Storming: A Dieselpunk Adventure (26 page)

At least, he hadn’t almost gotten hit by lightning, like Jael had. He looked at her sideways. If the people from her home had caused the storm, did that mean they had
made
the lightning that hit her?

“You don’t want to go home?” Aunt Aurelia asked.

Jael shrugged. “What I want does not have so much importance. I must be going... to give help before Zlo is doing much damage to many places.”

But if she went home, they’d never see her again. His stomach cramped.

She smiled at him. “Now that I am working with planes, your mother maybe would let you come to see them. You should ask her. Tell her I would be certain for your care.”

It wouldn’t work, of course. When Mama Nan made up her mind, that was that. He bit his lip, hard. But maybe—just this once—he might sneak out anyway. Once Mama Nan understood how important this was, she would see it was all right for him to go. She had to.

And, of course, good sweet angels willing, she might not find out at all. Jael wouldn’t tell on him. It would be just once. After he rode in the plane, he’d come home and do all the girls’ chores without anybody even asking him.

He gave Jael a firm nod.

Aunt Aurelia stared at him. The look in her eyes was serious.

He’d forgot about her. She wouldn’t tell on him either. But she might say the wrong thing without realizing it.

“It’s coming back,” Aunt Aurelia said.

What?
He shook his head.

“Jael’s home—it
is
coming back. The storm hasn’t stopped. It’s coming to get us, and I know all about it.” She raised her chin, kind of like Molly did when she was spatting with Mama Nan. “People who fly, it will get them all. First, you.” She brushed her fingertip against Jael’s nose. “It has already gotten you.” She turned to Walter and touched his nose in turn. “And now it will get you.”

Aunt Aurelia was always saying stuff that didn’t make any sort of sense. Her mind didn’t work right, after all. Everybody knew that.

But he got cold all over anyway.

Jael’s eyebrows came almost all the way together. She pushed herself up to sit. Beneath her rolled-up blouse sleeves, goose bumps appeared on her arms. “It
must
find me—I know because of... this.” She fingered the strange pendant that hung around her neck. “But where do
you
have knowledge for this?”

Walter frowned. If her home was up in the sky and she was down here, how could she use the pendant to make it come back to get her?

He pointed at the pendant and then at the sky.

She was too busy watching Aunt Aurelia to notice.

Aunt Aurelia sniffed. “Oh, I do talk to people, you know.”

“Zlo? Zlo told you this. You had sight of him?”

Walter’s insides froze up.

Yesterday, when Mama Nan had been taking him to the shelter in the diner’s cellar, Aunt Aurelia disappeared for a minute. Mama Nan stopped right in the middle of the sharp rain, her pocketbook over her head, and turned back to call for Aunt Aurelia.

Walter had looked back too.

Aunt Aurelia was standing in the door to Mr. Fallon’s store, and a man with a great bird on his shoulder held the door for her. He looked like a tramp, and his teeth gleamed when he grinned down at her.

Then Aunt Aurelia came running and they all made it to the cellar.

Was that the man who had made the storms? The one who’d robbed all the stores in town? The one who’d hurt Jael?

And Walter had been
that
close to him?

A sick feeling swirled through his stomach.

Jael kept her face very still. Only a little muscle at the edge of her cheek flinched. “This,” she said, “is why I am having fear.”

She
was afraid too? She didn’t seem like she was afraid of anything. She rode on the
outside
of Hitch’s plane.

On a different day, that might have made Walter feel better. But if she was scared too, then maybe this man really was coming back.

Aunt Aurelia tsked. “Oh, he was a
most
polite man. You have no need to be afraid.”

“I am having fear because maybe many people will be hurt before I can stop Zlo.” Jael looked up at Walter, not Aurelia. “But I have to be staying in this place, because how else can I be going
up
to him when he comes?”

Walter’s stomach rolled over on him. He tried again to point at the pendant and then at the sky. It was the only way he knew to ask.

But she looked away again, and the ticking of the muscle in her cheek got worse.

Aunt Aurelia stood and stretched. She bent to pluck a long strand of grass out of Jael’s hair, then she turned toward the house. Her gaze caught on Walter’s face.

He could feel his eyes growing huge. He was clenching his teeth awfully hard.

She cooed and patted his head. “Aww.” Then she started back across the field, swaying and humming along to whatever music she heard in her head.

She
wasn’t afraid anyway.

He watched her for a second. Maybe he shouldn’t fly with Hitch after all. He looked at Jael.

“Have no worry.” She smiled, but it was forced. “She has no knowledge of what she says. Her head is not correct.” She stood up and reached out a hand.

That was true, of course. Mean people said Aunt Aurelia was loony; nice people just said bless-her-heart. If he let what she said after one of her fits keep him from riding in Hitch’s plane, then
he
was the one whose head wasn’t right.

He grabbed Jael’s hand and let her pull him up. She put her arm around his shoulders, and he put his around her waist, holding on tight.

He jammed the fear down deep inside of himself, so deep he could hardly feel it. It was still there: beating like a baby bunny’s heart after you caught it and held it in your hand. But if he didn’t look at it, maybe, just maybe, it would go away.

Nineteen

FOR THE SIXTH time that morning, Hitch took off, gained about nine hundred feet, banked hard, and turned around to set the plane right back down. The show started tomorrow, which meant today was the big opportunity to make extra dough by hopping rides to paying customers.

Up, turn, and back was worth two bits a person.

The passengers in his front cockpit, a pimpled farmhand and his sweetheart—the farmer’s daughter if Hitch didn’t miss his guess—grinned at each other, wide-eyed. Most folks reacted that way the first time. Even if they got into the cockpit all stiff, hanging onto the sides until their knuckles went white, it usually only took that first stomach-bumping lurch into the air to win them over. Half of them might not ever get the bug to fly again, but they’d be telling their families about it for the rest of their lives.

