Flying Jenny

by Theasa Tuohy

  “Lay off goading Jenny about how or when she flies,” John replied. “She can do what she wants, just as you can. You’re running around from town to town doing little air circuses? Come on.”

  “You got a problem with that?” Roy didn’t lift his fists, but he might as well have. His legs were planted, rigid, his stance that of a man ready to square off, basically to hide the fact that he was cut to the quick. He had been hit where it counted most and, Jenny knew too well, by the person whose opinion he most cherished.

  “You know damned well what I’m talking about.” John’s voice lost its sarcastic edge, took on almost a soothing, sympathetic tone. “Others move on from the war and grow up. Your buddy Wiley Post has managed to hold down real jobs—test pilot for Lockheed, flying for rich oil men.”

  “Wiley and the war?” Roy adopted the sarcasm. “He spent it as a mechanic at Fort Sill.”

  “That’s enough, you two. Now just stop it,” Jenny scolded.

  John’s voice got back its edge. “If he’s going to badger you about doing something serious, he should take his own advice. Wiley is talking about trying a trip around the world. Not a continual loop from Atchison to Ponca City to Pawhuska and back.”

  “Back off,” Roy was nearly yelling at this point, “you know damned well what those jobs for rich oil men can entail.”

  John shrugged, but didn’t respond.

  “What? What does it entail?” Laura’s question broke the spell. She, Cheesy, and Clem had stood silently by, nearly holding their breath, watching the argument unfold between the two old friends.

  John nodded his head and pursed his lips in what amounted to a shrug. “Just lay off Jenny. Okay?”

  Roy reddened. “Fine. You ease off, and let’s get back to the business at hand.” He turned to Laura with a wide grin, as though nothing unusual had just transpired. “Now back to you, my dear. Just a little lesson in aerodynamics. There is no need to fear flying. Of course there are occasional mishaps. But whenever we need to make a forced landing, it’s no problem. The planes are light and can just glide to the ground if we have engine problems. It’s what we call a dead-stick landing, and every licensed pilot knows how to do them.”

  “But why—”

  “Time for more questions later, we have to get a move on.” Roy turned to address the others. “So who’s driving and who’s flying to the next stop? I’ll take Laura with me. I want to give her a couple of quick lessons, so she’ll see how easy and safe this all is.”

  “I think I’ll just bow out,” Clem said, looking at Laura. “I’ve got work to do tomorrow.”

  “Hey,” said Cheesy, “hate to impose, but I was hoping you could give me a ride. I had a heck of a time getting down here from Cleveland. The trains don’t exactly go from here to there.”

  Clem looked around at the expectent faces. “John, I assume you’re going to leave your car here and fly with Jenny. Cheese, I guess we’re the odd men out.” He circled the toe of his cowboy boot in the dirt, looked hard a Roy, then said, “Okay, let’s do it. Pawhuska’s about forty miles. There’s a good hotel on Main Street, the Duncan. It’s a quick walk from that grass patch Roy uses.” He waved Cheesy toward the passenger seat then yelled over to Jenny. “The field’s easy to spot from the air ’cause it’s right behind the courthouse, which is on a big hill. See you at the hotel.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE DUNCAN

  Jenny dumped her small traveling satchel at the front desk and said, “Hi, we’re going to need several rooms. My husband’s outside looking for some friends.”

  “You’re traveling with a party, ma’am?” asked the clerk, a stiff young man in a dark three-piece suit and round owl glasses.

  “Yes,” John said, walking up, “there are four, no, wait . . .”

  “Five,” said Jenny, “We need five rooms. Clem, Cheesy, Laura, Roy, and us.” She held up her right hand, rolling off each finger. “That’s it, five.”

  “Perhaps your party has already checked in, ma’am,” the clerk replied. “A couple fellas are over there in the dining room eating. The lady and gentleman haven’t come downstairs yet.”

  Jenny looked at John, a question on her face. The lady and gentleman haven’t come downstairs yet? What in heaven’s name could that mean?

  John laughed. “You’ve got a slow plane, my dear. And with your stunt exhibition for my benefit, we took quite a bit longer.”

