Flying Home (21 page)

I wanted a plane more than I’d wanted anything; more than I wanted the red wagon with rubber tires, more than the train that ran on a track with its train of cars. I asked my mother over and over again:

“Mama?”

“What do you want, boy?” she’d say.

“Mama, will you get mad if I ask you?” I’d say.

“What do you want now, I ain’t got time to be answering a lot of fool questions. What you want?”

“Mama, when you gonna get me one …?” I’d ask.

“Get you one what?” she’d say.

“You know, Mama; what I been asking you …”

“Boy,” she’d say, “if you don’t want a spanking you better come on ’n tell me what you talking about so I can get on with my work.”

“Aw, Mama, you know …”

“What I just tell you?” she’d say.

“I mean when you gonna buy me a airplane.”

“AIRPLANE! Boy, is you crazy? How many times I have to tell you to stop that foolishness. I done told you them things cost too much. I bet I’m gon wham the living daylight out of you if you don’t quit worrying me ’bout them things!”

But this did not stop me, and a few days later I’d try all over again.

Then one day a strange thing happened. It was spring and for some reason I had been hot and irritable all morning. It was a beautiful spring. I could feel it as I played barefoot in the backyard. Blossoms hung from the thorny black locust trees like clusters of fragrant white grapes. Butterflies flickered in the sunlight above the short new dew-wet grass. I had gone in the house for bread and butter and coming out I heard a steady unfamiliar drone. It was unlike anything I had ever heard before. I tried to place the sound. It was no use. It was a sensation like that I had when searching for my father’s watch, heard ticking unseen in a room. It made me feel as though I had forgotten to perform some task that my mother had ordered … then I located it, overhead. In the sky, flying quite low and about a hundred yards off, was a plane! It came so slowly that it seemed barely to move. My mouth hung wide; my bread and butter fell into the dirt. I wanted to jump up and down and cheer. And when the idea struck I trembled with excitement: Some little white boy’s plane’s done flew away and all I got to do is stretch out my hands and it’ll be mine! It was a little plane like that at the fair, flying no higher
than the eaves of our roof. Seeing it come steadily forward I felt the world grow warm with promise. I opened the screen and climbed over it and clung there, waiting. I would catch the plane as it came over and swing down fast and run into the house before anyone could see me. Then no one could come to claim the plane. It droned nearer. Then when it hung like a silver cross in the blue directly above me I stretched out my hand and grabbed. It was like sticking my finger through a soap bubble. The plane flew on, as though I had simply blown my breath after it. I grabbed again, frantically, trying to catch the tail. My fingers clutched the air and disappointment surged tight and hard in my throat. Giving one last desperate grasp, I strained forward. My fingers ripped from the screen. I was falling. The ground burst hard against me. I drummed the earth with my heels and when my breath returned, I lay there bawling.

My mother rushed through the door.

“What’s the matter, chile! What on earth is wrong with you?”

“It’s gone! It’s gone!”

“What gone?”

“The airplane …”

“Airplane?”

“Yessum, jus like the one at the fair … I … I tried to stop it an’ it kep right on going …”

“When, boy?”

“Just now,” I cried through my tears.

“Where it go, boy, what way?”

“Yonder, there …”

She scanned the sky, her arms akimbo and her checkered apron flapping in the wind, as I pointed to the fading plane. Finally she looked down at me, slowly shaking her head.

“It’s gone! It’s gone!” I cried.

“Boy, is you a fool?” she said. “Don’t you see that there’s a real airplane ’stead of one of them toy ones?”

“Real …?” I forgot to cry. “Real?”

“Yass, real. Don’t you know that thing you reaching for is bigger’n a auto? You here trying to reach for it and I bet it’s flying ’bout two hundred miles higher’n this roof.” She was disgusted with me. “You come on in this house before somebody else sees what a fool you done turned out to be. You must think these here li’l ole arms of your’n is mighty long …”

I was carried into the house and undressed for bed and the doctor was called. I cried bitterly; as much from the disappointment of finding the plane so far beyond my reach as from the pain.

