“Old Jack’s going to be disappointed,” Fleurette said.
“Everyone in Wyoming is disappointed,” Norma returned.
Constance pulled out a handkerchief and took a swipe at Fleurette’s mouth. She looked like a porcelain doll, with cheeks and lips painted on.
“I hope you’re not going anywhere looking like that,” she said.
“Helen and I have a run-through at the theater tonight. It’s for the audition.”
“But I don’t see why you have to put it on before you leave the house. You’ll only call attention to yourself on the train.”
Fleurette raised an eyebrow to let it be known that calling attention to herself on the train was precisely her aim. A horn sounded in the drive and she ran to look.
“It’s only Mrs. Borus,” she said, “come with some urgent business pertaining to birds flying about in the sky. You’re all due at my show on Tuesday, so don’t forget about it. Invite Mrs. Borus if you want, and anyone else who hasn’t defected from your pigeon club.”
“No one’s defected,” Norma called as Fleurette went to gather her things. “We’re on winter hiatus.”
Norma ran a pigeon club, which she insisted upon calling the New Jersey Society for the Deployment of Messenger Pigeons to Aid in Civic Affairs. It had dwindled from a membership of a dozen or so pigeon-keepers to just a few civic-minded women eager for a worthwhile project. This wasn’t seen as much of a surprise by Constance and Fleurette, after Norma installed herself as the club’s entire slate of officers and ran its affairs in her ruthless and autocratic style. Not a single man remained. Norma ignored Fleurette’s suggestion that perhaps they didn’t like to take their orders from her, insisting instead that the men never intended to join in club activities, and had only been hoping to pick up new breeding stock with the aim of selling more birds for a higher profit. But the trade in messenger pigeons had never been brisk, and the men found other things to do.
Apparently the women who stayed around felt that they had enough to run in their own lives and didn’t mind Norma taking charge. It was really the only way to get along with Norma, and wasn’t too different from how Fleurette and Constance had managed all along.
Carolyn Borus was the most steadfast of the women who remained. She was a widow of some means and quite the sportswoman. Before her interest turned to pigeons, she had hunted with a pair of dogs, and she once raced a horse. She ran an auto with perfect ease, but was just as likely to show up on a saddle-horse if the weather was fine.
Norma went to greet Mrs. Borus and brought her back to the kitchen, which was the warmest room in the house in winter, thanks to an enormous old cast-iron stove. Constance followed and was relieved to find a pot of potato soup with bits of sausage submerged within it. She built a fire under the burner. Carolyn went right over to warm her hands.
“I love a country home,” she said cheerfully, looking around at the old kitchen, which hadn’t changed since Mrs. Kopp bought the place eighteen years ago. The floors were made of broad planks covered in a painted floor-cloth whose fleur-de-lis pattern was nearly worn away. The wall was spattered with grease for three feet around the stove, and Constance wondered, as she considered it from the perspective of a guest, why none of them had ever thought to wash it down and paint it.
“You’re smart not to bother with a refrigerator,” Mrs. Borus continued. “My sister just bought one of those new ammonia-cooled models, and the whole house stinks of it. No one can stand it except the bugs, who come from miles around to take up residence behind the milk bottles.”
“How do the bugs get in?” Constance asked.
She dropped into a chair beside Norma and sighed. “Would you believe they insulate these refrigerators with cattle hair? The bugs adore it. They chew right through it, and the next thing you know, you reach in for the eggs and butter, and come away with a handful of beetles instead.”
“I object to the idea of a motor inside the home, even without the beetles.” Norma turned her attention to the neatly typed list Carolyn had set before her. “Twelve volunteers? Are you sure?”
“Oh, yes. They were all quite eager when I told them we were taking their birds on long-distance flights for the war effort.”
Norma and Mrs. Borus had, of late, affiliated their pigeon society with the American Pigeon Racing Association, which had announced its plans to set new world records in speed and distance flying, in an effort to convince the War Department of the necessity of deploying pigeons overseas when the Americans went (inevitably, as Norma regarded it) to France. They intended to help in this endeavor by sending their own pigeons on increasingly longer train trips—five hundred miles, seven hundred miles, even a thousand miles—so that they could select and breed the most competitive flyers.
“I thought this was just a demonstration,” Constance said. “How does it help with the war?”
Both Norma and Carolyn looked at her pityingly.
“It’s a national effort on the part of pigeon-keepers to supply the War Department with the training and equipment they will so desperately need,” Carolyn said, in the manner of a woman accustomed to making a speech. “They don’t yet know how badly they need pigeons, because they haven’t yet seen what they can do. We aim to change that.”
“That sounds just fine,” Constance said quickly, not wanting to seem unfriendly to the first person she’d ever met who enjoyed Norma’s company.
Norma went back to studying the list. “I have my doubts as to whether these birds have been properly conditioned.”
Constance was trying to keep quiet, but she couldn’t help herself. “How do you condition a bird to fly? Isn’t that what comes naturally to them?”
“Oh, not at all,” Carolyn said brightly. “Your sister has the very best method for acclimating them to long flights, one that has been enthusiastically adopted by our club. It begins with a short course of flights from the east, of increasing lengths from one mile to ten. Then the same course is attempted from the west, and then the south. Then they must be taken for a flight of twenty miles, followed by a day’s rest and a diet of mealworms, and then fifty miles. After their first one-hundred-mile flight, they take a week of rest, and then they are shipped to a two-hundred-mile station. It proceeds along those lines until?—”
“What a fascinating program you two have put together,” Constance said, rising quickly before she had to hear the rest of it. “The War Department will be delighted.”