An Impossible Distance to Fall

by Miriam McNamara

  Birdie swallowed her mouthful and gestured to June’s plane. “What kind of plane is that?”

  June shot an adoring look at it over her shoulder. “That, my dear, is a Gipsy Moth.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s British, a de Havilland. It’s like their Jenny—a military training plane that got sold cheap after the war.”

  “How’d you end up with it?” asked Birdie.

  June leaned in close, and Birdie noticed a smattering of light freckles on the bridge of her nose. “I stole it,” she said, low.

  Birdie’s eyes widened, and June grinned as she sat back. “Well, I stole it at first,” she admitted. “But after it was clear I wasn’t gonna quit stealing it, my daddy ended up giving it to me.”

  It was almost as hard to imagine someone giving their daughter a plane as it was to picture June making off with one. “Spill,” said Birdie. “I need the whole story.”

  “The whole thing?” June mumbled around a mouthful of food. She swallowed and set her sandwich down. “I wanted to fly since I was little. I was probably nine or ten, watching a parade that had three planes doing stunts—steep climbs and rolls, keeping pace with the parade below. The sun flashing off the propellers, the zoom of the engines, the wide, blue sky—oh my Lord, I wanted to do it right then and there! I didn’t know you could want something that bad and never even tried it. But I just knew.”

  Birdie had had a similar longing when she was a child, but she’d never imagined she could fly them. She’d thought it was something girls didn’t do. She took another bite, as a couple of sparrows landed a few feet away and eyed the crumbs at her feet.

  “I was determined to fly from then on,” June continued. “But my parents are way too highfalutin to let their daughter do anything so undignified. Fortunately my daddy bought that Moth—mostly just for show, I don’t even remember him flying it—and I managed to sneak off and teach myself.”

  Birdie choked on her mouthful. “You taught yourself?”

  “I couldn’t not! I was too scared to try the stunts, but I figured out how to take off and land, and the basic in-between stuff. Heard about a race happenening the next town over and took off for it in my daddy’s Moth. Believe it or not, I placed! In a regional competition, but still. That’s how my parents found out. They were not impressed—but they did end up coming around. They even paid someone to teach me, since they figured there was less of a chance of me killing myself that way.” June picked her sandwich back up and took a bite.

  “How thrilling.” Birdie sighed. June’s story was so fun—a spunky tomboy taking off in her daddy’s plane while her prim parents fanned themselves back on their plantation.

  “They might’ve had some regrets when I took off with a flying circus—but they’ll be all right. They’re making peace with the fact that I’m gonna do what I want, no matter if they approve or not.” June sounded a little wistful as she looked away.

  “They don’t sound so bad,” Birdie said. “They let you do what you want.”

  June laughed shortly. “I’m not the daughter they want me to be, but they’ve resigned themselves to that, for the most part. And my sister more than makes up for me.” June’s face brightened. “She’s the type that screams at mice and won’t walk through a puddle unless some fella puts his coat down. My parents get to take out all their fussing on her, and she just eats it up.” June gestured with her sandwich. “Enough about me. What’s your story?”

  “Sort of like yours.” Birdie shrugged, a flutter of nerves in her stomach. Anything she could think to say beyond that seemed like too much. “I always wanted to run away with the circus,” she managed.

  “You fly as well as you dance?” June popped the last of her sandwich in her mouth.

  “I’ve never flown a plane.”

  June almost choked. “What?”

  “My dad said it was too dangerous.” How silly that sounded now.

  “You’ll wingwalk on a plane some sap you don’t know is flying, but flying it yourself is too dangerous?”

  Birdie laughed. “That makes no sense, does it?”

  June crumpled her sandwich wrapper into a ball. “Bennie said you came asking about Oscar’s new Jenny?” She tossed the ball into the air and caught it. Tossed it again.

  Birdie fidgeted with the last of her sandwich. “Oh, that. My dad had a plane just like that Jenny, is all.” She threw it on the ground and watched the tiny brown birds cautiously hop closer.

