Airfield Page 4

  Kenzie raises his voice to reach Moss. "Well? You gettin' in?"

  The plane is a small, single-engine aircraft, all streamlined and fast looking with high, cantilevered wings. Only now it's resting empty in a cotton field, seeming about as forlorn as the three passengers sitting on suitcases under the shade of one of those wings.

  Squawks and yowls and an intermittent "Hello, hello" come from crates piled under the other wing. Nearby, a man is poking among spindly plants and calling, "Millie? Here, Mill. Here, girl."

  "Uh-oh," Kenzie says. "You kids can help."

  I check the crates first, saying, "Hello, hello," to a parrot in one of them. Stenciled on the crate's side is COLONEL BO MARSHALL AND HIS ACTING ANIMALS, STARS OF THE SILVER SCREEN.

  Movie stars!

  "Hello, hello," says that particular star.

  Millie turns out to be a trained dog that took off after a jackrabbit. "When I get that durn mutt back, I just may turn her into rabbit stew herself," Colonel Marshall says. "She's not so big a star I won't do it."

  Kenzie begins fueling the plane, and the pilot, reload-ing animal crates, tells the passengers they'll be leaving in a jiffy.

  A moment later, though, as gasoline splashes the dry ground, Kenzie says, "You better rethink that jiffy. With fuel leaking somehow, this plane's ain't going noplace today."

  The passengers murmur in protest, and Colonel Marshall says, "But at least my birds and that dog must be on the set tomorrow. In Hollywood."

  "Now, folks," says the pilot, "we'll get you all where you're going as fast as possible. And you'll get a night in Muddy Springs on the airline. Dinner included."

  "And how will we get to Muddy Springs?" someone asks.

  They ride in and on Kenzie's truck. The two women crowd in the front seat, and the pilot perches on the running boards. The other men sit in the back, keeping tight hold on the animal crates Moss has helped rope down.

  "What about Moss and me?" I ask Kenzie.

  "You see room?" He hands us a couple of water bottles before getting behind the steering wheel. "You two wait here. Beatty, your uncle or me'll be back soon as we can."

  "And keep an eye out for my dog," Colonel Marshall adds. He turns to the pilot. "If that animal is not in the studio on time, I will expect your airline to pay for a replacement."

  Chapter 7

  YOU'D THINK WE'D see her," I tell Moss as we walk parallel rows of cotton searching for Millie. "These plants are hardly big enough to hide behind. And why's she hiding?"

  "You want me to read a dog's mind?" Moss asks. "I once had a hound what wouldn't do nothing all day but watch water drip out a cistern."

  My stomach's really making noise now. "Let's check in the airplane for some food," I suggest. "The passengers get box lunches—maybe someone didn't eat."

  Moss looks like he can't believe I didn't mention food earlier, if I knew it was a possibility.

  The plane's door is standing open above a hanging step, and Moss hurries to climb inside, grabbing one edge of the doorway and yelling how hot the sun's made it. Then he puts out a hand to haul me up.

  "Thanks," I gasp, as scorching air whams against my chest. "This place is an oven."

  Moss wastes no time. When he doesn't find any uneaten lunches, he goes though a bag of trash, pulling out empty cardboard boxes and used napkins. "Here's a sandwich still wrapped," he says.

  The plane's not very big—just two seats on the door side and three opposite. I look in the pocket behind each, hoping maybe Moss has overlooked something better than throwaways. And in the pocket behind one seat, I do find one of those traveler's packets that passengers are given. It's got a strip map of the route, cotton for ears, a little ammonia inhalant for airsickness, and chewing gum.

  "I found gum," I call.

  Toward the front I come across a full vacuum bottle. "And lemonade."

  Then I peer into the cockpit and up through an open hatch that lets hot air out but also lets the sun pour in.

  Just then I hear a sound ... at least I think I do ... like a soft whine....

  "Moss!" I shout. "I found Millie."

  She's wedged between the cockpit seat and the floor pedals, a small black-and-white Border collie that right now appears half-dead.

