The Flying Circus (5 page)

Henry hopped to, figuring the fuselage must be what a pilot called the body of the plane. “Fasten that belt around your lap,” Gil called as he put his hand on the propeller.

At first Henry couldn’t find a belt; then he located the two halves on the floor on each side of his seat. His stomach got a little queasy
as he fastened it. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined he’d be sitting where he was right now.

Gil gave the propeller a hard pull. The engine caught in a deafening roar. The wind from the blades sucked Henry’s breath away and tried to rip the hair from his scalp.

The plane inched forward. He located the magneto switch in his cockpit, in case he had to cut the engine before the plane ran over Gil.

But Gil was as fast as he claimed. By the time Henry spun around to look for him, he was already stepping into the rear cockpit. He sat down, pulled on his goggles, and gave Henry a salute.

That tiny gesture made him realize how much he missed being a part of something outside himself. It was almost as great a gift as his first flight.

Gil throttled the engine and swung the nose toward the expanse of pasture. Before Henry could blink, they were bouncing along, gaining speed. The nose of the plane was so high that Henry couldn’t see where they were going. Gil was even lower behind him.

“How can you see?” Henry shouted, but his words were torn away and tossed into the air.

The plane crabbed a little sideways, giving him a glimpse of what was in front of them, and then straightened out.

The vibration set Henry’s teeth to clattering against one another. His eyeballs shook. He slid lower in the seat and braced his arms and legs against the inside of the cockpit.

The noise! The wind! The jouncing!

Suddenly the bumping stopped. The noise of the wheels on the ground silenced. The vibrations changed, and Henry’s stomach slid to the tail of the airplane. For a moment he was so dizzy, he thought he was getting ready to have a fit of some sort.

He inched his eyes up over the leather-wrapped edge of the cockpit, careful not to lean too far to the side, just in case it might throw the plane off-balance.

Oh my God in heaven!
The ground was falling away. Trees had shrunk to the size of bushes. Cows were team oxen for toy soldiers.

He was flying.
Flying!

He sat up straighter. Now that he was looking at something outside the plane, the dizziness left him. The wires between the wings began to sing in the wind, adding to the magic of the music of the machine.

Impossible!

The wind buffeted him, making it hard to breath and his eyes water, but if he kept low, it wasn’t so bad.

The road was an endless arrow shooting to the horizon, the creek a winding ribbon tucked in rounded mounds of trees. Fields were patchwork squares and rectangles in shades of green and brown.

Gil tilted the plane to the side and Henry grabbed hold, fearing he’d tip out. What must it be like to go upside down? The plane circled and lost a little altitude. They cleared the lightning rods on the Fesslers’ barn by only thirty feet, the rooftop of the farmhouse by slightly more.

Amazing! He was a hawk. An eagle.

In leaving the ground, he left all of the craziness behind. Nothing could touch him, no hatred, no rumors, no law. If only it were possible to just keep flying, on and on until the land turned into ocean and back to land again. If only he could go far enough to be certain what was left behind him never caught up.

But they didn’t fly on. Gil circled the farmhouse again. Saying thank-you and good-bye? Or taunting Cora?

Just then she shot out the back door, her hair flowing and the hem of her robe flapping behind her. She waved her hands in the air.

Gil waggled the wings and veered away from the Fesslers’ farm.

Henry’s last look down at Cora made him a little sick.

She was jumping up and down, shouting, shaking her fists. Henry didn’t need to hear her to know what she was saying.

3

H
enry had never had the audacity to imagine he would someday fly in an airplane. Such things were for heroes and adventurers, not orphans of poor immigrants. But last night in the hayloft, his heart had lifted and soared above the earth on slippery currents of air.

Reality turned out to be nothing like his imaginings.

