Airfield Read online

  "She sure is picky," I whisper—to Kenzie, but Miss Winters hears me.

  "And alive," she calls down.

  The third is Annie Boudreau, who hasn't been around in quite a while because some state official hired her to take him to every air strip in Texas. "And there are dozens," she tells me. "All of them dusty. But it is about the steadiest work I've ever had."

  We're sharing my lunch—some of Clo's chili—while we watch Moss service Annie's plane. It's as good a chance to talk with her as I'm likely to make.

  "There's something I'd like to ask you about," I say. "Kenzie and others have been telling me about my mother—things she did that I never knew about before—but their stories don't make her seem real. Not like a person I can picture."

  Annie looks at me, troubled. "I don't know what you want me to add." She seems thoughtful, though, and I wait for her to continue. But then her passenger shows up, and Moss signals that his work's done. Rising, Annie says, "We'll talk, Beatty. The first time I'm back here, we'll talk."

  "When will that be?"

  "I'll he over for the air show for sure."

  As though we're not already busy enough, a dust storm a few days before the show causes us extra work.

  It starts as a brown cloud on the western horizon. Sweeping our way in a sun-hiding murk that makes us have to turn on the field lights for the midmorning plane, it blows around everything loose outside and lays down a layer of grit on every surface in the terminal and hangar.

  It terrifies Millie, who stays wrapped around my ankles for two solid hours, tripping me up every step I take.

  "Millie," I say, reaching down to pet her, "you may be smart and talented, but you are also a coward."

  Moss, helping Grif clean out the operations room, calls, "Might be she's smart enough to be acting."

  "I think she was really scared."

  We're interrupted by a radio transmission coming in and the telephone ringing both at the same moment. "I'll get the phone," I say.

  It's an electrician from the lighting manufacturer, wanting to speak to Grif.

  "He's not available at the moment." I reach for paper and a pencil. "May I take a message?"

  "Tell him I'll come by this afternoon to look at that bad field light. Have him bring it in where I can get to it quick."

  "I'll let him know."

  I've hardly hung up, though, when the terminal door opens and a husband and wife come in wanting schedules and prices for flying to California. Clearing a space on the counter, I take out a system timetable and turn to the page showing coast-to-coast flights.

  "There's a westbound plane every afternoon. You'll have only—let's see ... one, two ... six intermediate stops, and you'll be there in less than thirteen hours. A round-trip fare is one hundred forty-seven dollars and seventy-six cents."

  Late in the afternoon, Grif and Moss and I are helping Kenzie with the hangar cleanup when a man appears at the doorway. He's carrying a toolbox and some sort of meter.

  "Hey," he says, "you all didn't have to order a dust storm to prove you need your lights working. Where's that broken one?"

  Grif breaks into a smile. "Are you ever welcome, even if you weren't expected. The one giving us the most trouble is on the boundary where—"

  "Oh, Grif, I am so sorry," I say, taking from my pocket the note I'd written earlier. "I forgot to give you the message."

  The man interrupts. "Don't you have the light pulled down and ready for me? I only have half an hour I can spend."

  "But the whole layout needs work," Grif tells him. "Can you at least look at some temporary repairs I made?"

  The man shakes his head. "Not today. If you'd had that one light ready for me, I might have fixed it, but trouble-shooting the entire system—that's several hours' work at least. Wish I'd known sooner that's what you needed: I could have switched today's work for tomorrow's."

  "We've got an air show planned for Sunday," Grif tells him. "I sure hope the lights don't go down between now and then, not with all the planes that will be coming in."

  "They're not likely to," the man says. "If the system was that iffy, this dust storm would have knocked it out. I'll come back next Wednesday or Thursday. Meanwhile, I guess you just keep changing bulbs as they burn out. Need some extras?"

  After they've gone to get them from his truck, I ask Kenzie, "So you think we're going to be OK?"

  "I'd say so, unless a lot stronger storm than the one we just had blows through. The forecast is for good weather."

  "I thought you didn't trust forecasts."

