Sentimental Journey

by Jill Barnett

  “You like it.”

  “And you like facing down tornadoes.” She paused. “Or are there other dangerous things you like to face down?”

  “Snippy female pilots?”

  She faced him.

  “Should I duck?”

  “No. I’m not dangerous. Yet.”

  He laughed and stretched back a bit, folding his hands behind his head. “I watch tornadoes because there’s not much else exciting to do around here.”

  “You’re saying it’s dull here in Acme, Texas?”

  He shrugged. “I’d bet being a pilot isn’t dull.”

  “It’s not.”

  “What exactly does it take to be a pilot?”

  She was drinking from her soda. She swallowed and faced him. Lessons.

  He laughed. “I’m serious.”

  “It takes a love of flying, Red. A fascination with aeronautics. A deep and abiding desire to be up in the air, to look down on the world that exists, instead of looking up at a world you can only imagine.

  He seemed to understand that. She could see in his eyes that he wanted to fly. He had all the signs, signs she knew only too well. “If that plane wasn’t filled with equipment, I’d take you up.”

  He turned and looked at her then.

  “You could take flying lessons.”

  “How much do lessons cost?”

  “Enough hours to get licensed?” She added it up in her head. “I’d say maybe five hundred dollars.”

  He whistled and shook his head. “That’s a lot of money. Guess I’d have to strike oil in the garage to be able to learn to fly.”

  “Maybe you could work out a trade. Exchange engine work for flying lessons.”

  “Don’t know much about airplane engines. I could learn, but it would take me a while.”

  “I meant car engines. You could trade auto repair and maintenance for flying lessons.”

  He seemed to think about that.

  “Wouldn’t hurt to go to the nearest field and give it a try. All they can do is say no.” She set the bottle down on the platform and watched the sun burn the clouds away. There was a deep red-and-blue sunset starting west of them. “When I finish this job, I’m going to get my instructor’s license.”

  “So you can teach other women to fly or so you can earn a fortune and retire rich?”

  She glared at him. “So I can teach anyone to fly, even pigheaded young Texans.”

  “You are all too easy to get a rise out of.”

  “The truth is,” she said, “if you want to get rich, flying isn’t the way to do it. Especially if you’re a woman.”

  “Is that why you use a man’s name?”

  “No. It’s been my nickname for as long as I can remember. My real name is Charlotte. Pop called me Charley because he said it fit me better. My mother’s mother was a Charlotte and I was named after her. Charlotte Evangeline Morrison. Pop said it was the stuffy name of a bunch of European queens and not so great for his daughter. So he called me Charley. It stuck. I don’t know if I would even answer to ‘Charlotte’ anymore.” She faced him. “My name did get me entered in my first air race. When I filled out the forms, they thought I was a man.”

  “What happened when they found out you weren’t?”

  “They took the prize money and the trophy away.”

  “You won?”

  “You don’t need to sound so surprised.”

  “I wasn’t surprised.”

  “You were, too. I’ll have you know I’m very good at what I do.”

  “Unless you’re headed for my gas pumps.”

  She punched him in the arm.

  “Ouch!” He grabbed her hand and held it up. “Look at those bony knuckles. You ought to be a prizefighter.”

  “Very funny.”

  They had quietly settled into an easy camaraderie. Two hours ago she was ready to clobber him. Now she supposed she would have to admit she liked him.

  His smile faded, and he was looking at her with an odd expression; then he was quiet. He turned away, pensive, looking like he had nothing to say.

  So they sat there quietly, and it was odd, because Charley didn’t feel as if she needed to say something to fill the void. The moment wasn’t awkward, so it didn’t need filling with nervous words.

  She turned toward him.

  He was staring at the soda bottle and the almost full package of peanuts in her lap. “So, Charley Morrison, you can win an air race against a bunch of men, but you won’t put more than a few measly peanuts in a soda bottle.”

  “You don’t give up, do you?”

