“Don’t worry. We’ll be fine. Pa’ll be fine. He just needs some time to stop missing Ma so much.”
Edward couldn’t tell them it had been better since Ma died, mostly. Even the fury of Pa’s grief was manageable. The reason he’d moved a few years before, out of the house and into the farm-hand quarters out back of the barn, was to get away from her, not Pa. He loved Ma, but after her accident she changed, and over the years it got worse and worse.
She’d have conversations in Danish with herself and with people no one could see. The tomte—her little ones.
I know you’re hungry, little ones. Ma said, her words slow and thick as she placed the porridge on its shelf. Eat up, or the cat will. See, Eddie. They’re so far from home and they’re our family. If we take care of them, they’ll take care of us.
Sometimes she claimed they were the spirits of her grandparents that she’d brought with her from Denmark in a pot of dirt from the family farm. Oldemoder wants you boys to go out and play now. Enough of that radio racket. That machine is disturbing the air in here. Poor Oldemoder can’t think. Edward was sure it was Ma who kept breaking the radio, though she blamed Oldefader.
Her doctors assured them this was common in cases like hers. But that didn’t make it easier. She would laugh with the shadows that huddled in the kitchen, and sometimes when Edward passed by the room he saw those blotches of darkness shake in ripples of glee. If he stopped to get a good look they’d melt back into the corners, perfectly normal shadows cast by stove, cupboard, chair.
Pa said there was no harm in it. Something to help her pass the time.
But when she died he cleaned up most of her tokens, the pot of dirt from the kitchen shelf went into the vegetable patch, along with the feathers she kept in her top drawer. He left her dresses hanging in the closet, however, and some mornings Edward smelled her eau de toilet coming through their bedroom window when he fetched eggs to make their breakfast.
***
“Have you met her? What’s she like?” Mata swung between her crutches, kicking stones with her good leg while the other hung stiff in its polished steel cage. Her chin-length hair so feather light it floated around her face, up toward the pale blue sky. “I can’t believe you’re guarding Amelia Earhart’s plane.”
Edward was collecting the mail when the bus from secretarial college dropped Mata Setter off on the road at five in the evening. The bus creaked to a stop and as Mata disembarked the other girls leaned out the windows, calling to her in sunny voices, giggling and waving at Edward. He smoothed his hair, hoping it wasn’t all pillow-tufted.
“I talked to her last night. She was very polite. Feminine.” He blushed. “I mean, of course she’s feminine. She’s a girl . . . woman.”
Mata scowled at him, but a smile lurked behind it. “You think she’s pretty?”
“I . . . well of course . . . ”
With a bright, throaty laugh Mata swung back and kicked a stone. It bounced off Edward’s shoe.
“She’s wonderful, I bet,” Mata said. “I’ve heard she’s really intelligent. Very kind. Tell me everything she said.”
Edward walked with Mata up the drive to her house. Like the Hammer farm, it was flanked by pale rows of poplars, and a narrow porch stretched across the front. He told her about the plane, a custom Lockheed Electra with all the new radio equipment, even a Morse code machine. Everything was fixed and running well, ready for her second try. He described the gap between Amelia Earhart’s teeth and the way her nose crinkled, just like Mata’s did. How she walked with such long strides and he showed how she held up her hand with the first finger higher than the rest before heading down the runway.
“She’s a lucky gal, getting to do what she’s doing.” Edward sighed.
“There’s no luck in it,” Mata said. “She got to where she is by a lot of hard work. My dad says you can see it in her chin. Her determination.” She looked at the sky, and then pointed with one of her crutches at a crop duster looping around for a landing. “One day I’m going up.”
She leaned against his shoulder and they watched the plane drop like a bird of prey. Edward wanted to tell her he’d take her. Together they would skim the clouds, the farmland laid out below with roads cut between.
A door banged. Mr. Setter came out onto the porch, fists on his hips. In the front window the round faces of Mata’s mother and sisters pressed against the rippling glass.
“I’d better go.” Mata smiled at him and gave his leg a soft touch with one of her crutches before she turned and crossed the front yard to her porch. She hopped up the steps, kissed her dad’s cheek and ducked inside.
