Wings

4

Three days after the storm that eventually turned into a tornado, ten miles away in Blandinsville, Cassie got up and did her chores and when she left the house, she told her mother she was going to the library, and then to meet a friend from school who had married that spring, and was expecting a baby. And after that she'd stop by the airport. She had packed an apple and a sandwich in a paper bag, and she had taken a dollar from her savings and hidden it in her pocket. She wasn't sure how much the bus fare would be, but she wanted to be sure she had enough to get to Prairie City. She had promised to meet Nick there at noon, and as she walked toward the bus terminal downtown in the summer sun, she was sorry she hadn't worn a hat. But she knew that if she had, her mother would have suspected something. She never wore one.

As she walked along, she looked like a long, lanky girl, going off to meet friends. She looked her age, but was extraordinarily lovely. She was even prettier than her mother had been, she was taller and thinner, and she had an even more impressive figure. But her looks were something that Cassie never thought about. Looks were something for other girls, who had nothing else in their heads, or girls like her sisters who wanted to get married and have babies. She knew she wanted children one day, or at least she thought she did, but there were so many other things she wanted first, things she would probably never have, like excitement and freedom and flying. She loved reading stories about women pilots, and she read everything she could about Amelia Earhart and Jackie Cochran. She'd read Lindbergh's book We, about his Atlantic solo in 1927, and his wife's book North to the Orient the year before when it came out, and Earhart's book, The Fun of It. All the women involved in aviation were her heroes. She often wondered why they could do what she could only dream of. But maybe now with Nick helping her… just maybe… if she could just fly… if she could just take off as she had the other day with Chris, and soar lazily into the sky forever.

She was so lost in her own thoughts that she almost missed her bus, and she had to run to catch it before it left her. She was relieved to see that no one she knew had gotten on, and the forty-five-minute ride to Prairie City in the dilapidated bus was uneventful. It had only cost fifteen cents, and she spent the entire trip daydreaming about her lessons.

It was a long walk to the airstrip after the bus dropped her off, but Nick had told her exactly how to get there. He had somehow assumed that she would get a ride from someone. It had never dawned on him that she would walk the last two miles to meet him, and when she arrived she looked hot and damp and dusty. He was sitting quietly on a rock, drinking a soda, with the familiar Jenny parked at the end of the deserted airstrip. There was no one else around, just the two of them. It was a runway that was used occasionally for crop dusters, and had been put in originally in barnstorming days. It was only used occasionally, but it was in good repair. Nick had known it would be the perfect place for their lessons.

“You okay?” He looked at her with a fatherly air, as she pushed her bright red hair off her face, and held it off her neck. The sun was blazing. “You look hotter than hell. Here, have something to drink.” He handed her his Coke, and watched her admiringly as she took a long swallow. She had a long graceful neck, and the silky whiteness of her throat reminded him of the palest pink marble. She was a striking girl, and there were times lately when he almost wished she weren't Pat's daughter. But it wouldn't have done him any good anyway, he reminded himself. He was thirty-five and she was seventeen, she was hardly fair prey for a man his age. But there were moments when it could have been tempting. “What did you do, you goofball?” he asked, relieving the tension of the moment. It was odd being here, just the two of them, alone on their secret mission. “Did you walk all the way from Good Hope?”

“No,” she grinned back at him, quenched by his soda. “Just from Prairie City. It was farther than I thought. And hotter.”

“I'm sorry,” he said apologetically. He felt bad to have brought her so far, but it had seemed the perfect place for their rendezvous with her father's plane, for their secret lessons.

“Don't be,” she grinned, accepting another swig of his soda. “It's worth it.” He could see easily in her eyes how much it meant to her. She was crazed over planes, and totally in love with flying. It was exactly how he had been at her age, dragging from airport to airport to airport, happy to do anything, just to be near the planes and get a chance to fly now and then. The war had been like a dream come true for him, flying in the 94th, with men who had almost all become legends. But he was sorry for her, it wouldn't be that easy, particularly if Pat was determined to keep her from flying. Nick was hoping that one of these days he might sway him. And in the meantime, at least he could teach her the important things, so she didn't kill herself doing crazy tricks, or scud running with her brother. He still shuddered when he thought of her flying out of the clouds three days before, just barely above the ground and moving like a bullet. At least now she'd know what she was doing.

