Falling in Love

by Aimee Norin

  Somebody handed a very happy Lourdes another slice of pizza.

  CHAPTER 33

  Even though it was raining, the dawn sun shone over Runway Three Six onto the bellies of all the planes, illuminating the bottom half of Lourdes' tent. Lourdes peeked out her door flap, underneath the tarping there, and looked: it was an isolated shower, blue sky everywhere else. No problem.

  She zipped the door flap closed and sat in her tent, in her underwear, cross-legged. Scrounging around-

  A nausea grew in her stomach. Was it the drinking the night before? Sometimes, if she overdid it, ill effects would linger into the next day, but this time-

  No, it wasn't the drinking, she knew. It was because she had to leave.

  She didn't want to. She didn't know where she should go.

  What should she do?

  Who should she be?

  She had no home.

  She could climb into her plane and take off, but into what kind of life?

  Literally, which direction should she point her plane?

  She was a nurse, she told herself. She could work anywhere. Just point the plane and go until you need to land, and she could find work and live there.

  So why did it matter?

  Her old fear of abandonment resurrected. Her husband had left her. Her family had effectively disowned her. But also, if it made any sense, her own life had abandoned her when she was born.

  Few believed her on that, she knew, but it didn't have to make sense to others to be true.

  So here she was, she thought. Alone in a tent-beautiful airshow. Ending. Need to leave. Go. Somewhere.

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the tent, she slowly began readying things for a possible departure. A little bag of this got put over there, another little bag of that got put over here. The sleeping bag? She scooted it over and rolled it up beside her.

  She dressed as well as she could in her short tent.

  When she was ready, she unzipped her door flap, again, and crawled out to stand under the wing of her one-fifty.

  The sun painted everything orange from the side, while the rain made everything sparkle. There wasn't enough rain to puddle. Millions of tiny drops floated down from the heavens and dripped off everything on earth with a gentle splat on the grass and a tink on her plane. There was not a breath of wind to disturb their fall.

  A fellow with an umbrella walked past her to the south, between the rows of planes, and greeted her. He looked like he had just had a shower. "Good morning," he said with a smile as he passed.

  "Good morning," she said to him in return.

  She lied. It was beautiful, but not- No, it was a good morning. She didn't feel good about it.

  The shower had stopped, and the sky was a soft, clear blue.

  Lourdes stepped out of the portable toilet letting the plastic door whack shut behind her. She looked around herself at miles of green lawns, trees now and then, at people smiling as they walked from planes to showers to flight line cafes. The smell in the air: it was a mixture of cut grass and fuel and food. She could hear people talking far in the distance. And in spite of an airplane that was obviously taxying north up Poppa, she could hear bird song that, she swore, must be half a mile away.

  It was picturesque, for her. Heaven, for any airplane buff.

  The pit in her stomach gnawed at her.

  She noticed the gaggle of Cubs along the flight line-beginning about where she was and ranging to the south along Taxiway Poppa and Runway Three Six. It seemed like a mile of yellow Cubs parked side-by-side, wing-tip to wing-tip, as far as the eye could see.

  Other people walked into the flight line caf? to eat, but Lourdes didn't have the stomach for it.

  She crossed Wittman Road and walked over to the Cubs. Some with wooden props. Some with larger wheels, what pilots called "gear." All taildraggers. The yellow was striking against the green lawns, which may have appeared greener than usual with the periodic rains they'd had.

  She stood ahead of one cub and looked under its wing to the south. It looked to her like one of those images produced when one mirror is set facing another mirror, and the reflections continue to infinity. It was row after row of Cub on grass.

  "Hi," came a man's voice.

  Lourdes jumped and turned around. It was the man she'd met the other day in the caf?.

  "Heath!" Lourdes said. "You surprised me a bit."

  "Sorry," he said. "And your name is?"

  "Lourdes."

  "Ah. Right." Heath stepped forward, with a cane. "Beautiful, isn't it?" he said indicating the Cubs, then stood there gazing with her, saying nothing.