Edward and Mr. Setter looked at each other across the yard, then Mr. Setter nodded and went in the house.
That was the moment Edward Hammer’s life changed. In an instant he gave up the idea of joining the air force, an idea that had been tickling at him for the past year, since they expanded the airfield and bigger planes had started coming, since Roy and Frank had moved out, leaving him as the only son to take over for Pa and run the family farm.
No. He would stay on the farm. And he would marry Mata Setter.
***
Arnie could tell by the slow, soft steps which brother had come into the barn. He turned when Edward tapped his shoulder.
“Think you can get it running, Arnie?”
He shrugged. There was something in his brother’s face, a new happiness that made Arnie smile.
“What’s so funny?” Edward scowled and scratched his head, but the frown was just on the surface. His lips moved as though they wanted to twist back into a grin all on their own.
Arnie’s hands moved in a series of quick gestures.
“You can say it, Arnie. You know I’m no good at reading that.”
Arnie shook his head and repeated the gestures, this time more slowly.
Edward shrugged. “The lessons are too expensive. I don’t have enough, and Pa would never agree to pay. I can just hear him . . . what the hell you want to fool around in the clouds for, boy? That hay ain’t gonna bale itself . . . ”
Arnie signed again, and made an exaggerated scowl.
“No, it’s okay. You keep your money. Besides, I’m saving up for something else.” Edward’s gaze flashed warm and distant and his neck flushed, the red climbing to his cheeks as he spoke. “I’ve almost got enough, as long as it doesn’t cost much to get this tractor going, and we have a good harvest.”
Arnie signed “okay” and bent back to the repair work. He felt Edward’s easy steps as he walked out of the barn, off to prepare for guard duty.
One side of the farm truck’s hood folded open for him to work on the engine. He’d been over it three times already and decided to have a look under the chassis, see if he could locate a leak, some indication of what the problem was, other than the truck had a tendency to stall, for no reason he could see. He laid his tools in reach and rolled under the truck.
Arnie talked as he worked, not in his head, but out loud. He practiced what the doctor taught him, how to keep his volume low by paying attention to the muscles in his throat. Whispering was hard. At least he hoped he was whispering, talking to the engine, asking it to tell him what was wrong and how to fix it.
He’d already pulled off the oil pan and checked for bits of metal. Now he’d replace the gasket and hope that helped. The truck was losing oil, but not enough to be a major concern. There were only so many options of what could be wrong; he’d eliminated all the obvious. There was gas and spark. No sticking valves, plugs all good. Everything checked out up top. He’d even checked the gas in the tank in case those local vandals had poured sugar in, but it tasted how it should, like gas.
He rolled farther under the truck, dipped his rag in gasoline and repositioned the lamp. From the corner of his eye he saw a dark shape. It slipped along the crankshaft and up out of sight—too long and thin to be a rat. When Arnie tried to get a better look, it disappeared. He tapped the crankcase with the adjustable wrench, trying to sca
re the critter out, and realized it was likely just shadows moving around when he adjusted the lamp. The fact that the shape appeared as a slug of liquid darkness, little points of light glinting on its skin as it slipped up into the deeper shadows—just his eyes playing tricks.
He gave the bottom of the engine a good wipe down with the gas-soaked rag and set the gasket and oil pan in place, bolting two corners first. He worked his way around the pan, tightening bolts. A small shadow slithered around in the periphery, but each time he turned his head toward the movement it was gone. So he worked, all the while tracking from the corner of his eye.
A movement near the starter engine.
He rolled farther under the truck, following the shadow. It was quick, slithering up around the side of the starter. Without turning his head, Arnie swung with the wrench, and made contact with something soft. He dropped the wrench, his hand gone numb from a pulse of electricity. He’d probably also hit a couple of exposed wires. The critter fell somewhere behind his head, he could just make it out, writhing on the ground, the lamplight catching on its inky skin. Snake. Not a rattler, but some kind of snake.
The floorboards shifted, alerting Arnie that someone had entered the barn. He pushed out from under the truck, rolled off of the dolly, and searched the shadows under the truck for the snake. It was gone.