“Shall we give it a whirl?” he asked, waving at the Jenny. She was sitting there, waiting for them, an old friend, just as they were.

She was too excited to even speak to him as they walked down the airstrip to the familiar plane. She had gassed her a thousand times, cleaned her engine, lovingly washed her wings, and flown her half a dozen times with Chris pretending that he was taking his sister up for a joyride. But the Jenny had never looked as beautiful to Cassie as she did now. They did a walk around first, checked the landing gear to make sure he hadn't damaged it when he landed. She was a low plane with a broad wingspan and the feel of a larger plane, although she was a modest size, and she wasn't daunting to Cassie. And now Cassie gently stepped into her and buckled her seat belt. She knew that the skies would soon be hers, she had a right to them, just as they all did. And after that, no one could stop her.

“All set?” Nick shouted at her in the first noise of the engine. Cassie nodded with a grin, and he hopped in the seat behind her. At first, he would be flying the plane, and once they were safely in the air, he would turn over the controls to her. This time she wouldn't, have to wrest them from him, as she had from Chris. This time it would all be aboveboard, and as they taxied down the runway, Cassie turned to look at him. Nick's was such a familiar face to her, and yet as she saw him now, she felt happier than she had ever been, and she wanted to throw her arms around his neck and kiss him.

“What?” She had said something to him, and at first he couldn't hear her. He didn't think anything was wrong, she looked too happy for there to be a problem. But he leaned forward so he could hear her better. His dark hair was blowing in the wind, his eyes were the same color as the summer sky, and there were lines around his eyes from where he squinted into the sunlight.

“I said… thank you!…” She shouted back at him, her eyes so filled with joy that it touched his heart. He squeezed her shoulder gently, and she turned forward again, and put her hands on the controls. But there was no question this time as to who was flying the plane. Nick was.

He pushed the throttle forward evenly, and used the rudder pedals. And a moment later, they lifted smoothly off the runway and rose easily into the air, and as they did, Cassie felt her heart soar with the old Jenny. She felt the same thrill she always did when she left the ground. She was flying!

He started a gentle turn to move away from the small airstrip, and then rolled the wings to level off, and touched Cassie on the shoulder. She glanced over her shoulder at him, and he pointed at her, indicating to her to take the controls now. She nodded, and as though by instinct, Cassie took over. She knew what she needed to do, and they flew easily through the bright blue sky, as though she had been flying all her life. And in some ways she had. He was amazed at her skill, and her natural instincts. She had picked up a lot of his own and her father's tricks, just by watching them, and she seemed to have a style of her own, which was surprisingly smooth and easy. She seemed totally at ease at the controls of the small plane, and Nick decided to see how much she could do on their first lesson.

He had her do turns and banks in different directions, first moving left and then right; he was going to tell her to keep the nose up, to maintain altitude, but she seemed to know automatically that the plane would fall during turns, and she kept the nose up without his telling her anything. Her natural sense for the plane was uncanny. She kept back pressure on the stick with a steady hand, and the nose stayed up in response to her movements.

He had her do S turns then, using a small dirt road as a guide, and he noticed as she did them, that she controlled her altitude easily. She seldom seemed to look at the instruments yet she knew when she needed to compensate, or rise higher in the sky. She seemed to fly primarily by feel and sight, which was a sure sign of a natural pilot. It was rare to see one like her, and he knew he had seen damn few in his lifetime.

