“I’m not making fun of Ma. Eddie and Arnie used to see them, too.”
“We were kids, Roy. And Ma was . . . Ma.” Edward shook his head, fed up with the conversation.
He dragged a crate to the other side of the plane from his brothers, turning to look out the hangar’s gaping doors at the night sky. It was clear overhead, the air so dry it parched his mouth, and in the distance lightening stuttered across the horizon. Frank and Roy went on bickering, but their voices slipped away. Edward imagined what things looked like from up there, hills and mountains reduced to the size of waves in a lake, lights winking like reflected stars.
***
Edward was pleased when Arnie—still wearing his grease-stained coveralls—came to pick them up after their shift and his brothers agreed to stay and watch Ms. Earhart fly. A crowd of women pilots were there to cheer her on, as well as newspapermen, oilmen with their pledges of support, folks from town—the applause loud enough that even the roar of the plane’s engines couldn’t drown it.
On the drive home Edward sat up front. Roy and Frank hauled themselves in the back and slumped against the cab. The truck’s engine sputtered in fits when Arnie changed gears. Not at all like the smooth animal roar of Amelia Earhart’s plane as it surged down the runway and took to the sky.
Edward rocked in and out of a doze, sunlight flashing warm on his face, until the truck cut over to the side of the road and jerked to a stop on the sloping shoulder. Edward cracked an eye open and watched as Arnie hopped out of the truck, walking stick in one hand, hunting knife in the other, and limped across the road, down into the tangled weeds. Arnie stood for a moment, head prairie-dogging left, right, then lunged and struck with the handle of his stick. He pulled a dead rattler from out of the bush. Its body swung as he sawed off the rattle with his knife, then Arnie chucked the snake across the ditch and it caught in the cattle fence and hung there, oozing blood onto the bone-colored grass.
Back at the truck Arnie fished a lunch box out from under the bench seat, snapped it open, and dropped the fresh rattle atop the others, some so old they’d crumbled to sand in the bottom of the box.
It was that way with Arnie. He’d be going along the dusty roads in the truck, on his horse, even on the Indian motorcycle he’d bought against Pa’s instruction, and you’d see his ears twitch, his head sweep to the side like a weather vane. All tensed up, eyes narrow, nostrils wide he’d be on that snake the way Duke, Pa’s old hound, took after tom cats. According to the doctors he couldn’t hear a thing. But Arnie knew when a snake was near, and every rattler that crossed his path met the same end.
***
Pa blamed the truck for what happened to Ma. But not Arnie. Arnie blamed the snake.
He had been ten the day of Ma’s accident. The other three boys, younger and older, worked the farm while Arnie stayed home and helped with the housework. It was one of those days where the wind came in, cut low along the fields, blasting everything in its path. In winter, the ground all slick with ice, that wind would blow you right off your feet. In summer it hit you like opening the door to a furnace.
On that day, the wind ripped through the row of poplars and the clothesline snapped free. All the fresh washing tumbled across the yard, wild phantoms before a howling gale. Ma and Arnie scurried after the linens. The parched brown grass cracked under Arnie’s bare feet. The dust-spiced wind caught funnels of earth and blew them up Arnie’s nose until it formed a thick crust in his nostrils. He giggled when one sheet twisted around Ma, hog-tying her ankles so she tripped and fell butt-first into the laundry hamper. She tipped her head back and laughed, mouth open, eyes closed, face painted bright by the sun.
The last pillowcase flapped all the way up to the highway and Ma ran after, dress billowing, straw-blond hair spinning loose of its coil. She peeled the pillowcase off of the thicket and jumped back when she saw the rattler hiding behind, poised to strike. It darted at her, angling up to strike her high on the leg.
She jumped back again. Into the path of Mr. Jesperson’s Ford.
Arnie drove out to the field to where his brothers and father were working, Roy handling the wagon while Frank and Pa slung bales of hay up to Edward. Arnie’s tear-red eyes barely cleared the dash of the truck as he hung on to the wheel and stood on the gas pedal, racing ahead of a cloud of dust.
