by Liza Palmer
Deep down, I’ve always known that I belonged in the cockpit of a plane. I just automatically thought that in order to make that true, someone else—someone truly important (unlike me)—would need to give me their stamp of approval. Which is why someone like Jenks’s respect means so much to me. Sure, when I sat in that cockpit today I felt more myself, more at peace, and more perfectly made for something than I ever have before, but a part of me still wouldn’t—couldn’t—call it truth or fact until Jenks gave me his expert opinion.
But watching Wolff be so sure of himself, trusting his own gut feeling enough to challenge Jenks, I’m realizing that all this time, it’s been easier to depend on someone else’s approval of me, someone who holds a position of power and importance, than to approve of myself. Or, to take it even further, to demand that others approve of me whether they like it or not.
Let yourself learn. State Trooper Wright’s words pinball around my head, and before these additional meanings they’ve now taken on can vaporize, I pluck them up and pin them to a bulletin board in my brain.
My brain is throbbing by the time Maria and I settle in at McDermott Library for our study session that evening. Bianchi, Del Orbe, and Pierre trickle in, and slowly but surely our table is overrun with books and sheets upon sheets of scribbled notes, all this mass of knowledge after just one day of classes.
Noble sits at the next table over. We—okay, I—ask her if she wants to join us, but she politely (or at least with her version of politeness) declines. Her mouth does quirk up on one side in an approximation of a smile, though, so I’d say she’s coming around.
“Did your soaring instructor tell you about the air show?” Maria whispers in between assignments.
“No, what air show?” I ask, looking up from my notes.
“I guess everyone in the airmanship program gets to go to an air show,” Maria says. I wait expectantly for more, but there’s only silence. She laughs. “Sounded like I had way more to say about it, didn’t it?”
“It totally did,” I say, laughing.
“The Thunderbirds are going to be there,” Bianchi puts in. The Thunderbirds are basically the Flying Falcons times a million.
“I heard they might be flying the brand-new F-Sixteens instead of those old T-thirty-eights,” Del Orbe says.
“Hey, now. Those Talons were cool,” Pierre says. And everyone stops. “I saw them at Robins down in Georgia. My family drove for hours to watch them and…” Pierre trails off into a dreamy world we all know far too well.
“Jenks used to be a Thunderbird,” Noble says from the next table. We all look over. She’s slumped over her stacks of books, pencil still tight in her hand.
“What?” I ask.
“Did he retire?” Bianchi asks.
“I heard he got grounded,” Noble says, her voice a lethargic exhale, lowered so that we’re all leaning forward to better hear this piece of information on the inimitable Jenks.
“Do you know why?” I ask.
“If I knew why, I would have said, ‘I heard he got grounded because of this reason,’ now wouldn’t I?” Noble says, sliding her gaze away from us and back down to her books.
“Well. You are a delight,” Del Orbe says.
“Aw, thank you. Thank you so much,” Noble says, her tone dripping in sarcasm. So much for coming around.
“How could someone get grounded from the Thunderbirds?” I ask, turning back to our little huddle.
“Danvers,” Maria warns. Her tone is serious. So serious that it makes Del Orbe, Pierre, and Bianchi dive back into their studies so Maria and I can, apparently, have a private moment.
I lift my hands in a gesture of surrender. “What? Don’t you think this is at least a little bit interesting? Don’t you—?”
“I need you to loosen your stubborn grip as you try to figure out whatever happened in this man’s past.” Maria’s eyes are locked onto mine as she interrupts me.
“But—”
“Or are you thinking of raising that number to forty percent after all? Find out his weak spot and stick it to him, maybe, as a bonus?”
My face colors. Maria knows me better than I’d even thought. “Forty percent is not even half, by the way,” I grumble, unable to put up any kind of fight.
“The only reason Jenks has any power over you is because you keep giving it to him,” Maria says.
“Ouch,” I say, her words hitting me right between the eyes.
