Chasing the Wind

by C. C. Humphreys

  She trailed off. The last blue line went across the vast Pacific to join up where it all began—Oakland, California. But a pin split it near the middle, thrust into an expanse so empty she’d had to draw a circle and mark the name that her friend had given her.

  “Howland Island,” she said loudly, as if saying it loudly made it more real. It was maybe two miles long. And even if two Coast Guard vessels would be cruising around it, signalling like crazy, Roxy knew that finding that speck was not the breeze Amelia made it out to be.

  Roxy looked down to the writing again. To the part that always blurred her eyes a little. The part where even Amelia Earhart had her doubts:

  But you know, even if it’s tough, there’d be no point doing it if it wasn’t. So I put my faith in God, in the Coast Guard, in the Lockheed Corporation, in Fred, in my husband and in every blessed mechanic and airstrip maker along the way. And in myself, as one of the founding members of the Ninety-Nines. Because a woman’s going to do this first, kiddo, not a man: fly around the equator. Around the whole damn world. When I’m done, that’s what they’ll remember me for. Though, knowing you, you’ll find some way to eclipse me yet, eh?

  Roxy could hear Amelia’s laugh as she wrote that.

  So you get better fast, ya hear? And meet me in Oakland. I’m going to start a flying school when I get back—and I’ll need you around to demonstrate to the students what not to do! Do you think you could ever handle an actual job?

  Yours, aye, and ever affectionately,

  Amelia

  Roxy’s eyes blurred again. She pressed a hand to the wall, took deep breaths and waited for the nausea to pass. When it had, she looked at the map again.

  If Amelia Earhart can make this amazing journey, Roxy Loewen can make one too, she thought. It was much shorter, it was nearby and she wouldn’t even need a plane.

  She was going to walk across a roof.

  Ten minutes later, Roxy stood on the roof of the house, wondering if she’d ever been more scared.

  She could think of a few occasions that came close. That time when her yacht had capsized off Montauk, she’d been thrown into the frigid ocean and, as usual, had failed to put on a life vest. Or when the Italians bombed the airfield in Malco Dube and she’d lain in a hole six inches deep and eaten dirt for an hour. Or eight months before when she’d tried to land a plane that had turned into a flying, flaming spear.

  Nope, she thought. This is worse. Because those other times had happened to her, so she could only react. This time she was doing it to herself.

  Go back inside, she told herself. You’re not ready. She reached to her neck, where her rabbit’s foot should hang. That too had been burned in Belgium, destroyed. Perhaps I need to get another one before I try something like this, she thought.

  She was leaning against the windowsill anyway. All she had to do was slide back in. She raised her hands to each side of the frame.

  And yet, it had taken all her willpower to get herself to this point. If she went back in, she wasn’t sure she’d ever make it out. And if she never made it out, she’d never beat this. Fail to beat it and she’d never fly again.

  She heard it, faintly, high up. She raised her eyes, swayed and gripped the sill. Distance was still a problem—more than a problem. But through the motes that danced in her vision, she could see the plane, flashing silver in the clearest of April skies. It wouldn’t hold still long enough for her to identify it. The engine’s sound told her it was small, possibly a fighter. Hurricane, she thought. There was a base not far away. Dr. MacPhilips had suggested they motor over one day, he could introduce her to some of the pilots. She’d always put him off. It was hard enough thinking that she might never fly again, without meeting flyers who knew they would never stop.

  Sunlight on metal made her suddenly nauseous. She retched, looking down, and closed her eyes. She opened them slowly. Focus, she commanded herself.

  It stretched out ahead, her pathway. A line of bricks, crown and apex of the tiled roof that sloped steeply away either side. She knew that to her left was the gravel courtyard, the main entrance to Hazelhurst Manor. To her right, the garden where she’d been spending more time now that the season had changed. She looked at neither. Looking down from a height was even worse than looking up. But looking straight ahead?

  She’d learned a brick’s dimensions. An English brick was eight and a half inches long, Dr. MacPhilips had told her, puzzled by the question. Yet since he considered her psychologically as well as physically damaged, he’d answered it.

