The Flying Circus

by Susan Crandall

  “Bushwa.” He used her own term on her.

  She put her fingers on his lips. “I want this, Henry. All the way down to the marrow of my bones. And I’m going to do it.”

  He took her hand in his and kissed the palm. “Of that, I have no doubt. But that doesn’t alter the objective. You crash this plane or cause someone else trouble on the course, you’re done. There are no second chances for women in aviation.” He didn’t know that for a fact, but imagined it’d be damned hard for a woman to recover her credibility when most men were already looking for the slightest reason to banish them from most everything outside of keeping house and having babies. “That would be it. Dream out the window. Remember that.”

  “I have no intention of doing anything stupid.”

  If it wouldn’t add additional weight, he’d insist she fly the race with Mercury in the plane with her. She’d never risk that mutt’s life.

  The next day, they laid out a three-mile course with turns at a windmill—the closest approximation to a pylon they could come up with—a neighbor’s barn, and the place where Reece’s lane intersected the road. She practiced first at a much higher altitude than she would race at, getting the feel for the turn and the angle at which she needed to come out of it to set up for the next “pylon.” Henry climbed onto the roof of Reece’s barn to see the whole course over the trees. She ran the course lower and lower, ultimately making the turns around the windmill and the neighbor’s barn at even altitude. That’s when he got skin-crawling nervous. That speed at that low altitude, as sharply as that plane reacted, if she lost her concentration long enough to swat a fly, she could be in trouble.

  He’d told her to cut those first low-altitude turns plenty wide. There’d be time to shave seconds off once she had some practice. The first low-altitude lap she cut too close around the barn. Henry sucked in his breath and cringed, but she cleared it. He muttered curses and signaled for her to take the next one wider. The windmill turn, the tightest on the course, required the plane to bank to almost ninety degrees. She took that one too close, too. At least the turn at the intersection didn’t have anything she could possibly hit.

  She ran it two more times, each just a gnat’s ass from clipping the “pylons.” By the time she landed, Henry was on the ground, hopping mad.

  As soon as she climbed out, he had her by the shoulders. “You were supposed to work your way up to those close turns.”

  “I did. I flew above the pylons seven laps before I got down to altitude. I think I can cut them even closer. There was plenty of wiggle room. You just can’t tell from so far away.”

  Reece didn’t help when he came driving up in the truck. “Jake said she was a natural, and by God she just proved it! Well done, lady!”

  She tossed a look at Henry. “See. I bet if Gil had cut those pylons that close, you’d be slapping him on the back.”

  “Probably. But Gil didn’t just start flying three months ago.” He shut up then. She did have a point.

  The next morning, Henry took up one of the Jennies and had her keep her speed low enough that he could fly with her as another racer would. He wanted her to learn to keep track of another plane in proximity. At least this time she did cut the first few laps wider around the pylons. Henry had to force himself to fly close enough that it would do her some good, his inclination being to keep a distance that ensured her safety. He varied his position—inside, outside, above, below, slightly ahead, slightly behind. Finally, she gave it full throttle and ran the course with him tagging behind, way behind.

  After they landed and got out of the planes, she threw her arms around Henry’s neck. “It’s even better with another plane up there!”

  He smiled as he wrapped her in his arms, his shoulder giving only minimal complaint. All of this movement had kept it from getting stiff. “You amaze me.”

  She grinned back. “Why, Henry, no reprimands? You’re actually complimenting my flying skills?”

  “I’m complimenting your nerve. . . . Remember, overconfidence—”

  She cut him off with a quick kiss. “I know. I know. Trust me.” She looked into his eyes. “The way I trust you.”

  Although he and Cora hadn’t talked about Emmaline’s murder again, the undercurrent meaning was in her eyes. Henry had spent every night trying to float on the boiling river of his memories, but nothing new surfaced. He did however lose plenty of sleep to nightmares.

