We walked toward the plane without saying a word. My heart was beating so furiously in my chest I was certain the sound of it would drown out any conversation. He reached toward me tentatively, thinking, I suppose, that he’d have to lift me and my crippled leg into the plane, but I stopped him. “Just give me a boost like you did everyone else. I can do it. I like doing things for myself.”
He looked at me seriously as he made his hands into a stair step. “I know what you mean.”
Watching from the ground, I somehow never thought about being afraid, but now, as the propellor coughs and roars and the body of the plane shimmies, I am afraid, awfully afraid. Feeling my heart pound and almost hearing the blood coursing through my body, I realize that fear, some kinds of fear, are good. It makes me know I am alive in a way nothing else ever has. The plane is light and flimsy, made of wood and wire and cloth, nothing more. Somehow I thought it would be stronger, thicker, like a protecting cocoon. If anything goes wrong and we hit the ground, there is nothing to prevent injury or even death. I still want to go. I know somehow that there is something in the sky I’m meant to find. Maybe you have to risk death to find your life, your true life. I know if I stay on the ground I’ll definitely stay alive and things will go on like they always have, but I know too that if I stay on the ground, my future will miss me.
It seems so long, so long that we run, weighted and clumsy, along the ground. It is as though gravity refuses to loosen her grip on us, and then, miraculously, speed and our defiant will, our refusal to stay pinned and helpless to the earth, breaks us free, and we rise on the fuel of our own thoughts, away from the heat of earth, up and over the fences and fields into the fresh and darkling sky.
Suddenly my heart isn’t pounding anymore and I can breathe. For the first time in my life I can draw a full, greedy lungful of air into my body because I am part of the sky, in exactly the right place, exactly where and how I am meant to be. How perfect everything looks from an angel’s perspective. There is nothing wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with anybody. There are no mistakes, only the beauty that comes from difference and surprise and the beauty that comes from sameness and order. How hard it is to see from sea level. How long it took me to understand this.
I lift my arm into the wind and feel it rushing, pushing, stretching past my open fingers, wanting to take me with it through clouds and stars to be part of the eternal, but today it leaves me behind. Today I am too heavy to join it. Someday I’ll come. The winds tell me so, and I am sure of it. It’s our destiny.
I never want to go back.
Chapter 2
I couldn’t even wait for the propeller to quit spinning before I gushed forth a flash flood of words. I needed to find the right phrases to explain it all, right then, before one particle of it faded and I missed my chance to preserve it fresh and whole in a waxy casing of words.
I gasped for breath, trying to say everything at once. “Is it always that way? Is it? Ever since I first saw you, when you flew over the house and dipped your wings at us, I’ve tried to imagine what it would be like! I’d spent so much time at it that I almost convinced myself I’d gotten it right, that I’d already done it, but I was wrong! It’s just so much ... I don’t know, bigger than I thought it would be. Not the world, or the sky, but the idea, the way your thoughts expand. Oh!” I screwed up my face in exasperation. “I’m not making any sense. You must think I’m crazy rattling on like this, but I’m so excited I’m tingling! I can’t think of anything to compare it to. It’s a new world up there! A new heaven and earth. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“Yes,” he said, smiling, pulling off his goggles to reveal eyes that reflected mine. “I know. That’s why I wanted you to come. I thought you’d know what you were seeing. Most people don’t, you know.”
“How is that possible?” I wondered.
He thought for a moment, then shrugged and hopped lightly out of the cockpit and onto the ground. “They just don’t have the imagination, I suppose.”
“Papa would understand. I know he would. I just wish I could find the right way to describe it to him.”
Slim moved around the Jenny methodically, sliding wooden blocks under the wheels while my eyes followed his every move, memorizing him as if he were a vapor that might vanish into thin air if I turned my head even for a moment. “I’ve tried, a few times,” he said, “but nothing ever quite hits the mark. The first time I flew I rushed right home to write it all down in my journal. I was so afraid I’d forget just how it felt.”