  She focused again on the bricks. They were horizontal to her. So she had a pathway eight and a half inches wide. The bench she’d been practising on, which she’d nearly mastered—only slipping off once in the last week, and that because someone had burst into the rehab room—was not quite six inches. So here she had more than two and a half extra inches to work with. Though the bench, of course, was only two feet from the ground, not fifty.

  Time to go, Roxy thought, and released the ledge behind her.

  She felt her feet solid beneath her. Breathing slowly, she stared at just one brick, the one a pace ahead of her. Inhaling deeply, she raised her right leg and covered the brick with her foot. There was another brick the next pace ahead. She stared at it for a long moment, then placed her left foot on that.

  She supposed that if she began to sway, she could turn and hurl herself at the open window. She thought she might make it, and the sudden temptation to try was strong. Instead she thought she’d look longer at the brick, three away from the one her left foot was on. This one looked newer, was more yellow to the others’ red, the mortar around it less weathered. Hoping that a more modern bricklayer had done as solid a job as his eighteenth-century forebear, Roxy stepped.

  Nothing shifted. She stood carefully, breathed easier. There was something about being beyond sanctuary that eased the mind rather than the other way around. It was kind of like when she’d first tried stunting. Once you committed yourself to a barrel roll or, worse, the falling leaf, you had no choice but to stick to theory. Listen to the engine. Move the rudder bars and stick correctly, use the throttle judiciously, and hope that it would work out. It always had. In the end, it was a matter of will. Here, there was that faint sea surge of blood in her ears; her legs were her controls and her will was the same, urging her to the next brick, the next step, the next after that…

  She was holding the frame of the other window. She grinned into the glass, saw her lopsided expression—the plastic surgeon had done a wonderful job, but he hadn’t quite been able to centre Roxy’s smile. Then, through the window, she noticed Nurse Watkins, the thread donor. She was fashioning perfect hospital corners on a bed. Glancing up, she saw Roxy and screamed.

  Not long now, she thought, so she turned around and, instead of focusing on bricks, focused on the window opposite and walked straight across to it.

  The shout came on her fourth traverse, halfway back to her point of departure.

  “What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?”

  Since she’d been expecting him, she paused, swayed only a little, then moved forward again. “My exercises, Dr. MacPhilips,” she said, “just as you ordered.”

  She smiled as she neared the wall. She could hear the curious rumblings and grunts that usually preceded one of the good doctor’s eruptions. As if he was building enough phlegm, which would overflow like lava.

  Spit and sound came as she reached the window and turned: “For Christ’s sake, girl,” he bellowed, “are you trying to kill yourself?”

  She had thought of doing so the day the doctors first told her that her flying days were over. Vestibular disorders, they’d declared. Severe. The medical people might one day get her back onto her feet without nausea. It would be the limit of their ambitions and nigh on a miracle if it happened, given the extent of her injuries. Flying? Impossible.

  Once she got past the weeping and gradually got them to reduce the morphine dose they had her on to near zero, she tho
ught about how she’d always hated that word, impossible. And proving them wrong might be a better choice than killing herself. Anyway, she’d reasoned, she could at least try the first option. The second would always be there.

  “Hello, Doctor.” She smiled across at the red-faced physician. “Care to join me for a stroll?”

  Her cockiness, as usual, was nearly her undoing. Halfway across and maybe moving a shade fast, she put her left foot on a brick edge and it slipped off. Nurse Watkins’s yelp and the doctor’s curse came loud as she windmilled her arms. But balance returned, her foot found solidity, she sank down and gripped brick. Only for a moment.

  She rose and carried on. When she reached the window, the doctor grabbed her. “You are crazy, girl,” he grunted, relief warring with fury on his face.

  “It has been noted,” she replied, and smiled as, with a strength unguessed at in a small and wiry Scotsman, he pulled her off the roof and into the room.