Almost falling out of the truck, he stumbled the last few feet, saying “Ma . . . snake!” over and over again.
“Quiet, boy, you sound like a fool,” Pa said, like he did every time Arnie tried to talk. Arnie’s brothers caught his meaning and ran around to the bed of the truck where Arnie had hauled up the body of their mother and laid her out as best he could, her being so bent and with that oddly flat spot near where her hair parted.
“A snake didn’t do this,” Pa said, his fingers gripping the side of the truck so his knuckles turned white. Then he vaulted up beside his wife and wiped at the blood that wound down from the corner of her mouth, which was already drying in the hot wind.
Frank drove to the hospital as fast as the truck would allow. Mr. Jesperson raised his hand when they came to the site of the accident, where his tires had burnt S’s into the pavement. He held a cloth to his head, the truck rolled up in the ditch, chassis bent beyond repair. Frank slowed long enough for him to hop in the back.
The doctors fixed Ma to the best of their ability, splints and casts for her broken bones. Called it a miracle she was even alive, but she was never the same. Until the day she died, fifteen years later, in her sleep, she moved slowly, and talked to the shadows—her two little tomte she called them—in a flattened out tone, so terrified of even the smallest snake that she wouldn’t go outside.
Pa would always blame the truck. We Hammers don’t fit with machines. Never had any luck with them. Best to stay well away. If Jesperson had been using his horse that day he would have been paying attention, rather than sitting on that padded seat, behind a glass shield, while the infernal combustion engine blared in his ears.
But Arnie knew it was the snake, sneaking through the low places, striking the unwary. Taking his poor Ma, and leaving a sad, limping ghost behind.
***
Edward sipped his tea, the cream and honeyed sweetness doing little to wake him. It was dinnertime, only a few more hours ‘til they had to be at the airport.
“I could have slept another eight hours,” Roy said and stretched his arms back before scratching his chest. “That roast sure smells good. Hey, Arnie.” He signed a few words to his brother and rubbed his belly.
Arnie nodded and turned back to the stove, taking the hot gravy over to strain into Ma’s rose china gravy boat. The brothers were staying with Pa at the farm that week while they worked guard duty. The farmhouse rattled with their footsteps as they moved from room to room, trying to keep out of Pa’s way. Once they were finished at the airfield, Roy and Frank would be back to the Cassidy Ranch and their cow-hand duties. Arnie would go with them and look after the ranch trucks and the neighbors’ farm equipment.
While they were all together Arnie was treating every dinner like Sunday. Same as Ma would have.
Edward had slept most of the day, and woken to the sound of pots clanking and the smell of fresh biscuits and roast. From above him, in the eaves, came the scrape and muttering of pigeons and other attic dwellers, the distant boom of thunder disturbing their rest.
The kitchen had steamed up, the windows a sweating blur. Arnie jostled Edward’s chair as he squeezed around the table to pile dirty pots in the sink, nudging the cat back under the stove before someone stepped on her.
“You should have seen that girl, Pa,” Frank said. “She climbed up in that big plane in her pilot getup, smiling and waving while everyone popped off pictures. She is something, I’ll give you that.” He slapped Arnie’s shoulder as he arranged the roast in the middle of the table. “And she handled that machine like a pro.”
Roy shook his head. “You wouldn’t believe the circus there to see her fly. A bunch of ot
her lady pilots showed up. Even saw reporters all the way from Vancouver.” He paused. “I think Eddie’s in love.”
Edward dropped a slice of roast on his plate, glanced up at his brother, and then reached for the gravy.
“He practically chased the damn plane down the runway.” Roy continued. “Stood there rubbernecking and grinning like an idiot.”
“Won’t be no fly boys in this family.” Pa shook salt all over his dinner, scowling down into his plate. “Never have been, never will. You got your farming to do, Edward. That’s head-to-the-ground work.”
Frank gave Edward’s shoulder a light punch, but Edward busied himself pouring gravy. His brothers had keen eyes. Couldn’t keep anything from this family for long.
“You hear about Old Man Jesperson?” Frank asked. “Saw his tractor sitting in the middle of his field. Did our neighborhood mischief-maker strike again?”
