Airfield Read online

  Grif, after a quick, disbelieving glance at me, repeats my apology.

  But by now the pilot's gaze has settled on my father.

  "Collin! Is that you? And..." She looks at me, and what seems like recognition sweeps her face. "Oh no, Collin. Is this your daughter I almost ran down?"

  Then she gets really angry. "What are you doing, letting her grow up without good sense?"

  Dad's face is rigid, his lips thin and tight. "Beatty," he says, "I want you to leave here now."

  Chapter 3

  I DON'T EVEN TRY the shortcut again but pedal furiously down Airfield Road and turn east onto the highway. How could things have gone so wrong so fast?

  Nobody even let me explain. Or let me ask any questions.

  Who is that woman? What business is it of hers how I'm raised? And how did she know who I am, anyway?

  I don't even have a name for her, except to think of her as Gold Lightning. Her and her airplane both.

  Dad was so angry he could hardly talk—far more than I deserved.

  "Dad," I told him, "I did something stupid, but I didn't get hurt. Nobody did."

  But he turned his back to me, rigid, with that tight control he shows when my mother is mentioned—and he never explains that, either.

  "What are you so mad at?" I insisted.

  But by then he was walking to his airplane, calling to the passengers, "Let's board."

  ***

  Before I know it, I'm almost to Joe's Texas Auto Parts, and the scene there jerks my thoughts back to the present.

  The old car is still in front, engine running and blown-out tire replaced, but the car's people are standing outside, arguing, it looks like.

  A man flings himself away from them. He grabs together a small bundle of things and commences walking up the road toward me. Bitter voiced, he's talking to himself as we pass: "...won't go on, that's their doing. But I ain't goin' back."

  The others, all except the boy I noticed before, get in the car. I reach them as a woman asks, "Moss, you comin' with us or goin' with your pa?"

  The boy, looking as if neither's much of a choice, answers, "I guess I'll try here a spell, Ma."

  His mother flinches, but all she says is, "Well, see folks know you're worth something. Tell 'em you're magic with machinery." Then, sagging into herself, she sets the car struggling back the way it came.

  The boy she called Moss turns my way. Sun-faded hair hangs on his forehead, and his body is that kind of bony, long-muscle, tight-skin lanky that comes of scrabbling-hard work. Hurt or anger makes his face harsh.

  He says—to himself or me, I can't tell which—"She knows there's nothin' for me home, and Pa didn't ask my company."

  I hardly know what to answer. He's got troubles a lot bigger than mine if I understand right—his family has just broken apart and he's suddenly on his own. "I'm sorry."

  The boy flushes. "It ain't your worry." Then he heads across the lot to where Joe is still sorting radiator caps.

  I ache for him, just imagining...

  "Hey, Moss! My name's Beatty," I yell, not stopping to think why I want him to know. "Beatrice Anne Donnough. You hear?"

  Back at the tourist court, I find Clo setting up her sewing machine. She's underneath it, doing something to the treadle. "There's Ovaltine waiting, angel," she tells me. "And cookies. Did you see your father? This thing's jammed..."

  Then, turning, she catches sight of my face. "Beatty? What's wrong?"

  "Everything," I tell her, explaining about the old car and its family, about Dad being so angry, about the woman pilot getting mad at Grif because the field wasn't clear.

  I describe her and add, "Clo, she knew me, or knew Dad, anyway."

  It's the kind of mystery we can usually talk about for hours, but now all Clo says is, "I've no idea who the woman is." My aunt seems distracted, and after a bit she walks down to the tourist court office. Through the window I see her at the telephone.

  A pang goes though me as I realize she must be calling Grif. Surely what I did wasn't enough to cause a problem for him?

  The fold-out sofa in the front room of our cabin has been made into a bed for me. It's night now, and I should be going to sleep, but instead I'm wide awake, thinking about the day.

  I did my apologizing to Grif over supper, until finally he said, "Beatty, stop worrying about what's done. I don't think anything will come of it, anyway." He turned to Clo and gave her this sappy, silly look. "Water under the bridge, right, honey?"

