I took his thumb in my hand and gently shook it. "Truce."
"Well, phew," he said. Then he looked around, as though just now noticing the store, the lot, the dumpster.
"Hey, I"m sorry about that handshaking thing at the fair. That was s.h.i.tty of me. I was just feeling jealous. I mean, Pearl"s a special lady, you know?"
"Yes," I said, though, much as I"d have liked to just then, I supposed I didn"t know. I didn"t know much about her at all.
"Bygones and buried hatchets, right?" d.i.c.k laughed, so cheerful all of a sudden. "So you have to stay out here all night, huh? Your boss told Pearl you"d be here till morning. That is one bad b.i.t.c.h."
I explained that it wasn"t so bad.
"Still, that"s a lot of downtime," he said. He reached into his back pocket and took out a CD. "This might be ridiculous, but I thought that maybe, if you"ve got nothing better to do, you could take a listen." He handed it to me.
On the cover was a picture of him with that same dazed expression on his face.
"Will do," I said.
d.i.c.k nodded. "Well...I"m going to get back," he said. "Listen, I"m glad we talked, brother."
He patted me on the shoulder with his better hand, and then turned and walked back to his car. As he got in, I cast a last look at Pearl, watching me from the driver"s seat. I wanted to talk to her, to apologize, something, but she was already starting the engine. A moment later they disappeared down the street.
I walked back to my car. Inside, I took the CD from its case and slipped it into the player. The first song was about two truck drivers, a man and a woman, who meet over the CB radio. They start talking to each other one night, while driving their routes, just two lonely voices in the darkness.
It was a beautiful song and I hoped that I"d get the chance to listen to it with Joan the next day. I imagined myself lying on the couch with her, listening to the story together. The man and woman keep driving right past each other"s trucks, barely missing each other without even knowing. In one verse the truckers come close to meeting: The woman eats at a truck stop, and the man comes in so soon after her that when he unknowingly sits down on her stool, her tip money is still on the counter. The change is still warm from her pocket.
JOHN CIRCLED BACK OVER THE PUMPKIN PATCH, BRINGING THE plane lower this time, just to make sure his eyes weren"t playing tricks on him. He"d been flying for over two hours straight; he felt dizzy from engine fumes and his goggles were smeared with gasoline. But as he brought the plane around, he spotted them again: forty, maybe even fifty people gathered among the pumpkins-a whole party waving at him, shouting and cheering, waiting for him to land. They were dressed formally, the men in sack suits and bright silk ties, the women in smart summer hats of pink or cream straw. They"d even laid out a runway, a long strip of white cloth that cut a clear, straight path through the pumpkin vines.
John wondered for a moment if he had the wrong town. He pulled his map from beneath the seat, unfolded it, and pinned it with his forearm against the leather rim of the c.o.c.kpit. The map"s edges whipped about as he did his calculations: he"d taken off from Poth, Missouri, at nine in the morning and followed the railroad tracks west across the gra.s.slands until about eleven o"clock, when he"d landed to refuel. It was near two thirty in the afternoon by the time he"d lifted off again, and now it was just after five, which would put him at-John scanned the wrinkled expanse of eastern Kansas-yes, this had to be Bunting. It was the only town for a hundred miles in either direction, and when John looked up from the map he saw, as though to underscore the obviousness of his deduction, a water tower standing just to the south with BUNTING, KS painted across its tank.
He refolded his map and glanced again at the crowd a.s.sembled below, the tiny white blossoms of their faces. He slowed down to let them read the lettering painted on the bottom of his wings. On the left wing: JOHN BARRON. EXPERT PILOT. On the right: RIDES JUST $2!!!
Then he leaned out of the c.o.c.kpit to watch the reaction. Some of the men saluted and a few women waved as his shadow streaked over them.
John waved back, beaming. As he turned to the controls to ready his Curtis JN "Jenny" for landing, he felt an electric joy thrum through him: he had an actual welcome party. People had dressed up in fine clothes and hiked out to the middle of an empty pumpkin patch to welcome him to their town. He"d been barnstorming for three months now, since just after his twenty-first birthday, in February of 1919; so far he"d visited over thirty towns scattered throughout the Midwest, from Minnesota to Iowa to Nebraska and now down into Kansas, and never, not once, had there been a real welcome party waiting for him. Now and then he"d arrived in a new town to find some aviation enthusiasts standing out on the sidewalks, their Kodak Brownies aimed up at the sky. Sometimes a group of children, drawn outside by the Jenny"s approaching whine, chased after him as he flew past. But most often, John flew into a new town to find no one waiting for him or cheering him on. n.o.body even expecting him, save a telephone operator or two.