“Promise me, Danvers.” Maria doesn’t break our gaze. “Promise me you’ll leave it.” I can see Del Orbe, Pierre, and Bianchi trying not to eavesdrop. But as I take my time in promising Maria that I’ll leave it alone, I can hear Bianchi whisper, “Come on, Danvers,” under his breath.
“I promise,” I say.
“WAIT, WHAT’S THE AIR HORN FOR?” I YELL at Jack over the sound of Mr. Goodnight’s engine. The entire plane is rumbling and shaking as I belt myself into the open front cockpit. I tuck the air horn in tight next to me.
“To communicate with,” Jack yells back.
“There’s no radio?” I ask, clicking my belts into place. Maria and Bonnie wave, excitedly falling back into conversation, going over their first hop.
“I can talk to you, but you can’t talk to me,” Jack says.
“Yes, sir!” I yell, trying to make my reply as brief and not-scared as possible.
“One for vomit and two for crashing,” Jack says. I look down at the horn.
“One for vomit and two for crashing,” I repeat, nodding. I’d hate to mix those two up.
After weeks of ground lessons with Jack and Bonnie, it’s finally time to fly. Bonnie and Maria just returned from the air, Maria’s face aglow; now it’s my turn, with Jack at the helm.
“Put your hands on the instruments, Danvers,” Jack yells. My throttle moves as Jack taxis the plane away from hangar thirty-nine. That’s the beauty of these old training planes that I’ve come to appreciate, despite the initial shock of being trained on the Stearman as opposed to something new and shiny. All the instruments in my cockpit are mirrored in Jack’s. So I experience what he’s doing, and I learn, in real time, how to fly. I curl my fingers around the throttle, and the sensation around my entire body is like fireworks.
“You got your feet on the rudders?” he calls to me. I holler in the affirmative as I stretch out my legs and place them on the rudders of the old plane.
The plane’s violent shaking threatens to dislodge the air horn, so I quickly shove it under my leg as tightly as I can. The propeller spins and spins, finally going so fast that it looks like it’s not spinning at all. At first I thought the excitement would eclipse all my education and I wouldn’t be able to keep my head in all this. But it’s the exact opposite. I’ve never been so laser-focused in my whole life. Every sound, every feeling, every scan of the instruments locks me more and more into a groove.
I was made for this.
I hear Jack through the radio, talking to the tower. Requesting clearance and repeating a series of numbers as we rumble closer and closer to the runway. Our plane idles at the end of the strip and I can feel every cell of my body alive and ready. That haunting singsongy hum of Mr. Goodnight’s engine snakes up my spine. That growl and purr, which was once was so far and mystifyingly above me, now envelops me like an old friend’s caress.
And then, Jack taxis Mr. Goodnight onto the runway. We begin to speed up faster and faster and faster, and all I can hear is the wind and that powerful engine, and I feel the shaking beneath us, and then with one stomach-dropping swoop—
No more shaking.
We. Are. Flying.
As we leave the ground, my heart feels as though it might explode out of my chest. Jack’s firm, gentle hand eases us higher and higher. The impossibly blue sky is no longer way up there, unattainable. It surrounds me. I’m up here, too. I laugh. I can’t help it. It’s everything I thought it would be. It’s everything I wished it would be. It’s everything I knew it would be. And more. So much more.
Jack banks us left, and the world below opens up underneath us: green and brown and mountains and fields and tiny dots of people going about their day. We straighten out and climb higher still.
When Jack hits cruising speed at just over one hundred miles per hour, I feel us settle into the blue just like any other bird soaring on the ebbs and flows of the airstream.
“You ready to take him, Danvers?” Jack asks, crackling through the radio.
“Yes, sir!” I scream. I’ve never been more ready in my life.
My whole body tightens and relaxes all at once. A deep breath and I can feel Jack let go, as the throttle becomes mine and mine alone.
I turn the throttle left, easing it over, and watch as Mr. Goodnight’s wings dip low into the sky, listening to me, following what I do.
“I DID THAT!” I yell into the sky.