  MacPhilips tried to ground her. But since she was at the hospital as a voluntary patient, that was difficult. He threatened to call in a psychiatrist and have her sectioned. Roxy just sweet-talked him, as she always did. The doctor had three daughters about her own age. He was a sucker for female persuasion.

  “Besides, Doc,” she said, sitting on the edge of his desk and swinging her legs, “didn’t I just prove that I am cured? You’re a genius.”

  “I am not. And neither are you.” He took off his glasses, placed them on the desk and stared at her. “Disorders such as yours are never fully cured. Your skull—” he waved over his shoulder at her X-rays on the light box “—was fractured in two places. The vestibular system was compromised. The best one can hope for is a retraining of your body and mind to overcome the symptoms related to your loss of balance, using the exercises we have devised here at Hazelhurst and others gleaned from specialists around the world. Work on eyesight, on the somatosensory system, on—”

  “Somato tomato, Doc!” Roxy loved Dr. MacPhilips, but once he started, he could talk for hours on subjects that made her dizzier than her disorders. “Didn’t I take a big jump forward today?”

  “A jump that could have ended in a life-ending fall, Miss Loewen.”

  “ ‘Roxy’! I keep telling you.”

  “Roxy.” The doctor leaned forward, his stern manner slipping away. “You are my patient. I don’t wish to see you rush at this and perhaps set yourself back. This is a steady progression we are exploring here.”

  “Steady? I’ve been here five months.”

  “And remember the state you were in when you arrived. You couldn’t stand, you could barely speak. Our psychiatrist diagnosed you as severely traumatized. Not to mention the burns—”

  He broke off, and Roxy sighed. She knew what she’d looked like. The flaming plane had caused second-degree burns on 60 percent of her body and third-degree on part of the left side of her face. Fortunately, the hospital in Belgium where she was treated after a week in intensive care was a centre for plastic surgery. Many soldiers from the trenches had been treated there, and the doctors applied the same techniques to her. Straight on, she didn’t look that different, unless someone really remembered her smile. If she turned sideways, though, the scar tissue was more obvious because of its smooth shininess.

  But it was the hair that stood out most. Once it finally grew back, it came in entirely white. It’s also a terrible cut, she thought, running her hand over the thick white hedge of it. First thing I fix when they let me out of here, if I can raise the dough.

  It was this consideration that had pushed her into accelerating her treatment. Hazelhurst was expensive and the money Jocco had given her hadn’t lasted long. Dr. MacPhilips and the staff had ignored her account for quite a while now, but they wouldn’t be able to for much longer. An administrator was poking around, querying things. She’d overheard a blazing row between the man and MacPhilips on the subject. She needed money. To earn money, she needed to fly. It was the only thing she knew how to do. To fly she needed her balance. It was that simple.

  She turned and looked again at the doctor. As usual, when she switched sight from middle to close distance, it took a little time to bring him into focus. When she had, she saw the concern still there. And it was as if he’d read her mind.

  “I would feel I had failed you if I had not restored more of your functions. That will yet take some time. So do not be concerned about money. I will talk to the powers that be. Arrange something.”

  “Doc Mac, you are the tops.” She slid off the desk. “But you and I both know my time here is up.”

  “Damn pencil pushers,” MacPhilips muttered. “Well, I will delay them at least till the end of the week. Say I am trying out new techniques on you. Now, young lady, you will go to your room and practice your vision exercises for the next half hour. And you are to go nowhere near that roof again. Is that clear?”

  “As glass, Doc Mac.”

  She wanted to get to her room without touching the walls. She managed it with just one slump and lean. The roof walk was already paying dividends.

  There were various alphabet letters stuck around her room at different heights. She stood in the room’s centre and focused on one A. She kept it in focus as she moved her head from side to side, up and down. When she felt tired, she glanced down to rest her eyes on the plain grey coverlet of her bed. Which was when she noticed the envelopes.

  There were two. One was marked with an American stamp and bore the return address of Herr Bochner, in Brooklyn. The second…

  She refocused. Noticed the lines first, the crossings-out. The letter had followed her through the various hospitals from Belgium to Hazelhurst. She bent closer, and her name came into focus. And she recognized the handwriting.

