Born to Fly

by Michael Ferrari

  “You worry about your dad?” Kenji asked.

  “All the time.” Just thinking about him then made me worried. Gosh, if I didn’t watch it I was gonna start bawling right in front of Kenji. I ducked my head away, just in case.

  Kenji squeezed my shoulder softly. Kind of the way Dad would. “Hey,” he said, “if he’s anything like you, he’ll be okay.”

  “Thanks.”

  Kenji went back to his records, pausing now and then to consider an especially jazzy-looking one. But something still didn’t make sense to me. How would a kid like Kenji get all this stuff? Finally I figured it out.

  “This stuff was your parents’, wasn’t it?”

  “No.” He stopped fanning through the records. Then, reluctantly: “Yeah.”

  It got real quiet all of a sudden. And seeing how me and quiet don’t exactly get along, I was just about to ask something stupid about his parents when Kenji quickly plucked out a record.

  “You ever hear this one?” he asked.

  He wound the crank on the phonograph and lowered the needle. A rousing jitterbug number blared out. Kenji started to dance a little, doing a few fancy steps, and I had to admit, he was pretty darn good.

  “Want me to show you?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on,” he said. “It’s easy. My mom taught me.”

  He grabbed my hand and started slow, stepping back and forth. Dipping down. Left. Right. Left. Right. At first it was strange to be holding hands and I kept stepping on his feet, but after a minute or two I started to get the rhythm of the music. Then Kenji worked up to spinning me and I ducked under his arm. We did it just like grown-ups in the movies! I was surprised at myself. It was kind of easy. We did it again. Boy! I was dancing. I wished my dumb sister Margaret could have seen this. She had to take lessons all summer just to learn to square dance. Before long we were twirling like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. And for the first time, I saw Kenji break into a real smile.

  “Now for the big finish,” he said.

  The music started to build. Kenji got ambitious and tried to pick me up by my waist. But his hand got caught in the bib of my overalls, and instead we slipped and collapsed all over each other like Laurel and Hardy. After a second, we looked at each other and burst out laughing—just as Uncle Tomo walked in, home from working at the factory.

  “Kenji!” he said. Then he hollered something in Japanese.

  Kenji hopped to attention and yanked up the record needle. “Nothing, Uncle.”

  “Oh, we have company,” Uncle Tomo said, recognizing me. He bowed. “Hello, Miss McGill.”

  “Hello.” I clumsily tried to bow back to him the same way he had to me.

  Uncle Tomo asked Kenji, “Now you want to be Ginger Roger?”

  “It’s Fred Astaire, Uncle. Ginger’s the girl,” Kenji said, embarrassed.

  Uncle Tomo winked at me knowingly. “What happened to wishing you were John Wayne?”

  “Uncle!”

  “All right, all right. Miss McGill, you stay for dinner?”

  “Thank you, sir, but I should be getting home,” I told him.

  Kenji walked me out into the hall.

  “Do you think you could sneak us some of your uncle’s fireworks?” I asked.

  He fidgeted. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “You know, you’ve never told me what you want if this crazy scheme works and they make us heroes,” I said.

  “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”

  “Haven’t thought about it? How could you think about anything else? I can barely pay attention in school.”

  “Who can, with that blabbering Mrs. Simmons teaching?”

  We shared a laugh at that one.

  “Do you think you’d go back to Hollywood?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” he said. But he didn’t seem so sure.

  “What about your uncle? I mean, if you went back to California, who would you live with?”

  “I haven’t thought about it, okay?” Kenji dropped his head.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. I guess I was talking too much. “So we’ll meet by the south shore, Friday night?”

  He nodded.

  “And bring the camera,” I reminded him.

  I was a little ways down the hall when he called after me. “Say, Bird?”

  “Yeah?”

  He hesitated, then asked, “What’s your real name?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  I shrugged. “It’s stupid.”

  “Okay. Forget it,” he said. “It’s no big deal.”

  “It’s just … Everybody laughs at it,” I said.

  “I wouldn’t,” he said.

  “Yeah? Well, maybe someday I’ll tell you.”

  When I walked into our kitchen, Mom was cutting up turnips and carrots for dinner. I twirled past her, practicing one of the dance steps Kenji had been teaching me. She looked at me and I raced back to wipe my feet. “Sorry,” I said.

  “What, sweetheart?” she said.

  Sweetheart? She had never called me that before. Then I spotted a torn-open envelope on the table—and it had a Georgia postmark.

  “A letter from Dad?”

  Mom nodded, beaming, and I grabbed it.

  “Your father’s getting leave in July,” Mom said. And then, out of the blue, she hugged me.

  “That’s great,” I told her. I caught my reflection in the refrigerator door handle. My hair was hanging in my eyes. I fussed with it. “Mom?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Am I pretty?” I asked.

  She paused. “Doesn’t your father always say so?”

  “Yeah. But that’s just Dad.”

  Mom feathered my bangs away from my eyes. She smiled. “Yes. You’re pretty.”