  "I don't," Kenzie says, "unless they agree with what my nose is telling me. But right now, my nose doesn't smell a hint of rain." He nods toward the push broom to indicate I ought to be using it. "And in the unlikely event both the forecast and my nose are wrong and those lights fail just when we need 'em—maybe we could put you out on the airfield with a couple of strong flashlights!"

  Hearing Moss chuckle at the idea, I say, "Moss, too!"

  "No, not Moss, too," Kenzie says. "He didn't forget to pass on any durn messages."

  Chapter 17

  THE WEATHER DOES hold. And Sunday! It's a clear-blue-sky, beautiful, not-too-hot, barely breezy day like doesn't come once in a hundred Augusts in Texas

  A banner that Clo made—AIR SHOW TODAY—flutters between the hangar and the terminal.

  The show's not supposed to start until two-thirty, but by noon people from town are arriving in a steady stream. Some stake out seats on the temporary grandstand. Others spread blankets on the airport grounds and open picnic baskets and lemonade jugs. Lots more just pull their cars off the road and roll down their convertible tops or perch on their hoods.

  As starting time approaches it looks like all Muddy Springs is at the airport, and a lot of people from other towns, too.

  The group parked along Airfield Road upsets Mrs. Granger. "They're not paying," she says. She has to shout to be heard over the noise of airplane motors being turned over, of pilots calling greetings to each other, of marching-band music pouring from loudspeakers. "Nobody's supposed to watch for free."

  But Mr. Granger is too happy, excited, and busy to mess with a few freeloaders. "It's a success," he tells her. "Sweet, our air show is a success!"

  "Grif," I say, as we give pilots carbon copies of the timetable I've typed up, "how can he say the show's a success when it hasn't even started yet?"

  But my uncle asks, "Are you sure it hasn't?"

  A wave of laughter comes from the grandstand, and looking to see why, I spot Millie. She's out in front of the crowd, performing all by herself, tossing a ball and then chasing it. Sitting up and clapping her front paws. Taking a bow. Turning and leaping and flipping over and then waiting for more applause.

  The crowd loves it.

  "Grif!" I exclaim. "She's not supposed to be on yet. Her act is playing Monkey in the Middle with Moss and me, trying to get a ball away from us—"

  "Beatty," he tells me, "I think you and Moss better leave crowd pleasing to an expert."

  Mr. Granger approaches the microphone stand, and as though Millie understands what a good introduction is, she covers the apron in a lightning series of half somersaults and winds up jumping into Mr. Granger's arms.

  He staggers back but hangs on. "Ladies and gentlemen," he says, "I'm honored to present an exhibition team from the army, opening our spectacular First Annual Muddy Springs Airport Air Show."

  Millie leans in toward the megaphone and howls, and every person in sight is clapping when three military planes soar up from the airfield, circle, and fly into the distance.

  They're followed right away by Annie taking off in Gold Lightning.

  Julie Elise's voice on the loudspeaker system tells the crowd, "The army planes will be back, but first, pilot Annie Boudreau will show what she can do. She'll demonstrate some patterns, make a climbing turn called a chandelle, and then show you what the word spin really means. Watch for a vertical roll followed by a loop and a barrel roll."

&
nbsp; "And after her," breaks in Milton's voice, "look for those Army Air Corps planes to return with some spectacular precision flying."

  Overhead the gold stripes of Annie's plane flash as she traces a tight, twisting figure eight. She layers on dizzying patterns, one after another, each just a little higher than the one before, until it's hard to know which she's flying and which are just lingering in my mind.

  What must it feel like, to be able to do that?

  I'm startled to realize that I'm pressing my foot into the grass as though I'm the one pushing down on a rudder pedal. I struggle to picture the actions: When Annie's pushing on the right pedal, she must also be pulling back the stick and moving it right.

  By the time I get the figure eights figured out, Annie's flying off in another direction, moving from maneuver to maneuver so fast I give up trying to do more than just lose myself in the joy of watching.

  I meet her plane when she lands and help her out of a parachute that turns her walk into a waddle. "You were wonderful! All those acrobatics!"