  “Your dad had a plane, too—that makes you either a rich kid or a poor performer’s kid.”

  Which best described her now? “I grew up well off.”

  “I figured.” June winked. “You don’t look like the starving performer type to me.”

  Birdie put a hand to her messy hair and attempted a coy smile. “Oh really? I was sure I was beginning to make a convincing hobo, three days in the same outfit and no soap!”

  June grinned and nudged her with her shoulder, and all of it—the wink, the smile, the nudge—made Birdie feel warm. Of course they weren’t flirting, but something about their banter gave her the same thrill.

  “It’s funny how this business is full of runaway rich kids. Every pilot I know is, practically. Except for Hazel.” June picked up Birdie’s wrapper, tore it in two, and crumpled the two halves into balls. “You’d never guess she grew up poor, with a hundred siblings. I still don’t know how she convinced some guy to teach her to fly, then got herself a plane, then got into racing and stunt-flying, all with no money or credit or anything! I’d never have managed, if I had to work as hard as she did.” June picked up her wrapper as well and juggled the three makeshift balls. Around once, around twice—“So your folks are rich. Do they know you’re here? Or, let me guess. Y’all the type of folks that leave out certain information if it might bother someone unnecessarily.”

  Birdie’s swallowed her smile and had to cough it back up. “Might have left a few details out.” She coughed again as she stood up, scattering the sparrows. “Gosh, I’m thirsty. Think they’ve got some water in there?” She gestured toward the hangar.

  “Let’s go take a gander.” June dropped the sandwich wrappers in the dust. “I’m parched myself.”

  Birdie followed June toward the hangar, throat tight. It was over two days since she’d seen Mom. No phone here, in the middle of nowhere, but they’d be in Chicago tonight, where there should be plenty of them. Birdie’d call then. She owed her mom that.

  The night before he left, Dad had put on the gramophone, twirling her around the parlor after supper while Mom watched from the chaise lounge. He had spun her around and around, until the whole room seemed like it was falling to pieces and she fell over laughing. When the room had stopped spinning everything was still where it was supposed to be. Dad was still there. The room was still there, and the house around it. The bank was still there, still supposedly full of money, just down the street. He had acted like nothing was wrong.

  Wouldn’t you tell a person that something so terrible and big was about to happen, even if it would bother them? Wasn’t that too much information to leave out, just to make sure no one got upset?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  BIRDIE STUMBLED OUT OF THE FRONT COCKPIT ON CRAMPED LIMBS WHEN they landed for the final time. John, his cheeks red from the wind, gave her a hand. They had stopped two more times to refuel, and now the sun was setting.

  The others stretched their legs and lit cigarettes. June offered Birdie a drag as she approached, but Birdie shook her head. She was light-headed, having eaten nothing since lunch, and the smoke would make her fall right over. “This isn’t Chicago,” she said, unable to keep aggravation out of her voice. An expanse of flat pasture and trees was interrupted only by a single house, a barn, fences, and a rough, empty stretch of road. “I thought we were going to Chicago tonight.”

  “We’re just outside of Elgin,” said June. “Chicago’s within an hour’s drive. We’re staying here through the audition, with Merri’s aunt. Th
e fields are great for practice.”

  Birdie’s irritation flared hotter. An hour’s drive to Chicago? “We’re staying here, in this—this cow pasture? The whole time?”

  June raised her eyebrows. “My, my, Miss Prissy. The beds are comfortable, and Henrieta’s a swell cook. You’re gonna be just fine.”

  Birdie bit back a tart answer. Chicago was supposed to be jazz singers and speakeasies. It was supposed to be bright lights and slick hotels. It was tall buildings and fast cars and big crowds. If Dad was anywhere around here he was in Chicago.

  She had been promised Chicago.

  Birdie was hungry and tired. Hopefully tomorrow this would seem like a fun adventure again, and not just a giant mistake.

