Great Circle: A Novel

by Maggie Shipstead

  She’d stacked the books in teetering columns against one wall. She would read them, she decided, one after the other, in the order they were stacked, and she begins to do this shortly after her tenth birthday. Here and there, after she’s been working on Wallace’s car or mending bicycles for other children, she leaves some streaks of grease on the pages, but she decides her father is the kind of man who wouldn’t mind. During the day, she carries a book with her, to school or into the hills. In the evenings, she goes to the cottage and reads in the armchair by the stove. Had her father sat in it even once? Before this windfall of books, she had not been a reader and is unpracticed at sitting still for so long.

  The first volume on the first stack, not quite by chance, is Dracula, and, like her mother, she has distressing dreams about Renfield, the lunatic who feeds flies to spiders and spiders to birds and, when he can’t obtain a cat to eat the birds, eats them himself, alive. She dreams about the beast with Gilda, and in the dream she knows the beast is Renfield, the devourer. There is no one, of course, who can tell her that her mother also had been frightened by the idea of such an appetite. No one had ever known.

  Among the books are novels and some collections of verse and quite a few volumes of illustrations of plants and birds and animals labeled in Latin that she tells Jamie he may come and look at but may not take anywhere. There is a collection of Shakespeare and a fat dictionary that she keeps nearby for words she doesn’t know. But mostly there are accounts of journeys. She reads about storms and wrecks, pirates and armadas, crews forced to eat their comrades. (Renfield reappears in her dreams.) She reads about Tahitian mountains rising from warm seas, their emerald summits wreathed with cloud, about the forbidding Himalayas and the high pastures of the Alps where cowbells toll. She reads about James Cook and Charles Darwin and Mary Kingsley and Richard Henry Dana and about Lewis and Clark walking through the very same valley where she lives. She reads about the winds in the Strait of Magellan that can push a ship backward at such speeds its prow leaves a wake, winds that blow Arabian sand hundreds of miles out to sea in choking orange clouds. She reads about the Congo and the Nile and the Yangtze and the Amazon. She reads about wild, naked children in hot climates who play games of looking and touching not unlike those Caleb sometimes devises when Jamie isn’t around. She reads about waves towering like mountains, about maddening calms, circling sharks, whales that leap free of the ocean, volcanoes that ooze fire. There are no books among them about little girls like herself, but she does not notice.

  So her father, besides making journeys of his own, liked to read about those made by others. Presumably he approved of people who had adventures. She likes Joshua Slocum’s account of sailing around in the world alone in his little oyster sloop, the Spray, feeling like a planet unto himself. She would like to feel that way.

  Her very favorites, though, are the accounts of the far north and the far south, where ships’ rigging sags heavy with frost and blue icebergs drift freely, arched and spired like frozen cathedrals. She reads accounts by Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen and about the vanished Sir John Franklin but is not satisfied and brings back more books from the library, gorging herself on the deprivations suffered by Ernest Shackleton and Apsley Cherry-Garrard. Bravery at the poles seems appealingly simple. If you go there, or try to, you are brave. She comes across an etching of narwhals crowding a patch of open water amid Arctic pack ice, tusks clashing in the air like sabers in a battlefield melee. From the corner behind the stove, she retrieves the long horn and goes out across the snowy yard to the main house.

  Wallace is up in his studio, Beethoven on the phonograph. He takes the book into his lap and studies the image. “Yes, I see,” he says. “I think you’re right.”

  “A narwhal tusk,” Marian says. “Here in Missoula, Montana.”

  He looks at the etching again. “Are they fighting?”

  “It says they’re breathing. You don’t think my father killed the one this came from, do you?”

  “I think he probably bought it.”

  “Why is it,” she asks Wallace, leaning on the spiraled tusk, her long pale braid pulled forward over her shoulder, “that both the north and the south are so cold? Why are their seasons flip-flopped, and why is it sometimes always dark and sometimes always light?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. He flips through the book, passing images of Eskimos and dogsleds and icebergs and grimacing whales flapping their tails. He wonders if his brother had seen all those things. Marian does not seem like a child to him, nor like an adult. She has an avidity that unnerves him.

  She goes back out across the snow, toward the cottage suspended in the dark like a lantern hanging from a bowsprit. More than two years have passed since her father’s brief stay in it. She hopes more of his belongings will be explained by the books, that by the time she has read them all, she will know what he knew. In a way, then, she will know him. And later, when she is grown, she will go to the places she has read about, see things for herself.

  Nights and days, summers and winters.

  Barnstormers

  Missoula

  May 1927

  Three months later

  The morning was cold, but Fiddler’s barrel warmed Marian’s legs. She rode bareback, reins loose, ducking under pine boughs that swept through the early gloom. When Fiddler paused to snatch wisps of grass, she pressed his ribs with her bare heels.

  Most mornings since last September, when she’d turned twelve, she’d risen before dawn and bridled the horse. Jamie seldom came along anymore, maybe because he sensed she preferred to go alone. Depending on her whim, she and Fiddler might follow the banks of the Clark Fork or Bitterroot, or they might wander through town, watching the plodding circuit of the milkman’s wagon, the lonely homeward transits of night workers and wandering drunks. If there wasn’t too much snow, she might ride up one of the mountains or canyons.