When the doctor came I heard my mother telling him about the plane and asking if anything was wrong with my mind. He explained that I had had a fever for several hours. But I was kept in bed for a week and I constantly saw the plane in my sleep, flying just beyond my fingertips, sailing so slowly that it seemed barely to move. And each time I’d reach out to grab it I’d miss and through each dream I’d hear my grandma warning:

“Hey, son!”

At first he did not know where he was and looked at the old man pointing, with blurred eyes.

“Ain’t that one of you all’s airplanes coming after you?”

As his vision cleared he saw a small black shape above a distant field, soaring through waves of heat. But he could not be sure and with the pain he feared that somehow a horrible recurring fantasy of being split in twain by the whirling blades of a propeller had come true.

“You think he sees us?” he heard.

“See? I hope so.”

“He’s coming like a bat outa hell!”

Straining, he heard the faint sound of a motor and hoped it would soon be over.

“How you feeling?”

“Like a nightmare,” he said.

“Hey, he’s done curved back the other way!”

“Maybe he saw us,” he said. “Maybe he’s gone to send out the ambulance and ground crew.” And, he thought with despair, maybe he didn’t even see us.

“Where did you send the boy?”

“Down to Mister Graves,” Jefferson said. “Man what owns this land.”

“Do you think he phoned?”

Jefferson looked at him quickly.

“Aw sho. Dabney Graves is got a bad name on accounta them killings, but he’ll call though …”

“What killings?”

“Them five fellers … ain’t you heard?” he asked with surprise.

“No.”

“Eve’body knows ’bout Dabney Graves, especially the colored. He done killed enough of us.”

Todd had the sensation of being caught in a white neighborhood after dark.

“What did they do?” he asked.

“Thought they was men,” Jefferson said. “An’ some he owed money, like he do me …”

“But why do you stay here?”

“You black, son.”

“I know, but …”

“You have to come by the white folks, too.”

He turned away from Jefferson’s eyes, at once consoled and accused. And I’ll have to come by them soon, he thought with despair. Closing his eyes, he heard Jefferson’s voice as the sun burned blood-red upon his lids.

“I got nowhere to go,” Jefferson said, “an’ they’d come after me if I did. But Dabney Graves is a funny fellow. He’s all the time making jokes. He can be mean as hell, then he’s liable to turn right around and back the colored against the white folks. I seen him do it. But me, I hates him for that more’n anything else. ’Cause just as soon as he gits tired helping a man he don’t care what happens to him. He just leaves him stone-cold. And then the other white folks is double hard on anybody he done helped. For him it’s just a joke. He don’t give a hilla beans for nobody—but his-self …”

Todd listened to the thread of detachment in the old man’s voice. It was as though he held his words at arm’s length before him to avoid their destructive meaning.

“He’d just as soon do you a favor and then turn right around and have you strung up. Me, I stays outa his way ’cause down here that’s what you gotta do.”

If my ankle would only ease for a while, he thought. The
closer I spin toward the earth the blacker I become, flashed through his mind. Sweat ran into his eyes and he was sure that he would never see the plane if his head continued whirling. He tried to see Jefferson, what it was that Jefferson held in his hand. It was a little black man, another Jefferson! A little black Jefferson that shook with fits of belly laughter while the other Jefferson looked on with detachment. Then Jefferson looked up from the thing in his hand and turned to speak but Todd was far away, searching the sky for a plane in a hot dry land on a day and age he had long forgotten. He was going mysteriously with his mother through empty streets where black faces peered from behind drawn shades and someone was rapping at a window and he was looking back to see a hand and a frightened face frantically beckoning from a cracked door and his mother was looking down the empty perspective of the street and shaking her head and hurrying him along and at first it was only a flash he saw and a motor was droning as through the sun’s glare he saw it gleaming silver as it circled and he was seeing a burst like a puff of white smoke and hearing his mother yell, “Come along, boy, I got no time for them fool airplanes, I got no time,” and he saw it a second time, the plane flying high, and the burst appeared suddenly and fell slowly, billowing out and sparkling like fireworks and he was watching and being hurried along as the air filled with a flurry of white pinwheeling cards that caught in the wind and scattered over the rooftops and into the gutters and a woman was running and snatching a card and reading it and screaming and he darted into the shower, grabbing as in winter he grabbed for snowflakes and bounding away at his mother’s, “Come on here, boy! Come on, I say!” And he
was watching as she took the card away seeing her face grow puzzled and turning taut as her voice quavered, “Niggers Stay from the Polls,” and died to a moan of terror as he saw the eyeless sockets of a white hood staring at him from the card and above he saw the plane spiraling gracefully, agleam in the sun like a fiery sword. And seeing it soar he was caught, transfixed between a terrible horror and a horrible fascination.