Arnie filled a small bowl with porridge, and poured milk and honey over the top.
“What the hell is that?” Pa slammed his hand on the table. Arnie looked up from where he was standing near the stove, nearly dropping the bowl of porridge. “You throw that out.”
Arnie shook his head and placed the steaming bowl on the bit of exposed framing behind the stove that Ma always used as a shelf. He turned to Pa and signed a few quick words. Roy cleared his throat and prepared to translate what Arnie had signed. Pa silenced him with an angry glare.
“You don’t throw it out, I will.” Pa slapped the table again, but Arnie had turned his head so he couldn’t read Pa’s lips.
Pa scraped back his chair, his brow creased in anger, and grabbed the bowl. Edward could tell it was hot when Pa sucked in a breath, but he held on, carried it across the room and chucked it hard into the garbage. The ceramic cracked against the side of the bin. He turned and glowered at his sons, smoothing his work shirt down into his jeans.
“She’s gone and that foolishness stops now. Feeding imaginary critters—I won’t have it.”
Pa had teased Ma about her strange superstitions, said they never did the family much good. He knew she was lonely, and these little rituals gave her comfort.
Since she’d died there’d been endless trouble with the truck, which didn’t bother Pa, he preferred to go by horse. He didn’t use the radio either. When Edward tried to tune in most evenings he found nothing but static, and then not even that. Pa said the damned thing had never worked right, even when Ma was alive. He was right, but you could usually tease out a signal. Enough to listen to a little music or the weekly episode of Jack Armstrong, The All-American Boy, as long as Ma wasn’t in the room.
Edward wondered if Pa had something to do with it not working. That in his grief, or his guilt, he kept the silence for Ma. Just like he kept Arnie from honoring her rituals. Reminders that brought him pain.
“You boys can live without your gadgets while you’re here. And you can certainly do away with that nonsense of your mother’s. Now let’s eat this food before it gets cold.” Pa cut off a dripping chunk of roast and shoved it in his mouth, chewing as he glared from one son to the next.
They ate to the sound of knives scraping and cups thunking on the table. Pa left the room as soon as they’d finished, so he wasn’t there to stop Arnie from retrieving the broken pieces of bowl. Arnie washed them and added them to the mound of cracked dishes Ma had piled under the front porch for luck.
***
It was strange that all three vehicles were acting up.
At least it kept Arnie busy and out of the house, for that he was grateful. After dinner he escaped to the barn to try and get Roy’s truck running right before his brothers headed out for the night. He was tired of Pa’s scowls and his constant banging on the table or counter, stomping on the floor, just so he could give Arnie some piece of backward wisdom, tell Arnie how he had it all wrong. How spending time learning about machines, fixing them, was unnatural.
Arnie knew Pa would never understand. His brothers all made choices Pa approved of, was proud of. Arnie’s deafness was the first wall. When he was a kid and Pa took the boys to town, he’d see it in Pa’s eyes. The shame and the guilt when folks realized the skinny jug-eared boy couldn’t hear them. And then when Arnie showed such a knack for fixing things, taking them apart to see how they worked, Pa complained endlessly. Men got soft when they depended on machines, soft in the body and in the head. That’s what Pa said.
For Arnie it was completely natural. He fired up Roy’s truck and took it for a test drive, leaving the farm lights behind in the dusk. The fields spread out grey on either side, long grasses shifting back and forth with the trickling currents of wind.
He concentrated on the vibrations, alert for coughs and sputters that changed the way the truck moved. He could feel an engine hesitate, its labored grind. When things worked perfectly he felt the open-throated surge of the engine, ready to go. It was a lot like riding was for Frank and Roy—the twitch of muscle that told a rider what the horse was up for.
But nothing could compare to a well-tuned engine. Probably like what that Earhart woman felt in her plane. On his Indian motorbike, leaning into the curves that wound up the undulating foothills, the powerful thrum of the engine, vibrations changing speed and intensity as he moved through the gears, the grit of the road coating his teeth. Pure freedom.