  “I love showing off for you,” she said with a blush. “I love it even more when you tell me what a superior pilot I am.”

  He put his arm around her shoulder and brushed her forehead with a kiss. “Not only the best, but my favorite.” He then bent down to whisper in her ear, give it a nibble. “And you know what else I told you. Roy’s right. You probably should be stretching yourself more. But it’s totally up to you.”

  The clerk cleared his throat, slight color moving up his neck at the display of affection. “You’d like to register, sir?” He shoved a pen and white card across the marble desktop toward John, who grinned and reached for the pen.

  “Let’s see who’s in the dining room,” Jenny said. “You’ll have the bellhop take up our luggage?”

  She looked around the lobby—tiled floor, a few comfortable leather chairs, a writing desk. Fairly spare and plain. Hardly Oklahoma City’s Skirvin, she decided, with its crystal chandeliers and paneled walls with gold-leaf busts of Bacchus surveying the scene from on high. Velvet carpeting in the bedrooms. Jenny’s cheeks turned rosy remembering her honeymoon there. The hotel had been made even grander shortly before her wedding reception last year when colored glass and artwork had been added, inspired by the 1925 Paris exhibit.

  Jenny smiled thinking about the elaborate party her parents had finally put on, but only after they’d given up trying to dissuade her from marrying John.

  Her mother was horrified, her lavaliere heaving, her eyes wide behind the pince-nez. “You’re only a child. You haven’t even finished high school.”

  Her father’s objections were much more opaque, but had a sinister tone. “A man who has had John’s experiences is not a suitable husband for a young woman such as yourself. The Army. France. He’s seen the world and, I suspect, has the habits to prove it.”

  “Papa, whatever does that mean?” Jenny had asked, trying to tease her father out of his dour mood.

  “He is much older than you, my dear.”

  “We all know that,” Jenny had replied. “So what of it? That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “I do believe he drinks. More than the occasional cocktail. And his friends all seem to be war buddies. Fliers. Not a very stable group.” Her banker father had adjusted the gold collar pin at his throat. His face couldn’t have been more stern if he were turning down a client for a loan.

  Jenny crossed the lobby of the Duncan and looked into the dining room. It seemed passable. Linen on the tables, at least. A bustle of waiters and six or so groups of diners. She spotted Cheesy and Clem in a far corner with tall water glasses in front of them, accompanied by a bowl of ice and a bottle of soda.

  “We found a way to amuse ourselves while waiting.” Clem’s lopsided smile was warm. “You fly a pretty slow old bucket, my girl. Laura and Roy haven’t come down yet.”

  “How long have they been up there?” Jenny asked sharply.

  “A while,” Clem said, his smile evaporating. “Have a seat. Want a glass of ginger ale?”

  “Yes,” Jenny said with a laugh. “Just ginger ale, thank you.”

  “Not me,” said John, joining the group. “I trust you’ve got something a bit stronger.”

  A bit stronger were the bywords of the day. With Prohibition in full swing, it was the rare man who traveled without a flask. Clem and John were both equipped. It was unclear just what gear Cheesy carried in his camera bag. But with his rumpled clothes, disheveled hair, and ever-present tail of a cigar, he didn’t appear to have the price of a drink, much less one carried by pocket in a sterling-silver container. />
  Jenny momentarily studied the disreputable-looking lout lounging there, elbows on the white linen cloth, his shoes overrun at the heels, and once again wondered at the strange beings that populated journalism. She smiled her best Miss-Grace-Finishing-School smile and extended her hand. “I’m Jenny Flynn, we don’t seem to have been properly introduced.”

  “Pleased,” Cheesy said, nodding his head slightly in acknowledgment, and that was it.

  Jenny was sipping her soft drink when she spotted Roy, appearing quite jaunty, enter the dining room. Laura, hesitant and looking slightly flustered, was trailing behind.

  “Not good,” Jenny mumbled under her breath to John.

  Her husband’s dismissive shake of the head said, Don’t be silly.

  “So what’ll we do?” Roy’s question was jovial. “A quick drink, then move on?”