  The kiss that sealed her vow was anything but quick. Henry tumbled, falling as if he’d jumped out of an airplane without a parachute. His arms went around her, and he lifted her off her feet. Only with reluctance and necessity from his painful shoulder did he set her back down. When he lifted his head, he saw Gil standing at the edge of the field, a rucksack on his shoulder, looking like a man who’d lost his best friend.

  Henry quickly set Cora away from him and nodded in Gil’s direction.

  Cora turned. Her intake of breath was audible.

  Gil took a pull on his cigarette, then put a forced-looking smile on his face and walked over to them. His appearance was worse the closer he got. He looked as if he’d spent the past weeks taking a daily beating. His eyes were shadowed and sunken; that broken look was back. He’d lost enough weight that his pants bagged.

  Reece called out, “If you’d let us know, we would have come and picked you up at the train.”

  “I needed the walk.”

  The train station was at least fifteen miles from here.

  “Where did you come up with this beauty?” He gestured toward the plane but kept his eyes on Cora.

  She seemed to have recovered from her fluster, while Henry’s heart was still racing with guilt. She told him about meeting Evans and how she was going to race in Miami.

  Gil’s smile was mechanical and no joy was in his eyes when he looked at her. “I knew you were destined for big things.”

  Something sharpened in Cora’s gaze. Henry got the feeling that suddenly he and Reece were on a different planet from Cora and Gil. “How was your family?”

  If she’d meant to hurt him, she’d clearly hit her mark. Gil’s shoulders slumped slightly; a man defeated. “Well. Quite well, in fact.”

  Henry stood there feeling like a Peeping Tom as Gil and Cora continued to stare at each other. Thank God Reece opened his mouth. “If you walked all of the way from Greenwood, you’re probably starving. Let’s get you up to the house so Nell can feed you.”

  Gil’s gaze lingered on Cora for so long Henry thought Reece’s comment hadn’t been heard. Finally, Gil turned away and said, “Lead the way.”

  Henry kept his eyes on Cora. Instead of watching Gil walk away, she looked to the ground, her cheeks slightly flushed. Her reaction, compounded by Henry’s own creeping guilt, told him that while Gil might have been the glue that initially bound Henry and Cora together, he would also always be the barrier that kept them apart.

  Two nights later Henry awoke to the slow, steady back-and-forth creak of the porch swing’s chains against the hooks that held it. He smelled cigarette smoke drifting up to his open window. He hadn’t had a chance to talk with Gil alone in the two days he’d been back. Cora, Reece, Henry, and Gil had spent every waking moment together, working on improving Cora’s skills and going over the EV-1’s engine making sure it was operating at optimum capacity. Gil was able to instruct Cora and push her in ways Henry could not, so it was a good thing he’d come back when he did. Yet, deep inside, Henry selfishly wished Gil had waited just a little longer, given Henry and Cora more time to solidify what was between them. If he’d had that time, maybe he could have erased that blush Gil brought to her cheeks.

  Although they’d all reverted to their old ways, an undercurrent was between Cora and Gil and Henry that hadn’t been there before. Or maybe Henry’s guilt was manufacturing it. Even though Gil was married and Henry shouldn’t feel guilty over his feelings for Cora—or she for him. But th
ere they were.

  He got out of bed and pulled on his pants, unsure if he was going down to talk to Gil about Cora, or if he was going to tell him about Emmaline. He knew he needed to do both, but they didn’t belong in the same conversation. He left his shoes off, opting for quiet footsteps that would be less likely to wake anyone else in the house. As he crept down the stairs, he decided that talking about murder charges against him would be easier than talking about Cora. And more necessary.

  The front door was open to the screen, letting in the cooler night air. As Henry got near it, he heard Cora’s voice rising in question. Outside. With Gil.

  He stopped dead, then moved closer to the door and listened.

  They were quiet for a long while and Henry’s imagination conjured images he wished it hadn’t.