  Merriwether put her cigarette out and cut purposefully through the field toward the white farmhouse, motioning for them all to follow. As they approached, a woman with wild, frizzy white hair slammed the front door open and starting hollering. She hugged Merriwether and then went for the twins, squeezing them and pinching their cheeks and calling them “Babisiu!” and “Myszko!” with an accent Birdie didn’t recognize. The whole place stank of vinegar and woodsmoke. What looked like a thousand cabbages were piled up against the house, and empty mason jars were scattered on the porch in untidy piles.

  The woman introduced herself as Henrieta, Merriwether’s ciotka, or aunt. She gave them each a sour-smelling hug and exclaimed that they were as welcome as her own family, insisting they help themselves to her cords of firewood stacked on the porch and make a fire while she scrounged up something to eat. Merri ordered the twins to drag the chairs on the porch down next to a pit in the yard as Oscar grabbed some logs. Birdie excused herself to the outhouse, and by the time she came back Oscar had started a small fire and Henrieta, her hair now pulled back in a respectable bun, had brought out a few loaves of fresh bread, a crock of salty butter, and a hard salami. They sat around the fire and munched the bread, lips glistening with butter. June cut off pieces of salami with a pocketknife and passed them around. Birdie had never tasted anything so salty and warm and chewy and sweet as that bread and butter and salami, and it went a long way towards cheering her up.

  Tomorrow. Everything she needed to figure out, she would figure out tomorrow.

  Henrieta launched into a story about how a couple of girls had stayed with her during last year’s Powder Puff derby, and how one tomfool girl had went and crashed her plane into the lone tree standing in the middle of Henrieta’s pasture. “You stay yourselves on the ground after you’ve had some of my trunek,” warned Henrieta. “Some can barely walk, much less fly, after drinking it—but for some reason people get some daft idea in their head for a stunt, and next thing you know—”

  Oscar asked to sample the hooch. Henrieta brought out a jug and then went to shut the chickens in for the night. Oscar tasted it and gave it his nod of approval, then passed it to June.

  “We’ll meet up with Hazel tomorrow,” said Merriwether. “She’s at a boarding house near the Curtiss airfield in Glenview. We’ll tell her—about Charlie. She might have ideas for a new set, or maybe we could ask the other girls.” She popped a piece of bread into her mouth and chewed for a moment, then asked, “Anyone had any thoughts?”

  “Nope,” said Oscar. “Hazel’s brilliant, though. You know she’ll come up with something.”

  “I’ll check in with the folks at the boarding house tomorrow,” June said. “See what their take is.”

  “Yeah, June’s gonna check in with Ruth first, I bet,” said Oscar, teasing. “She’s gonna find her so she can just, oh, get her opinion.” June didn’t respond, just took a swig of hooch and gave him a dark look.

  “How about you two?” asked Merriwether, nudging one of the twins.

  “If you’d let me fly in the show, I’d find a way to save it,” he said, cheeks chipmunked with bread, and the other twin snorted.

  “Yeah, John will get us the contract by crashing straight into the stands.”

  “‘Youngest Pilot Ever Allowed by His Own Mother to Fly Dangerous Stunts!’” Oscar swept his hand across the horizon as if gesturing to a marquee. “I bet that would catch someone’s attention.”

  “We flew all day with nothing better to think about, and nobody came up with anything that won’t get me jailed for negligence?” Merriwether huffed. She looked at Birdie. “How about you?”

  “New girl never even saw an air show before ours,” drawled June. “She’s got nothing.”

  Birdie shot her a look. “You don’t know that!” she protested, but she hadn’t thought about it all day.

  Merriwether sighed and tore off another chunk of bread.

  Henrieta came and told them that she’d made up the usual rooms for them—and realizing that she’d forgotten Birdie, Henrieta told her she’d make up the daybed in Merriwether’s room, which was right inside the front door. “You are small enough,” she said, patting her shoulder reassuringly. “You will sleep very good.”

  Birdie thanked her. Anything would be better than that horrid mattress she’d slept on last night.