He had her fly circles for a while, around a silo they spotted on a distant farm, and she complained at how boring it was, but he had wanted to check her precision. She was careful and precise, and astonishingly accurate, particularly for someone who had scarcely flown. And then finally, he let her try a loop, and the double loop she had wanted to terrify her brother with. But after that, he taught her how to recover from a stall, which was far more important. But she seemed to know that by instinct too. Her total calm going into the stall impressed him, as the Jenny began to fall nose down with alternate wings dipping. But within seconds, she released the pressure on the stick that had created the stall in the first place and in a totally fearless move, she allowed the dive to increase their airspeed. He had explained how to do it at first, but she seemed to have no trouble at all figuring it out, and no lack of courage in following the procedure. Most young pilots were terrified at the drop and the sudden zero gravity. Cassie was awed by none of it, as the Jenny plummeted briefly, and when the jenny had gained just enough speed, she pushed the throttle, gave it power, and leveled out like a baby eagle, soaring gently back to where she wanted to be, without a murmur.

Nick had never been so impressed by anything he'd seen. And he made her do it again, to see if she could maintain the same cool hands and cool head, and quick reactions, or if it had just been beginner's luck. But the second stall and recovery were even smoother than the first, and she swooped him right back up again from a stall that even had him worried. She was good. She was very good. She was brilliant.

He had her do a few lazy eights then, an Immelmann, and their last lesson of the day was a spin recovery, which was not unlike the stall, but first she had to give it right rudder pedal to induce a spin to the right, and then left rudder pedal to recover. She did it perfectly, and Nick was grinning from ear to ear as he landed the plane, but so was Cassie. She had never had so much fun in her life, and her only complaint was that she had wanted to try barrel rolls and he wouldn't let her. He felt they had done enough for one day, and he'd told her they had to save something for next time. She wanted to learn a dead stick landing too, his specialty, which had earned him his nickname, but there was time for that too. There was time (or everything. She was a fantastic student.

He sat in the plane for a moment, looking at her, unable to believe how much she had picked up over the years, just by watching. All those times Pat had taken her up with him, or that Nick had flown her somewhere, every moment, every gesture, every procedure had been absorbed, and somehow, by watching them, she had learned how to do it. She really was what he had suspected she was all along, the ultimate natural. A pilot who was born to fly, it would have been a sacrilege to keep her from it.

“How was I?” She turned in her seat after they'd stopped, and he killed the engine.

“Terrible,” he grinned at her, still unable to believe what he'd seen. She had a natural sense of their altitude, an uncanny sense of direction, an instinct for guiding the plane almost as much with her mind as with her hands. She had known exactly what she was doing. “I don't think I could ever fly with you again,” he teased, but his face told her all she wanted to know, and she let out a whoop of joy on the silent airstrip. She had never been as happy in her entire life. And Nick was the best friend she had ever had. He had given her her life's dream, and this was only the beginning. “You're good, kid,” he said quietly, and handed her another Coke he had brought with him. She took a long swig, saluting him, and then handed it bade to her new instructor. “But don't let that go to your head. Those can be dangerous wonds. Never be overconfident, never over trust yourself, never assume you can do anything you want to. You can't. This bird is only a machine, and if your head gets too big, the ground will get too dose, and you'll wind up with a tree between your ears. Don't ever forget that.”

“Yes, sir.” But she was too happy to care about his warnings. She knew how careful she'd have to be, and she was prepared to be, but she also knew that she had been born to fly and now Nick knew it too, and maybe one day he'd convince her father. And in the meantime, she was going to learn every single thing she could and be the best pilot who had ever lived. Better than Jean Batten or Louise Thaden or any of the others. “When can we do this again?” she asked anxiously. All she wanted to do was go up again, and she didn't want to wait long to do it. Nick was paying for the fuel, and she didn't want it to cost him too much. But like an addict, she wanted more soon, and he knew it.

“You want to do this again tomorrow, right?” He grinned at her. He had been the same way when he was her age. In fact, he had been almost exactly her age when he floated all over the country, after the war, trying to get jobs at airports, and finally came to Illinois to fly for his old friend Pat O'Malley.

“I don't know, Cass.” Nick thought about it for a moment. “Maybe we could do this again in a couple of days. I don't want Pat to start wondering why I'm taking out the Jenny. I don't exactly fly her much.” And he definitely didn't want Fat to suspect them. He wanted her to get plenty of good solid lessons under her belt first, before they confronted him with her skill, of which there could be no question. She was a thousand times the pilot her brother was, a thousand times the pilot most people he had taught were. But they had to convince Fat of that, and they both knew that wasn't going to be easy.

