The Flying Circus (4 page)

Gil choked a little and reached for his glass of water.

Her mother’s face soured. “And you felt it proper to stop and engage with strange men while you were alone? Really, Cora. You must exercise better judgment.”

“Yes, Mother.”

Henry’s eyes snapped up to meet Gil’s. Cora had obviously changed more than her clothes in that shed.

“Mr. Gilchrist, did you learn to fly in the service?” Mr. Fessler asked in a way that made Henry think he was speaking more to rescue his niece than out of curiosity.

“I did. The Jenny . . . my plane . . . was a surplus trainer left over from the war.”

“A horrible thing,” Mr. Fessler said. “We lost Cora’s brother Jonathan in France. My great-niece’s son came back in one piece, but the shell shock ruined him. Tragic, just a tragic, tragic waste.”

Mrs. Haviland suddenly stood and dropped her napkin on the table. “If you’ll excuse me . . .”

Mr. Fessler and Gil stood also. Cora and Mrs. Fessler stayed seated. After a second, Henry got the idea and stood until Mrs. Haviland had left the room.

As the men sat back down, Cora said, “Please don’t take offense, this happens all of the time. Mother simply detests
any
un
pleasant topic of conversation at the table. She’s trying to teach us all a lesson.”

Mr. and Mrs. Fessler stayed quiet, but both of them looked more relaxed—more as they had in the kitchen when Henry had first arrived.

Henry wondered how it could be much of a lesson when the entire room felt better without Mrs. Haviland in it.

Cora looked at Gil. “You named your plane
Jenny
?”

“That’s not her name. That’s what she is, a Curtiss JN-4 . . . everyone calls them Jennies.”

A devilish twinkle came to Cora’s eye. “Ah, but she is a female.”

Gil looked perturbed. “All ships are
she
s.”

“That’s right,” Mr. Fessler said. “Because they’re the only females a man can control.”

“Clyde.”
Mrs. Fessler sounded scandalized, but her eyes sparkled and a smile played on her lips.

“Sorry, dear.” He reached out and wrapped his blunt fingers around her blue-veined hand. It struck Henry as the most loving gesture he’d ever seen. “I don’t get the pleasure of masculine company very often. I lost my head.”

“You’re entitled, Uncle. After all, you’re always so outnumbered,” Cora said as if she were forgiving a transgression—and maybe she was. In the world of good manners, how would Henry know? “That’s one of the reasons I asked Mr. Gilchrist and Mr. Jefferson to dinner. And I know how you support our veterans. I told Mr. Gilchrist you might be willing to let him use your pasture for his . . .” She batted her eyes and looked at a loss. “What did you call it, Mr. Gilchrist?”

A prick of unease nibbled the back of Henry’s neck. She was so convincing in her feigned innocence, so skilled at her duplicity.

Gil slid a look her way. “Barnstorming.” He explained to Mr. Fessler as he had to Henry and Cora.

“People pay money to risk their lives like that?” Mr. Fessler asked.

“There’s nothing that compares to how it is up there.” The tension slid from Gil’s face like melted wax; his eyes glowed as if he’d just seen the face of God. “The wind. The power. The isolation. The view. It’s
like you don’t even belong to the earth anymore.” He sat there staring into space for a moment, then seemed to snap back to himself. “I’ll be happy to take you for a ride. No charge. Aviation is going to change the world.”

“Can’t see much use for it outside of the military. Read about them planes being used for the mail. Been more mail lost in crashes than made it to its destination. Trains are trustworthy. Airplanes . . .” Mr. Fessler sat back and shook his head. “I’ll pass on the ride, but if you want to use my pasture, it’s all yours, son. I doubt you’ll get many customers around here, though.”

“Oh, Mr. Gilchrist says they always come, Uncle!” Cora then lowered her eyes to her lap, as if she were embarrassed by her lack of restraint.

She’d turned completely into that “young lady of breeding” who was “enthralled” with nature walks.

He’d only ever known one girl who could change herself this convincingly.

E
ver since he’d laid eyes on that plane, an idea had been playing in Henry’s head. He needed to put more distance between himself and Delaware County. And planes travel faster than feet.