In his mind, flying was smooth and graceful, like sliding on ice or bobbing gently on a river current. Birds sure made it look that way. But the air turned out to be unpredictable, as bumpy as the roads below in places, just trembling roughness in others. He quickly got used to the isolating noise of wind and machine and the steady vibration of the engine, which numbed his butt in short order. The jostling and jerking soon ceased to spur fear that the plane was disintegrating around him—it was nothing but stitched fabric and wood strapped behind a ninety-horsepower engine, after all.

Even after he settled and began to understand the normal ways of the plane, his stomach still lurched when the plane fell straight out from under him. Henry knew engines well enough to know one irrefutable fact: they were unreliable. The first time his seat dropped from beneath his butt, he figured he was good as dead. The spike of desire to live had surprised him, especially after the number of times over the past two days self-pity had made him half wish he could disappear from this earth.

After a handful of intermittent sudden drops, he realized the engine had nothing at all to do with it. It was air, all air. Once that became
clear, he immersed himself in appreciating this incredible gift Gil had given him. He would never again take his first flight . . . or likely any flight at all.

From up here with this larger-than-life view he felt detached from the earth and all of its creatures. Henry began to understand the change he’d noticed come over Gil when he’d looked over his shoulder at the man. The tightly wound tension that was ever present when he was earthbound had vanished; without the tightness around his mouth and the furrowed forehead, he could have passed for an entirely different person—a younger person. Henry wondered if the man Gil had been before the war was the one in the air, or the one on the ground.

Henry counted every mile west as a mile banked toward safety. If only they would cross a mountain range or vast canyon, some substantial landmark to stand between him and his past. But he had to satisfy himself with counting land parcels and dots of towns as evidence he was indeed putting distance between himself and those who hunted him.

Everything looked the same in all directions: planted fields in corrugated stripes of green and brown; woods like rough, rumpled green blankets; rivers and creeks green-brown yarn batted around by a cat. Even the grids of towns all looked pretty much alike—and they all looked too small from up here to actually hold people and stores and automobiles. It made him feel insignificant, a nearly invisible speck in the vast world that spread beneath him. It made him believe Henry Schuler
could
disappear forever, replaced by Henry Jefferson, a man untainted by a past. His irrelevance would be his protection.

He would start a new life. His third in eighteen years. It hadn’t been of his choosing, but he now had the opportunity to reinvent himself. And he would. He would leave the Schuler name and its shadow of disaster behind him once and for all.

He reached his fist out of the cockpit and into the buffeting air. He opened his fingers one by one, releasing his disaster-shadowed name on the wind. When he brought his unclenched hand back in, he was, and would always be, Henry Jefferson.

A smoking curl of shame rose inside his chest.

Oh, Pa, I am not the man you and Peter were. I am weak. I am afraid. I am lost.

Please forgive me.

H
enry’s pa had died one month to the day after Armistice—and not of the influenza like everybody else in 1918. Poverty and grief had slowly rolled him into his grave. With the rest of his family already collected by disaster, Henry alone sat vigil beside his pa’s pine box. He turned the oil lamp low, to conserve the last of the fuel. In the long, cold night hours, frost bloomed on the inside of the window glass as Henry thought about what he’d do next.

The Schulers didn’t have friends, not after the war broke out, and few before. People had never understood Pa’s quiet, stern ways. Ma had been sociable enough. Lucky for her she was dead before the war started; it’d have broken her heart to suffer the scorn of the ladies she’d sewed quilts with and helped tend their sick children. Henry’s parents’ people were still in Germany, if they were still alive. Ma had had a brother, an aunt, and two cousins that Henry knew of. Pa never talked about the life he’d left behind. There hadn’t been any letters from overseas—even before the war.

Pa had been convinced that once Peter went to war, everyone would finally understand that the Schulers were as American as any other family in Indiana. If only Pa hadn’t put so much faith into that sacrifice, Henry would still have someone.

He would not go to the County Home. He would be spurned for his German-ness even among the outcasts and throwaways that lived there. He decided he would run away.