  “Nope.”

  She dumped the rest of the package into the bottle and then drank a few sips, chewing on the peanuts. It wasn’t bad, but she wouldn’t admit that to him. A girl had to have some secrets.

  “Where’d you learn to fly?”

  “Pop taught me. He was a barnstormer and bought his first plane when I was four. By then there was only the two of us. Mom had died, so we spent a lot of years flying all over the place. I grew up in a plane. We’d fly over a town, and he’d pump the throttle to make a lot of noise, then circle round and round and land in a field somewhere just outside the town boundaries.”

  “What about school?”

  “I went to school in different places. He’d make deals for me to study in the county we were in at the time. He traded rides for favors.”

  “Tell me what it feels like up there in that plane. Tell me what it was like the first time.”

  She thought about it for a minute, shifted on the hard boards, and stretched her legs out. “Well, you feel light, as if you weigh no more than a feather. That was the first thing I can remember. In those days, all the cockpits were open, so the wind would blow in your face and through your hair. The air tastes different up there, cleaner, cooler. It’s like drinking a big cool glass of water.”

  “How long have you been flying?”

  She gave him her usual evasive answer. “I got my license when I was sixteen.”

  He turned to her and said, “That wasn’t what I asked.”

  “Okay,” she said with a laugh. “You caught me. The truth is, Pop taught me to fly as soon as I could reach the rudder pedals and see over the rim of the cockpit.”

  “He waited that long, huh?”

  “Well, I guess there were a couple pillows under my bottom. Legally, however, I couldn’t get my license until I was sixteen.” She faced him then and leaned back against the tower wall, crossed her arms, and asked sweetly, “When did you drive your first automobile?”

  “When I was ten. No pillows, though.”

  “I soloed when I was eleven. I was as tall as a sixteen-year-old then. Pop trusted me, said if I hadn’t learned it all by now, I never would. So up I went.”

  “Is he still flying?”

  She nodded. “He has a ranch outside of Santa Fe with a landing strip and a hangar. That’s where I learned about engines and pistons.”

  “He works on planes?”

  “Yes.” She laughed a little. She didn’t want to embarrass him and tell him that her father wasn’t just a pilot who understood the mechanics of airplanes. He was Lilienthal Aircraft, a company whose modified planes won most of the air races in existence.

  “What’s so funny.”

  “Nothing really. Pop’s a great pilot and he taught me so much. I had to learn all about planes, how they run, the concept behind flight and the mechanics. He wouldn’t settle for me to learn only how to take off and fly. He made me into a good pilot. Taught me a skill level that is pretty high.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, as an example; he wouldn’t let me just land anywhere. I had to land precisely in the center of the landing strip. He would make me do it again and again. Up and touch down in the center. Up and touch down. Perfect landings. Until he bragged that I could land on top of the hangar if I had to.”

  “Is that true?”

  “He was exaggerating. But he never treated me any differently becaus
e I was a girl. Pop taught me to reach for my dreams, by example, because he reached for his and didn’t let anything stop him. I never thought I couldn’t fly just because I was a woman. I’ve never felt as if there was a job I couldn’t do if I set my mind to it. I suppose that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing today. Because of him.”

  “What exactly is it that you’re getting paid to do?”

  “Airmarking. I work for the government. We fly over certain parts of the country, looking for roofs and buildings to place marks you can see from the air as directional points for pilots. We’re mapping the country from the air.”

  “You know, I never thought about that, about how a pilot would be able to tell where he was going.”

  “Maps don’t work if there are no navigational points of reference you can see.”

  He nodded. “Makes sense. Flying with no points of reference must be like driving and hitting a fork in the road during a sandstorm.”

  She agreed. “Planes have opened up a whole new world. It’s pretty amazing when you think about it.”

  He looked at her for the longest time. “Yeah, I guess it is a different world. One day out of the clear blue a plane just up and lands on the road, almost takes out the station pumps”

  “I did not almost hit the gas pumps.”

