The Flying Circus

by Susan Crandall

  Was she that crazy?

  She sped up.

  Flat out on the ground, Henry waited in stunned horror for the destruction of two machines, their owners, and one innocent mutt.

  Just a few feet shy of Gil, Cora cut the handlebars and spun the motorcycle 180 degrees. The bike leaned over so far she put her foot on the ground—as if she had a chance in hell of stopping the downward momentum. Instead of slowing, she added power—an act totally against instinct and the only hope she had of keeping the machine from landing on its side and sliding out from under her. The turn complete, the bike righted, its rear tire spinning. Soil and grass clumps peppered the Jenny like hail. Henry, on his belly, received a mouthful of dirt. A rock caught his forehead, stinging like fire.

  The crowd roared.

  When Henry opened his eyes, Gil was on his ass, legs splayed, having stumbled backward.

  Thirty feet away, Cora slid the motorcycle in a quarter turn and stopped dead, revving the engine twice before she cut the power, pulled off her leather helmet, shook out her hair, and held her fists over her head.

  “A woman!”

  “Have you ever . . . ?”

  “Good heavens!”

  “Bravo!”

  “Well, I’ll be!”

  “Did you see that?”

  Before Henry could spit the dirt out of his mouth, Gil was up and stalking toward Cora, clumps of dirt and grass falling from him as if he’d sprung from the depths of the earth itself.

  Henry scrabbled to his feet, stumbling to catch up. Gil was about to make a horrible mistake.

  Gil hooked Cora by the waist and yanked her off the bike, which fell to the ground with a thud. He had her by the shoulders, nose to nose, looking ready to give her a swift shake when Henry threw his arms around both of them in what he hoped appeared to be a celebratory three-way hug (four if you counted the wriggling dog inside Cora’s jacket). He tightened his grip when Gil tried to shrug him off.

  Gil growled, “You spoiled little bit—”

  “Spoiled! I wasn’t the one who sneaked off—”

  “Listen!” Henry shouted in Gil’s ear, shaking both him and Cora. “Listen! They love her!”

  Murder raging in his eyes, Gil kept struggling to be shed of Henry.

  “No harm done.” Henry squeezed again.

  “Only to Flyboy’s overblown pride.” Cora’s body was as stiff as Gil’s.

  “This is money in your pockets!” Henry said, giving them both a shake.

  The dog whimpered.

  Henry eased his grip—for the pup’s sake. “People love a spectacle. The more unexpected and daring the better.” Harry Houdini came to mind. “Cora’s definitely unexpected.”

  “Know who she is?”

  “Pretty little thing, ain’t she?”

  “Is that a dog inside her coat?”

  “. . . not from around here . . .”

  “A woman! How . . . how . . .” This last from a female, definitely not in the same enamored tone as the man who’d uttered the same words earlier.

  Henry released them and grabbed a hand from each, spinning them around to face the crowd, keeping himself in the middle. He raised their hands over their heads and grinned victoriously. A stunt well planned and executed.

  A cheer went up.

  He bent at the waist, forcing Gil and Cora to share a bow—not that Gil did much more than lower the shoulder Henry dragged down.

  Then, just when Henry thought he’d saved them all, Cora chirped, “See what an asset I am to the team!”

  Henry had to tighten his hold on Gil to prevent him from strangling her right there in before a hundred adoring people.

  Gil spent the rest of the day in simmering silence. Dark moods made Henry edgy, always had, even when they were no particular threat to him. His natural inclination was to cajole—teachers’ frowns were appeased by generous good deeds, Ma’s anger cooled with a sweet smile and a corny little soft-shoe, Peter’s rare spates of irritation were diluted with a joke, the littlest Dahlgren girls’ foul humor nearly always succumbed to funny faces. But today Gil’s face had been so thunderous, his body so tense, Henry hadn’t even attempted to nudge him out of his mood.

  As the sun set, Gil climbed into the passenger seat of the dusty Model T owned by the last customer and drove off toward town without so much as a wink or a wave—or pausing to tie down the Jenny.