  Gil’s deep sigh was sad, not sexual. “I did love her, when I was a boy and capable of love. Now . . . there’s nothing left in me. I tried to convince her to divorce me, especially after I saw how obvious it was she loved, and is loved by, the man who owns the house she and Charlie live in—which explains the cheap rent. She is as against divorce now as she had been four years ago—more so, now that Charlie’s almost seven and old enough to know. My God, that boy looks like John.” The last words carried all of the sadness Henry imagined was stored up in Gil’s soul.

  Looks like John, Henry thought, but she named him after you.

  Cora said, “She’d rather her son live believing his father doesn’t love him or his mother, and that he basically abandoned them? If she won’t divorce you, then she should let you be a part of their lives.”

  That statement gave Henry a lift of hope. Cora wasn’t trying to talk Gil into divorce.

  “The way she looks at me hasn’t changed. She doesn’t want me near her child. Guilt penance, that’s what she calls my offers to help raise Charlie, the money I send.”

  “How can she be so unforgiving? John’s death was an accident.”

  “An accident that never would have happened if not for me.”

  “But Charlie—”

  “Looks at me like I might go berserk any minute. Mary told him I came home from the war so scarred that I can’t live a normal life, no matter how much I love them. It’s best to just let it be. I owe her that. Divorce is a sin she’ll never commit. She’s become quite pious. I suppose it’s a comfort to her.” Gil sighed. “I just can’t believe God wants people to be this unhappy.”

  “Would you be happy? If you were free?” Henry thought he heard just a hint of hope in her voice. And it cut him deep.

  Gil was silent for a few seconds. “I haven’t been happy since the instant I beat my best friend into a bloody mess. So, no. Married or free, I’m the same. It’s Mary that needs freeing.”

  The grandfather clock chimed, startling Henry and setting his shamed heart to racing.

  He retreated silently upstairs and lay awake in his bed, listening to the slow, sad creak of the swing.

  24

  Henry and Cora arrived at Miami’s Chapman Field in the EV-1—now dubbed by Cora as the Evie—four days before the event. They wanted plenty of time for Cora to get used to taking off and landing while buffeted by Atlantic winds and shifting air currents caused by the water-land mix. They had been unsure if it would be the same as the air turbulence caused by crossing from a sunbaked bare-earth field to a lush green one, or something entirely different.

  Henry had expected Miami to be like Southern California, both being the southernmost reaches of the country. But about the only things they had in common were palm trees and warm winter weather. The people he met were mostly East Coast birds gone south, Jamaicans gone north; only a handful were true Floridians. It was low and flat here, water seeping up everywhere as it tried to overtake dry land; nothing at all like the sparse vegetation on the dry, rocky hills and mountains around Hollywood and Santa Monica. The air was different, too, heavy and moist, as opposed to California’s ethereal lightness. When he crawled into his cot at night, inside a tent that was more mosquito netting than canvas, the sheets were damp. The towel from his shower never completely dried.

  They allowed themselves the first afternoon to see downtown Miami and search for a reasonable hotel. In the end, the thirteen-mile distance was more than Henry wanted to deal with, considering they had to rely on buses and the charity of others for transportation, so they decided to rent a couple of tents at the airfield, where Henry could keep a close eye on the plane.

  Between there and the city, they’d passed huge hotels under construction and signs for new developments that promised to change scrub and swamp into homesites, golf courses, and tennis courts. Henry couldn’t see how. The locals at the diner where they stopped for lunch—once they’d discovered Cora and Henry were here for the air race and not among the offenders—had complained about the “land rush”; Northerners who would never set foot in Florida buying up big chunks of land they’d never set eyes on, looking to turn an obscene profit. Cora told Henry her father would have been one of the first—and probably the most crooked.

  Henry studied her across the table after that statement. She didn’t seemed shamed by it, hadn’t made excuses out of love and respect. It simply was. In the same way Henry’s pa had been a landless farmer, a poor immigrant. A German. Henry decided he’d rather be poor than have a man he couldn’t respect for a father.

