Ted escorted them in silence to the dining room. He introduced them to the two Kunming businessmen and their wives who would be sharing their table, and then he left to find a seat with the pilots. The men and their wives graciously welcomed them, their faces lighting with relief when Genie responded in the local dialect.
The Chinese guests nodded gravely when she mentioned she was on her way out of the country. The men agreed that her father was right and said they had considered leaving themselves because the opportunities for advancement were surely more abundant overseas, away from the war. The women expressed their condolences, for they had heard the food was awful, and the countryside not nearly as beautiful.
None of the comments cheered Genie. Already crushed in heart and spirit as well as supremely irritated with Nathan, she dejectedly twirled her chopsticks in the delicately sauced noodles. If the Lord had any mercy, one of the gathered company would offer to take her back home, an offer she would have accepted in a heartbeat.
After dinner was finished, and the applause following the lengthy speeches given by General Chennault and Madame Chiang had faded into lethargic postmeal conversation, Nathan excused them both. He didn’t talk on the way back to AVG Hostel Number One, where she was staying. Nor did she. It wasn’t until she got back to her room that the tension of the evening finally slid from her shoulders. The respite was brief, though. Tomorrow she would be leaving China, perhaps for a very long time. And leaving on an airplane, no less.
She sank onto her narrow bed and stared unseeingly out the window. If only the planets had aligned differently, maybe Ted would never have been shot down. Then her father would never have rescued him, and she might still be in her village. Her little family would still be intact, her friend ready for their next walk up the mountain to feed Wu Fang.
She drifted over to the window and looked out through the snow toward the peaks, toward the east, toward home. The swirling snow winked in the light and then blurred as tears filled her eyes. Baba . . .
The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. She could almost hear her father’s beloved voice, and yet the comfort was thin. She knew he was right. If this was truly the Lord’s will, then so be it. She had no choice but to submit, and yet . . . she didn’t want to.
Ah, Yu Jie. The snow seemed to reverse directions, and a memory of Zhenzhu rose before her. A boat can’t always sail with the wind. Sometimes the boatman has to steer into it to find safety.
Genie’s fingers curled into a fist, her heart twisting in indecision, the two halves of her soul never having seemed so disparate as they did tonight.
“I’ll go, Baba,” she whispered into the icy darkness beyond the glass, “because it is what you want. But I’m coming back. I promise.”
Chapter 11
Genie wiped her palms on her long skirts, looking anywhere but at the large twin-engine airplane with the blue-and-white logo and initials of the China National Aviation Corporation emblazoned on its aluminum exterior. Nervous perspiration dampened her skin, chilling her as the wind whipped across the airfield. Wondering where Ted was this morning, she turned her attention to the fighters, painted green and tan and with fierce, toothy snarls on their noses, sitting off in the distance. She couldn’t imagine the kind of courage it took to fly one, let alone fly it toward enemy territory.
Nathan stood next to her, huffing into his clasped hands to warm them, his collar turned up against the cold. Despite his obvious impatience, he hadn’t yet said a word about her reluctance to climb the metal stairs into the plane. Maybe he sensed her fear. Or perhaps he was nervous as well. It was one thing to be on the ground and watch a plane soar overhead. It was quite another to get in one, entrusting one’s life to the contraption’s ability to defy gravity.
“Miss, you need to board if you’re going.” The young American smiled encouragingly at her as he stamped his feet to stay warm, his hands shoved deep in his flight suit’s pockets.
“All right.” She curved her lips into what she hoped was a smile.
“And don’t hesitate to ask the pilots if you can’t figure out the seat belt. It’s likely to be a rough ride, and there’s no stewardess on board today. No coffee service for the same reason. But the view on top should be nice.”
“Wonderful,” she said, aware she didn’t sound very enthused.
Nathan stooped to pick up their two recently purchased suitcases and started toward the metal airstair positioned at the rear of the plane. With every cell of her body crying out in objection, she followed him. Her knees shook so badly on her way up the steps she was afraid she would fall.