“Couldn't you tell him you're giving someone lessons out here. He doesn't have to know it's me. Then you'd have an excuse to take her out whenever you want to.”

“And where's the money, miss? I wouldn't want your dad to think I'm cheating him.” They took a cut on each other's profits, when they used each other's planes, or sometimes if Nick took charters or taught on time he would have otherwise used flying for O'Malley.

Cassie looked crestfallen at this. “Maybe I could pay you… a little bit from my savings…” She started to look seriously worried and Nick touched the bright red hair and ruffled it.

“Don't worry. I'll get her out. We'll do plenty of this. I promise.” Cassie smiled gently up at him, and his heart did a little flip. It was all the payment he needed.

He helped her step from the plane, and noticed that there was a shady tree nearby. “Did you bring anything to eat?” She nodded, and they went to sit under it. She shared her sandwich with him, and he shared his Coca-Cola. He drank a lot of it, and unlike Pat, who liked a good whiskey now and then, Nick had never been much of a drinker. He spent too much time in the air to be able to afford to do much drinking. He was always getting hauled out of bed for an emergency somewhere, or a special mail flight, or a long distance cargo flight for anywhere from Mexico to Alaska. He couldn't have flown those runs if he'd been unexpectedly drunk or even hung over. And Pat was careful too. He never drank if he knew he'd be flying.

They talked about flying for a long time, and her family, and how much they had meant to him when he first came to Illinois. He said he had come out from New York just to work for her father.

“He was good to me during the war… I was such a kid… I was a damn fool too. I'm glad you'll never have to get into something like that, dueling it out at ten thousand feet with a bunch of crazy Germans. It was almost like a game, sometimes it was hard to remember it was real… it was so damn exciting.” His eyes shone as he talked about it. For many of them, it had been the perfect time, and everything afterward had paled in comparison. Sometimes she thought her father felt that way, and she suspected Nick did.

“It must make everything else seem awfully dull… flying the Jenny… or cargo runs to California in the Handley can't exactly be exciting.”

“No, it's not. But it's comfortable. It's where I need to be. I never feel as good on the ground, Cass, crazy as that sounds. That's my life up there.” He glanced up at the sky as he said it. “It's what I do well,” he sighed, and leaned back against the tree trunk where they were sitting, “the rest of it, I'm not so good at.”

“Like what?” She was curious about him; she had known him all her life, but he had always heated her as a child, and now that they were sharing the secret of her flying, for the first time, they seemed almost equals.

“I don't know. I'm not so great at marriage, people… friends… except other pilots and the guys I work with.”

“You've always been great to us.” She smiled innocently up at him, and he marveled at how young seventeen was.

“That's different. You're my family. But I don't know… sometimes it's hard to relate to people who don't fly, it's hard to understand them, harder for them to understand me… particularly women.” He grinned. It didn't bother him. It was the way his life was, and he was satisfied with it. There were ground people, those confined to earth, in their bodies and minds… and then there were the others.

“What about Bobby?” he asked her unexpectedly. He knew about her boyfriend. He had seen him often enough at the house when he stopped by there to see Pat, or came to dinner. “How would he feel about you flying like you do? You're good, Cass. If you learn right, you could really do it.” But do what? That was the problem. What could a woman do, except maybe set records? “What would he say?” Nick persisted.

“What everyone else says. That I'm nuts.” Cassic laughed at him. “But I'm not married to him, you know. He's just a friend.”

“He won't be ‘just a friend’ forever. Sooner or later, he'll want to be a lot more, or at least that's what your father thinks.” It was what everyone thought and she knew it.

“Is that so?” She sounded cool suddenly and Nick laughed at how prim she was.

“Don't go getting all icy at me over it. You know what I'm saying. It's going to be odd if you want to be another Earhart. You're going to have to live with it. That's not always easy.” He knew that only too well. He knew a lot of things he suddenly wanted to share with her. The new dimension of their friendship both excited and frightened him. He couldn't imagine where it might lead them.