He’d get the Indian on the road as soon as he’d chased the problems with the tractor and the farm truck. Roy’s truck was an easy enough fix. His brother simply didn’t know how to drive it. He set the timing wrong and didn’t mind when the engine told him to gear up or down. By the end of the month, the truck would be backfiring so badly the poor cat bolted under the house whenever someone started it, and the chickens clucked and beat their wings in a frantic cloud. Regular as clockwork, Arnie would have to rub the black crust off the valves and adjust the timing until it thrummed.
What was really strange lately was how Arnie found odd little issues each time he folded back the hood. Loose connections, dead battery, burnt plugs. Nothing Roy could have done on his own, and Arnie didn’t think it was a vandal. Kids would more likely put a potato in the tailpipe, or take your tractor out for a joyride, leaving figure eights cut in your cornfield.
If Ma was here he knew what she’d say. Sometimes she was pretty convincing. When he was a kid he believed in the tomte, felt their vibrations as they wound through the walls on stormy nights, even found the apples Ma said they left for the horses. Until the day he woke early and saw Ma in the yard, heading for the barn, a bushel of apples caught up in her skirt. She walked up on her toes, unsteady but trying to hurry. She kept looking from side to side, wary of snakes coiling up from the long shadows of dawn.
Ridiculous, of course, putting out the porridge, keeping the broken dishes, but when he worked on the trucks he really did feel like he was chasing something. Not a little spark-eating demon. A mechanical or electrical problem, but one that didn’t follow the normal rules.
***
The second night of guard duty was quiet, too. Much the same as the first. Though it started out differently for Edward.
He’d gone early, walked the length of their farm, the Setter farm, then the airstrip as gloom turned to twilight. He stood in front of Miss Earhart’s plane, hands in his pockets, wondering what that lift felt like. Was it like riding a bull, when your teeth rattle and your guts drop and then for a moment you just hang there, floating, the clouds whipping by and the sun catching in your eyes, before gravity smacks you down?
“She’s a beauty, isn’t she?” A soft female voice came from behind.
Edward didn’t turn around, afraid if he saw her face he’d lose his tongue. “Sure is, ma’am. You can see a thing like that is built to go right the way around.”
“Yes she is. I trust her with my life.”
“How does it feel? Flying her up there, skimming the clouds?” Edward’s voice cracked with embarrassment. A flush crawled up from his collar.
“Just like you think it would. Free.
Light. Powerful. That all is possible.”
Edward stole a glance at her then, her gaze far away, already picturing herself in flight.
“Thank you for keeping an eye on her. Just wanted to tuck her in for the night,” she said.
They stood for a moment more in silence.
“I’ll keep her safe, ma’am.” Edward heard steps behind him and turned to watch the tall slim woman in flight gear stride away into the shadows.
“I thank you for that.” She turned back and flashed him a wide grin, and then pushed through the service door, and was gone.
From the bay doors out front Roy and Frank came clacking in, their cowboy boots dusted from the road.
“Ho there, Eddie. Hope we’re not late. Arnie’s got my truck all pulled apart. And the farm truck. We may be walking in the morning, too.” Roy settled back on his crate. “Pa’s in good form tonight. Frank wanted to head into town and see about why the house’s electric keeps cutting out, but Pa said he needed the horses rested for tomorrow, and he’d rather use the old lanterns anyways. Claims the light bulbs bother his eyes. Farm’s falling apart, Eddie. Thought you’d be taking better care of things.”
“Come on now, Roy.” Frank tended to be more understanding. As the oldest son it should have been his place to take over the farm. But he’d had no affinity for farming, preferring to run cattle and ride rodeo. “Arnie will fix things before we go. Even get the tractor going if Pa’ll agree to use it.”
Edward shook his head. “That battle’s lost. We’ve been using the horses to pull the plow all year.”
“I don’t know how you do it, Eddie. He’s even worse with Ma gone.” Roy took off his hat and hung it over his knee. “I’ll be glad to be out of there when we’re done with this gig.”
“Well, it’s not like there’s much choice. If I quit and come work the Cassidy ranch with you all, we’d have to sell the farm. Then what? Where would Pa go?”
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