It was pleasantly warm inside the plane, almost hot, with a peculiar stale smell to the air. While Nathan stowed their suitcases with the others on a metal rack, she scanned the interior of the cabin. Of the twenty-one seats, all upholstered in green and cream, only two were unoccupied, a silent reminder of the two military officers who had been bumped from the flight to make space for her and Nathan. The seats were arranged in seven rows, with a narrow aisle between seats one and two. Through the square, curtained windows she could see the airport and the mountains beyond.
“Which seat do you want?” Nathan asked, gesturing toward the two empty ones that were conveniently next to each other. She wondered if that had been arranged in advance as well.
“I don’t care.”
Being by the window would give her a better view, one that Ted had rhapsodized about not too long ago, on the trail. But it might also mean seeing her death seconds before it happened, because planes did crash. Or at least have very hard landings, like Ted’s plane, and that hadn’t sounded like much fun, either.
“Actually, not the window one,” she said.
“Fine. Follow me.”
A murmur of conversations in both Chinese and English filled the cabin as she walked up the narrow aisle. While two or three of the passengers were in uniform, the rest were well-dressed civilians, both white and Chinese. Her attention caught on one particular family. White like her, the mother looked to be close to tears as she clutched a fretful baby in her arms. Her young son played happily with the window shade while the father stared off into nowhere, his face haggard and pale. She wondered if they, too, were being forced to flee because of the war.
Nathan took his seat, and Genie sat beside him. Barely a second later, the door in the back thudded shut, making her jump. A uniformed pilot—a handsome Chinese man with a scar through one eyebrow—strode past her and down the aisle on his way to the front. He disappeared through the opening in the front of the cabin.
She leaned over in time to see someone—she couldn’t tell if it was the pilot or not due to the man being backlit—pulling down a folding seat in the narrow hallway, cutting off her view of the forward part. Then the engines sputtered and then roared to life, and she forgot about the pilots.
Her fingers dug into the armrests as the growl escalated into a deafening roar and the plane began to roll forward. Nathan leaned forward to peer out the window, temporarily blocking the view. At first it didn’t feel much different from her ride in the truck, with the same bumps and decelerations. Then the plane turned, and turned again, and the engines began to snarl in earnest. Genie was pressed back into her seat by the sudden acceleration, and her heart stuttered.
For what seemed like an eternity, the plane bounced and swayed. Genie closed her eyes to hold back sudden, desperate tears. Please, Lord, let me live. I want to see Baba again. And Zhenzhu. Please . . . She was going to die. She just knew it. They all were—everyone on the plane.
The plane shuddered, and she bit her lip hard enough to taste blood. Then the ride abruptly smoothed out. She held her breath, waiting for death. Seconds passed with the engines’ growl unchanged, and then it dawned on her. The plane was airborne. She was flying.
A strange sensation fizzed through her veins. She slanted a look at Nathan to see if he felt it, too. His face was pressed to the window, his attention rapt. Curiosity overrode the remnants of her fear. She leaned closer to
look over his shoulder. The city slid out from beneath the wing, the cars and buildings diminishing to the size of toys, then even smaller. Wisps of white briefly obscured the view, and then a solid wall of pale gray slid around the aircraft, erasing the world.
Flying through the clouds didn’t feel so different from being surrounded by fog in the early morning. Beginning to relax, she tentatively looked around the cabin. A few of the passengers were still pale, but most either chatted with their seatmates or read newspapers. Even the little boy had settled down to pester his mother with questions. Genie smiled to herself, a little humbled by his lack of fear.
Nathan leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes.
Light flickered outside the window, and then sunlight flooded the cabin. She leaned across Nathan to see the clouds stretch out below them like dazzling white snow, freshly fallen in a thick blanket. It looked thick enough to walk on, and she imagined herself walking across the clouds toward the rocky peaks jutting up like a miniature range. She almost expected to see the iridescent dragons of folklore flying around the distant ones. Or perhaps a celestial tiger, its orange-and-black coat sparkling in the sun, padding on silent paws from one side of the Middle Kingdom to the other.