  "Yes," she said simply, mesmerized, loving the peace of the moment and needing-pleading, inside-for a way to make it a larger part of her life.

  Time passed with neither of them moving, neither of them saying anything.

  Lourdes noticed they were there-two people, on such a beautiful morning, side-by-side, doing nothing other than loving part of life together.

  She reached over and gave Heath a big hug, holding his back with her arms, feeling his hair against her cheek.

  He returned the hug.

  "This is what it's all about, isn't it?" Heath asked.

  Back at her camp site, Lourdes pulled the last stake that held her tent and began rolling it up. The grass was brownish and squashed flat, where the tent had been, but she knew it would revive within days. She rolled the tent and tied it with twine.

  A Vintage biker, wearing an orange vest, came by on his scooter and asked her if she were leaving. Over the sickness in her stomach, Lourdes nodded.

  "I'll be right back," the biker said with a smile. "Don't fire up 'till I get back."

  Lourdes nodded again.

  She felt sick.

  She walked slowly around her plane, preflighting. She lowered the flaps for inspection, checked the fuel, oil, all nuts and bolts visible, pulled all three tie down stakes.

  She patted the side of the fuselage just behind the left wing. The plane had been her only friend for as long as she could remember. Helping to keep her alive. She needed its comfort, had needed the plane to love her, for something to love her, for as long as she could remember. "We'll find a home," she consoled herself. "A way to survive."

  The biker returned, and they chatted about her departure. Another ground crewman stood along her intended taxi near Wittman Road, to block traffic as she crossed over it.

  Lourdes had her "V.F.R." card, and she'd read the NOTAM.

  Her stomach ached with fear.

  "Lets move it forward about a foot to get it out of your tire imprints," her biker said with a smile. "Otherwise, you might be stuck here."

  The biker and Lourdes each pushed on a wing strut. The plane moved easily forward one foot.

  "So we're ready," he said. "Please wait for this signal," he rotated his finger in the air, "before you fire-up, okay?"

  Lourdes nodded and got into her plane, adjusting her tablet computer onto her passenger yoke for her right hand to manage, displaying charts and weather information.

  When she was ready, she nodded to the biker who was at that time standing in front of her plane and to the left.

  The biker checked to make sure no pedestrians were around and rotated his finger in the air.

  Lourdes started the engine. It's purr was familiar. It's propeller patted the air, ready to go.

  After a minute of Lourdes checking instruments and letting the engine warm up enough for the oil to begin lubricating her rings, she nodded to the biker who raised his hands in the air, moving them sequentially toward his head, meaning "taxi forward."

  Lourdes added throttle to move forward. The plane rocked a little with the thrust against the damp ground, but moved readily.

  When she was half way into the taxi lane, the biker moved both his hands to his left, indicating for Lourdes to turn right.

  She added throttle to help her turn, blowing whatever tents may have been behind her. Her plane rocked slightly as it mo
ved over the grass, bouncing a little as she went over slight perturbations in the lawn.

  Two ground crew at Wittman Road held traffic at a distance, including one tram full of vacationers and several pedestrians watching a plane cross in taxi.

  Inside the cockpit, Lourdes advanced and retarded the throttle as needed to keep the plane at a steady pace while crossing past the Vintage Ops Shack and toward Taxiway Poppa.

  At Poppa, another ground crew motioned for her to turn right and taxi south.

  Lourdes knew not to talk on the radio but to monitor it, listening for her instructions. It was part of the NOTAM that governed operations during the airshow.

  At the south end of Poppa, she did a run-up to make sure all systems were go-oil pressure, oil temperature, ammeter, carb heat, magnetos? She listened to the engine. Everything seemed functional-the fuel was turned on and she was full of oil, she re-checked in her mind-so she turned the plane slightly to look at the tower, which cleared her for takeoff Runway Three Six.

