Cloudmaker

by Malcolm Brooks

  “They had guns like ’at Krag twenty year back, I doubt even ’em buffs over the hill be here.”

  By the trees, one of Roy’s horses snorted and stamped a hoof. He heard the buzz of flies, the swat of a tail. He gave Findley a nod. “Reckon it’s a good thing they didn’t, then.”

  A year later found him working as a ranch hand outside the eastern edge of the park, at an outfit at least as reliant on paying guests from New York and Philadelphia as beef and sheep on the range. Dudes, in the local parlance. He mainly worked with the chief wrangler, mucking stalls and maintaining tack and sometimes taking guests on trail rides and pack trips.

  He also worked in the ranch’s blacksmith shop, learning so quickly that by his second year he’d become a full apprentice to the head smith. By the time he turned seventeen, he’d taken over the shop himself.

  In September 1911, while walking down Main Street in Red Lodge, a flyer with the bold print DIXON caught his eye. It turned out to be an advertisement for the third annual state fair in Helena, featuring a demonstration of one of the newfangled flying machines, flown by the youngest licensed aviator in the land. Cromwell Dixon. With a ten-thousand-dollar purse proffered to the first daredevil to fly successfully across the Continental Divide, Dixon seemed a sure bet.

  Roy caught the train to the capital and attended the fair. Young Dixon performed several acrobatic demonstrations in his airplane, really little more than an enormous kite with a motor and prop and a couple of spindly wheels. But the display was impressive—all Roy could think of was his pa, hacking around the wild plains in a buckboard barely forty years ago, dodging hostiles and shooting shaggies by the score. Now it was all this.

  Two days later, Dixon did indeed corkscrew to some preposterous elevation and flew across the crags to the other slope of the continent. He collected his ten thousand dollars.

  A week after that, back on the ranch, Roy sat down to breakfast in the mess and spied a photograph of the young flier’s airplane on the front page of a three-day-old newspaper. Seems Cromwell Dixon’s next engagement was at a county fair in Spokane, where he came down like a stone in that same history-making kite and died an hour later from the injuries. Nineteen years old. The hell.

  “I almost moved on right there. Handed my walking papers, saddled up with Juno across the pommel, and just rode south again for Texas. See if that other Dixon might still be around. Not even sure why, exactly.”

  “The Lord had a different plan, though,” said Huck’s ma, studying the contents of her plate. “By the name of Houston.”

  Roy reached over and rubbed her back a moment, right there at the table. He took in Annelise, then McKee. “Yeah, I reckon that’s so. Because I didn’t ride on, I stayed on. Right at the ranch.” His gaze stopped on Huck. “And that’s where I met your mama.”

  Cousins

  1

  He’d spent little more than a single afternoon three weeks earlier mulling the pros and cons of McKee’s offer to help. Truth be told, there really were no cons, other than the risk of letting too many people in on the secret, and as Annelise put it, that cat was out of the bag.

  As it turned out, McKee spent a fair bit of time on the project even while Huck and Annelise were across town at school, so much so that Huck began to wonder whether Pop hadn’t hired him for exactly that reason. It wouldn’t have surprised him, really.

  Whatever the case, the airplane was progressing by previously inconceivable bounds. The wing and tail were now assembled, save for the cloth covering, with the thirty-foot wing frame squirreled away under a strategic pile of sheet tin behind the shop. The landing gear was nearly assembled as well.

  McKee worked incredibly quickly, Huck had to admit. He was actually a little intimidated at first at how exacting the man was relative to his rate of production. Not to mention the amount of Highlander he put down in the process.

  “A lot of guys can make a job come together,” McKee told him. “What separates the men from the boys is how fast they can get ’er done.”

  Annelise for her part was certainly willing to pitch in. Eager, even. Granted, she had no shop experience, but she was a quick study and not afraid to get her hands dirty.