Jack cautions me through the motions as I bring the plane back to level, his voice a soothing presence in my ear that keeps me from getting too carried away. Right turns are a bit trickier, so I’m especially focused on Jack’s instructions for navigating the delicate balance of throttle pressure and rudders. But soon enough, I’ve got Mr. Goodnight banking right with ease.
“All right, Danvers. No need to show off.” He chuckles through the radio.
“This is amazing!” I yell to no one in particular, just needing to hear myself to know this is all really happening. As Jack and I fly and practice turning and leveling and climbing and right turn here and left turn there, I have no nagging thoughts left about needing to prove myself to others, about doing this to show everyone who ever doubted me that they were wrong. My brain is here in this cockpit and nowhere else.
Before I know it, it’s time to take Mr. Goodnight home.
I scan the horizon and realize I have no idea where home is.
“Give him back to me, and I’ll take us home,” Jack says, as though reading my thoughts, his voice crackling through the radio. The throttle moves and the plane sweeps across the sky with an ease that makes me tear up. Just the right angle, just the right pressure. Suddenly my swoops and turns feel clunky, graceless, in comparison. Jack is an artist.
You’ll get there, too, one day, I tell myself.
As Jack talks to the tower, I finally see the airport’s hangars and runways dappling the landscape in front of us. I scan the horizon for any other planes and see nothing but blue sky.
“Pay close attention to this landing, Danvers,” Jack says through the radio. I watch as Jack lines up Mr. Goodnight with the runway just next to hangar thirty-nine. The ground closes in, rushing up to meet us, and as I hold my breath, Jack sets all three of the plane’s tires down in one seamless motion, without even a single bounce.
“That was beautiful!” I yell. I can hear Jack’s rumbling, smoky laugh behind me. And as we taxi Mr. Goodnight toward hangar thirty-nine, I use the loud rumbling engine to mask an eruption of laughing and yelling and trembling and everything that I felt up in the air.
I think back to that yaw string on the glider. A simple piece of yarn that keeps the pilot from slipping or skidding one way or the other. I think about how Jack and Wolff and even Maria each seem to have their own internal yaw string. An intrinsic piece of yarn that keeps them steady no matter how hard the wind tries to blow them off course. They are their own expert opinions. They are their own yaw strings. I want to have that, and today feels like it’s as close as I’ve gotten to obtaining it in my entire life.
Joy explodes out of my every pore, voluminous enough to take us back up into the sky even without engine power. Is this what I’m trying to temper by obsessing about Jenks? Do I direct all my energy toward proving myself because somewhere deep inside I fear the freedom I felt up there in the sky? And the power. The power I keep giving to people like Jenks.
Why am I so afraid of my own power?
Why is he?
I hop down from the plane and run over to Maria, lunging into her for a hug. She wraps her arms tight around me and we both know there are no words for what we experienced and felt up there today. We’ve been completed.
We cling to each other. Neither of us are big huggers, but it’s like we both know that if there was ever a time for a hug, now is it.
“How’d she do?” Bonnie asks Jack as he sidles over to join the rest of us. Maria and I finally break apart, both of us still beaming from ear to ear.
“Oh, she’s brilliant,” Jack says with a shrug. “Just like this one.” Bonnie gazes proudly over at Maria.
“I told Maria that by the end of this she’s going to do a slow barrel roll. We’re going to get you to have a little fun,” Bonnie says. Maria’s face lights up.
“I have plans for this one, too. Not quite as fun as a barrel roll, though,” Jack’s eyes twinkle as his gaze meets mine.
“Jack,” Bonnie warns.
“Nothing big, just maybe a teeny, itsy-bitsy, tiny power-off stall is all,” Jack says.
“What’s a power-off stall?” I ask, not liking any of those words. Maria’s slow barrel roll sounds far preferable.
“It’s a way to teach you that even if you’re the best pilot in the world, sometimes things go wrong.” He laughs at my face, which must look as though I’ve just swallowed a lemon. “Now come on. Enough about that. Let’s celebrate today. Bonnie made cherry pie,” Jack says, taking Bonnie by the hand and walking them into the hangar.
“Best day ever?” I ask Maria as we follow in behind them.