  Lourdes looked one final time at the lawns of the South Forty and turned her attention to the runway and its associated traffic.

  As she taxied onto the runway, she looked south up final approach for any indication of incoming, landing traffic. Seeing none, she proceeded, turning left, facing north, on the runway.

  She slowly advanced the throttle, and the little plane began its take off roll.

  At speed, she pulled back slightly on the yoke, which angled her rear elevators up, which increased the down-force on her tail, which angled her nose up, increasing the angle of attack on the wings, increasing her lift, and her little plane slowly rose into the air, breaking free of ground which had been her haven for over a week.

  As she rose into the air, she could see the large, colored dots on the runways, the Cubs on her left, trees, event booths and hangars, and miles of lawns and planes which were parked to enjoy the airshow.

  It was over for her.

  She felt her stomach knot again as she banked her plane to the right, per NOTAM, away from everything there.

  CHAPTER 34

  Lourdes flew over forever-green fields of the upper Midwest. From her altitude, it was hard to distinguish corn fields from patches of trees, except for the color. She assumed that the lighter, richer green was probably crops of some kind, particularly if it was in a defined geometric shape, and the darker color greens were probably woods or other trees.

  She was flying.

  The sky was clear.

  No winds at her altitude she could detect.

  Her plane flew well.

  Yet her stomach still ached.

  She adjusted the mixture, leaning it for max endurance, careful not to over do it and hurt her engine. She could hear the engine's steady beat through her headphones, feel it in the panel.

  What had gotten her into this? she wondered. Her transition?

  That contributed, but it had to BE. It was that or die, for her.

  Her fears? They contributed also.

  Other people's fears? Yes. Also a big part of it.

  Something in the way she looked at it all? Yes.

  But there were realities she had to grapple with-or they'd grapple with her.

  In her situation, she felt, you have to accept some pain sometimes to avoid even greater pain from other things that could result if you don't.

  Okay.

  So, combining all that, what was the path of least pain and the greatest happiness? she asked herself. And could she ever be "happy" by some definition, if she was also in excruciating pain at the same time?

  That was her life, she knew. Trying to live with one while searching for the other. That was living with her kind of birth defect, her kind of difference.

  So where-?

  She realized she was forcing rationale on herself-to make herself make a decision by force of her mind, when her emotions weren't up to it-because her time was up. Her issues wouldn't be resolved, now or ever, as far as she could guess, but she had to make a decision.

  She was up in the air; she would have to come down.

  While the upper Midwest slowly rolled by underneath, she reached into her flight bag in the passenger seat and withdrew some cabling, hooking her tablet into her headset, so she could hear music without interfering with her radio.

  She found her phone in the flight bag as well, still shut off in an effort to keep him at bay. She looked at it for a second and put it back in the bag.

  She scrolled through her playlists on the tablet until she found Joan Baez.

  Joan's soothing voice in "Diamonds and Rust" began to play through her headset, mixed with the sound of her engine.

  "Well I'll be damned

  Here comes your ghost again?"

  She closed her eyes for a minute, feeling Joan's comfort, begging Joan to find a home within her.

  She looked at her watch, adjusted for local time. It was ten thirty. She'd been in the air about three hours.

  She looked out the window for area land marks.

  There was a town over there and another over there.

  That one had a grain elevator.

  That one had a river running past it.

  While Joan sang and Lourdes' engine droned, Lourdes consulted her displayed sectional chart on her tablet, moving it with her finger, making it larger by spreading two fingers apart on it, moving it over again.

  The she made the chart smaller by bringing her fingers together, displaying a larger area of northwest Missouri.

  There was Kansas City.

  There were a grouping of other towns.

  There was no landmark she was aware of to look for, and she hadn't previously researched the exact location of the town, because she hadn't made up her mind to even go there.

  But-

  Joan Baez finished "Diamonds and Rust" and began singing "Jesse," a loving, gentle song that lingered in Lourdes' heart beneath thousands of scars. Joan's guitar at intro pulled on Lourdes' heart, even before Joan began to sing.