Now, as he started his descent-pushing on the Jenny"s elevator, nosing her down toward the pumpkin patch-he tried to guess which of the women below was Marlene, the Bunting telephone operator he"d spoken with. Maybe the girl in the sleeveless dress at the back of the crowd? Waving a glove at him? John felt a small thrill at the thought of meeting her. He got along well with telephone operators. He made a habit to call ahead to every town he planned to visit and introduce himself to at least one telephone operator first. The women who worked the telephone lines in the kinds of towns John visited-country towns where a plane was still big news-usually spent their afternoons connecting the same people over and over again, knitting and reknitting familiar patterns: plugging Mr. Gray into Mrs. Beige. Wiring Mrs. Beige to Dr. Brown, and so on. A new voice on the line excited these girls. They joked and flirted with John. It was easy to get them on his side, to get them to help publicize his arrival. All it took was the promise of a free plane ride and they were swearing up and down that as soon as they hung up they were going to tell everyone they knew that an expert pilot was coming to town. And they were fun girls, too. Outgoing and social. The type to show him a good time, take him out to movie theaters and dance halls.
He"d called Marlene twice while he was still performing in the town of Poth, two hundred miles to the east.
"You owe me one," she"d said the last time they"d spoken. "I got the whole town waiting for you. You better be cute."
"I"ll wipe off some of the grease. Just for you," said John.
"Well, try not to make me look bad. Everyone"ll be out there when you fly in."
John had taken "everyone" to mean a couple of Marlene"s friends standing outside the telephone offices, yelling h.e.l.los or whistling at him or maybe waving a scribbled paper sign. Nothing like this.
The women"s lawn dresses shimmered in the sun, pale green and yellow and tangerine. At the back of the pumpkin patch stood a table lined with bottles of champagne. John tried to think up something extraordinary he could do for Marlene to thank her for preparing all this for him. He could make a banner for her: MARLENE, MARLENE, BUNTING QUEEN. Something like that, and fly it over town. Or he could buzz her house at sunset, shower her yard with flowers.
John took the plane low as he crossed the edge of the pumpkin patch. Green, unripe pumpkins rushed by beneath his wheels. He tilted the tail down, dragging in wind to slow the plane. The levers trembled in his hands. Through the blur of the propeller he could see the men and women part, moving away from the makeshift runway to give him room.
The Jenny hit hard, knocking John against the controls, but then it bounced, rising and leaping forward. John shoved on the elevator and brought the plane back down. Pumpkins burst against the wheels with dull, sickening thuds. The sour odor burned his nose as bits of pumpkin meat splattered across his face, getting in his mouth, slapping across his goggles. The pulp fouled up the wheels too. The plane skidded and spun, tossing John around the c.o.c.kpit, the world a cyclone of shouts and colors, until finally the Jenny whipped to a jarring halt.
John tried to catch his breath, but his chest hurt where the lever had punched into him.
"h.e.l.lo?" said a woman"s voice. "Are you all right in there?"
John winced and pulled off his goggles. "Just part of the act," he said, wiping the pumpkin from his face.
He ran a hand through the sticky tangle of his hair and looked around. What a dream-like vision, all of these men and women dressed in fancy clothes, gathered around him in the middle of a pumpkin patch. Each woman carried a single pink rose. A large house stood off in the distance, just beyond the edge of the field. The sight sent a pang of excitement through John; he might actually get to sleep in a bed that night.
This, he thought as he took it all in-the party, the pumpkin patch, the warm afternoon sunlight-this was what he loved best about barnstorming. Between the last five towns combined he"d made seventy-two dollars profit, but this morning he"d landed to a champagne toast and a warm bed. You never knew when your luck would turn. You just cranked the propeller, lifted off, and followed the silver thread of the railroad tracks.
John climbed out of the c.o.c.kpit and stood on the plane"s wing. Everyone, the men, the women, seemed stunned to silence by his arrival. Probably none of these people had ever seen a plane before, John thought. And even if they had seen a plane, they"d never had one roar to a stop right in front of their faces. He scanned the crowd for Marlene.
"Ladies and gentlemen of Bunting," he said, unzipping his leather aviator jacket. "I can"t thank you enough for this warm welcome. When I saw all of you gathered here, I almost cried tears of joy."
A young man approached John with a bottle of champagne. "Now you"re really trying to make me cry," John said, taking the bottle. He popped the cork and let the fizz run down his glove before taking a long sip.
The man"s fist hit John on the side of the head. It flew up out of nowhere and knocked him backward against the fuselage. Champagne splashed across John"s face and chest. Through the ringing in his ears, he heard people shouting, rushing around. The man who"d hit him climbed up on the wing and stood over him now, a huge silhouette blocking out the sun.