Her smile lights up her entire face. “Best day ever.”
“THAT’S FLICKERBALL!” I HEAR DEL ORBE YELL as Pierre lies groaning on the ground in front of him.
I laugh and look across the pitch to see Bianchi trotting toward me on the sidelines. I pick up my sweatshirt, slide it over my head, and pull my tired, sweaty arms through, already chilled even as the beads of sweat cool on my body. We’ve gone from fall into the beginnings of winter, and now at our early-morning runs it looks like someone has dared us to run around the track while wearing every item of clothing in our closet.
As challenging and fulfilling as these past few months have been, it still feels like everything else but the flying is all happening to someone else, real but not real. The study sessions, the classes, the afternoons spent on the Flickerball field. Walking through the hallways with held breath, taking tests with my chest tightened up, listening to lectures as my oxygen depletes—waiting for the moment I can draw in that exquisite gulp of fresh air that comes when I get to fly again. Stitching together a perfectly tolerable existence, until I can feel that stomach-dropping swoop as I’m finally able to gasp for air. Flying is my new reality, and nothing else measures up.
“Del Orbe did that to him on purpose,” I say as Bianchi settles in next to me.
“He’s been planning it for months,” Bianchi agrees, laughing. We fall silent as we watch our team practice for next week’s game. Our intramural Flickerball team is currently tied for first place, and just like Field Day, it’s Johnson and Noble’s squadron that we again find ourselves in contention with. This time, however, they’ve come way closer than any of us is comfortable with. So there’s a lot riding on next week.
“You going to the air show this weekend?” I ask.
“Yeah. You?”
“Yeah.”
Silence.
“Good.”
Silence.
“Maria and I have been taking flying lessons at an airport just outside town so we can earn our private pilot’s licenses and try out for the Flying Falcons,” I say in a rush. Blurt, more like.
I can’t meet Bianchi’s eyes even though I can sense them on me, laser-focused. “Wait, what?”
“Well, it’s never just you and me, so I can never seem to tell just you, and I didn’t want to pass you some weird, mysterious note in McDermott, but I also didn’t want to wait until you were on your deathbed, but it was looking like it was about to be—I mean it’s been how many months since you first asked us where we go when we leave campus?”
&n
bsp; He pauses to mull this over. “Three and a half, really almost four.”
“Wow….Really?” Bianchi nods, his deep blue eyes now locked onto mine. “I was going to say maybe one-ish.”
“Yeah, no.”
“Well, time has certainly flown by, har-har,” I say, clearing my throat.
“So, am I allowed to ask some follow-up questions?” Across the field Maria shoots and scores. A high five to Pierre. A high five to Del Orbe.
“Of course,” I say, giving Maria an enthusiastic thumbs-up from the sidelines.
“Who are you taking these lessons from?”
“Jack and Bonnie Thompson. They flew with Maria’s pop in the war. Well, wars,” I say, following Maria’s progress as she snakes and weaves her way through the field. Passing. Catching. And scoring again. Bianchi and I both clap.
“Maria’s dad flew in the war?”
“He was a Tuskegee Airman,” I say.
“Wow.”
“So was Jack.”
“And Bonnie?”
“She taught them both how to fly, and then the Air Force let her fly transports.” I can’t look at him. “She always says how proud she was to serve her country, but…” I trail off. I can’t say it. Bianchi nods. He takes a deep breath and clasps his hands behind his head. He looks down at the ground, and I can see his swirl of breath exhale out into the cold, wintry air. When he finally speaks, his voice is painfully kind, and I almost wish it wasn’t.
“So, this is about being able to fly combat.”
“Everything is about being able to fly combat.” My words are fast and violent, almost a snarl, shocking even me. “Oh god, I’m sorry. I’m so…Wow, I…I guess I am not as okay with that as I thought I was.”
“I can’t even begin to understand,” he says. I look over at him. The field erupts into cheers as Pierre is hoisted onto the team’s shoulders after his first-ever score. Bianchi and I absently applaud our friend who finally, after several painful months, is mastering Flickerball.