  "Jesse come home

  There's a hole in the bed

  Where we slept;

  Now it's growing cold?"

  In her mind, Lourdes substituted "old" for "cold." She felt she was so old, she could barely move the yoke-proof the plane had a spirit, as it flew itself.

  The sound of the engine seemed to fade as Lourdes fell into the hypnosis of her needs. In shock, unable to face her own actions while facing fears she'd long held, her hand moved on its own to charts on the tablet, finding nothing amid a hundred towns, yet remaining on one.

  She looked out the window of the cockpit as she approached.

  On the west side of town, literally across a north-south street, was a little farm with a landing strip by it, aligned east and west along a dirt road.

  The strip was not marked on her chart.

  Circling over the town, she picked out what may be a Main Street, two churches, a grocery store? A couple of larger buildings with landscaping that looked like schools with a track and football field. A water tower. A highway running by the southeast edge of town, northeast to southwest, with a gas station at it.

  "Oh my God," she said to herself, seeing her intentions.

  Her stomach was in pain.

  With "Jesse" playing through her headset, Lourdes circled slowly overhead, watching the town turn beneath her, wondering. The streets all looked clean. Jim's farm was on the west side, literally across the street from town. He was down there somewhere. Rooftops- Few people were about, either by car or on foot. She watched them slowly turn as she flew in wide circles.

  A dog played in someone's front yard, evidently not enclosed with a fence.

  The occasional car drove down the highway.

  "Jesse" played in her headphones saying, she needed to believe, that Joan would protect her if she descended into her own fears.

  She watched herself raise a shaking hand to the radio and dial 122.9. Maybe that could be their multi-com.

  She dried her sweaty
hand on her jeans and paused her thumb over her push-to-talk switch before she pressed it. "Jim Ranch, Greenhills." Her voice was unsteady. "Cessna Niner Eight Two Hotel Sierra, over town at two thousand A.G.L. Anyone in the pattern?"

  There was no answer.

  Her thumb pressed the push-to-talk switch again. "Jim Ranch, Cessna Two Hotel Sierra, over town, make left traffic Runway Two Seven, Jim Ranch."

  While on the left down wind leg of her approach, at one thousand feet, Lourdes looked over the strip for anything that could be a problem: pot holes, height of grass indications, how well it was mowed-there were worn tire tracks in the grass, mostly on the east end as if traffic usually landed to the west-telephone poles beside it, by the road, by the house at the east end. There was no fence around it, so she worried about cows that could wonder on the strip. But she didn't see any cows anywhere. There were some trees by the farm house, but they were only about forty feet high, she guessed. There was a barn and-

  Oh, God! Her heart skipped a beat.

  There was a large shed attached to the side of the barn.

  She was downwind abeam "the numbers," as it were-the approach end of the runway-though there were no numbers on the private grass strip.

  She dried her right hand on her jeans and pushed the fuel mixture control in to "full rich," pulled the carburetor heat control to "on," retarded the throttle to twelve hundred RPM-about zero thrust-and pulled her Johnson Bar, flaps on full.

  She felt the little plane slow and begin descent.

  "Jesse" continued in her ears. She silently begged Joan to help her.

  "Jim Ranch," she said as well as she could. "Cessna Two Hotel Sierra, left base, Runway Two Seven, full stop, Jim Ranch."

  She heard nothing on the plane's radio.

  Her plane came down smoothly, and in no time she was on final.

  "Jim Ranch, Cessna Two Hotel Sierra, on final, Runway Two Seven, full stop, Jim Ranch."

  She saw herself float over the farm house, a comfortable distance perhaps fifty feet above the trees in its yard, and pulled the throttle the rest of the way off.

  Lourdes engine idled, her slowly turning prop now a drag item.

  All attention on her flare, Lourdes glided past the barn and onto the tire ruts she'd seen from altitude.