  Nobody went right to bed. Merriwether invited Henrieta to share a pipe. June and Oscar passed the gin back and forth, their voices getting louder, while the twins stifled their yawns, fighting their obvious tiredness.

  Birdie wasn’t ready to go to bed, but she didn’t feel much like talking. She stood up stiffly, her antics on the plane the day before catching up to her. She was used to dancing for hours at a time—much longer than yesterday, when there was a show coming up—but adrenaline and wind and gravity all made wingwalking a different kind of exhausting. She walked through the dark field to Charlie’s plane, pulled a blanket out of the Jenny, and wrapped it around her shoulders. Sneaking past the fire and onto the porch, she propped herself up against the wall of the house with her ankles crossed.

  She tugged the blanket close against the chill and watched Oscar and June gesture by the fire, the twins listening earnestly to whatever story they were telling. She watched Oscar smile, skin gilded by firelight. The sadness that had hung around him since Charlie’s accident was gone—or sodden with enough alcohol, at least, that it didn’t rise off of him in waves. She watched his striking eyes crinkle up at the corners. His full lips. Thick, short lashes. Big white teeth flashed when he smiled. Broad, strong hands.

  She saw how he looked when Hazel was mentioned, the way his face lit up. She got the sense that Oscar was stuck on the mysterious girl they were meeting up with tomorrow, no matter how flirtatious he’d been with Birdie.

  June was a strange girl. Birdie hadn’t ever met anyone like her. She sat like a boy, and Birdie could swear she flirted like one, too, but she wasn’t a tomboy in the way that it was fashionable to be. Birdie had thought there were two types of girls in the world—good ones and rebellious flappers who wore short skirts and smoked cigarettes. She’d thought those were the options. But June was something else entirely. Something tall and challenging and—fascinating, really.

  Birdie closed her eyes and imagined June watching her dance across the wing, her green eyes staring into her.

  You looked real pretty up there …

  Charlie was falling again. This time Birdie saw it in slow motion, and she willed the parachute to open. She could make it open, if she just believed hard enough. The parachute would open. Any second, it would pop open. Any second, everything would be okay. Everything would happen like it was supposed to.

  She turned away right before Charlie hit the sand. She stared at the ocean and kept believing. He was still up in the air. If she didn’t look, he could still be up in the air. There was still a chance the parachute would open.

  When she turned back he would be standing on his feet, waving at an adoring crowd.

  Birdie woke with a start, her mouth like cotton. June was standing over her, a lean shadow. Smoke was curling up from the fire’s embers into the dark sky. Everything below the tree line was black.

  Everything was quiet.

  June squatted
down, and Birdie’s breath caught in her throat.

  “Hey,” June said softly. “Everyone’s gone to bed. You want a hand up?”

  June extended a hand and Birdie reached out. Their hands caught, and June pulled Birdie to standing. They were inches apart, their toes almost touching. June held her hand.

  June turned and led her toward the door. Birdie’s heart was thumping in her chest. She couldn’t say why. She was on the wing again, and each step she took was one step closer to a drop into the unknown.

  June made sure the screen door didn’t make a sound as it shut behind them, her hand still clasped in Birdie’s as she turned to face her again.

  Birdie felt June’s fingers loosening. She realized, the dream-fog clearing from her mind, that they were standing in front of the bedroom door Birdie was supposed to sleep in. June had walked her inside to make sure Birdie found her way to bed and didn’t sleep on the porch all night.

  “Sweet dreams, Birdie,” said June softly, releasing her hand.

  She turned and walked away. Birdie’s hand fell to her sides as June crept down the hall, then up the stairs.

  Birdie tried to orient herself. There was the floor beneath her feet, the wall against her hand, and the doorknob within reach. It felt like she had still been sleeping and was just now waking up.

  She opened the door. Merriwether was sprawled out on the bed, snoring lightly. Birdie went straight across the room and lay down in the narrow daybed, made up with a blanket and pillow, her eyes wide open.

  She imagined June lying in her bed upstairs, her breath coming fast, too.