Suddenly the seat dropped out from under her. It reappeared mere seconds later, the impact hard enough to click her teeth. She grabbed Nathan’s arm just as another violent shudder racked the plane, her pulse kicking into high gear.
“What’s happening?”
He sighed and pried her fingers off his arm, not even bothering to open his eyes. “Didn’t you hear the ticket agent? Honestly, Eugenia. It’s a good thing you have me along. He warned us the ride might get rough.”
The plane lurched sickeningly to the side, and she closed her eyes against the rush of nausea. Silently reciting every psalm she could remember, she clung to the armrests like a lifeline while the plane shimmied and fell through the air. She tried not to think of the mountains she had seen sticking up through the clouds, or how far the plane had risen above the earth. After another hard jolt, she remembered the ticket agent mentioning seat belts. With fumbling fingers, she found the metal ends and figured out how to connect them.
Around her, all the conversations began to quiet down bit by bit. The baby started to cry, its piercing wails rivaling the pulsing snarl of the engines in strength. Genie gritted her teeth against the sound of the terrified child and hung on as the plane lurched through the air like a drunken farmer. She closed her eyes, hoping that would help. It didn’t.
A slight cough and then a soft retching sound came from her right. Heart sinking with dismay, she opened an eye. Nathan was leaning forward, a fist pressed to his lips. His skin was dotted with perspiration. He shifted in his seat. Guessing his intent, she jumped up in time to let him shimmy past. Her own stomach clenched as she heard another passenger vomit.
Desperate for distraction, she slid her gaze out the window as she sat down again. A huge snow-covered peak drifted past, this time close enough to touch. Horrified, she immediately sank back into her seat and closed her eyes, feeling uncomfortably close to panic. Out of psalms to recite, she switched to prayer.
“If you clutch the armrest any harder, you’ll dent it,” someone said in a familiar, amused-sounding drawl.
“Ted!” Her eyes flew open to find him smiling down at her, his hands braced on opposite seats to keep his footing.
“How are you doing?”
“All right,” she lied. “Nathan is having a hard time of it, though.”
“He’s not alone.” Ted gave her a once-over, and then squatted in the aisle beside her. “Would it help if I explained the science behind flying? You’re looking a tad nervous there, sport.”
“I—I don’t know.” No sooner had the words left her mouth than she suddenly became weightless, only to slam down in her seat a second later. She squeaked in terror.
“Easy.” His hand covered hers in what was meant to be a comforting gesture. Instead it sent her pulse into a frenzy as heat from his hand coursed along her nerves. Still, she couldn’t for the life of her pull away.
“Have you been on board the whole time?” she asked, immediately realizing it was a silly question but needing to refocus her thoughts on anything other than where their skin touched.
“You didn’t see me up front? I thought you did when I pulled down the jump seat.”
“That was you?” she asked in surprise, and then wanted to kick herself. Of course it was; he had just said so. Apparently being this close to him caused brain failure.
“It was. But as I was saying, no matter what it might feel like, the plane isn’t going to drop out of the sky.” Amusement laced his voice.
“How do you know?”
“Physics.” This time he actually had the gall to smirk.
The plane shimmied, and she clutched the armrests again, her irritation vanishing.
“What if the engines fall off?” The moment the words left her lips she wanted to call them back, afraid she had jinxed the plane.
Ted eyed her death grip and sobered slightly. “That’s very unlikely to happen. And even if we did lose power, the plane simply becomes a glider, which is no harder to land than a powered aircraft.”
Terror held her silent.
“Look, you’ve been in a boat before, yes? It’s the same principle.” He held out one hand level to the floor and then angled his other hand until it butted up underneath. “This is the plane, and this is the wind, or more accurately the relative movement of the air with respect to the plane. But never mind that. Long story short, the relative wind rushing under our wings holds us up, just like water sliding under a boat.