  "Hey," I reassure her, putting a hand on her side. "You're going to be OK."

  But she's breathing in shallow pants, and her body and nose feel way too warm.

  "Come on," Moss says. "We best get her outside."

  Millie is heavier than she looks, thirty-five or forty pounds of limp weight, but between the two of us we get her off the plane. Moss offers her some warm water from one of the bottles Kenzie left us, but she doesn't even try to drink.

  Then I think of the lemonade, which might be cooler. I get Moss to pour a little into my cupped hands. "Come on, Millie," I say. "Poor pup ... Moss, why do you think she went back inside?"

  Moss shakes his head. "No tellin', but I think we ought to eat." He takes out part of the sandwich, holding it so I can take a couple of bites, and then he has some himself.

  For a long moment Millie lies where we've put her, stretched out in the shade of the plane. Then, with a huge effort, she raises her head enough to lap down the lemonade.

  "Good girl," I tell her. "Good girl. Moss, maybe she wants more."

  While I try to get her to drink, Moss wets down his shirt and lays it over her and works on keeping the pads of her feet moist and cool.

  It must take Millie the better part of a half hour to get the rest of the lemonade down, but she finishes it standing up, and by then her body's not so over-hot. I'm saying "Good girl" again when she snatches what's left of the sandwich from Moss's pocket and skitters out of reach.

  "Hey!" Moss shouts, but he doesn't come even close to catching her. She runs, halts long enough to rip into the wrapping, and then runs some more.

  "Millie," Moss calls. "Stop. Stay. Bring that back. Beatty, help catch her."

  But I'm laughing too hard to do anything but watch as Millie gobbles it.

  Moss sinks down next to me. "I was counting on that!"

  "You were!" I tell him. "Me, too!"

  Millie cocks her head like she's trying to understand. And then she very carefully picks up a shred of waxed paper and brings it to me. She goes back and gets another and then another, until every bit of it is in a neat pile in my lap.

  Dropping into a crouch, her amber eyes intent on my face, she thumps her tail.

  "What do you want me to say, Millie?" I ask her. "You just stole our only food!"

  Thump. Thump.

  "All right. So you cleaned up, too. OK. Good girl. Now are you happy? Good girl!"

  Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.

  "Millie don't sound like much of a movie star's name," Moss says.

  "Maybe it's short for something like Mademoiselle Millicent," I answer.

  It's early evening, a little cooler now that the sun's going down. We're perched on one of the plane's plywood wings, our legs dangling over the edge. Millie, who insisted on being hauled up through the cockpit hatch with us, is lying with her head on my knee and her tail thumping against Moss.

  "That looks like the airfield," I say as, way in the distance, lights come on one after another. "I guess somebody will be coming for us soon. Or they better be, since Clo's probably long back at the tourist court. I hope Grif got a message to her."

  "I was wondering about that," Moss says. "Why that's where you all are living."

  I explain how Grif's job is to move from one airfield to another on vacation relief.

  "So you all will be goin' soon?" Moss asks, and I'm pleased that he sounds disappointed.

  "It may be Grif will work here all summer, anyway."

  "And you'll stay?"

  "I guess."

  And then I go on to tell him why I'm here in Muddy Springs at all: how I live with Clo and my dad's two older sisters turnabout, and would be in Dallas now except for a damaging windstorm. "Aunt Fanny says there's
no telling when she'll move back home or reopen the lunchroom she runs on the porch. And my other aunt can't have me just now."

  I'm searching for a way to ask Moss about his own family when he says, "I guess you saw my folks don't have much. The bank took our place."

  "But I thought your mother was returning home."

  "Movin' in with relations."

  "And you didn't want to go with her?"

  "Nah, I'd hate movin' around, askin' this 'un and that to take us in. I'd rather be settled in a place of my own, even a railroad car." Moss halts, realizing, I suppose, I must think he's criticizing how I live.

  "That's OK," I tell him. "I guess people just want what they're used to. And I like moving around, not feeling too committed."

  Said like that, our differences seem huge, and for a few moments we don't talk more but just listen to the land around us. It's full of sound, crickets and night birds, slitherings and brushings and twigs snapping.