  Lovers' good humor, I guess. I laugh quietly myself now, remembering how nobody argued when I said I thought I'd go for a walk.

  Through a window and shade open to any breeze, I watch the flash of the Hi-Way Tourist Court sign. Headlight beams swing in and out of a malt-shop lot across the road, and kids call good night to each other.

  I hear a plane go overhead, probably the 10:35 mail flight that Grif had to go meet. It's a lonely sound, over the town but not part of it.

  Abruptly I remember that lonely boy, Moss. Is he hearing it, too?

  I hope Joe helped him somehow—told him, at least, someplace he could sleep.

  Moss is one of the first people Clo and I see when we go into town the next morning to get cleaner for my dress.

  We're walking down a block of nice old houses when I spot him pulling weeds from a rose bed.

  "Clo," I say, "look yonder ... I'm sure it's that boy I told you about, the one whose family left him."

  "He didn't waste time finding work."

  "Moss!" I call. "Moss!"

  His head whips around, but when he sees me he gives a half wave and returns to the weeding.

  I wonder if he was hoping it was his mother, or maybe a sister, come to ask him to change his mind.

  I start to call out again, but Clo puts a hand on my arm. "Beatty," she says, "the person he's working for might not want him visiting, and besides, you don't know him."

  ***

  Clo and I take our time finding the cleaning fluid. We poke into this store and that, Clo being almost as new to Muddy Springs as I am. In the dime store she picks out some yellow gingham to make curtains.

  "For a tourist cabin?" I ask.

  "I'm going to put in deep-enough hems that they ought to fit wherever we go." My aunt looks a little embarrassed, but proud, too. "I thought if we could always see our own curtains, it would help make all the motor courts we're living in feel like home. Since, as long as Grif's got this relief job, we won't really have a place of our own."

  "But don't you like moving around? Thinking there might be something exciting waiting at the next place?"

  Clo looks at me curiously. "Is there usually?"

  "No. But I like knowing there might be. Anyway, it's not as though I'm leaving family, the way that boy's doing by staying here..."

  I pause, seeing my aunt's smile lessen and hearing how my words must have sounded to her. "Of course," I amend, "you are family, especially you, and I'm always sorry to say good-bye. I just meant—"

  "I know what you meant, Beatty. And I guess since it's true, we better both be glad you like moving around."

  "But you don't?"

  "It's not what I'd pick." Then she laughs. "I'm not Beatty, happy to be footloose!"

  We find thread and a packet of rickrack on the notions counter, and Clo counts out change for her purchase. "So," she asks as we leave the store, "how was Waco this spring?"

  "Good. The day I started back to school someone put a WELCOME BEATTY sign on the trophy case, so it was the first thing I saw."

  "Cupcakes to go with it?"

  I shake my head, knowing Clo's reminding me of the sendoff my class in San Antonio gave me when I left there in January.

  I don't think my friends in either place have skipped giving me some kind of good-bye or hello once in all the time I've been making the midyear switch. Not any more than my teachers have missed reporting to each other exactly how far along I am in my textbooks.

  Of course, the routine will be broken this fal
l, since I won't be returning to San Antonio. Grandpa's dead, and with Clo married and moved away there's no one there for me to go to. The plan was for me to stay on a few extra months in Dallas with Fanny, enroll in North Dallas High, but now that she's trying to figure out what to do herself...

  As though Clo reads my mind, she says, "Beatty, we'll work out something."

  "I know. You guys"—I mean my aunts—"always do."

  By this time we're again passing the house where we saw Moss, but now the yard is empty except for a woman in a lawn swing. Before Clo can stop me, I go over.

  "Why, no," the woman tells me, "I don't know where the boy's gone. I gave him breakfast in return for cleaning out my garden, but that's all the chores I had."

  "Beatty," Clo tells me, "I know you mean well, but you can't make a strange boy your concern."

  Chapter 4

  BACK AT THE tourist court, Clo stands at the open door of the icebox and says, "For pity's sake, now Grif really did forget his lunch."