He and Gil went to the barn for the night, Henry back in his own clothes, dry and brushed free of crusted mud. They climbed to the hayloft. Once they were settled in the silver moonlight coming through the open hayloft doors—so much for Aunt Gladys’s weather prediction—breathing the comfortingly familiar smells of alfalfa, motor oil, and animal, Henry decided to inch his way toward his new objective.

“Does the Jenny use a battery or a magneto?” he asked.

“Magneto. Battery adds too much weight.”

“But there’s no crank.”

“Sure there is. The propeller.”

“But you’re by yourself. You set the brake first, then?”

“There are no brakes.”

“But”—Henry leaned up on one elbow—“it’ll run right—”

“Oh, yeah. You spin it and get your ass out of the way.”

“Do you use wheel chocks to keep it from moving forward?”

“Some do. I’m fast.”

Henry wondered how fast a man had to be to start the engine, run around the wing, and clamber up into the cockpit. “Be easier with two people I imagine.”

“It is. But you can’t let just anybody prop it; severed body parts are bad for business.”

Henry barked out a laugh. “I would imagine.” Here goes. “There must be a lot of upkeep on a machine like that one.”

“Endless.”

“You know, a good mechanic could get that OX-5 singing like a bird.”

“I don’t make enough to pay a mechanic. I can barely feed myself.”

“What if one would do the work for a ride to the next town?” A break in the trail. Did they have dogs after him? There’d be no way to know until he heard them barking at his heels. He’d made one scent break by walking in the river for a long, slow, ankle-turning, mud-sucking mile. But thirty miles in the air, no dog could pick up that scent again.

I’m thinking like a guilty man.

And he was acting like one. Guilty men always run.

“I’ll give you a ride if you want one.”

“I can’t take something for nothing and I don’t have any money.”

“I told you, I’m the only one who touches her. You can help me haul gasoline out to the field when we get to Noblesville. It’ll be a fair trade. Now shut up and go to sleep. I want an early start.”

Even before Henry could spit out his gratitude, Gil’s breathing changed. He was asleep.

Sleep should have been easy for a man as tired as Henry. But he watched through the open doors of the hayloft as the moon tracked across the night, unable to still his mind. In a bit, Gil’s breathing grew rough. Henry heard small movements, twitching against the straw.

Did the green-eyed monster-men of the Kaiser’s fill Gil’s dreams? Was he dodging and ducking bullets? Was he rolling his plane through skies filled with artillery fire?

Henry had been nine years old when the war started in Europe—a place so far away that Peter, then sixteen, said it wouldn’t mean anything to the folks of Delaware County. But that’s when things in Delaware County had begun to change. Subtly at first. So subtly that Henry initially thought he’d done something, broken some rule, misbehaved in some way, to draw the nasty looks and turned backs. An invisible cold hand touched the back of his neck every time his teacher walked past his desk, it brushed his cheek when he passed someone on the sidewalk, and it gripped his heart when he sat with his head bowed in prayer in Sunday school. So he tried to be more respectful, more cheerful, more helpful.

Things only grew worse.

The first time some kids mocked him with fake German accents, calling him Heinrich the Hun, he finally got it. It wasn’t his fault. It was worse. And damn it, his name wasn’t even Heinrich. It was plain old American Henry.

German hate became a national pastime after that German sub sank the
Lusitania
. When the United States joined in the fight, the frosty attitudes turned into flaming rage. German hate even got its own poster and slogan campaign. The one in Henry’s classroom said
Beat Back the Hun with Liberty Bonds
. The Hun was a gruesome green-eyed monster of a man with a bloody bayonet and crimson-soaked fingers.
Once a German, always a German
. And Germans ravaged all civilization—usually starting with the women and children.

Then someone had set fire to Wuesthoff’s Bakery—after the police had hauled Mr. Wuesthoff to jail for “disloyal utterances against the United States.”

Henry had thought nothing like that could happen to his family. Mr. Wuesthoff
acted
German. He wore that stupid hat. Even after the first weeks of the war, he continued to stick little German flags in his strudels. Maybe he
was
a spy.

Peter had been the one to point out the error of that thinking. “Good God, Henry, do you think he’d do any of those things if he
was
? He’s not stupid.”

Spy fever caught on. The
Schulers
might be spies! Watch them carefully.

It didn’t matter that the only thing to spy on where they’d lived were cornfields and cows. Wells could be poisoned. Stores of gasoline and grain burned.