  Then Moss says, "I asked Ma to write me at the post office here and say how it goes."

  "Do you think she will? I mean, would she be honest whether things are good or bad?"

  When Moss doesn't answer right away I say, "I'm sorry. I had no right to ask."

  "It's OK. Yeah, Ma would tell me."

  There's something in the tone of Moss's voice that makes me turn to see his expression. I wonder if my question's just reminded him how bad off he and his folks are. The dusk doesn't let me see well enough to know, though, and the odd note is gone when Moss asks, "How about your people, Beatty? Ain't they honest with you?"

  "Yes," I say. "That is, as far as I know. Except I'm finding they leave things out. Moss..."

  And suddenly I'm telling him all I learned today, what Kenzie said about my mother being a pilot, and how it seems so unbelievable that no one ever told me.

  "Do you remember her at all?" Moss asks.

  "No. I just know what I've been told, that when Dad showed up at my grandparents' with me and my mother, she was so sick with pneumonia she couldn't talk. She died right after, and then Grandmother died—maybe got sick from my mother, though I don't know that. It was late in the fall after my first birthday."

  "And that's when you started moving around?"

  "Pretty much. Clo was a kid still, and she and I were sent to her and Dad's big sisters, who were already grown and married. Once Clo was old enough to watch me, we started spending summers with my grandfather. And then she started staying on with him for the school year and it was just me going to my other aunts' for the winter."

  "Complicated," Moss says.

  "It worked."

  We fall silent again as I think about those early years, how I first was scared of all that moving and then got glad for it. Like I told Clo, I enjoy knowing something exciting may be waiting out front. And behind ... well, behind is for entanglements, where you leave problems when you move on.

  Moss breaks into my thoughts, asking, "Beatty, was your ma with the airline, too?"

  "I don't think so, Moss. I don't think there were airlines back then. But she was good. Kenzie said she was such a good pilot that she'd try to climb to the sun."

  "A teacher showed me a picture of that once."

  "A picture of my mother?"

  "No." Moss laughs. "Of this winged person flying near the sun. I disremember his name..."

  Icarus. I know the story. He flew too close to the sun and his wings melted.

  Just then a car's headlights come in sight. "Looks like Grif's the one who's had to rescue us, on top of doing everything else," I tell Moss.

  And that's when I get my idea.

  "Moss, maybe you can work at the airport! Grif's got way too much to do. Ask him if you can't help with stuff like mopping up and carrying bags. Just for food, I mean, until you can get a paying job."

  Moss takes a moment before answering, "I'll think on it."

  Chapter 8

  SOON WE'RE IN my uncle's car, bouncing over the field toward the road. He's come full of apologies for being so long—"one thing after another"—and, thank goodness, brings us a box of crackers. I take a good stack and hand the rest back to Moss, who's in the rear seat with Millie. I figure the two of them can work out for themselves who gets how much.

  "I guess Colonel Bo Marshall will be happy to get his dog back," I tell my uncle.

  "Not him," Grif answers. "He caught the evening train, said he was done trusting airplanes. And he said if Millie showed up, we should feed her to the coyotes."

  "You wouldn't—"

  "No. But I can't say I have any idea what we can do with her. You've seen the tourist court rules. 'No pets allowed.'"

  "But we can't just leave her on her own."

  It's Moss, of course, who ends up with her, pending his finding a way to keep her fed. We stop near the bluff where the caboose is, and Moss gets out, telling Millie, "Come on, girl."

  She stays put, looking uncertainly from him to me until I give her a little push and add, "Go on, Mill. Moss'll take good care of you."

  She jumps down then and goes with Moss. He starts off, calling back, "Good night, now. Thank you for the ride. Beatty, I'll think on your idea."

  Grif and I don't leave the airport until after the night mail plane's come and gone, and by the time we get back to the tourist court Clo's asleep. She's left an "I love you two" note on the table, along with sliced meat loaf and rice pudding.