  “I’m hungry,” Jenny said.

  “Me too,” agreed Cheesy.

  “Then let’s go eat,” Roy said. “How about that fantastic barbeque joint Clem mentioned? An old Negro’s place with a pit in the yard and some tables under the trees.”

  “Yep, and beer in his wife’s kitchen ice box,” Clem said. “Best eats in Oklahoma.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  MOONSHINE

  Jenny and her traveling companions settled in at a picnic table shaded by oak trees, with several children playing and yapping dogs running around the yard. The sun had set, but the wide sky was still bright with light. Sweet-smelling smoke mingling with the scent of the sizzling meat curled up from the pit and wafted over the table.

  The beer was in frosty pitchers in the center. The heavy-set, grizzled owner named Jim was passing around dripping barbeque sandwiches wrapped in pieces of waxed paper. Jenny had chosen spare ribs, which came on a cracked china plate. She knew from experience how difficult it was to manage such sandwiches without sticky sauce dribbling down her chin. Although she’d never been here before, it was a familiar type. There were several such places dotting the little towns on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. Small enterprises in meager homes. After meeting John, visiting these culinary wonders was one of her many new experiences.

  “I’d like a Nehi soda, Jim, if you don’t mind,” Jenny said.

  But he cajoled her instead into taking a mug, saying the soft drinks were hot because they didn’t take precedence when ice got short. “It’s sweltering, miss, and we all needs our beer, now don’t we?”

  Jim’s weathered shingled shack appeared to be two rooms. Jenny could see a large woman through a torn screen door bustling around the room that apparently was the kitchen from whence the coleslaw and hush puppies came. Behind the house was a shed that had a quarter-moon hole carved into its door. To a certain extent, Jenny had understood her parents’ objections to John. Her life and her experiences had changed, opened up, when she met him. They partied in beer halls, flew in airplanes, took a spur-of-the-moment trip to Denver. Things she never would have been exposed to had she married one of the boys she met in dancing classes or at the country club. Her eyes had been wet and shiny that first day when John approached her at the recently opened Curtiss-Wright Field in Oklahoma City.

  “I’ve seen you here several times,” he’d said. “Are you interested in flying, or just like to watch the planes?”

  “Both,” she blurted out before catching herself. “Of course, I meant the planes. No way I could fly.” She giggled, and wished she hadn’t been wearing these awful jodhpurs. But using the excuse of going to the stables was the only way she could manage to sneak off here to hang around watching the pilots and their planes.

  “I bet I could find someone around who would be willing to teach a pretty girl like you to fly.” He wasn’t laughing—seemed very matter-of-fact. But a twitch around his mouth made her feel he was making fun, or playing with her. She had since learned from experience that she’d indeed been right about that twitch. Her husband, with his wickedly dry sense of humor, rarely laughed out loud, but the close observer could read his mirth or disdain in almost imperceptible facial movements.

  She drew herself up that day, giving him a dismissive look. “Don’t be silly. Nice to have talked to you.” She turned on her heel, walked around the corner of the main hangar, climbed into her roadster, and didn’t look back. She knew he was watching. She hadn’t missed the fact that he’d casually ambled across the tarmac to get a view of where she was headed.

  As much as she’d wanted to, she didn’t go back for a week. He was handsome, older, intriguing. She’d seen him hanging around the field before. He seemed to know all the pilots. For days, she dallied with schemes for dropping by the field on her way home from school or other places in the city. She wanted him to see her in a dress. But that would give her away; she knew no one had ever seen her at the field in anything but riding clothes.