  He grinned. “You came awfully close. But then, that didn’t surprise me half as much as when you pulled off that helmet.”

  “You need to broaden your horizons, Red Walker. Women are as capable as men are and perhaps more capable in some things.”

  “Yeah, I can’t cook worth a darn.”

  She gave him a narrow-eyed look and crossed her arms over her chest, the half-full Dr. Pepper bottle still in her hand.

  He nodded at the soda bottle. “If you’re not going to finish those peanuts, then give them to me and I’ll empty them over the side.”

  She looked at the bottle, then raised it to her lips and drank down the flat, salty Dr. Pepper and soggy peanuts.

  “THE WAY YOU LOOK TONIGHT”

  That evening they ate thick, melted cheese sandwiches and Campbell’s alphabet vegetable soup on blue-and-white speckled enamelware. As the moon crawled up the night sky and a thousand stars began to glitter, they were sitting peacefully at the time-scarred kitchen table with a Ford distributor between their dishes, while the Bakelite radio in the corner was tuned to CBS and playing the last of The Johnson’s Wax Program:

  “We’re not going anyplace, Fibber McGee, if I can’t get this suitcase open pretty quick.”

  “Bang it on the floor, Molly. That’s the way they come open for the bellboys.”

  Red leaned back in the hard ladder-back chair and rested an ankle on one knee while he sipped his coffee and watched Charley laugh. She had a great laugh. Not loud or giggly, but free and easy. Like their conversations.

  She reminded him of Irene Dunne. The two shared that same pecan-colored hair, nice skin, and wide smile, but it was something more. They had something about them that made you like them.

  He looked at her sitting across from him, her face turned to the radio as if she could hear it better if she looked at it. He wondered why people did that, huddled around the radio like it was a stage.

  Another sip of coffee and he stared at her over the rim of his coffee mug. She was a good six foot one or two if she was an inch. He liked that she could look him in the eye. He liked that he didn’t have to hunch down to talk to her like he did with the little old ladies who brought him their cars or the few town girls who were small as birds and just as flighty.

  For Red, looking at Charley Morrison was sort of like seeing a sleek modern skyscraper standing smack dab in the middle of his flat ordinary world. He didn’t think he could ever get tired of looking at a woman like her. To top it all off, she was living his dream.

  He put the coffee mug down and got up to clear the table. His chair scraped the floor.

  She turned back around, saw him reaching for her plate, and stood quickly and grabbed the plate, too. “I can do that.”

  “No. You sit there. Listen to the show.”

  “It’s over. See?” She waved her free hand in the direction of the radio. “They’re playing the finale.”

  They were both standing there, holding the same plate.

  He didn’t let go.

  She didn’t let go.

  He looked from it, to her. “This going to be another argument, isn’t it?”

  “Probably.” She laughed.

  At that moment he almost gave in and let go of the plate. Almost.

  “Let me help you, Red. It’s the least I can do to repay you for giving me a place to stay tonight.”

  “Nettie’s old room is empty. It wouldn’t be very hospitable of me to make you sleep in the garage.” He pulled the plate from her hand. “Come on. We’ll do them together.”

  By the time they finished the dishes and walked away from the sink, the radio was playing the soft, silky tones of the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra.

  “I love this song.” She stopped and stood there, swaying a little to the music.

  He paused and listened.

  “‘I’m Getting Sentimental Over You,’“ she said dreamily, eyes closed.

  “Must be my Texas charm.”

  She stopped and looked at him, then burst out laughing. “That’s the song title, and you know it.” She looked past him, over his right shoulder. “What’s that over there?”

  He turned as she moved toward the piano behind an old, faded screen with bamboo painted on it.

  He felt his smile melt away.

  She faced him. “Do you play?”

  “No.”

  The radio announcer marked off the time, and there was a commercial for Ovaltine.