  This day, she had turned away from the Rattlesnake, ascending Mount Jumbo as the last stars winked out and the sky blued and glowed. Fiddler swung into a trot up the steep rise to the summit, where he stopped and immediately began to graze. Low silver fog lay on the valley floor, pierced by roofs and treetops. From behind her, the rising sun’s rays played over the ranks of mountains across the valley, tilted slowly down onto Missoula, dispersing the fog until ordinary tidy daylight glinted off the river.

  Thrusting her feet forward to hook the reins, she lay back on the horse, hands behind her head on Fiddler’s haunches. She was almost dozing when she heard the distant sound of an engine. She took it for one of the local aircraft, rickety surplus Jennies and Standards sold cheap after the war and flown mostly by hobbyists. The sound was coming from the east. Louder. Louder still. She pushed herself up just as a red-and-black biplane roared over, as abrupt and magnificent as an announcing angel, passing so low it seemed she could have touched the wheels.

  * * *

  —

  The Flying Brayfogles. So it said in looping white script on the tails of their Curtiss Jennies. They were Felix and Trixie, refugees from Wilton Wolf’s Flying Circus, which had gone defunct after the government decided the festive local air shows that had sprung up everywhere after the war involved too many people plunging festively to their deaths and tightened regulations. The Brayfogles were heading west, to Hollywood, to find stunt work in the pictures.

  Other barnstormers had come through town before, selling rides and doing aerobatics and parachute jumps, but Marian had never really noticed them, never considered how an airplane could pass over the mountains, over the horizon, carry people elsewhere. Maybe she had needed the dangerous proximity of the plane, its roar and the red flash of its wings to jolt her from obliviousness. Or maybe the moment was simply right. She was at an age when the future adult rattles the child’s bones like the bars of a cage.

  Wallace drove her, later that day, to the airstrip at the base of Mount Sentinel that
was nothing fancier than a reasonably level field marked with lime and pocked with badger holes. He’d barely stopped the car before she bolted like a rambunctious colt, galloping away across the grass toward the parked planes.

  The cowling doors were open on the nearer plane’s engine, and a figure in a mechanic’s overall was standing on a stepladder and digging among the valves and cylinders. Another figure, in breeches and boots, lay in the shaded grass under the far plane’s wing, face covered by a wide-brimmed cattleman’s hat, apparently asleep. The person on the stepladder straightened up and turned, and Marian was surprised to realize it was a woman. A blue bandanna covered her hair; her face was streaked with grease. A spanner dangled from one hand.

  “Hello,” the woman said, looking down at the girl and then back across the field at Wallace. “Who might you be?”

  “I’m Marian Graves.”

  “Did you come to see the planes? Our mighty squadron of two?” Her way of speaking was singsongy and mannered. She pulled a second bandanna from her pocket and wiped her face, further smudging the grease.

  “I saw them already. This morning I was on my horse and one flew right over me.” Fiddler had spooked and she had nearly fallen off. Just as she’d recovered herself, the other plane had passed over, higher but still loud enough to upset Fiddler all over again.

  “They do seem quite low sometimes, don’t they? But really we’re much higher than you think. Safety first, I always—” She stopped. “Oh. You mean up the mountain? That was you, dearheart? You poor thing, you must have been awfully frightened. Felix can be very silly.”

  “I wasn’t scared.”

  “I’m glad you came by so Felix could apologize in person. I can absolutely promise you it was an accident. Just a silly mistake. You’re all right, I’m glad to see.”

  Marian gathered her courage to say what had been consuming her all morning: “I’d like to go up in one.”

  The woman tilted her head, screwed up her face in an expression Marian supposed was meant to suggest sympathy. “I’m afraid we won’t be giving any rides until tomorrow, and the fact is they cost money. Five dollars. We have to pay for fuel and so on—it’s how we make a living. I’m sorry Felix frightened you, but we can’t start taking up anyone who wants to go, much as we’d like to. Maybe we could give you a small discount as a friendly gesture, but you’ll have to ask your father there if he’ll pay. Unless you’ve been saving up?” This last quite hopefully.

  “He’s my uncle.”

  “You’ll have to ask your uncle, then.”

  Wallace, arriving, shaded his eyes with one hand and smiled up at the woman. “What will she have to ask me?”

  “This brave young lady wants to go up in a plane.” Again the bandanna swabbed at the grease, this time more effectively, and a long, narrow greyhound face emerged.

  “Can I?” Marian demanded of Wallace, boisterous from the embarrassment of having to ask. She and Jamie weren’t given pocket money in any sort of regular way. It did not seem to occur to Wallace that there might be things they wanted to buy, and so, under Caleb’s tutelage, they’d turned to petty thievery, pinching candy and fishing tackle and various bits and bobs from the stores downtown. Caleb in an hour on a busy street could unobtrusively dip enough coins from passersby for three movie tickets and lunch at a beanery. When they had any money, they spent it, and so, in what now seemed a terrible oversight, Marian had nothing saved.