  Henry secured the plane, driving the stakes with heavy blows that did little to release his own frustration. Gil hadn’t welcomed Henry’s involvement in his business, but the man’s irritation had been salved by the steady flow of five-dollar bills. Cora on the other hand, well, she was nothing but pure aggravation. She had to go.

  He went over to where the motorcycle leaned against a tree to remove the last remaining piece of the chain guard so no one would get cut on it. Then it hit him. He didn’t know why it hadn’t before then. That front wheel shouldn’t have been rolling at all. His pride took a lick when he saw it was straight and true as new.

  “Hey, how’d you fix this wheel?”

  Cora stopped unloading the knapsack she’d retrieved from the edge of the field where she’d left it before her grand entrance. “I didn’t.”

  “Looks fixed to me.”

  “It’s a different wheel. That tarp in the shed covered a bunch of spare parts that Jonathan kept.”

  “You had a spare wheel all the time!”

  She smiled sweetly and shrugged.

  “We could have changed it yesterday and not broken our backs.”

  Tilting her head, she said, “And Gil would have flown out of there before dark. Probably without either one of us.”

  A manipulator, just as he’d thought. He shoved his hands on his hips and briefly wondered if Cora and Tilda had been in cahoots.

  He knelt and checked the installation of the wheel; did she even know how to do it right? “This axle nut is loose! The whole wheel could have come off and you’d have broken your neck.”

  “But I didn’t,” she said matter-of-factly. “I only had one wrench, so I did the best I could.”

  “How’d you get the bent one off without some leverage?”

  “It wasn’t all that tight either.”

  “It’s a miracle you’re alive.”

  “Jonathan used to tell me that a lot—mostly when he was trying to scare me out of running across or doing handstands on the rafters of the stable at the Hudson Valley house.”

  How was he going to discourage a girl with an attitude like that?

  Henry needed to ease his way in with Gil, one town at a time. He was counting on the growing stream of cash to make his company less objectionable; God knew he’d had plenty of experience in minimizing his presence when need be. Encroaching on Gil’s solitary life needed to be handled subtly and gradually, by quiet inches, not by loudly declared miles.

  Cora was a declaration with shouts and fireworks.

  Henry arranged the sticks and deadwood he’d gathered to start a campfire. Cora sat down on the ground opposite him, drawing the dog onto her lap, looking as if she was settling in for the duration.

  “Shouldn’t you be getting home?” Unlike Henry, she had a home. With people who seemed to care about her, even if they didn’t understand her. “It’ll be dark soon and your people will be worried.”

  She stopped picking at the tangles in the dog’s coat and looked at him. “I’m not going home, Kid. I’m joining the show.”

  “There isn’t a show.”

  “What was that we just did this afternoon, then?”

  “Well, it was a show all right.” He couldn’t deny that. My God, the sight of her tearing along on that motorcycle on her knee . . . He ducked his head so she couldn’t see his smile. He put a match to the fire.

  “They loved it, didn’t they!” She grinned like a kid w
ith her first chocolate bar.

  “Gil’s not interested in a show or an exhibition. And he’s the one with the airplane. I managed to get a lift closer to Chicago in exchange for helping with the gasoline today. Tomorrow he’ll be gone on his own and I’ll be back on foot. There. Is. No. Show.”

  “I disagree. We just have to make Gil see the benefit.” She held the dog close to her face, oblivious of the animal’s smell. “We can perform during fuel stops, keep the crowd entertained while they wait.”

  True. They loved her. And that the dog acted as if he’d been waiting his whole life to ride on that motorcycle made it even more outstanding. But Gil wouldn’t see beyond his anger. If there had been enough daylight left, Henry was pretty sure Gil would have flown out of here and not hopped a ride to town.

  She looked more serious than he’d ever seen her when she said, “I will not go back. I can go with you. Or I’ll do it on my own. I’m committed to the road.”

  Henry stopped poking the growing flames and sat back on his haunches. “I can’t imagine your mother sending you off with her blessing to run all over the country with two men she didn’t even want you to talk to in the first place.”