  "Maybe he'll come get it," I suggest, hopeful I won't have to make that hot bike ride again and realizing I will.

  I don't intend to stop at Joe's Texas Auto Parts, but Joe's out front when I ride up. He calls, "That airport still lost?"

  "No, sir," I answer, veering over. "I found it and guess I will again, if it's not moved." Then I ask if Moss has been by.

  "What for? I told him I hardly got work enough for me, and sure none extra." He looks at me sharply. "What's your interest?"

  "None, really. I just saw how his folks took off yesterday. It was sad."

  "He's a wandering boy now."

  A wandering boy. There's thousands on the roads, and Moss is just one more.

  "When you talked to him, did he say ... I mean, where was he even going to stay?"

  "No telling," Joe says, "though I did mention an old boxcar up by the bluff, dry anyway and empty, far as I know. That ain't saying he's gone to it."

  I'm about to leave when Joe tells me to wait while he fetches a few peaches. "Take these along. Just in case you find him."

  "I'm not looking—"

  "I said, 'in case.' Now get goin' 'fore your plane leaves without you."

  "But I'm not—" Then I see Joe's teasing again. "One day," I tell him. "One day I mil get a plane ride."

  Biking up Airfield Road—no more shortcuts for me—I study a low smudge of reddish brown in the not-too-far distance. That's got to be the bluff Joe meant, the only rise visible in all this flat land.

  A vehicle overtakes me, a little open roadster trailing dust clouds and noise. It brakes to a halt, and the driver waits for me to catch up. It's Gold Lightning, I realize after a moment. Somehow she looked better in her flying suit than she does in the sprigged cotton dress she's now wearing, an outfit that seems way too dainty for her.

  Though, to be fair, if I hadn't seen her yesterday I probably wouldn't think that.

  "You," she says, "Donnough's daughter. What do people call you?"

  "Beatty. For Beatrice."

  "You going out to the airport again?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, do something for me. Give this to Kenzie and let him know I've got a pupil coming in at five o'clock, so I'll need my plane ready by then."

  Hardly giving me a chance to take the leaflet she holds out, she makes a dirt-spitting three-point turn and starts off. Then, fifty feet away, she stops again. This time she backs up until she's even with me.

  "Beatty..."

  She seems uncertain about what she wants to say, and impatient, too. With herself for being indecisive, is my guess, considering how up to now about all I've heard from her are orders.

  "Beatty," she repeats, "what I said yesterday—I hope you are learning good sense..."

  It's such a strange thing to say, and so ill mannered that I'm tempted to snap off, No.

  But I can see from how her face flushes that she doesn't mean it rudely: She's just not as good asking a personal question, whatever her reason, as she was demanding to know what a fool was doing in her landing path.

  So I nod, intending to ask why she wants to know and how yesterday she put Dad and me together.

  Gold Lightning doesn't give me a chance. "Good," she says, driving off, leaving me to chew dust and think her interest really does seem odd.

  It's strange enough I'll ask my dad to explain the next time he comes through Muddy Springs. Assuming that by then he's calmed down.

  And I hope it won't just make him angry again.

  Grif's got three people to check in for the afternoon flight, an unanticipated crowd for Muddy Springs.

  I listen for a moment while Grif explains to a woman that, no, he is not being fresh by weighing her and her luggage. "Airline regulations require me to figure load allowances and balance. With full flights there's not a lot of leeway."

  Another passenger interrupts. "Ma'am, I've flown many times, and there's always some weigh-in. If our plane's to get in the air, there's just so many pounds—us and fuel and cargo—it can carry."

  "Young man," the woman says, "I understand that. But I assure you my suitcase is not more than the allowed thirty pounds, and as for my person..."

  I put Grif's lunch where he'll see it, wave the leaflet, and point toward the hangar.

  Kenzie has the Gold Lightning plane pulled in the shade just inside. He's working in the forward seat of its cockpit, and judging from the way he's talking to himself—just this side of outright swearing—I guess he's having a hard time with something. Suddenly his arm jerks back and a tangle of webbing sails my way. "Gol durn it!"