I pushed myself up from my seat and swung my legs out and over onto the wing. “Yes! That’s just what I was thinking.”
“Don’t worry,” he said earnestly. “You’ll never forget it. If it speaks to you, flight stays with you always. Sometimes I find myself talking to someone and I’ll begin daydreaming about flying and realize the dream is more real to me than the person I’m talking to. Even though it’s so real, you can’t ever find the right way to tell people about it. At least, I can’t. But there’s something about you, Eva”—he nodded seriously—“you might have better luck.”
He looked up, and I saw in his eyes the same expression he’d had the first night in our kitchen, a moment of recognition, as though he sensed we’d met somewhere before but couldn’t quite remember where. For an instant, the doubt cleared away and he remembered my face and that we had been together from always. I waited for the perception to pass, for him to brush it away as a ridiculous fancy, but he didn’t. When he spoke his voice was soft as the breeze, almost as though he were talking to himself.
“I bet there are words in you, Eva, poems and songs that could make sense of everything. I can see it in your face.”
He reached up to me with both arms, and this time I let myself be helped off the wing. The touch of his hands was firm and comforting encircling my arms. My body slid steadily along his until my feet touched the ground, and I felt his hands resting too long between my shoulders and the small of my back. I knew I should pull away and say something awkward and blushing to cover my embarrassment, but I wasn’t embarrassed. How strange, I thought. Stranger still that I felt so natural leaning my head onto his chest. Without pretense of accident or confusion I raised my face to meet the kiss I knew was waiting.
I didn’t need to make myself concentrate on that kiss. It was like flying. There was no danger I’d forget how his lips felt, soft but solid, tentative and unapologetic all at once, or the gentle insistence of his fingers at the buttons of my blouse. If I had been thinking, maybe I would have told him to stop, but I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t want him to stop. If I were lying, maybe I’d say that I didn’t understand what would happen next, but I did.
I could have said no, but instead I yielded to the pressure of his arms on my shoulders, pulling me down onto a bed of crackling wheat stalks, curling beneath the safety of his body sheltering mine, covering me like a blanket. Though it was my first time, my body responded to his without thought or instruction. Natural and familiar, like opening a thick, dusty book and finding you already know the story.
Afterward, we lay talking, encircled by a protecting wall of wheat that hid us from the world. He told me of his growing up in Michigan and of the first time he saw a plane fly and how wonderful he thought it would be to have one of his own and be part of the sky. He told me how he had saved up to buy the Jenny and how he’d worked as a wing-walker with a flying circus before he’d started barnstorming on his own, but what he really wanted was something bigger, something to test himself against. He told me a million things about himself while I memorized the lovely flat vowels of his midwestern accent and practiced pacing my breathing to his, making my lungs expand and contract to his rhythm. Then he was quiet a long time, content as I was to stare up at a perfect elegant circle of evening sky. Finally he raised himself up on one elbow and turned toward me, resting his other arm on the flat of my belly.
“Now tell me about you. Tell me about that,” he said simply, indicating my lame leg
with his eyes. If someone else had asked me that question, I’d have felt ashamed, but with Slim it was different. I liked his honesty. He was genuinely interested in me and wise enough to know that my twisted leg was part of the story.
“Right after I was born, the doctor told Mama and Papa I’d never walk and they ought to take me to Texas to see a specialist. Mama asked if a specialist could make me walk, and the doctor said no, but they could brace my leg so at least it would be straight. Mama said she didn’t see how a straight leg would do me much good if I couldn’t walk on it, and besides, she wasn’t going to travel four hundred miles to see a bunch of doctors who’d given up on me before they’d ever seen me anyway, so we never went.”
“I like your mother.” Slim laughed. “She doesn’t let anyone get around her, does she?”