  She could be moody, though. Huck often found himself on pins and needles around her, although when he thought about it, he guessed he really couldn’t blame her. They’d spent a lot of time together in the past weeks, with Annelise staying at the bungalow during the school week and heading—teeth gritted, he knew—out to the ranch on Friday afternoon and then back for church with Mother on Sunday. Huck had given up his little bedroom for her here. He slept on a pallet in the front room.

  Pop had an unclaimed electric sewing machine he’d taken in as a repair at some point, and they set it up on the desk in the office so they could hear the radio while they worked. McKee kept at the landing gear in the main shop. They could hear him out there, cutting and clanking and occasionally swearing, although with McKee even the worst of the curse words sounded like part of a comedy act.

  Annelise had learned to sew a bit in home economics, which she’d regarded at the time as drudgery if not actual enslavement. Still, she made a few practice runs on scrap muslin now, got her sea legs back under her and before long formed a reasonably true run of seam. Huck tried it too, kept practicing until he was at least in the ballpark. They fetched the cutout panels from the fabrication bay and carted them back to the office.

  Out in the shop, McKee popped a torch. Through the half-open office door they heard the hot-static sizzle of melting alloy, saw the white-blue surge and steady pulse of electricity, fusing metal unto metal.

  “You should be out there learning that,” Annelise told him.

  Huck shrugged it off. “I already know how, a little. Plus he won’t be at it long. He’s only tacking things together.”

  They got to work pinning the muslin panels along the seams. The radio played a Lone Ranger chapter with a lot of dramatic background music and clopping horse hooves and dropped g’s in the dialogue. Pidgin English out of Tonto. Annelise strode over and spun the dial to a dance band before sitting down in front of the Singer. “Sorry,” she said.

  “It’s okay.” Huck watched her position the edge of the pinned sheets beneath the needle. “You know I thought you were fixing to have a . . . baby? When you first got here?”

  She fixed that blue-gray gaze at him. “Obviously I’m not.”

  “I know. I just . . . wondered.”

  She made the first run of stitching, then stopped mid-seam. “Nobody said anything otherwise?”

  He shook his head. “Figured you must’ve gotten into some other trouble. Way they’re keeping you out on the ranch and all.”

  “I slept with a boy. A man, actually. Is that what you thought?”

  Huck nodded. “I guess so.”

  “Well, now you know.” She finished out the run and repositioned the cloth panels. “Are you shocked?”

  He wasn’t, though he knew he was supposed to be. He shook his head. “I’ve seen the movies. I know the world’s different than they make out in church. I know people are just . . . different.”

  “It was books, for me. At first anyway. Then I got in with some much more worldly people than I was raised around, and I really started to see some light through the cracks. Then it just”—she shrugged her shoulders, made a singular gesture with her head and eyes—“happened to me, too.”

  “Weren’t you afraid, though?”

  “Of getting in a predicament, you mean? Maybe a little. There are ways around that, though.”

  “But weren’t you . . . afraid of God?” Huck himself felt that old familiar flare of guilt, the conviction that He was listening even now, and certainly not amused. But he also cringed to think that his cousin, right here in front of him, might simply find him ridiculous.

  She didn’t laugh at him, though. “That I’d be judge
d, you mean? Or that I’d be punished.”

  “Some of both, I guess.” He considered. “Aren’t they the same thing?”

  “Sort of like, was I afraid God would punish me by interfering with my own . . . precautions? I’m assuming you know what a rubber is.”

  “Why yes, I do,” McKee said from out in the shop. Not exactly the disembodied voice of the eternal Father, but more than enough to turn Huck’s face beet red.

  “Not talking to you,” Annelise said loudly. Huck could see the grin at her mouth.

  “Oh. Too late for that.” They heard him shuffle around a bit before he actually stuck his head in the door. His dark welder’s goggles made him look sort of charmingly deranged. “Since we’re on topic here at the Junior Aviators’ Club, I’d like to impart this important safety tip: never, ever, jump without a chute on.” He gave them a jaunty salute.

  “And how about you, Enos? Flown at all lately?”