“And like water, this relative wind can have waves that lift the plane up and down. Some days the waves are smooth and you’ll hardly notice them, and other times—like today—the waves are a lot rougher. And so is the ride.”
As if to punctuate his words, the cabin shuddered violently. Her heart skipped a beat, and even Ted had to brace himself on the seat ahead of him.
“You sure we won’t crash?” she asked, truly wanting to believe him.
“Positive. Well, mostly. Mountain waves can be a bit dicey. It’s not so much the engines we worry about falling off as the wings.”
Her stomach cramped. “You’re not helping.”
“Sorry.” But the sparkle in his eyes said otherwise. And the fact that he could joke about such a thing somehow, perversely, made her feel a little better.
“Here.” He stood suddenly. “I know something that might help, if you’re up for it.”
She hesitated. Nathan had yet to reappear, and as curious as she was about whatever Ted had in mind, she should probably check on her escort. Her father would expect it. Reluctantly, she turned around in her seat and searched the faces behind her.
“Sterling’s huddled in the back where you can’t see him, waiting to use the lavatory,” Ted said as if guessing her thoughts. “Do you need me to go ask his permission to come up front?”
Something in his tone pricked her pride.
“No need. I’ll do whatever I want.”
One of his eyebrows slid up. His gaze turned assessing. “Is that so?”
“Yes.” Her heart skittered at her temerity.
A small smile touched his lips as he glanced down the aisle again. “Well, all right, then. It feels like it’s smoothed out a bit, so follow me.”
On the short journey to the cockpit, Genie realized Ted was right—the air had smoothed out. The baby had even fallen into an exhausted slumber in her mother’s arms. Curious looks followed her into the narrow space between the cabin and where the pilots sat. Luggage and mail sacks strained against the cages lining both sides, except for one section on the left where half a dozen radios in black boxes were mounted. Cable and wires snaked along the ceiling. Then Ted squeezed behind one of the pilots, and she could see out the front.
A dizzying array of black-faced dials faced her. Large and small, with
white-painted numbers and pointers, they were mounted on a broad black panel beneath the windshield. The pilot on the left reached out to adjust one of the five levers mounted on a silver housing between the seats. It was all rather overwhelming. She couldn’t even imagine trying to learn what all those levers and gauges did.
Ted tapped both pilots on the shoulder to catch their attention. “Gentlemen,” he said loud enough to be heard through the men’s headsets. “This is Miss Baker. Genie, this is Captain Joe Chin.”
The pilot on the left was the one she had seen earlier, the one with the scar. He nodded while keeping his eyes out the front. “Welcome,” he said in unaccented English, surprising her. Even Madame Chiang’s English hadn’t been as good.
“And this is First Officer George Willits,” Ted said, gesturing to the pilot on the right. Genie had barely registered the American name and blond hair when the pilot turned and smiled broadly over his shoulder. Blue eyes looked at her over the top of his sunglasses.
“Glad to have you aboard, Miss Baker,” he said with a wink. His drawl was even thicker than Ted’s.
“Thank you.”
Ted waved his hand at all the electronics. “So this is the cockpit and the panel. But don’t get hung up on all that. The real attraction is the view.”
At his prompting, she finally looked out the front window. Her breath caught.
The thick blanket of clouds had dissipated sometime in the past half hour, exposing a broad sweep of green and brown that faded into a dusky slate blue at the horizon. The rocky peaks still loomed off to either side, but their snow-covered heights were rapidly being replaced by foothills covered with ever-thickening vegetation. The colors were muted from the height but still stunning as the earth raced toward them, only to disappear silently beneath the nose.
Entranced, she crept closer, being careful not to touch anything.
“What do you think?” the American pilot asked.
She looked up at the deep blue of the heavens and followed the color down to where it became a milky white on the horizon. Endless. Enticing. A place where anything could exist. The ground continued to slide beneath the plane, a mere afterthought with no consciousness of their passing.
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