“Nobody except Papa, and I don’t think that counts. Anyway, after that Mama started exercising my leg on her own, trying to make it stronger. She made a kind of bag that strapped on to my ankle, and she put a few washer rings in for weight. I’d kick my legs to hear the washers jingle. Gradually she added more and more weight, and my leg got stronger and stronger. By the time I was a year and a half old I could stand holding on to something. I could walk with a crutch before my third birthday. Later I just needed the cane.”
“And after that you walked everywhere?”
“Not quite. I’m so slow they knew I’d never make it to school and back without help, so Papa taught me to ride, and when I turned five he gave me Ranger, our old plow horse, as a present. I loved riding. I used to gallop across the fields with my arms spread wide, pretending I was a bird. I’d imagine I was running a race and none of the other kids could catch me. But I couldn’t have been going too fast,” I said with a smile. “Even in his younger days, Ranger wasn’t exactly a speed demon.”
“You still have him?” Slim asked.
“Oh yes.” I nodded. “I still ride him to school and town, but I never go to Dillon unless I have to.”
“Don’t like school? I don’t blame you. I never saw the point of learning something out of a book that you could learn better if you just went out and experienced it for yourself. My mother is a teacher, and she’s always on me for not taking my studies seriously, but I’m too restless to be much of a scholar. I went to college for a while, but I dropped out so I could learn to fly.”
“You’ve been to college!” I marveled. “Really? Oh, I’d give anything to do that! I love books and learning things. Papa’s just the same. He reads everything he can get his hands on. If there’s nothing else available he’ll read the Sears Roebuck out loud so Mama and I can hear all about the new advances in farm implements. You know, I actually like it.” We laughed, and Slim reached over and wound a lock of my hair around his finger.
“So, you’re a lot like your Papa, and you love school. Tell me more,” he said and seemed so sincerely interested that I did.
“I don’t love school. I love learning. School would be fine if it was just me and the teacher and a pile of books, but it’s not. I hate going there.”
“The kids tease you?”
“Not so much now as when I was little.” I shrugged. “Now they mostly ignore me, all except Ruby. She’s the girl I was with today. My best friend. My only friend.”
“You don’t have any beaus?” he asked. For a moment I thought he might be teasing me, but his question was genuine, and I was pleased to think he supposed anyone would be interested in me.
“No. Of course not.” I blushed.
“Why not?” he asked incredulously. “You’re beautiful, Eva. The most beautiful girl I ever met. Are all the fellows in this town blind or something?”
“Not blind. They just can’t see past my leg. I’m the crippled girl, that’s all.” I sat up and started picking wheat stalks off my dress, suddenly wishing he’d change the subject.
Slim got up and kneeled in front of me, enfolding my hands in his. “I see you,” he whispered looking square into my eyes. Then he leaned forward to kiss me again, softly, an endearment. “I see you just like in a looking glass, but better than that. I see you front to back and head to toe. I see you, crippled leg and all, and I’m glad for it.”
I raised my eyebrows doubtfully. “You’re glad I’m crippled?”
Slim bit his lip, searching for a better phrase. “Not exactly glad, but if you weren’t you wouldn’t be the same person, would you? From that first moment, in your parent’s kitchen, I knew there was something different about you. I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then, when you walked away and I saw how hard that was, something as simple as walking across the room, I thought maybe that was the difference. You know what it is to have to work for what you want. If not for that, you might be just as empty and twittering as any of those small-town girls that come hanging around my plane. But you’re not. I never met anyone like you, Eva.”
“I never thought about my leg that way.” I couldn’t help but smile at him. “That’s the nicest thing anybody’s ever said to me. But what about you? You must have lots of girlfriends.”
“Not me,” he said dismissively. “There are plenty of girls that come out to watch me fly, but they don’t interest me. They flirt and bat their eyelashes at me, all painted up and squeaking. They remind me of a bunch of circus monkeys.”
I laughed out loud at the picture he’d painted. The description fit Mary Kay Munson and her crowd to a tee.