  Huck was curious about this himself. For all McKee’s efforts on the airplane project, the topic had never come up.

  “Oh, hell yes. I’m a grade-A barnstormer, missy,” he said. “A real wing-walking, barrel-rolling son of a gun.”

  “Yeah, I bet. I’m sure you’re just up all the time.”

  He struck a fast, funny pose with his head, fixed his goggles at some imaginary point in the far-off yonder. “And always with my chute snugly in place, young lady.” He turned his head back and held up his hand, three fingers in the air like a Boy Scout. “Honest Injun. Oh wait—you’re talking about airplanes.”

  She smirked at him, and Huck felt like a dern wet-behind-the-ears kid. Raleigh would’ve caught on—why couldn’t he?

  “Maybe I actually am,” she said. “Talking about airplanes.”

  “I wouldn’t climb into one of those gravity traps for love or money. Mother McKee raised landlubbers. Smart ones.”

  “You do what Mommy tells you, then.”

  McKee worked the goggles up onto his forehead. He had creases in his cheeks from the pressure of the elastic strap. “Not always. But let’s not kid ourselves. That Charlie Darwin is one cold son of a bitch.”

  Annelise shrugged. “At this point, flying’s no more risky or foolhardy than most anything.”

  “Fun and games, I’m sure. Right until somebody puts an eye out.”

  Huck saw again the windows of the New Deal, barreling toward him out of the night. He had to admit, that little episode could well be described as foolhardy. Absolutely worth it, too. Still, the mere mention of the name Darwin put his nerves on edge.

  “Lots of people said Charles Lindbergh was foolhardy,” he offered. “Look at how that worked out.”

  “Oh, risk can have its rewards, no argument.” McKee looked at Annelise. “To return to an earlier theme.”

  “At least we agree on that,” she answered. “Run along now. You said it yourself—standing around jawing won’t get the airplane off the ground. Even if you yourself don’t want a ride.”

  “I may get up with you yet, darlin’.” He’d already exited, his voice disembodied again but loud and clear on the air.

  “I’m only talking about flying,” she said loudly. But Huck saw the grin on her plain as day.

  “Have you ever kissed a girl?”

  They were walking to school, finally resuming the conversation from the evening before. Annelise saw him swallow, knew she was putting him on the spot. “There’s no wrong answer, buddy.”

  “Reckon I never had the chance.”

  And would no doubt be terrified out of his wits if presented with one. Of course he was pretty young yet in any case, despite his deceptive height. He still caught her off guard when he opened his mouth and a cracking, irregular falsetto squeaked out.

  “You will, probably pretty quickly. Girls like tall boys.”

  “Oh. I guess I ain’t in any real hurry.”

  They walked a little farther. “You’re blushing,” she told him. “Girls like that, too.”

  “I can never tell what they like. I just get the notion they’re pretty dern hard to please. No offense.”

  He really was pretty cute, she had to say. She hoped he’d figure it out for himself. After three Saturdays on the ranch in the company of her aunt, she knew he had to be even more puzzled about the general mystery between the sexes than any benighted Victorian virgin. Uncle Roy was certainly an asset and obviously no prude, but even he seemed to mainly step aside where Huck and Aunt Gloria were concerned. Choosing his battles, she supposed.

  She shrugged up her sleeve and checked the time.

  “That’s a Lindbergh watch,” said Houston. “If I’m not mistaken.”

  She let the thing slip back away. “You are not.”

  She’d seen him eyeing it in the previous weeks, which in and of itself was hardly unusual—it looked nearly like a wall clock on the inside of her wrist. But she’d wondered if he had a sense of what it was. They heard the school bell half a block off. “I’ll show it to you once school’s out. It’s pretty amazing.”

  “Do you know how it works?”

  “Not entirely.” They turned up the walk, into the trickle of kids. “Do you?”

  He saw Raleigh coming toward them. “No. I mean, sort of, in theory. But I’ve never really played with one or anything.”

  “Well, I guess not. I’d be shocked if there’s another in a thousand miles.”