  It felt weird, hearing Mom say it. Sort of like if Farley had said something like “Nice catch, Bird.” Satisfied, I snatched a carrot to nibble on.

  “By the way, that Lieutenant Peppel called for you,” Mom said.

  “Who?”

  “The pilot who flour-bombed you. He joked that he needed to talk to you about a ‘secret mission.’”

  Then I remembered. He was talking about our deal!

  “Bird. What are you up to?”

  “Nothing,” I told her.

  Mom cocked her head at me and squinted her eyes. Uh-oh. When Mom got that look, she was tougher than Humphrey Bogart. She could practically x-ray through the best fibs you could ever think of.

  “I’m just trying to get Margaret a date,” I explained.

  She wasn’t buying it. I was sunk.

  “Gosh. Can’t I do something nice for my big sister?” I pleaded.

  “I’m going to regret this, but you caught me in a good mood. All right.”

  “Thanks, Mom. How long until dinner?”

  “About an hour—”

  But I was already flying out the door.

  Inside the airplane hangar, Lieutenant Peppel struggled to walk toward the wing of his P-40. It was like his parachute pack was way too heavy. And it was—because I was inside it. He checked the area and tried to climb onto the wing, bumping my head on the aileron.

  “Ow!” I yelped.

  “Shhh!” he scolded me.

  Suddenly I heard another voice, that of the gruff old mechanic who worked on the planes there. The mechanic asked, “Taking her up again already, Lieutenant?”

  “Uh, yeah. I wanted to flight-test that oil leak.”

  The mechanic must have noticed the trouble Lieutenant Peppel was having climbing onto the wing, because he got behind him and gave me a shove.

  I yelped again.

  “Was that you squawking?” the mechanic asked Lieutenant Peppel.

  “Yeah, sorry,” the lieutenant said. “I’ve got a … a weak kidney.”

  “That’s ’cause you’re bent over all wrong.” The mechanic shoved his knee into my butt and I had to clench my teeth to keep from hollering
. “Here.” He lifted the chute and rocked Lieutenant Peppel forward onto the wing. “I guess they forgot to teach you how to carry a chute in college, huh, flyboy?”

  “Yeah, I reckon so,” Lieutenant Peppel grumbled back. Then he whispered to me, “This better be worth it, Peach-pit.”

  The mechanic helped shove me down into the cramped cockpit. I was crumpled in a ball now and Lieutenant Peppel was basically sitting on my head.

  “Thanks,” the lieutenant said. “I got it from here.”

  “Okay,” the mechanic said. He climbed down off the wing and pulled out the wheel chucks. I could hear him mutter as he walked away, “College boys.”

  As soon as he was gone, the lieutenant called out, “Okay, now.”

  I spilled out of the bottom of his chute pack and squeezed in behind the control stick, just in front of him. He strapped us both in while I stared reverently at the instruments sticking out on the control panel like jewels in a diamond mine. Beautiful.

  “You’re sure your sister will go out with me?”

  I gave him a thumbs-up. “Affirmative.”

  I strapped on my helmet and watched carefully as Lieutenant Peppel checked his instruments.

  “Mags on. Flaps set. Throttle set. Engine primed. Ready?”

  I pulled down my goggles and squeezed my eyes shut.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’ve never flown without my dad,” I confessed. I couldn’t believe it, but it had been almost six months since Dad and I had flown on my birthday.

  “Don’t you worry none. I’m first in my class.”

  I nodded excitedly and he spun up the flywheel and fired the engine over. The twelve cylinders pounded together in rhythm like a blazing boogie-woogie band and I smiled. It was the most wonderful sound I had ever heard. It shook your whole body, like the P-40 was just as anxious as we were to get off the ground and into the sky.

  A moment later, the mighty fighter taxied out, S-turning toward the head of the runway. I popped my head up to see—and I was instantly splattered in the face with oil.

  “Watch it.” The lieutenant dragged me back down into the cockpit. “She’s been blowing a little oil out of her stacks.”

  “Now you tell me.” I coughed and spit out the oil, then wiped off my goggles. I looked over as we passed a T-6 trainer plane. The T-6 pilot did a double take and I realized that from his viewpoint, with me in the cockpit, it probably looked like Lieutenant Peppel had two heads. I quickly ducked back down.

  “Power up,” Lieutenant Peppel called out, and the engine started to scream. He stepped on the brakes with all his strength. Like a hound dog fighting his leash to chase the fox, the Warhawk tried to shake loose its brakes, eager to be airborne. “Here we go.” Lieutenant Peppel released the brakes and had to stand on the rudder to keep us straight as the Warhawk tore off down the runway and carried us into the sky.

  In a matter of minutes, we were over Geneseo, the Warhawk’s massive propeller cutting through the clouds with ease as the lieutenant dipped and turned. Surrounded by the pillows of white, I felt like I was in heaven.

  I had to yell to be heard over the engine. “What about your machine guns?”

  “There’s a trigger on the stick,” the lieutenant hollered back. “But no bullets on account of this here being a trainer.”

  I reached down for a tempting red lever by my leg.