Frank and Roy stood ready for guard duty in a fresh layer of aftershave and boot polish. Roy climbed behind the wheel of his truck, Arnie had already tuned it up for him and everything worked fine now. Roy looked out toward the field, his black hat casting his face in shadow, his jaw clenched and his shoulders riding up high, still angry.
Arnie knew he shouldn’t have laughed at his brother. A few days ago, when he bought those new chaps with the fuzzy lamb pelt, Roy had strutted around like king of the rodeo. And earlier in the afternoon, despite the heat, he had worn them to help Palmer Setter check his fence line. The Setters’ truck was in the shop, another victim of the strange rash of vandalism. Roy needed sleep to be ready for guard duty, but he clearly couldn’t resist the chance to strap on his new chaps and parade past the Setter girls.
When Roy got home, chaps bristling with burrs and spikes of hayseed, Pa said he looked like a lamb that had lost a wrestling match with a badger. Arnie laughed, and he knew that he’d laughed too loud when Roy told him he sounded like a damn donkey. Roy spent the evening on the porch picking the burrs and chucking them into the yard. His refusal to look at Arnie meant Arnie could only read their lips, but he couldn’t say much of anything to the family. Roy was the only one of the Hammer men who was any good at sign language and since Pa couldn’t read much, Arnie didn’t like to bring out a pen and paper.
“Hey Arnie, Roy’s truck good to go?” Frank looked tired, dark circles blackened his eyes so they were hard to see under the rim of his hat.
Arnie nodded. Movement along the barn floor, seeping out from behind the farm truck, he turned to look. Nothing there. Frank tapped his shoulder and he turned back to read his brother’s lips.
“ . . . take Pa to the bank tomorrow, see about getting a loan for a new tractor if you can’t get that one fixed. We could at least keep it for parts.”
There again, a shadow sliding toward the underside of Roy’s truck. Not wriggling like a snake, more inching along like a worm, and vibrating in weird shuddering twitches. When he looked directly at it, it disappeared.
Arnie signed a message to Frank, but his older brother shook his head in confusion and waved as he climbed into the passenger seat. Roy wouldn’t look at him when he stomped on the floor and clapped his hands.
“Roy, Frank, there’s something strange . . . ” Arnie’s throat opened wide, the words came with easy force. He was talking too loud, he felt it.
Roy’s face twisted in disgust, so much like Pa. “You sound like a dummy, Arnie.” Roy slammed the truck into drive and drove off in a blast of exhaust.
***
The last night of guard duty was coming to an end, and Edward was glad. Roy had been in a foul mood the whole night and spent most of his time patrolling the other hangars, convinced he’d catch that little Japanese kid sneaking around in the dark. Frank and Edward sat side-by-side on empty crates, looking at Amelia Earhart’s plane.
“I can’t imagine all that time up there in the sky, going all the way around. You’d have no control. Why would you want to?” Frank chewed tobacco, said working his jaw kept him alert.
Edward shrugged. “It’s like those explorers. They went out in boats, people said they were crazy, but they needed to see it . . . the world. Understand the mystery. Maybe it’s like that?”
“Figure life’s mysterious enough. Watching the sunrise out there herding cattle; coyotes howling at the moon; the way a woman’s smile can make you feel weak and strong all at the same time—that’s enough mystery for me.” Frank leaned back against the hangar wall and closed his eyes.
Edward looked at his brother, his face lined by the sun, his hair slipping back under the band of his tan Stetson.
“I’m going to ask Mata Setter to marry me.” He spoke the words quickly, pushed them out before he lost his nerve.
Frank nodded without opening his eyes. “That’s good, Eddie.”
They sat side by side, listening for the scuff of Roy’s cowboy boots as he paced around the airfield. When the sun began pinking the horizon, the first of the ground crew arrived, the signal that their final shift was done.
Roy came swaggering back and threw his keys to Frank. “You’re driving, big brother. I can’t even see I’m so tired.”
“I’m going to stay a bit,” Edward said. He wanted to watch Amelia Earhart’s departure. Next time he saw Mata he’d tell her all the details, and then he’d ask her if she wanted to go for some ice cream.