He only had the little bit of money left in the coffee can. Most likely he’d have starved on the road. But Anders Dahlgren came with his offer of a new home, a new family. He arrived as Henry stood in the cemetery next to the four crooked crosses that were all that was left of his family. Peter wasn’t even buried beneath his. Henry had just planted
the one he’d made from fence pickets on his pa’s grave; a cross he’d carved with carefully chosen words:
GEORG SCHULER, DEAD AMERICAN
.

It had been snowing when Anders Dahlgren turned his wagon into the lane of his large farm. When Henry set sight on the big, two-story house with smoke curling from its chimneys, he’d been stunned by his good fortune. Hunger, cold, and loneliness—in truth, he’d felt alone since the day Peter had left for the Marines—would soon be distant memories. A man with a passel of daughters, Mr. Dahlgren had told Henry he wanted a boy to help him with the farm—a
son
he’d said. Henry hadn’t been sure how he felt about becoming another man’s son.

To meet the family, Henry put on a face that made people like him, that of a nice, fun-loving boy. He knew what that face felt like because he’d worn it before the war.

The daughters stood behind their mother, blond stair steps, with big bows in their hair and polished shoes. Mrs. Dahlgren was dressed fancier than Henry had ever seen a farmer’s wife—even for church. The instant she set eyes on Henry, her welcoming smile disappeared.

“Girls! Get back!” Her lack of accent told Henry she hadn’t come from Sweden alongside her husband. “To your rooms!”

The eldest girl picked up the youngest and they all disappeared like yellow leaves on the wind.

Mrs. Dahlgren snatched up a nearby broom. “Anders! Get that urchin out of here!” She took a couple of pokes in Henry’s direction, making him step back into the doorway. “No one is allowed inside this house that doesn’t live here. The epidemic! How can you risk our daughters?” She jabbed the broom Henry’s way, backing him down the first step.

She had reason to worry, he reckoned. Two kids at his school had died from the influenza before the health board had closed all the schools and churches. Maybe more had died since.

Mr. Dahlgren put a hand on the broom handle. “He is well. No fever. And
he
lives here now.”

“What are you talking about?” She pulled the broom free from his grasp and raised it again, her squinty eyes hard on Henry.

“I told you I was looking for a boy.”

“You said that
months ago—
”

“
Ja
. And here he is. He is orphaned.” Mr. Dahlgren reached back and put a hand on the top of Henry’s head. “And smart. He will stay.”

“You don’t know what filthy diseases that boy is carrying! Get rid of him, then wash up and change your clothes in the barn.” The broom jabbed again. “I will not have my daughters living under the same roof with some ragamuffin orphan.” She had them backed up far enough to slam the door.

For a moment, they stood on the steps staring at the closed door with the snow falling quietly around them. Then Mr. Dahlgren turned and put his arm around Henry’s shoulders. “Do not worry about her,” he said as they headed toward the barn. “The disease will pass. She will come around.”

“I don’t think so, sir.” The disease might pass, but Mrs. Dahlgren’s opinion of him would not. He’d seen it before. Only he’d never thought being poor and an orphan could provoke as much hate as being German—Mrs. Dahlgren hadn’t even learned that part about him yet.

Mr. Dahlgren set Henry up in a small bunk room tucked into the back corner of the barn. He lit the coal stove before he returned to the house and brought out supper, both his and Henry’s.

“Aren’t you eating with your family?” Henry asked.

“Too many high voices.” Mr. Dahlgren tucked a napkin in his collar. “And you are now family.” He’d nodded. “Eat.”

That meal was the best Henry had eaten since his ma passed, with a big serving of meat—good meat, not the kind that was tough like leather or so stringy it gagged you when you tried to swallow it. He was warm and his belly was full for the first time in a long time. But after Mrs. Dahlgren’s reaction to his arrival, he knew he couldn’t stay.

Mr. Dahlgren left Henry with a good night. As soon as the man had gone, Henry looked around for something to write a note, but didn’t find anything.
Thank you for trying,
that’s what his note would have said. Instead, he took his harmonica out of his canvas bag and left it on the pillow, a fair trade for a good meal he figured. He didn’t
reckon it was enough to cover the trouble with Mr. Dahlgren’s wife, but it was the best he could do.

