs that had them skidding in, wings flapping, calling in exasperation.
    They drifted back to where he'd spread a lap robe on the sand. She sat primly in her lacy white dress, legs daintily crossed. He stretched on his side, occasionally glancing down to admire his new clothes, the first plus fours he'd ever worn, but most often staring up at her.
    Across the road was a tumbledown building, an abandoned tool- shed. Someone had written in broad red brushstrokes the word "Repent," as if to forestall the lovers naturally seeking the beach.
    He pointed and said, "We don't have anything to repent—yet," trying to steer conversation back to the subject of virginity.
    "Probably a Baptist out here, worrying about people necking on the beach."
    "What religion are you?"
    "Episcopalian."
    Feeling too good, he got too smart. "Isn't an Episcopalian just sort of a cut-rate Catholic?"
    She stiffened and drew back. "What kind of a crack is that? What religion are you? Or are you an atheist?"
    He felt all the progress he'd made sliding away. "I'm sorry, I was just kidding, no offense. No, I'm not an atheist, but we didn't get any formal religious training. My dad was against it, and I don't think my mom cared."
    She smiled, no longer angry. "What would a cake-eater like you know about religion anyway? You're just like the college girl who was an artist, but would never draw the line."
    Corny jokes were more his style, and he countered with doggerel he remembered from Cal:
    "And you're like the girl in the poem that goes 'She doesn't drink, she doesn't pet, she hasn't been to college yet.' "
    She groaned, and he felt