  “How much does it cost?” Wallace asked the woman.

  “Five dollars for fifteen minutes—four fifty for you, since we’re all friends now. And that’s a bargain.”

  Wallace smiled at Marian, the same appreciative but noncommittal smile he’d directed at the fine blue sky, the grease-smeared stranger. To the woman, he said, “I hope we’re not bothering you. Marian had a close encounter with one of your planes this morning. It made an impression.”

  “Poor dear. It must have been so frightening.”

  “It wasn’t,” Marian insisted. “I liked it. Are you having engine trouble?”

  “Not more than usual.”

  “I know about engines. I take care of Wallace’s car—don’t I, Wallace?”

  “She does,” he told the woman. “Marian is a born mechanic.”

  “How charming.”

  The sleeping figure under the other plane stirred. A sun-browned arm curled up to unhat the face, and a man came out from under the wing, stretched his back. He was trim, compact, densely mustachioed, and, crossing the grass, had a leisurely, bowlegged stride and an insouciance to the way he set his hat far back on his head with one hand while brushing grass off his seat with the other.

  “Felix,” said the woman, “this is the poor little girl you almost mowed down on her horse.”

  “You!” He stopped short with hands on hips. “An unmarked obstacle, you are.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right. I could use a reminder not to showboat, if you can call it that when no one’s even watching. What were you doing up there so early?”

  Wallace regarded Marian with interest, as though he’d never considered asking her himself.

  “I just go up to look around sometimes.”

  “Fair enough.” The man shook hands with Wallace. “Felix Brayfogle.” He jerked a thumb at the stepladder. “My wife, Trixie. The Flying Brayfogles.” Felix shook Marian’s hand next but didn’t let go when she expected. He fixed her with a stern look. “No dead fish allowed. Go on. Firm grip. You won’t break me.”

  She squeezed as hard as she could, pumped his wrist.

  “Better. Cracked a bone or two. You like engines? Want to see this one?”

  “Dearheart,” Trixie cut in, “I’m afraid I’m busy up here, and we only have the one ladder.”

  “For every problem there is a solution,” Felix said. He led Marian to the wing, boosted her up onto the varnished canvas. “Hop on my shoulders.”

  “Felix, really,” Trixie trilled.

  “Go on,” he said to Marian. She sat on the wing’s edge and scooted onto Felix’s shoulders. Not knowing where to put her hands, she clutched the top of his head.

  “Aren’t I too big?”

  “You’re a slip of a thing.” He walked her a few steps to the plane’s nose. “There, have a good look. Easy on my hair, though. I want to keep it.”

  What she saw was like a car’s engine but even more wonderful. She studied the paths of fuel and water, noted the valves and rods and bolts while studiously avoiding Trixie’s gaze, baleful across the knot of metal. The glossy wooden propeller blades were elegantly angled to grasp and guide the air.

  “It’s an OX-5,” Felix said from between her knees. “Looks nice but leaks like a sieve and guzzles oil. Had a good enough look?”

  “Yes, thanks,” she said, though she hadn’t.

  Felix sat her on the wing again, turned to grasp her waist and lift her down. “Say,” he said to Wallace, “you wouldn’t know a place near here that won’t cheat us on gasoline, would you?”

  Marian edged closer to the cowling, reaching up to pet the metal as though it were a horse, and Wallace, watching her, told Felix he would drive him to a good garage if he liked and then back with the gas. While they were at it, he said, he’d show him a few spots in town to pin up notices advertising their air show and rides. “And, only a thought, so feel free to decline, but if you’re looking for a place to stay, I’d be happy to put you up for the night.”

  “Why, that’d be terrific,” said Felix.

  “And you’d take Marian and her brother for rides tomorrow?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And you, Uncle Wallace?” Trixie sang out from above. “Don’t you want a ride?”

  * * *

  —

  To Marian, the presence of the barnstormers transformed their house. On the one hand, she fe
lt newly mortified by its shabbiness because she assumed pilots must be used to the finest things in life. On the other, now that the house contained Felix, it seemed infused with radiant possibility. Did he have a beast in him? Did he grab at Trixie and growl and scowl? She’d clutched his hair in her fingers, felt his shoulders under her thighs. A slip of a thing. Was that what she was? The thought of him made her jumpy, nervy. Already she’d dragged him out to show him Wallace’s car, lifted the hood to reveal the patches and fixes she’d contrived in the engine. He was kind to her in a twinkling way and had seemed genuinely impressed by her knowledge of the car. She liked his mustache and his neat waist in belted breeches. While he bathed, she passed by the bathroom more than she needed, pausing once to press her ear against the door, listening for the occasional laconic splash.

  Naturally, Trixie happened by just then. She was wearing a tired-looking, sacklike blue day dress that must have emerged from the tiny valise that was her only luggage. She caught sight of Marian and stopped, her smile wincing and curdled. Her hair, free of its bandanna and damp from her bath, was bobbed in a style that was fashionable but did not suit her long face. She wore dark red lipstick, almost purple, and had lined her eyes and penciled her eyebrows. None of it suited her. She was spoiled by being taken out of her mechanic’s garb.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were snooping,” Trixie said.