  “Well, here’s the thing, Kid. I’m a grown woman. She might not like it, but she can’t do anything about it.”

  “You just up and left? Do they know where you went?”

  “My family isn’t your concern.”

  “I beg to differ. If your mother sends the law after you, it’s going to be both my and Gil’s concern.” Especially mine.

  She scoffed, but he thought he saw a flicker of uncertainty in her eye. “As I said, I’m a grown woman. Mother will have to marry a rich husband herself if she wants to return to our old life so badly. I’m taking charge of my life. If I were a man, everyone would think I was ambitious. Strong. Daring. Bold. Courageous. Admirable.” Her hand flitted in the air to indicate the list would go on and on.

  “But you’re a woman.” Man’s sacred duty is to protect women and children. It was the code of his life, taught by his pa, his church, Mr. Dahlgren.

  “In case you missed it, women got the vote. I won’t be like my mother, tiptoeing along a path lined with fences erected by parents, only to walk through a gate to tiptoe on another enforced by a husband.” She was so worked up she was stabbing a finger toward him. “Those days are gone, Henry. And good riddance.”

  She knew nothing about living without those protections, about being alone and vulnerable. If she did, she wouldn’t be so quick to toss it all to the wind for the sake of doing whatever she pleased. There was always a cost. Always.

  The crickets had begun to chirp and the mosquitoes to take daring attempts at his neck. Henry fanned the fire to get it burning better.

  “What about you? You can’t really want some drudge job in Chicago when you could do something special with Gil and his plane.”

  He shrugged. “Drudge it may be, but a man’s gotta eat. And Gil doesn’t make enough to feed himself, let alone three of us. You should rethink your plan. A rich girl like you doesn’t want to live like a starving gypsy.”

  “You don’t know anything about me, Henry Jefferson. Just like I don’t know anything about you. So don’t suppose you know what I do or do not want. I wasn’t born to live behind velvet curtains, wedding rings, and tea sets. Father promised me a life of my choosing, and that’s what I’m going to get.”

  “That sounds pretty selfish.”

  “Oh, yes, easy for a man to say. Men aren’t brokered and sold like their father’s sailboat or their mother’s fur coat.”

  Exaggeration; spoiled girls were so good at it. “There’s a reason men have more freedom; it’s dangerous for a woman with no one to protect her.” He ignored her scoff. “You’re lucky to have a family who cares about you enough to worry about your future. You have a home, even if it’s not what you’re used to. Let me ask you this. Would you want to run off and do this—go hungry, sleep outdoors, perform like a circus act—if you still had money?” Henry’s entire life had been hunger and uncertainty. Nobody would live penniless if they had a choice.

  “I never had money. I had promises.”

  “You had security . . . you still do. You don’t know what it’s like to be hungry, or cold with no hope of getting warm, alone, powerless.”

  “Did you hear yourself? Powerless. That’s exactly what I’ve been!”

  “Okay, I take that one back. But the rest stand. And believe me, if you have a choice, you don’t want to experience any of the others. Go home.”

  She looked at him across the growing fire, the light catching in her green eyes. “I’m sorry that your life has forced you to experience those things. But I’m choosing.”

  “You’re choosing. Choosing with no idea what your choice means.”

  “I do know what the alternative means. That’s enough.”

  “What? Get married to a rich man who’ll spoil you like your daddy did? Poor you.”

  “And bury my true self for the rest of my life. Do you know what that’s like, Henry, to go through every day forced to live behind a mask?”

  He did. But it wasn’t the same. “We all do things we don’t want to. That’s life.”

  She sighed. “When I was a girl, Father took me to an exclusive gambling room—oh, don’t look so shocked, he took me lots of places Mother never knew about. Anyway, it was filled with the whiskered sons of oil and coal and railroad fortunes. They smoked cigars and threw around incredible sums of money, as if they were betting peanuts or pea gravel. And the way they talked! Those men disregarded everything but money. It justified the most callous and inhumane acts. But I knew Father was different. He came from a farm and knew what it was like to dream and work hard; he knew what it was like to reach for something people told you that you could never have. He respected a person’s ambitions. He respected mine.”