  He was quiet. It was one of those awkward silences where you thought you should say something but, for the life of you, you couldn’t think of a thing to say that wouldn’t sound as if you were reaching for something to say.

  She sighed and bent down to pick up a green canvas flight bag she’d brought in earlier from the plane. Straightening, she said, “I should turn in now, and let you get some sleep. Me, too, I guess. I’ll need to get an early start tomorrow.”

  “Follow me, then.” He moved toward the small narrow hallway. “You know where the bathroom is.” He went past it to the two doors at the other end. He opened the one on the right and flipped a switch.

  There were two small beds in the room, both built into the wooden walls. Each bed had a thin, blue-and-gray ticking mattress on it and a feather pillow. Years before, he and Nettie both had slept in here. Once his daddy had passed on, Red moved into the other room with the double bed. Nettie refused to sleep in a bed that her mother had slept in . . . ever.

  It hadn’t been easy for Red, caught in between Nettie’s anger at their mother and his father’s crushing, defeated sense of hurt. When one person feels so strongly one way, and another the opposite, it’s difficult to be in the middle. You’re afraid to feel anything because you might be like them; you might take it too far. So you don’t let yourself feel at all.

  He stepped into the room and she followed him inside. “It’s not much—”

  “It’s fine. Really.”

  He looked levelly into her eyes and warned, “It’s a short bed.”

  “Don’t you find at our height everything is too short? Especially beds?”

  “Yep, that’s true.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said casually, standing so close to him he could smell her hair. It smelled like lemon. “I sleep all curled up anyway.”

  He took a step backward, into the doorway, where there was only the old wooden doorjamb next to him. No tall, sassy woman who smelled too good to be true. “The bed’s not made up, but there are sheets and blankets in the dresser.”

  She sat down on the edge of the bunk. “Great. Thanks again.” She was sitting on his old bed.

  “Sure.” He turned, feeling bigger than the door he walked through. He went straight in
to the kitchen, drank three glasses of tap water, then leaned against the counter and wiped his mouth with a sleeve, while the water sloshed around uncomfortably in his belly. A few deep breaths and he set the glass down, then switched off the light.

  The soft and wavy moan of a muted trumpet playing the blues came from the radio. Cab Calloway began to sing.

  Red turned off the radio with a sharp flick. He managed to get about four steps into the dark, narrow hallway before he stopped.

  She was humming the song.

  The door to his old room was half open, and the light cast her silhouette on the door. Her shadow moved provocatively while the sound of her humming drifted all around him.

  He couldn’t move, not for a few moments. Instead, like some kind of Peeping Tom, he watched the shadow get undressed. She moved out of the light.

  He rushed past. But at his door, he took one last look over his shoulder.

  The silhouette was gone. She stopped humming. A second later she turned out the light, leaving nothing but silence and a hollow feeling that he knew too well.

  He closed the bedroom door behind him, stripped, and got into bed. The sheets were scratchy and stiff from drying on the line out back. He lay there in the dark, staring at the door.

  Tomorrow she would be gone, flying off to do her job.

  Tomorrow he had to fix the Baptist minister’s oil leak and take new tires out to the Streit farm.

  Everything would be the same old, same old. He would eat alone and listen to the radio alone, and life would be normal and dull and familiar. He closed his eyes for a second, but all he could see was the silhouette of a tall woman, humming the blues. He jerked the sheets up to his neck and felt his feet slip out the end of the bed. He lay there on his side staring at the door again.

  I sleep all curled up anyway.

  He was nuts. Too many bags of peanuts. He turned away angrily, his bony bare feet sticking out of the bed. But he didn’t give a hoot. He punched his pillow a few times.

  He’d been living alone for too damn long.

  “SHOO FLY PIE AND APPLE PAN DOWDY”

  The next morning Charley paused in the doorway of the living room, where Red was sitting at the table, absorbed in reading a newspaper. In front of him was a pastry in a pie tin and a pot of coffee. They both smelled wonderful.