John braced himself for another blow, but before his attacker could swing again, an arm slid around the man"s waist and yanked him down off the wing.
A hot throbbing started in John"s temple. When he touched the side of his head, his fingers came back wet with blood. Two men were struggling beside the wing of his plane. The man being restrained was young, about John"s own age, with a thick black mustache. The man holding him was older, his beard streaked with gray.
"This boy is probably a present from someone, Charley," said the older man. "I"m sure he"s here as a gift to you."
"Who sent him, then?" said Charley, writhing.
"Why don"t you stop thrashing about and ask him?"
Charley glared at John. A vein shaped like a tiny lightning bolt pulsed at the center of his forehead. "Well?" he said. "Are you a gift?"
"I"m here to offer you the gift of flight, if that"s what you mean," John said. He scanned the crowd, waiting for a reaction, but they seemed frightened and confused. Some of the women looked like they were about to cry. John felt a cold, sinking sensation in his stomach.
"This party is for me, right?" he said. "John Barron? The pilot?" He gestured to his plane. Strings of pumpkin seeds dangled from the lower wings. "Is there a Marlene here?"
"For you?" the older man said. "Son, this is a wedding. You"ve crashed into my daughter"s wedding." He pointed to the aisle runner-the long strip of white cloth John had mistaken for a runway-lying rumpled and torn beneath the wheels of the plane.
"I"m the groom," said Charley, pointing a thumb at himself. "And that was my champagne, a.s.shole."
John felt very weak all of a sudden. It was then that he noticed, standing at the far end of the field, behind the crowd, a young girl in a white dress. She stared blankly at John, her dark red hair pinned above her face. She had one hand on the fence railing; the other hung limp at her side. Her dress was decorated with intricate beadwork that sparkled in the late sunlight. A bouquet of pink roses lay at her feet.
Then, all at once she turned and ran toward the house, her dress dragging behind her in the gra.s.s. Charley ran after her.
John felt a growing, painful pressure on the side of his head.
"Come down from there. You"re bleeding," said the father of the bride. "Let"s get you some medical attention." He put out his hand.
John reached for it but grabbed only air. A wave of panic hit him. He felt an overwhelming need to escape from there, to climb back into his plane and lose himself in the cold, oceanic emptiness of the sky. But he was so dizzy.
He turned to the crowd. The men and women were blurs to him now, watery shapes smearing into one another. "Sorry about the misunderstanding, everyone," he said, blinking hard. "If one of you would just point me to the nearest petrol station, I"ll be on my way."
Then he stepped down from his plane and pa.s.sed out in the gra.s.s.
John woke with a start. The skin around his temple felt hot and swollen, and when he touched it, he found that someone had taped a small gauzy bandage over his cut. He knew he should lie back down and ice his head, but all he could think about was getting back to his plane. He threw off his blankets and sat up. How long had he slept? Slipping on his aviator jacket, he opened the door to his room and peered out. The hallway was dark and empty.
John snuck past the other bedrooms and headed downstairs. When he reached the foyer, he stopped and wrote a note on a pad by the telephone.
Dear Sir, I apologize for destroying your daughter"s wedding. All moneys I have at present have been laid beside this note to pay for damages.
Sincerely,
John M. Barron (Pilot)
John placed a stack of dollar bills beside the note-practically everything he had. The bills were wrinkled and dirty and the pile sponged to one side. John frowned and picked up the pen.
I will send more once I make some.
He read over his work one more time and, satisfied, opened the front door and slipped outside into the foggy morning.
The light was still poor. It had to be at least an hour before sunrise-not a good time to fly, but John didn"t care. He looked around until he spotted the silhouette of his Jenny, still parked in the pumpkin patch, ready to lift off again. He hurried over.
As he approached the plane, though, he noticed a figure sitting on the lower port wing. Lord G.o.d, he thought. Charley. Waiting to pound him. John struggled to come up with some way of avoiding a fight, something he could say, but when he neared the plane he saw that the figure wasn"t Charley at all, but a girl. The bride.
She was still wearing her wedding dress. On her feet were a pair of scuffed black boots. Her hair hung down the front of her shoulder in a long red braid. To John she looked like a discarded fairy-tale character, a princess plucked from a storybook and dropped onto the wing of his plane in a heap of twinkling fabric.
"I left a note," John said to her. "I"m not trying to sneak off."
The girl nodded at a valise sitting beside the plane"s wheel. "I am," she said.
It took John a moment to understand her.
"You"re joking," he said.
"I don"t weigh a pound more than a hundred and ten," she said. "And I"m good with maps."