  She says, "A few stunts, maybe, but the routine was mostly just a fancy way to show skills any good pilot practices."

  "Then what's the parachute for?"

  "Another good practice—being prepared in case something goes wrong."

  A pack of little kids gathers about Annie, a couple of them even holding out autograph books, and several adults want to shake her hand. Even a pilot I've heard make snide comments about women not belonging on ships, either sea or air, gives her a thumbs-up.

  I start away but hear Annie call, "Beatty, let's find some cold soda." I feel myself blushing with the pleasure of being singled out. Is it because she's remembered her promise that we'll talk?

  We buy the drinks but don't see a good spot to settle down with them, not with the crowds everywhere. Then I get an idea: "I know one unclaimed place with a great view."

  When Annie realizes I mean for us to climb up on the terminal roof, she throws back her head in laughter. "Oh, Beatty," she says, helping me drag over the ladder, "in some ways you are so like your mother!"

  She's still laughing when we perch on the huge's in the painted muddy springs, and I wait for her to stop before asking, "Now will you tell me about her?"

  Annie turns to look at me. "That flying I just did—I was trying to show your mother to you. That's the way Lindsey would have flown, if she'd lived. Lindsey's flying would have been even better."

  A tumble of questions occur to me, but my throat's suddenly too tight for asking them. Instead, I listen to Julie Elise announce the first of the afternoon's air circus acts, and Annie and I watch a biplane fly low before the crowd. A tiny figure climbs from the cockpit.

  Hushed ohhhhhs drift among the spectators as the figure struggles for balance and then, reaching from one handhold to the next, paces out to the end of a wing. There the wing-walker stops, kneels, and straightens into a headstand.

  "Can you imagine!" I say, as the crowd breaks into applause. "That does look dangerous."

  "It is," Annie answers. "Just as dangerous as when your mother and I tried it. It was crazy, but we wanted money to buy Jennys from the war surplus the government was selling off."

  "My mother was a wing-walker And you, too?"

  "Not me," Annie says. "I tried it just once, tied to a safety line, Lindsey's instructions from her own first time ringing in my ears. 'There's nothing to it,' she said. 'Just step from rib to rib and don't put a foot through the canvas.' I went about half a yard before deciding I'd earn airplane money some other way."

  "But my mother! She was a wing-walker!"

  "Briefly, back when you were a baby," Annie says. "Until your father found out. It was one of the few times he ever said no to her, and he made it up by helping finance her Jenny himself. Against his better judgment, he said. They were already arguing..."

  Annie looks at me curiously. "You really don't know anything about your mother?"

  I shake my head. "Dad hardly talks about her. It was Kenzie who told me she was a pilot."

  "Your mother," Annie says slowly, as though trying to pick just what's most important for me to know, "was like those gold stripes on my airplane, always seeming to flash more blinding the higher she climbed. She was my best friend from the day we met at the field where we were both taking flying lessons.

  "Had to be friends, I guess, since we were the only females around, no folks of our own, both of us paying our way with the end of money our parents had left us. I liked your mother even though I couldn't keep up with her. Even then I knew when to be frightened."

  Annie breaks off to watch two planes compete in flying laps above a barrel on the airfield. Then she picks up her thoughts at a different place. "Your father ... Beatty, I can still see how he used to look at Lindsey, as though he was dazzled by her brightness."

  "He doesn't talk like he was dazzled by her," I say. "The few times he has mentioned my mother, it's been more like he was angry."

  Annie, folding and unfolding the ends of her long silk scarf, is silent for several moments. Then she says, "The year after you were born your mother saw a chance to win an air race. It was one of those contests where flyers all start at one place and head for another, and the winner's whoever gets there first.

  "Other contestants had bigger, faster planes than Lindsey did, but she had a risky northern route planned that she thought might even the odds. Your father—all of us—tried to talk her out of it, but this time she wouldn't listen."

  I hear the grandstand erupt with cheers, but nothing could make me take my eyes from Annie's face.

  "So what happened?"