Luckily for him, that made for good business. Not so luckily, business was a little
too
good to manage single-handedly at the moment.

He bounced the wheels back onto the strip and looked around. The crowd had been a couple hundred strong at dawn, and it’d only grown since. Even with almost every pilot here hopping rides, there were plenty of fares to go around.

But without Lilla to flash that smile of hers and direct traffic his way, every pilot but him was getting the lion’s share. Even Earl had deserted him—not that he was much good at flashing winning smiles. He’d thumbed a ride into town to buy gasoline with the last of their payment from Campbell.

No doubt Rick was laughing his head off. Hitch craned his neck and squinted through his goggles toward where Rick was successfully operating on the far side of the field.

Just ahead of Hitch’s propeller, Taos got up from lying in the shade of a lonely parked plane and ran, barking, across the field. And there, out of the early morning haze, walked Hitch’s solution.

Jael saw him. She didn’t wave, but her face lit up.

Speaking of winning smiles...

The dog jumped a good foot off the ground, still barking.

Hitch cut the engine. “All right, folks, thank you very much.” He climbed out and came forward to help them down off the wing.

No other customers were clamoring just yet, so he pulled off his helmet and jogged over to Jael. “’Bout time you showed up. Haven’t you figured out what ‘crack of dawn’ means?”

“I figured it.” She stood easily, hands in her back pockets. “But I had to help Walter with eggs. The birds sit on them. Did you know this?”

He glanced down to where Nan’s kid stood at Jael’s side. “Yeah, I know about it.”

The boy—Walter—bit his lip, uncertainly. But it only took half a minute for the light to start dawning in his eyes. He darted his gaze from Hitch to the planes, then back. He let go of Taos’s scruff long enough to stick out his hand.

“This is Walter,” Jael said. “You have memory of him?”

“I remember.” He gave the kid’s hand a shake. He had a firm grip for a skinny little guy. Then Hitch looked back up at Jael. “Nan said he could come out here?”

She glanced at Walter.

The boy tucked his chin in one hard nod. He didn’t look too certain of the fact. But whatever the truth, it was too late now.

Hitch peered at Walter, trying to figure the right thing to say. “Well... okay then. Anyway, we’ve got to get to work.”

Jael grinned. “Wing walking?”

“No, we’ll rest you up for now and give it a try later today. Right now, we’re hopping rides.”

She did a little bounce. “Hopping?”

“
Giving
rides. To all those wonderful paying people over there. All I need you to do is stand there and look...” He cast a glance over her trim figure, long legs longer than ever in those breeches and boots. He cleared his throat. “Well, like you do. Your job’s to convince these folks to come ride in
our
plane rather than somebody else’s.” And particularly Rick Holmes’s. “You just smile and say, ‘Right this way, ladies and gents. Only two bits a ride.’”

She wrinkled her nose.

“C’mon, you can do it. Your English is already better than it was when you first got here.”

She repeated his words—only with her thick accent, they sounded more like, “Reekgt tis vay, ladhee-es aundt ghents.” She stopped. “What is this ‘two bits’?”

“Hmm.” He looked at Walter. “How about you? Can you say it?”

The boy’s smile faded. He shook his head.

Jael laid a hand on Walter’s shoulder. “He is not liking to talk.”

“Right.” Hitch heaved a sigh and looked around for inspiration. “You know what, we’ll just make up a sign real quick, and you can hold it, okay?”

Walter tugged his sleeve and looked at him expectantly.

“You can both hold it. Now, come on. Every five minutes we waste is twenty-five cents we don’t earn.”

The three of them ran around camp until they’d found a board about as big as Taos and a quarter of a can of whitewash. No brush though, so he used the corner of his shirt to streak the paint onto the board in broad capital letters.

“All right. Now you hold that.” He handed it to Jael. “Fingers on the edge. Don’t smudge the paint.”

She looked bored already.

“You want Earl and me to eat tonight, don’t you?” He took her shoulders and turned her around to face the crowd. “Now, give ’em a smile and act like you’re having so much fun they’ll scramble to join you.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Smile.”

“All right, I smile.” She grinned wide, all teeth. Not quite Lilla’s effervescent allure, but it’d have to do.

Walter, on the other hand, seemed about ready to bust out of his skin, he was so excited. He stood next to her, one hand gingerly gripping the edge of the sign, the other petting Taos’s head. He caught Hitch’s look and stopped petting Taos long enough to give him an OK sign.

“See,” Hitch said, “he’s got the idea. You’re doing fine, son, you keep that up.” He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Over here, folks! No need to wait. We’re ready to take you up right this minute!” He elbowed Jael. “Wave.”

She got that shy look all of a sudden and bit her lip. But she lowered the sign enough to give a quick wave. Walter made up for it by jumping up and down and waving both arms above his head.

It was enough to start the crowd trickling in their direction.

“Good job.” He pulled his helmet back down over his ears and headed toward the plane. “Now keep it up.”

For the next five hours, he hopped rides pretty much non-stop. Earl and the gasoline arrived just in time to fill up the Jenny. They strained the gas through a chamois before funneling it into the tank, just to make sure there was no water in it. Then he was right back in the air.

With Earl helping the passengers in and out, Hitch didn’t even have to climb from the cockpit between rides. A smooth takeoff, a sharp turn, and a bounce back to the landing strip. Then another customer clambered up the wing and into the cockpit. As fast as Earl could pack ’em in, they stepped forward to pay up. It was a terrific crowd—the kind that would keep you in food and fixings for a couple months, if you didn’t have to share.