“I mean it,” he continued earnestly. “Most girls are just ridiculous, nothing in their heads but fluff, with no more interest or idea of how a plane works than a rabbit has of how the magician pulled it out of the hat. No,” he said solemnly, almost to himself, “no girls for me. I’ve got plans. Aviation is going to change the world, and I’m going to be right in the middle of it. I don’t have time to go and get myself tangled up with some girl.”
I knew his words weren’t intended for me, that he was only repeating his own resolutions to himself so he wouldn’t forget, but they stung all the same. For a moment, I felt foolish sitting there with him, wondering what I’d gotten myself into, but then I remembered his ambition. It had been there from the beginning. Before he’d ever touched me, before we’d said a word, I’d known who he was. His pull toward me was strong, but the pull of a future he saw outlined only in shadow was stronger and always would be. I’d known that, and still I’d come to the field, flown with him, held him close instead of pushing him away. I told myself I had no right to feel hurt now.
“Anyway, I’ve never been much good at talking to girls.” He shrugged off his reverie. “My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth whenever I meet one. It’s different with you, though. I can’t explain it. Right from the first moment I knew I could say anything to you and you’d understand. Isn’t that strange?”
“I know just what you mean.” I leaned over, kissed him, and pulled him down next to me as I lay back on the grass and nestled close to him, content for a time to say nothing, just watching the moon as it rose full overhead.
“Eva?”
“You know, my real name, my full name anyway, is Evangeline.”
“Really? That’s my mother’s name, too, and that’s what everyone calls her.”
“Nobody calls me Evangeline except Papa. I think of it as almost a secret, like a pet name that only the people who really know me can use. I wish you’d call me by it.”
“All right, I will. Evangeline, I ...” He lowered his eyes to look where his hand rested stroking the soft fabric of my dress. “What I mean is ... did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to. I didn’t plan any of this.” Finding the courage to look at me, his eyes were anxious and sincere. “I wouldn’t want you to think this was what I was planning when I invited you to ride with me. I wanted to share the sky with you, that’s all.”
I reached up and pulled a strand of golden grass from his hair, “Shush. You don’t need to explain. I didn’t feel tricked, if that’s what you’re thinking. I felt ... oh, I don’t know ... alive! All my veins were running
hot and cold at the same time, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. The truth is, I didn’t want to stop it. It would have been wrong to try, like standing against a force of nature. If we’d have fought it we would have been altering our destiny somehow.”
He smiled and rolled onto his back, sliding his arms under my shoulders and pulling me close, “I’m glad. I’d never do anything to hurt you, Evangeline.”
“I believe you, Slim, but some kinds of hurts you can’t help. Sometimes hurt and happiness are all part of the same package, so you’ll always know it really happened. You know how when something wonderful happens people say, ‘Pinch me so I’ll know I’m not dreaming’? Life is like that sometimes, a little pain thrown in so we know we aren’t imagining the whole thing. The pain will help me to remember it all after you’ve gone.” I took a deep breath and tried to sound light and brave. “I guess that will be pretty soon, won’t it?”
It made me feel better to say it first and give voice to the thought I knew was worrying him, how to tell me that even after what had happened he would have to leave. It would have been nice to lie there and imagine a life together, to pretend for a little while that we would never part, but there’s too much of my practical mama in me to give in to daydreams. He shifted away from me ever so slightly, and I felt his breathing find a new rhythm, separate from mine.
“I’ll go tomorrow morning. I’m supposed to fly down to Texas to do some stunts in a flying circus.” He sat up and looked me in the eye, and I knew it was because he wanted me to believe his words. At that moment, he believed them himself.
“I’ll be back, Evangeline. I promise. Just as soon as I can, I’ll come back, and then we’ll ...” He hesitated for a moment trying to think how the sentence ended, but I could see him struggling with the choices before him. Whatever he said next would either be a lie or alter everything he’d ever envisioned for himself. I interrupted him before he was forced to choose.
Fields Of Gold Page 3