  "A slow-moving weather front rolled in a few hours into the race. It grounded most of the pilots, but your mother put down just long enough to refuel and then took off again into a thick overcast. She told a mechanic she couldn't be worried by a little autumn sleet, that she'd climb above it and get ahead of the front. 'There's sun up there someplace,' she said.

  "Three days later searchers found your mother where she'd made a forced landing on an ice field in Canada. She was barely alive."

  About to die of pneumonia. That must be when Dad took her and me to San Antonio.

  Annie unties the long scarf from her neck and holds it out. "Your mother and I bought matching scarves the day we soloed. I don't know what happened to hers, but perhaps you'd like this one."

  "Thank you," I tell her, "but I don't think so. What I don't understand is how my mother could do something everybody knew was dangerous. I guess this sounds selfish, but ... didn't she care about me?"

  That gets a chuckle from Annie. "Oh, she did, Beatty. Lindsey talked about you and carried your picture with her everywhere. She'd swing into one of those creaking old wood hangars where a woman was about as welcome as fog, and make every man in it admire you!"

  The idea of my mother showing baby photos to a hangar full of Kenzies makes me laugh, though I ask, "But where would I be? Who'd be taking care of me?"

  "Your father, if he was home. Sometimes I'd have you, or some other friend your mother trusted. She'd leave pages of instructions about your care."

  Groping through ideas new to me, I say, "Maybe that helps explain why Dad's the way he is. Maybe he's still mad because part of what he loved was the daring that killed her."

  Annie looks startled. Then she says, "Beatty, you just may be a very wise young woman."

  But then, thinking about all Annie's told me, I burst out, "How can I be so proud of my mother and at the same time feel so angry?"

  And now it's Annie who's laughing. "What you've done, Beatty, is bump into the puzzle of Lindsey Donnough—the same one anybody who loved her came up against: how she could have been both so wonderful and—forgive me, Beatty—so foolish at the same time."

  This time, when applause sweeps through the crowd, we both look to see what's causing it. There's a skit beginning in front of a sign that says new york. A pilot slings a bag with a big air mail sign into the cockpit of a small plane, climbs in, and
takes off.

  Meanwhile, another man with a bag, labeled ground mail, steps into the cardboard cutout of a train. He moves it just a little way before reaching the end of wood tracks. The mail plane takes off, and the man on the ground transfers his bag to a truck.

  "Did you dream that up, Beatty?" Annie asks.

  "I painted the signs," I tell her.

  Overhead the mail plane swoops by, while on the ground the mail gets moved from truck to wagon to horse to mule and, finally, to a sled behind Millie. Millie wriggles out of her harness and trots off just as the air-mail plane taxis to a stop in front of a sign saying LOS ANGELES.

  "Pretty good," Annie says. "And not too far from the truth."

  She again holds out her silk scarf. "Want to change your mind?"

  "Maybe I'll at least borrow it," I say, "while I do some thinking."

  Now the army planes that began the show soar into a finale, and Julie Elise's voice over the loudspeaker says, "Beatty Donnough, Mr. Granger wants you down in front of the grandstand."

  Milton's voice in the background can be heard urging, "Go on, Moss. He wants you down there, too."

  Mr. Granger tells the crowd that if they've liked the air show, they should give Moss and me a round of applause, and they do.

  Though, of course, Millie thinks the clapping is for her. She prances and bows and, to tell the truth, judging from how the audience is laughing, she's probably got it right.

  Chapter 18

  THAT EVENING CLO and Grif and I lean back in the lawn chairs outside our cabin, and I wonder if the two of them are feeling the way I do, hardly able to believe this day is over.

  It has been so full, and such a finish.

  I finally understand what happened to my mother all those years ago, and in a way I'm not so much surprised as relieved. It makes her a real person, with parts I can love and parts I don't. The way Moss feels about his mother, I guess.

  The understanding gives me a new view of my dad, one that suggests why he wasn't more honest with his family before I was born. And it helps lessen my disappointment that he didn't come to today's show even though I asked him specially.