Roy’s eyes flashed with anger. “What’s with you, Eddie, and this airplane foolishness? You’re never going to be a fly boy—you don’t have the smarts or the money. You see what it takes with this crazy girl . . . flying around the goddam country begging money off bankers and oilmen. You need more charm than you got. Better looks, too.”
“Come on, Roy, let’s get home.” Frank turned the key in the ignition and the engine made a slow grinding sound.
“Damn truck.” Roy kicked the quarter panel twice, the truck rocked from side to side on its springs . . . and fired up with a shotgun blast.
From where Edward stood he thought he saw something drop from under the truck, behind the front wheel. It shivered like a leaf on a windy day, then moved forward as though a gust of a breeze compelled it, pulled by a force that was irresistible. But when he tried for a better look the blot of darkness had blown away.
Roy spat on the ground, then climbed into the bed of the truck and stretched out, crossing his ankles and tipping his black Stetson over his eyes. With a wave and a smile in the rearview mirror, Frank pulled out of the hangar and drove for home.
The truck hitched and blew a halo of white smoke that slowly dissolved in the still air.
Edward wanted to warn the ground crew, though he wasn’t sure what to tell them. He explained to one of the workers that something may have gotten in to the plane. When the man asked him what, he said it could have been a snake, he wasn’t sure. The man scratched his jaw and adjusted his coveralls, the name Alvin stitched on the pocket.
“We’ll be doing a complete check, pal. Always do. If a snake got in, we’ll find it, not that a snake could get in. Plane’s put together pretty tight.” Alvin squinted as he studied Edward’s face. “Fell asleep on the job, did ya? Had a bad dream? Or are you boys causing trouble?”
“No, sir. Just being careful.”
Alvin walked Edward out of the hangar. “We got work to do, pal. You go get some sleep.”
He patted Edward on the back and gave a little push.
Edward stopped at the edge of the airfield to wait for the takeoff. Thunderheads built up on the horizon, dark pillars of cloud on the edge of an otherwise clear day.
Ameli
a Earhart’s plane rose up into view, the morning sun catching on its steely skin. It lifted higher and higher, a feather caught in a puff of wind that drew it up to the heavens. Edward’s heart thrummed with the beauty of it, the wonder. The plane, a mere speck, flashed like a cold spark against the rose-tinted blue sky and then was gone.
The sun had long burned the blush of dawn from the sky when Edward arrived at the entrance to the farm. He looked down the road and saw Mata there, waving her crutch in the air like some featherless wing, waiting for him, and for a time he forgot his worries.
She was waiting for him.
***
July 5th, 1937.
Edward heard about the search for Amelia Earhart the day after Frank and Roy’s funeral.
They held off on Frank’s service a few days while Roy lay in a coma in the hospital. Roy lingered, fading bit by bit, then passed in the early morning three days after the accident. The brothers were buried the same day to spare the expense of two funerals.
Edward and Mata parked near the airfield to watch the planes, as they did when they both had an afternoon free. The air above the landing strip rippled with heat. The prairie spread out flat, and beyond the purple waves of the foothills. They had taken Mr. Setter’s buggy since Pa’s truck wasn’t working and Roy’s truck was still wrapped around the oak tree at Dead Man’s Bend. Arnie swore that the truck had been working fine when his brothers took it out, but he’d said the same about his motorcycle.
Edward rubbed sleep grit from his eye. He’d gotten up early to get a jump on chores. Sleep didn’t come easy, anyway, and when it did come, dark hungry shadows slithered into each of his dreams. At breakfast he prepared an extra serving of porridge and placed it on the shelf behind the stove, next to a jar containing soil from Frank and Roy’s graves. Mata laughed when he told her about the porridge, and when they snuck offerings of apples to the horses, but she understood.
Mr. Setter had resisted Edward and Mata’s courtship, suspicious of a man who would choose a cripple over a woman with two good legs. But it was clear, in the gentle way Edward helped her up into the buggy, in Mata’s bright laughter and shy smile, that this was love. Edward’s love buffed Mata’s beauty to a shine, and Mr. Setter wouldn’t stand in their way.
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