  Her voice broke and Henry worried she was going to cry. Then what would he do?

  But she didn’t cry. She sat up straighter and cleared her throat and started finger-combing the dog’s matted fur. “But when Father had to choose between his dreams and mine . . .” She pressed her lips together and shook her head, but it wasn’t with sadness, it looked more like anger.

  “If only Jonathan had lived, I’d have remained a spare tire; you know, inconsequential. But when you lose one tire on the road, everything depends on that spare.” She shifted and crossed her legs, cuddling that filthy dog closer. When she spoke again, her tone slid low and settled somewhere between sadness and desperation. “But he was killed. I became the sole vessel for the Haviland for-tune”—she slipped briefly into her high-hat voice—“and its descendants throughout eternity, amen. Father suddenly decided my aspirations were childish, foolish, ridiculous ideas and I needed to get them out of my head immediately. Women did as they were told, and I was no exception.” The way she said it told Henry those were her father’s words exactly.

  She sat there looking into the flames for a bit. Henry stirred the fire, and firefly sparks rose into the darkness. The tree frogs had joined the night ruckus around them, making her next, soft-spoken words hard to hear.

  “It was like he died with Jonathan and one of those whiskered men from that gambling room took his place. He stopped taking me places. Stopped joining me in inappropriate behavior behind Mother’s back. He stopped being Father.”

  Henry had been well acquainted with death and the changes it brought. Baby Marie and he had caught (ironically enough) German measles at the same time. He remembered Ma’s broken heart when Marie died. Ma eventually learned to smile again, but something was missing in her eyes. Try as he might, nothing Henry did brought it back. Eventually Peter had told him to stop trying so hard to cheer her, that it just made Ma sadder. Henry hadn’t understood that until Ma passed two years later. Peter had forgotten his words to Henry, and everything he did to make Henry feel
better only broke his heart more. By the time Peter died, no one was left who cared enough to even make the effort.

  He heard Cora draw a deep breath. “Here I am. So it all worked out.” Her voice had regained some of its buoyancy. “By the grace of God—and some shifty shenanigans on my father’s part—I was spared being married off to a husband chosen for his wealth and business acumen. I avoided my single life-duty of birthing a brood of little tycoons and debutantes and serving a man I didn’t even care to know, let alone live with.

  “The money’s gone. The promises were ash in my father’s mouth all along. My mother only knows one way to live, and I’m the only bargaining chip she has left to get it back. I’m not the commodity I once was; a penniless daughter of a scalawag is a hard sell to all but the most desperate of wealthy men. So don’t talk to me about being selfish, Henry Jefferson. I won’t be sold twice in one lifetime. This is my chance. I’m taking it.”

  Her voice changed. “I don’t know if Father killed himself because the money was gone, or because he knew he was going to jail for how he got it.” She drew a deep breath. “Doesn’t matter I suppose. The end result is the same either way.”

  “I’m sorry.” A little seed of hate for that man started in Henry’s belly. No matter how awful things got, his pa had stuck it out. What kind of man sets up such foolish expectations in his daughter, takes them away, then deserts her? Suddenly he didn’t feel like picking on her anymore. “So your dream and ambition was to ride a motorcycle with a traveling air exhibition?”

  “Why, yes.” She smiled. “Isn’t it every girl’s dream?”

  He added a log to the fire. “Really, what did you want to do?”

  “Have you ever heard of Nellie Bly?”

  Henry shook his head.

  “Of course not, she was a troublemaking woman. She was a daredevil journalist, got herself into all sorts of places using secret identities. Told stories nobody wanted the public to see, treatment of female inmates in jail, inhumane treatment of workers in factories. She angered all of those whiskered tycoons when she wrote about the Pullman strike from the strikers’ perspective. Best of all, in ’89 she circumnavigated the globe—alone. A woman unchaperoned on ship, train, and burro! The scandal! She did it in seventy-two days.” The excitement in Cora’s voice rose. “And she didn’t have the benefit of Jules Verne dictating her story.”