  "I'm too weary to eat," Grif says, heading for the bedroom. And a little while later, when I tiptoe through on my way to wash up, he's already snoring.

  Clo, though, whispers, "Good night, Beatty."

  "Good night." Then I turn her way. "Clo? Are you awake enough we can talk?"

  "Oh, angel," Clo says, sounding as if she'd rather sleep. Nevertheless, she slips into a robe and whispers, "Let's go in the other room."

  "Some hot milk tea?" she asks, mixing half water and half milk in a saucepan. She holds a lit match to one of the stove burners and opens the gas jet. "Beatty, is this just girl talk or do you have something particular on your mind?"

  "My mother," I answer. "Why didn't anybody tell me she used to fly?"

  Clo looks surprised. "Did she?"

  "That's what Kenzie says. Don't I have a right to know about her?"

  "Of course. But, Beatty, I doubt I have anything to say that you haven't already heard."

  "Tell me again."

  "What?" Clo asks, coming to sit opposite me. "That your father was roaming around the country making exhibition flights for an airplane manufacturer when he met your mother? The first we learned of her was a postcard Collin sent saying the next time he got home he'd be bringing a bride who'd be a surprise to us all. Just after that the United States got into the war, and instead of returning to Texas, Collin signed up in the new Army Air Service."

  "Where did my mother go? With him?"

  "I don't know. We wrote and asked if she wanted to come down to us. Our letters never got answered. Beatty, no one even told us when you were born."

  Clo gets up abruptly. Snapping the gas jet handle to Off, she says, "Look at this. I've gone and scalded the milk. I swear ... Beatty, Collin is my brother and your father and I love him, but I can't forgive him for that, for not telling us you were born. Now, where is that sugar?"

  "Here," I say, handing it to her. "Did you mind so much? You were pretty young."

  Clo laughs at that, an embarrassed little sound. "Nine. I suppose I had half a crush on my glamorous big brother—and him not passing along such important news seemed a kind of betrayal." The smile goes away. "Besides, I was old enough to see how much my parents were hurt. It didn't make sense. Collin had always been..."

  Clo pauses to choose her words. "Kind of the joyful noise in our house, barging in and out with friends when he was younger. Then sending silly notes from flying school, and afterward from this place or that—California, Missouri, New York. Only, after that one postcard ... it was as though he chose to drop out of our lives."

  She fills
our cups and hands me one. "Here, see if this is sweet enough. I still don't understand what could have made Collin change so." Clo seems to catch herself. "Beatty, I apologize. I have no business talking about your father this way, even if he is my brother. And if your mother was a pilot, I never heard."

  "Well, I'm going to ask Dad the first chance I get. Next week, maybe, if he comes for my birthday."

  Clo says, "Beatty, I don't want you disappointed ... but your father isn't much for talking about things he doesn't want to discuss."

  "I know that," I tell her. "But I'm not much for being put off, either."

  Which makes my aunt smile. "That's something I found out long ago!" She blows across her cup and sips. "Now, is that all that's on your mind?"

  "Actually ... Clo, do you think country boys have to always stay country boys, or can they change?"

  My aunt's answer is a long, protesting groan. "Beatty...!"

  We talk so late that Clo lets me sleep in the next morning. The 9:45 eastbound plane overhead wakes me up, and I'm still having breakfast when Julie Elise and Leila walk in.

  "An easy life, girl," Leila teases. "What happened to you yesterday? You find someplace more interesting than the Mirage?"

  Julie Elise doesn't wait for my answer. "Finish up, Dallas," she orders. "We've come to show you Muddy Springs's social life!"

  Leila's got her dad's farm truck, and the three of us squish together on a seat lumpy from long use.

  "Where to?" I ask.

  "The tank."

  It's just outside of town, not a man-made tank at all, but a wide, natural pool of water ringed by rock ledges. There's no one there when we arrive, but Julie Elise says, "Just wait."

  "Is the water too deep for wading?" I ask, starting toward it, but I back off when Leila calls to be careful, there's snakes.

  "So, Dallas," Leila asks, once we're stretched out and comfortable, "do you have a boyfriend?"