He waited a bit to get good and warm and let everyone in the house go to bed, then he put on his jacket with the too-short sleeves, snuffed the oil lamp, and left the barn.

When he stepped outside, the cold slapped his face like an angry hand. The sky had cleared and hardened like flint, making the snow look blue under the white sliver of moon. He’d always liked the quiet of a country night wrapped in snow and wondered if it would soften the sounds of the city, too. He had to get to Chicago, where he wouldn’t stand out, where he could live on the streets and make up a story about where he lived and no one would know any different. City children worked in factories, just as they worked on farms in the country. But Henry could probably get a man’s job with a man’s pay, he was big for thirteen.

The frigid snow squeaked under his shoes. As he passed the house, he stopped and sniffed. Matches and tobacco.

“You made me a promise, young Henry.” Mr. Dahlgren’s quiet voice came from the porch, deep in the shadowy corner of the ell of the house.

The man stepped to the edge where Henry could see him. Smoke curled pale gray from the bowl of his pipe in the thin moonlight.

“Yes, sir. I did. But that was before . . . Well, I just figured it’d be easier for both of us if I moved on.”

“I did not ask for easier. I asked for you to give me time.”

“But Mrs. Dahlgren—”

“Bah!” He waved a hand to swat Henry’s words away. “She is an excitable woman. She will get used to you.” Mr. Dahlgren shrugged, and Henry realized the man was coatless in the cold. “She got used to me.”

That seemed an odd thing to say about your wife, but Henry didn’t understand much about married folks, so he didn’t question. “I don’t want to make trouble for you.”

“I am not a young man, Henry. And I have waited a long time for you. I do not mind a little trouble, as long as it stays inside the house.
I know the barn is not what I promised, but if you can stand it for a while—”

“Oh, no, sir! It isn’t the barn. That room’s better’n our house.”

“Then you will stay.” Mr. Dahlgren turned around and disappeared back into the house and closed the door quietly behind him.

The smell of his pipe hung in the air as Henry stood thinking. His pa had always said a man’s work was his worth and his word his most valuable possession. Mr. Dahlgren seemed like a man who thought the same. And on that wagon ride, Henry
had
given his word to try.

He’d turned around and traced his steps back through the snow, to the little room in the barn.

It hadn’t taken long to understand he would never have the family Mr. Dahlgren had promised. But it hadn’t mattered. In fact, it eased his mind some, not having to figure out if accepting a new family made him disloyal to his dead one. He’d been happy to live in his little room in the barn. He’d been warm and dry and had committed himself to being as invisible as possible to the females and useful to Mr. Dahlgren.

All in all, Henry had figured mistreatment from the womenfolk was little enough to pay for his new hunger-free life. He’d modeled himself after his pa. He hadn’t argued with rumor and opinion. He’d never retaliated for slights and slurs. He’d not disrespected Mr. Dahlgren by complaining or discrediting his family in public. As his pa used to say, “Words are only words. A man’s deeds show what he is.”

As it turned out, Henry’s deeds had been confined to the farm, hidden from the sight of those whose opinion of him had been formed by the belittling tongues of the Dahlgren women.

He’d been mistaken to accept the opinion others had cultivated of him. Words might only be words, but they could be as powerful as bullets.

As things were now, Henry bet Mr. Dahlgren wished with all of his heart that he’d never stopped Henry from leaving that night.

Even if it had meant he’d have starved to death, Henry wished it, too.

H
enry’s worry that he’d leave a brown streak in his pants when Gil stunted over Noblesville to draw a crowd proved unnecessary. When the courthouse clock tower came into view, Gil started losing altitude. The sun reflected off the rails of the train track that led into town.

How could Gil tell where he could land from up here? Everything looked the same. But Gil must have seen something Henry didn’t because he circled around and lost more altitude.