“Why is it such a big deal?” she said plaintively, thinking of Nick's questions about Bobby. It didn't make any sense to her. What was so wrong about flying?

“I guess it's a big deal because it's different,” Nick explained. “Men are made to walk around on the ground. If you want to fly around like a bird all the time, maybe they figure you should have feathers, or maybe they just figure you're weird. What do I know?” He smiled easily at her, and stretched his long legs out ahead of him. It was fun talking to her, she was so bright and young and alive, so excited about the life she had before her. He envied her that. Her life was filled with challenges to be met and fresh beginnings. Even at thirty-five, a lot of the excitement in his life seemed to be behind him.

“I think people are stupid about flying. They're just planes, and we're just people,” she said simply.

“No, we're not,” he said matter-of-factly. “We're superheroes in their heads because we do something they can't do, and that most of them are afraid of. We're like lion tamers, or high-wire dancers… it's all very mysterious and very exciting, isn't it?” He made her think about it for a minute and she nodded, and handed his Coke back to him again. He took a swig and lit a cigarette, but he didn't offer her one. She might be learning to fly, but she wasn't that grown-up yet.

“I guess it is kind of exciting and mysterious,” she conceded as she watched him smoke. “Maybe that's why I love it. But it feels so good too… it's so free… so alive… so…” She couldn't find the right words and he smiled. He knew just exactly what she meant. He still felt that way too. Every time his plane lifted off the ground, whichever one he was flying at the time, he always felt the same wild thrill of freedom. It made everything else seem bland and uninteresting. It had affected his whole life, what he did, who he saw, what he wanted to do. It had affected all his relationships, and one day it would affect hers too. He felt he should warn her somehow, but he wasn't sure what to say. She was so young and so filled with hope, it seemed almost wrong to warn her.

“It'll change your life, Cass.” was all he could bring himself to say. “Be careful of that.”

She nodded, thinking she understood what he had said, but she didn't. “I know”- and then she looked up at him, with eyes so wise it almost scared him-” but that's what I want. That's why I'm here. I can't live on the ground… like the others.” She was one of them, she was telling him, and he knew it was true. It was why he had agreed to teach her.

They spent a long time talking that day, and he hated to leave her there all alone, to walk two miles back down the country road to where she'd catch the bus to home, but he had no choice. He watched her go, with a long wave, and a moment later he took off, and did a slow roll for her, to signal his leaving. She watched him fly for a long time, still unable to believe what he had done for her. He had changed her whole life in a single afternoon, and they both knew it. It was a brave undertaking for both of them, but one which neither of them could resist, for different reasons.

The long hot walk back to the bus seemed like dancing to her; all she could think about were the feats she had done, and the feel of the plane… and the look in Nick's eyes afterward. He was proud of her. And she had never felt better in her life.

She boarded the bus with a huge grin for the bus driver, and almost forgot to pay her fifteen cents. And when she got home, it was too late to go to the airport. She went home to help her mother instead, and suddenly even helping her didn't seem so terrible. She had fed her soul, and whatever price she had to pay seemed worth it.

She was quiet at dinner that night, but no one seemed to notice it. Everyone had something to say; Chris was excited about his job at the newspaper, her father had landed a new mail contract with the government, and Colleen's baby had finally come the night before, and her mother wanted to tell them all about it. Only Cassie was unusually quiet and she had the biggest news of all, but couldn't share it.

Bobby came by after dinner, as usual, and they talked for a while, but Cassie didn't seem to have much to say to him. She was lost in her own thoughts, and the only thing she really said to him was that she could hardly wait till the air show. It would be just after the Fourth of July that year, and Bobby had never been, but he thought this time he might come, and Cassie could explain all the planes to him. But to her, the prospect of going with a novice and explaining it all didn't seem very exciting. She would much rather have gone with Nick, and listened to him. But it never dawned on her then that the changes had already begun. That afternoon, she had set sail on a long, long, interesting but lonely voyage.