  Jenny reached for one of Jim’s dripping barbecued ribs and noticed Laura raptly following an animated conversation between Roy and John. They were still discussing the dangers of blacking out while maneuvering a plane through outside loops. As Jenny mopped up sauce with a flaky biscuit from her chipped plate, she thought about what Laura had said last night: that she had learned to fly because of her brother Charles. John mistakenly thought that too. After she made several more visits to the Oklahoma City airfield, he’d asked her one day why she had tears in her eyes the first time he’d spoken to her. Everyone else could believe what they wanted, but Jenny knew it was John who’d given her the courage to fly, had encouraged her, was proud of her because of her daring, and paid for and arranged for her flying lessons. He had set up a few secret lessons before they were married. Her parents never would have stood for it. But they could do nothing about it once she was John’s wife. Strangely, Jenny’s parents seemed to view Charles’s death the way she did: he died from war, not from flying. Or perhaps she was mimicking their thinking; after all, she was only six. No, they were opposed because, as her father put it, “Aeroplanes are not a proper hobby for a young woman. Why can’t you be interested in needlework, or playing the piano? We bought you that expensive horse.” And they both were “simply appalled” at seeing her in pants so often.

  Jenny looked across the table, the same stars always in her eyes whenever she contemplated her husband. He had given her life, romance, another world. He was a war hero. And she loved the fact that he was so indulgent, found her so amusing, was so delighted by and caught up in her accomplishment, yet didn’t push. He seemed to want for her whatever she wanted.

  She saw that John was in a happy mood, the sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled up. He’d removed his vest and jacket before flying with her that afternoon. “This place reminds me of Curley’s—remember, Roy? Joint we used to hit in St. Louis. We had some good times there.”

  “St. Louis?”

  Jenny frowned, straining to hear what Laura had just said. The reporter’s voice was barely audible, as though she were practicing forming the sound of a new word.

  “Yeah,” Clem responded, “according to what I heard from my brother Stan, that’s all you guys did, was have good times.” He lifted a beer mug in toast. “I ended up having to go to what my parents called a serious educational institution after all your folderol with the Jesuits.”

  “Oh lordy,” Jenny said. “I don’t want to hear that story again about the defrocked priest who ran off with his mistress.”

  “All this happened at university? In St. Louis?” Laura asked.

  Jim, hovering about the table, momentarily stepped in. “I got some good product come from the still, Mister Clem. You ’n yore friends like a taste?”

  “Absolutely,” Roy and John said in unison, and Jim hustled off toward the house.

  “Yeah, I heard that story about the priest too,” Clem said with a frown. “I guess we all have. Bothered my brother, and especially my parents, because the priest was an Indian. Reinforced the notion that we’re all irresponsible.” He stopped and looked around at the embarrassed silent table.


  Oklahoma in 1929 was loaded with assimilated, well-educated, rich Indians. Everyone bragged about humorist Will Rogers, who had billed himself on the vaudeville circuit as the Cherokee Kid, and was now Hollywood’s highest-grossing star after making his first talkie. But no one ever spoke about or faced the fact that being Indian was a delicate subject no matter how rich or well educated you were. Those living on reservations were still routinely referred to in many circles as savages.

  Clem dissipated the tension with a lopsided grin. “I guess I’ve got the wayward one to thank for getting me shipped off to Harvard, instead of St. Louis like my brother.”

  “Ah, Clem, I never heard that Indian part of the old scandal,” John said. “Did you?” he asked, turning in the direction of Roy, who shook his head. “Nah, don’t think anyone paid any attention to that.”

  Jim came back with a big smile as he unscrewed the lid of a huge clear jar that looked like it had previously held pickles. It now contained a liquid much paler yellow than the beer, which meanwhile had begun to develop a brown sediment that was floating in tiny particles to the bottoms of both the pitcher and the mugs.

  “Like some moonshine, miss?” Jim asked Laura as he was filling up assorted jelly glasses and old mayonnaise jars and passing them down the table.

  “Sure, what is it?” Laura asked.

  “Made from corn I growed myself,” Jim replied.

  “Fine. We never see corn in New York, except in tins.”

  “Without cornfields, we’d never have any place for emergency landings,” Jenny said with a chuckle. “Isn’t that true, Roy? How many times have we had farmers running after us with a pitchfork?”

  The men looked from Laura to Jenny then swiveled back to Laura again to watch as she lifted her jar to her lips. It seemed clear she was about to take a big gulp, when she got a whiff of what was coming. She looked startled, her eyes grew round, and she cut back her intake to a small sip. Even that cleared out her sinuses, judging from her facial expression and pursed lips.