John ran a hand over the back of his neck. What was it about pilots? he wondered. What made the lonely girls fall so hard for them? Maybe it was the outfit?-The cap and gloves, the scarf snapping in the wind.
"Don"t flatter yourself," said the girl, as though she"d sensed what he was thinking. "I"m about to leave a man behind. I"m not looking for a new one."
John climbed aboard. "Sorry," he said. "I don"t need a copilot."
"I won"t get in your way."
"You"re in my way now," he said, brushing past her. He opened the supply box and removed the doping tape. "I need you to move off the wing. I have to check for tears in the linen."
But the girl didn"t move.
When he tried to crawl over her, she grabbed his wrist. The force of her grip startled him, and he looked at her, truly taking her in for the first time. She was prettier than he"d thought. Her face was soft featured and pale, almost translucently white, but her eyes were a warm, clay brown. They stared back at him in a way that was neither desperate nor pleading. Just determined.
"You owe me this," she said. "You ruined my wedding."
John jerked his hand back, but she held on to him.
"I"ll yell," she said.
"Miss," John said, "why are you doing this?"
"That"s my business," she said.
John sighed. "Look, even if I agreed to take you, I don"t have enough petrol to get us both to the next town. We"re too heavy together."
She nodded at the garage to the east of the house. Stacks of green-and-white petrol cans stood in rows behind the cars.
The girl let go of John"s wrist but kept her eyes trained on him.
"Have at it," she said.
John rubbed his wrist. A nice fix he"d landed in this time. He glanced at the house; a lamp was already lit in one of the windows. He knew taking the girl was a bad idea, but he felt too weak to argue. He was hungry; his head hurt. His body felt like an empty pouch.
"I"ll take you to the next town," he said. "Then you"re on your own."
The sky was clear and calm, totally windless, perfect for flying. But the whole way to Gunnison, John couldn"t relax. He hated that the girl was suddenly there, in his c.o.c.kpit, uninvited; he kept his eyes fixed on the back of her head, watching for any signs of trouble.
He never knew how a pa.s.senger would react once the plane took off, and he had a bad feeling about her. She was wearing a wedding dress, for f.u.c.k"s sake. Plenty of perfectly normal-seeming customers went to pieces in the air. Out of nowhere. Regular men and women cringing and shaking, huddling inside the c.o.c.kpit. Some got sick. Some fainted. A few even seemed to go completely crazy. An old man in Minnesota, for example, had pulled a .32 on him two hundred feet above the earth. The man had threatened to shoot if John didn"t land the plane immediately. Another woman had stood up in the c.o.c.kpit and undressed mid-flight. She was a large person, and John could still see the pale flag of her body rippling in the wind.
And all this had happened on $2 rides, rides that lasted five minutes and never rose more than a few hundred feet off the ground. Now, with this girl as his pa.s.senger, he flew at a steady alt.i.tude of nine hundred feet, high above the thinning clouds. The cold blasted them, but the girl seemed so calm, sitting primly in the front c.o.c.kpit, staring out at the empty sky through her oversize goggles. Too calm, to John"s mind. It was unsettling; she never pointed or turned to him to ask a question. Never leaned out of the c.o.c.kpit to swim a hand through the wind. She acted as relaxed as someone riding on a bus. Probably she was holding it all in, he thought. Any moment now she"d burst into hysterics. And why not? Why not one more disaster? Lately John"s luck had only been getting worse. He"d made some good money back in Michigan, some in Iowa too, but that was weeks ago. Soon it"d be the heat of summer, blazing sun, the engine overheating. Barnstorming three months and already he was getting tired.
Just look at yourself, he thought: broke, injured, exhausted, responsible for the total ruination of a wedding. And now saddled with a weird, runaway girl. All at once, the old worries came rushing back. Maybe he was wrong to have bought the plane. Maybe being a pilot was a ridiculous idea. Maybe he should give up now, before something truly awful happened. He could sell the Jenny for parts, go back to New York. He still had a job waiting for him at Sweet Fizz, the soda bottling plant where he"d worked with his father, Rollie Barron, before enlisting. Rollie had told him so just a few days ago.
"Dale keeps asking me when you"re coming back," Rollie had said. "I told him I don"t know, but he keeps on about it. Says he"ll hold you a place as long as he can."
"Good to know," John had said.
"You"ve got his telephone number, John? The number to his office?" Rollie had a slow, sleepy way of speaking. John could picture him in their small apartment in Williamsburg, sitting on the stool by the telephone. He could see his father"s face as they talked, round and pink and dimpled, a boyish face despite the gray hair. But a sad face, also. With a weariness hanging about the eyes.
"I don"t need Dale"s number," John said.
"It"s no trouble to find," Rollie said. "I wrote it down somewhere around here."