  And what would Pa think of you now? Runner. Coward. Choosing self-preservation over honor and principle. Letting the one man who’d shown you kindness believe you betrayed him, without even fighting for the truth. Hiding from your own name.

  These thoughts put another turn in the continually tightening spring inside him. He worried that before long he wouldn’t even resemble the man his father had intended for Henry to become.

  Just a few more days, Pa. A few more days.

  Excuses. Feeble, pathetic excuses. He seemed full of them. Temporary splints on the weakness of his character. Would he find another reason to delay turning himself in once the race was done? The solid moral ground on which his father had placed him was now shifting sand and sinkholes. An ever-evolving parade of justifications. Every day he spent with Cora made him weaker, less inclined to sacrifice his life with her—whatever it shaped into—and more willing to let that sand suck him down. It would be so easy, now that she knew the truth and had not condemned him for it, just to continue on with Henry Jefferson’s life and hope against hope that no one ever came after him.

  Henry pushed away his half-eaten lunch.

  “Are you all right?” Cora looked concerned.

  “Fine. Just anxious to get back to the plane. When is Evans supposed to arrive?” Henry asked the question as a diversion, rather than out of any real interest. In fact, he didn’t look forward to the man’s looking over his shoulder as he did the final fine-tuning of the plane.

  “Tomorrow, or the next day. He wasn’t certain in his last telegram.” She took a sip of coffee. “I’m ready when you are. I want to get in a few takeoffs and landings before the day gets any hotter.”

  The tension eased up a bit once he was back at the field, attending to the plane, talking to other pilots, discussing the racecourse. It made him feel he was there for a purpose other than avoiding going back to Indiana. After the race, Cora wanted to walk on Miami Beach and see Smith’s Casino—which seemed to be all anyone wanted to talk about when they weren’t discussing planes and horsepower. If he might be put away for the rest of his life, or worse, it seemed he should put his feet in the Atlantic Ocean beforehand. One more day wasn’t going to change anything.

  Most of the pilots talked freely about their planes and their experiences—at least to Henry. They didn’t seem to know what to make of Cora, so they generally avoided her. It had started getting under his skin the way many of them deliberately excluded her from their conversations when she was standing right there, the sidelong looks of disdain, the turning
of backs, the insinuation that she couldn’t be taken seriously. Whenever he’d started to comment about it, Cora had stopped him and whispered in his ear, “It’s better if they’ve already discounted me as a competitor. They won’t push as hard when racing me. It’s an advantage.”

  Discounting her as a competitor was one thing. Disrespecting her as a person was something else. A couple of the men were teetering on the brink of crossing that line, and Henry had just about had enough.

  The next day, practice times were assigned by a random lottery. Cora ran the course as well as any of the men, better than some. When the pairings were drawn and times posted for the following day’s practice with two planes on the course—the way they would race—Henry couldn’t believe their bad luck. He looked over at the one pilot who hadn’t been satisfied with just freezing Cora out; he’d been making completely unfounded comments about her flying skills and had actively tried to get her disqualified.

  A squat man with a slow plane and a bad attitude, he was standing two feet from Henry when the pairings were posted. “Hell, no! I won’t fly with her. Change it or forget it.”

  The official informed him that no changes could be made.

  Henry said, “She’s passed all of her qualifications. You’re her draw. You can’t just refuse to run with her.”

  “I don’t have to practice at all. So, yeah, I think I can. I’m not going to risk having my plane taken out before the race by an inexperienced woman.”

  “She deserves the same practice as everyone else.”

  “Maybe you can find someone who’ll take an asinine risk like that. Not me.” As the man turned to walk away, he mumbled, “Who’d she fuck to get a ride in that plane anyhow?”

  Henry grabbed the man’s shoulder and jerked him back around. He got a handful of shirt and leaned down so he was nose to nose. “Say that to my face, you spineless little shit!”

  Instead of being cowed, the man shouted so everyone within fifty yards could hear, “I said, who’d she have to fuck to get that plane?”