  Turning, he exclaims, "You! Beatty, isn't it?"

  "Yes."

  "Well, Beatty, pick that piece of junk up and toss it away. I don't want to see the thing again."

  "OK, but I've brought you something from the pilot."

  Ignoring the leaflet I reach up to him, Kenzie climbs down from the plane and gets the webbing himself. "Blockhead who designed this ought to be shot," he says. "No proper connections, doesn't fit, probably won't be no use, nohow."

  "Do you want this?" I ask, offering the paper again.

  "What? Put it on the workbench."

  Certainly, Mr. Kenzie. You're welcome, Mr. Kenzie.

  Reading as I carry it over, I see the leaflet is instructions for installing what sounds like that webbing he was swearing about. I briefly enjoy thinking, Well, Mr. Kenzie, you can just find that out for yourself.

  But I can't be quite that mean spirited. Almost despite myself, I say, "Kenzie, this paper might help with what you're fixing."

  An hour later I leave the airport, still uncertain just how Kenzie roped me into reading those instructions to him step by step. Or how I ended up wrist-deep in kerosene and grease again, sorting what he calls valves from valve springs and connecting rods and pistons.

  "What's this all for?" I asked,

  "Spare parts for overhauling engines, of course," he told me, with a look that dared me to ask what an engine is.

  And so instead I asked about Gold Lightning.

  "I don't know much but her name, Annie Boudreau," Kenzie answered. "Been giving flying lessons over in Fort Worth, and now she's decided to expand her business to Muddy Springs a couple of days a week. Even brought a car over."

  "She didn't sound like Fort Worth."

  "Yankee, I'd say. You keeping those parts straight?"

  "Yes, Kenzie," I answered, and kept at the work until it was done.

  And now I have to decide which way to go.

  I know I should return to town. Clo's expecting me.

  But there's the peaches in my bicycle basket....Just how far away is that bluff, anyway?

  Past the airport, the road runs straight north. I'm not good at judging distances, but I suppose I've gone a mile or so when the bluff suddenly ceases to be a distant smudge and becomes, instead, a reachable line of gullied rock. A ribbon of brush and scrub oak meandering along its base shows where there's a creek.

  As I get closer I see it's almost
dried up.

  So now where do I go?

  A sound like a door banging comes from somewhere fairly close. I search, at first not seeing anything in the heavy brush, then making out a line too straight to be natural.

  It turns out to be not a boxcar like Joe said but an old caboose, half falling apart, glass missing from its windows. How, I wonder, did it ever get out here?

  I'm about to call a greeting when noise in the undergrowth startles me. Whirling about, I spot an armadillo digging through dead leaves.

  "He won't hurt," Moss, suddenly next to me, says. And then his voice gets an edge. "What'd you come after?"

  "Moss, you gave me a worse start than that animal did."

  "I asked, what do you want?"

  "To give you these peaches. There's no call to be rude."

  "I ain't hungry."

  "Then feed them to the blasted armadillo." Annoyed at him for making me feel foolish, I toss the peaches on the ground. One hits something sharp and splits open.

  "Hey," Moss says, lunging after it, "you shouldn' throwed 'em." Then he yells, "Ouch!" and cradles his hand.

  "Cactus spine?" I ask.

  "I guess." He probes a thumb joint, grimacing. "It's splintered off."

  "Let me see."

  I turn his hand to get the light. It's all calluses layered over ground-in grease. "You got tweezers? Or anything sharp?"

  "My pocketknife's inside," he says.

  I start toward the caboose, but he tells me, "Never mind. I'll fix it later."

  "Not without gouging yourself, unless you're left-handed as well as right."

  I pull open the door. Opposite, light shines in a rectangle where another door used to be.

  The inside's a mess, all but one end, and I realize that Moss has started cleaning up from that side. It's been swept—the trash, anyway—and a makeshift seat's pulled up to a counter. One bunk along the wall looks straighter than the rest, too, so I guess that's where Moss slept.