  Raleigh was nearly in speaking distance. Annelise watched him angle toward them, aware he had a sort of clumsy fascination with her the way pretty much all the boys at school did. The girls, too, although that was marked not by clumsiness but a nearly palpable territorialism. She caught Houston’s eye with her own and she knew she must have seemed serious, because his gaze dashed right away. “Don’t tell anyone what I’ve told you, all right? About my beau?”

  “I won’t.”

  “Thank you. I’m sure they’re curious.”

  “They are,” he said.

  They were nearly to the school steps. She said, “Of course they are.”

  “So why’s she have the watch?” Raleigh asked. They each manned a urinal in the boys’ room. “Telling her about it’s one thing, but letting her waltz around with it? Ain’t that a heck of a risk?”

  “It ain’t the same dern watch.” He finished and cinched his belt back up. “I never have told her about the one we took off the reverend.”

  “She’s got one too? I thought you said it was some rare deal.”

  “It is. Believe me, I like to fell over when I saw it on her. She just said it herself not two hours ago, there probably ain’t another in a thousand miles.”

  The bell rang in the hall, and they heard the clamor of lockers and feet. Raleigh zipped up. “You get a call from that detective last night?”

  Huck looked at him.

  “From Billings?”

  “I didn’t get a call from anybody. Like what, a private eye?”

  “No, a police dick. Wanting to know if there was anything we’d noticed unusual on the body, and whether Cy or Junior or anyone else ‘removed any effects’ at the scene.”

  “What effects?”

  “That’s what I asked him. He says, ‘Oh, just anything—a gun, a wallet. Or a watch.’”

  “Hoo boy.”

  “Yeah. Hoo boy.”

  They collected their books and went out, just in time to see Annelise and a couple of other girls disappear up the stairwell to the second floor. “So I take it she ain’t, you know, studying abroad,” said Raleigh. “In the euphemistic sense.”

  “Nope. Not in any sense actually.”

  “Huh. Why’d she come here, then?”

  Huck looked at him. “Who cares? What did you tell the detective?”

  “Exactly what we told Cy. But how in the heck does he know about the dern watch?”

  The
y stopped outside the open door to English class and watched a paper airplane sail across the room while Mrs. Hall rummaged in her desk. “Coincidence?” said Huck, admittedly with no conviction.

  “Better dern sure hope so.”

  A little later, with Mrs. Hall diagramming a sentence on the blackboard, Raleigh passed a note forward. If I’d known our innocent abroad planned to show up with the same lousy watch, I never would’ve told you to steal the good rev’s.

  Huck crumpled the note and thought, And I never would’ve listened to you.

  2

  April 1, 1937

  Blix—

  God, I hardly know where to start, except to tell you I’m fine, and nobody knows a thing. Or at least, nobody knows about you.

  Oh—for the record, I’m not in any so-called “trouble.” I’m guessing this has crossed your mind if not caused you to sweat actual bullets. But don’t worry, I’ve already fallen off the roof right into the red roses, same as it ever was. So whatever else might be said, the situation is at least not as dire as all that.

  My mother did however sniff out the basic fact of a dalliance. I’m honestly not sure how—Lord knows I’m a gold-star sneak. A loyal one, too, you’ll be glad to know . . . despite the Inquisition’s best efforts to beat, flog, or otherwise blackmail a name out of me, my fellow conspirator remains a mystery. Exaggerating on the beating and flogging, but not by much.

  I am however packed off to my aunt’s, in Montana, the town of Big Coulee, which may as well be Devil’s Island. No shark-infested waters, but anyway an impossible swim to the mainland for this girl.

  Do you know any of this already? Golly, it must seem as though I simply vanished into thin air, and in a way that’s the worst part of this whole mess. I wanted to get word to you somehow before they shipped me off, but the whole thing happened so fast and I was practically under armed guard, and the last thing I could risk was getting you even hotter in the drink than I am myself. But I know it must have seemed either awfully cold or awfully dire, just to up and disappear.