  “Jocco,” she breathed. She sat on the bed, laid her hand on the envelope and closed her eyes.

  The hope that he’d write had left her in stages. First there was the terror of that last glimpse from her bird over Templehof: his truck by the dock, black-uniformed men moving toward it. Had Jocco been arrested? If he had, he’d be tortured. He was a well-known Communist, after all. After that, they’d probably kill him. The thought had tormented her days and nights. Once she could write again—it took three months—she’d written to his father. There had been no reply. She’d tried twice more. Nothing.

  As she recovered her strength, her spirit came with it. Her fears receded and she thought: What if he escaped? He was always good at escaping, had more lives than a cat. In which case, he was in hiding. He had friends all over Germany.

  Lately, she’d settled again into her uncertainty. She would never know until she regained as much of her balance as was possible; got a bird and took to the air. She’d meet him, up there somewhere. As a ghost or a gunrunner. Because one thing was for sure: if Jocco Zomack was alive, he’d be flying. He loved it with a passion that matched hers.

  She looked down. The first postmark on the letter was from Germany and was dated March 16—one month before. But the sending of the letter could have happened months after the writing of it.

  There was only one way to find out. She slipped her thumb under the flap and drew out a single sheet; when she unfolded it, a newspaper clipping fell out. But Jocco’s distinctive copperplate was scratched across the page:

  My Love,

  I hope this finds you, and finds you well.

  I learned about the crash. I only now learned that you survived, and the hospital where they took you. That is why it has taken me so long to write. Now I must be quick. Today my friends are getting me out of Germany. I have been in hiding since the theft.

  Ferency betrayed us. You will suspect this. He switched the second fake for the real painting and that’s what you flew with. He was working for Munroe, and Munroe was working with Göring—a devilish alliance. Munroe got the painting; Göring the fake and 200,000 Reichsmarks. But our enemy wanted more than that, so he must have paid someone to plant the bomb on your plane.

  She’d reached the end of the
page. That mechanic, she thought as she turned it. Jürgen.

  By the time you read this I will be on my way to Spain, continuing the fight against Fascism. If you are recovered and have discovered an appetite for this fight, you could find me there. Yet I know for you, battles are always personal. So I have enclosed something that may be of interest. I think it is offering you a choice.

  Roxy glanced down at the folded piece of newsprint. She looked back at the page in her hand, waited for her eyes to refocus.

  My advice, though, is to forget Munroe. In the world now, the capitalist oppressors hold the power. But it is the system itself that must be fought. Individuals will be dealt with when the revolution is complete.

  Go well, my comrade. I will see you again at two thousand feet.

  Jocco

  Unlike the rest of the letter, written in his exemplary handwriting, his signature was a little ragged. Maybe, unlike the cool phrasing, when he actually came to sign, he was overcome with emotion?

  She closed her eyes again, and dropped the letter. It had begun with “My Love” and ended with “my comrade.” But what had she expected? A passionate declaration? Not Jocco’s style. The only time he wasn’t playing the revolutionary was when he was playing the lover. Perhaps she’d hoped that if she got him alone again, she could persuade him to give up one of those identities. It was crazy, she knew, even as she thought it. Africa, and all they’d been for each other there, was a long way away now. They’d needed a dangerous backdrop for their love, flying in, seizing moments, taking off again. Till the next snatched moment, lit by tracer fire.

  And yet…Spain? She’d read the newspapers, about the vicious ongoing civil war there. The rebels under Franco were heavily supported by his Fascist buddies, Hitler and Mussolini. The Republican forces, increasingly Commie, were backed by Joe Stalin in Moscow. Munitions were supplied to both sides by gunrunners and governments.

  And both sides were getting airplanes. It was common knowledge that German flyers flew for the rebels. The Condor Legion, they were called. The Republicans had guys like Jocco from nations all over the globe. Guys…and gals?