No one cared that Peter and Henry were raised as American boys. Henry didn’t even speak German. When he’d been really little, occasionally he’d heard his parents late at night talking softly to one another in a language with hard corners that didn’t lend itself to quiet whispers. It had made him feel he was being kept from a secret. But after the war started, he was glad he’d never learned the language. It made it easier to believe the Kaiser and his killer-filled country had nothing to do with him.

What would Gil do if he discovered Henry was a German-bred Schuler and not a star-spangled Jefferson?

He bet he’d never sit inside the man’s plane, that’s for sure.

A
t some point Henry must have fallen asleep, because Gil was kicking his shoe. “It’s time.”

As they walked toward the pasture, the sun inched over the horizon, silvering the mist that clung to the low spots and snaked in the ditch beside the road.

“How many people do you think’ll show up today?” Henry asked.

“None.”

“But you said they always—”

“There aren’t going to be any people because we’re flying out of here right now.”

“What about Cora?”

“I can’t afford to waste a day hoping a couple of farmers show up. I need to harvest a
town
.”

Henry had already decided not to trust her. And the way he’d caught her looking at Gil when she thought no one was watching, as if he were the most interesting man she’d ever set eyes on, told him there could be trouble. What if she got Gil to hang around here another day that could lead to still another? A willful woman could change the course of history—the path of a man’s life was easy pickings. Henry had learned that firsthand. The sooner he and Gil and that airplane were away from here, the better. Yet, sneaking off seemed the wrong way to go about it. “She did feed us.”

They were getting near the pasture. Traveling the distance had taken a tenth of the time it had taken last night, wrangling that motorcycle across country.

“I’ll send her a nice thank-you note.”

“But you said you’d give her a ride.”

“I did not. I offered her uncle a ride. He declined. And her
aunt and uncle
fed us.”

Henry couldn’t ignore his relief. “She’s gonna be mad as a wet hornet.”

“No doubt—Oh, shit!” Gil broke into a run. “Hey!” he shouted as he leaped the wire fence. “Get away from there!”

Henry looked across the pasture. Tilda stood eating the wing of Gil’s plane. Henry took off on Gil’s heels.

“Shoo! Shoo!” Henry waved his arms over his head as he ran.

“Get!” Gil swatted the air.

Tilda finally turned their way. As Henry got closer, he’d swear he saw bored defiance in her big brown cow eyes.

Gil thumped her hindquarters.

She took a reluctant step away from the wing.

Gil growled and ran his hand over the fabric.

Henry took a step closer. The cow hadn’t been eating it exactly. More like licking it like a lollipop.

“Why would she do that?” Henry asked.

Gil poked at the wet spot with a finger. “Not too bad,” he muttered. “Some cows like to lick the dope on the fabric.”

“Dope?”

“The stuff that stretches it tight.” He flicked a finger against the dry area of the wing. It sounded like a drum. Then he did the same to the wet spot. It sounded a little duller, but still sounded solid. “The vapors will knock you on your ass when you’re putting it on. Worse than a bad drunk. Maybe it gives ’em a cow buzz. I should have stayed with her last night.”

“Tilda?”

“You’re a real vaudevillian.”

Henry shrugged.

Gil untied the ropes that kept the Jenny anchored to the earth, and Henry pulled up the stakes.

“We’re really going without seeing her?”

Gil didn’t pause coiling the ropes. “You’re more than welcome to stay behind, Romeo.”

“I’m not the one she—” Henry decided to quit while he was ahead. “Where do you want these stakes?”

Gil took them and stowed everything behind the rear cockpit. Then he climbed back to the ground with an oil can in his hands and stepped up on one of the wheels. Henry figured he was lubricating the rocker arms. Gil did the same on the other side of the engine. After that he walked around the plane, ran his hands over the propeller, checked tautness on some wires, looked at and moved the flappers on the tail and upper wings. Then he went back to the front and rotated the propeller a few times.

Henry braced for the roar of the engine before he realized Gil hadn’t turned on the magneto switch yet. Wouldn’t that give a lot of credence to his claim of being a good mechanic if Gil had noticed?

“If you’re coming with me, climb up into the front cockpit. Careful. Just step right there close to the fuselage or you’ll go through the wing.”