The sun was not so high now, and Jefferson was calling, and gradually he saw three figures moving across the curving roll of the field.

“Look like some doctors, all dressed in white,” said Jefferson.

They’re coming at last, Todd thought. And he felt such a release of tension within him that he thought he would faint. But no sooner did he close his eyes than he was seized and he was struggling with three white men who were forcing his arms into some kind of coat. It was too much for him, his arms were pinned to his sides and as the pain blazed in his eyes, he realized that it was a straitjacket. What filthy joke was this?

“That oughta hold him, Mister Graves,” he heard.

His total energies seemed focused in his eyes as he searched for their faces. That was Graves, the other two wore hospital uniforms. He was poised between two poles of fear and hate as he heard the one called Graves saying,

“He looks kinda purty in that there suit, boys. I’m glad you dropped by.”

“This boy ain’t crazy, Mister Graves,” one of the others said. “He needs a doctor, not us. Don’t see how you led us way out here anyway. It might be a joke to you, but your
cousin Rudolph liable to kill somebody. White folks or niggers don’t make no difference …”

Todd saw the man turn red with anger. Graves looked down upon him, chuckling.

“This nigguh belongs in a straitjacket, too, boys. I knowed that the minnit Jeff’s kid said something ’bout a nigguh flyer. You all know you caint let the nigguh git up that high without his going crazy. The nigguh brain ain’t built right for high altitudes …”

Todd watched the drawling red face, feeling that all the unnamed horror and obscenities that he had ever imagined stood materialized before him.

“Let’s git outa here,” one of the attendants said.

Todd saw the other reach toward him, realizing for the first time that he lay upon a stretcher as he yelled:

“Don’t put your hands on me!”

They drew back, surprised.

“What’s that you say, nigguh?” asked Graves.

He did not answer and thought that Graves’ foot was aimed at his head. It landed in his chest and he could hardly breathe. He coughed helplessly, seeing Graves’ lips stretch taut over his yellow teeth, and tried to shift his head. It was as though a half-dead fly was dragging slowly across his face, and a bomb seemed to burst within him. Blasts of hot, hysterical laughter tore from his chest, causing his eyes to pop, and he felt that the veins in his neck would surely burst. And then a part of him stood behind it all, watching the surprise in Graves’ red face and his own hysteria. He thought he would never stop, he would laugh himself to death. It rang in his ears like Jefferson’s laughter and he looked for him, centering his eye desperately upon his face,
as though somehow he had become his sole salvation in an insane world of outrage and humiliation. It brought a certain relief. He was suddenly aware that although his body was still contorted, it was an echo that no longer rang in his ears. He heard Jefferson’s voice with gratitude.

“Mister Graves, the army done tole him not to leave his airplane.”

“Nigguh, army or no, you gittin’ off my land! That airplane can stay ’cause it was paid for by taxpayers’ money. But you gittin’ off. An’ dead or alive, it don’t make no difference to me.”

Todd was beyond it now, lost in a world of anguish.

“Jeff,” Graves said. “You and Teddy come and grab holt. I want you to take this here black eagle over to that nigguh airfield and leave him.”

Jefferson and the boy approached him silently. He looked away, realizing and doubting at once that only they could release him from his overpowering sense of isolation.

They bent for the stretcher. One of the attendants moved toward Teddy.