  “Don’t touch that!”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “That’s the bomb release.”

  “Flour?” I asked.

  He nodded. “For target practice.”

  We made a high pass over the bay. I peered out the window. This was real. Me. In a P-40 Warhawk! If Dad could have seen me then, he wouldn’t have believed it. I barely believed it myself.

  “You really love flying, don’t you?” the lieutenant said.

  I nodded.

  “Me too. Ever since I was no taller ’n you,” he said. “The world seems gosh darn perfect from up here. All them houses in a row. Rivers bent around hills and trees all pretty much where they oughta be. Everything seems to fit together. When I’m flyin’ in the clouds sometimes, it’s hard to figure there’s a war going on out there with folks trying to shoot our guys down.”

  “Yeah. Like my dad.” I kind of dropped my head and the lieutenant wrapped his arms a little tighter around me.

  “Sorry, Peach-pit. I forgot about your dad. He’s a pilot?”

  “The best. He taught me everything I know.”

  The lieutenant spoke close to my ear. “Ya know, kid, someday, if I have a daughter, I hope she loves flying as much as you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Thanks,” I told him. He was a pretty nice guy, even if his takeoffs weren’t near as smooth as Dad’s. I almost felt sorry for siccing Margaret on him.

  “Say, do you think your sister might like to go up for a ride? I could probably sneak her up in one of them old Kitty Hawks.”

  But before I could answer, my eye caught the outline of something black below the surface of the water in the bay. Oh my gosh, that was it! The sub!

  “Lieutenant! Lieutenant! Look! Down in the bay.”

  “What?” he said.

  “Tilt the wings!” I hollered.

  He tilted the wings to see. “What is it? I don’t see anything.”

  I looked down at the water, but of course by then it was gone. “Forget it,” I said.

  Then the lieutenant checked his watch and the setting sun and said, “We’d better get back. I’m not cleared for night flying.”

  I bit my lip and nodded okay. I guess it was gonna be up to Kenji and me to catch that spy sub.

  It was Friday at noon when Kenji met me behind the oak tree in the playground. We firmed up our plans while we gobbled down our brown-bag lunches.

  “We’re all set for tonight,” he said. “I got us four rocket flares, two Roman candles—”

  “I saw the sub again,” I interrupted him.

  “What? When?”

  “Lieutenant Peppel took me up in his Warhawk. That’s when I spotted it in the bay,” I said.

  “Did he see it?”

  Before I could answer, I noticed that crooked-toothed Farley Peck was making a beeline our way. “Shhh. We got company.”

  Farley walked right up to me and shoved me against the tree. “You dirty d-d-double-crossers. Where is he?”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Who do you think, Birdbrain? My father.”

  “He’s not in the tree house?” Kenji said.

  With his other hand, Farley grabbed Kenji by the shirt. “Don’t play dumb. Who did you t-t-tell?”

  Across the playground, Principal Hartwig smelled trouble and started to head over.

  I tried to loosen Farley’s grip. “No one.”

  “He’s probably just fishing or hiding out from the shore patrol or something,” Kenji said, trying to pry himself free.

  “If anything happens to him, you t-t-two are as good as d-d-dead,” Farley stuttered.

  Suddenly the strong hand of Principal Hartwig collared Farley. “What seems to be the problem?” The principal looked to me and Kenji for the answer.

  “Nothing, Mr. Hartwig,” I said.

  Farley let go of Kenji. “Yeah, nothing.”

  “Good. Then how about you do your ‘nothing’ over there, Farley?”

  “All right,” he said. But before he was led away, Farley, with a deadly stare, whispered to us, “I better find him.”

  When I got home after school, Mom was dressed in a gray and white dress, standing over a pot of stew and trying to fasten a nurse’s cap on her head.

  “Red Cross tonight?” I asked.

  “Mm-hmm,” she answered. It seemed like Mom was volunteering for everything. She never used to, but Margaret said she was probably just keeping busy to keep her mind off Dad being gone.

  “By the way, I’ve gotta go down to the bay and collect some stuff for school,” I mention
ed matter-of-factly

  “Not tonight,” Mom said. “You’re watching Alvin, remember?”

  That was when my stomach sank into my shoes. I had completely forgotten. “But, Mom! Can’t Margaret do it? It’s really important.”

  “Of course it is,” she said, not really meaning it.

  “No, I mean it. The fate of our country depends on it.”

  “I’m sure it does. But you’ll have to work the ‘fate of our country’ out with Margaret. I have to help out at the hospital in half an hour.” She took off her apron and handed me the spoon. “And keep stirring this.”

  As I took over stirring the stew, my little brother Alvin walked in.

  “Reporting for duty,” he said, saluting.

  “Alvin!” Mom shrieked.

  Alvin had given himself a crew cut with Margaret’s scissors.

  “When’s Dad coming home?”

  I’d sat Alvin down on the kitchen stool and was trying to even out his hair as best I could.

  “Soon. Real soon,” I told him.

  “Are you sure?”

  “He promised he would, didn’t he?”

  Alvin itched away some hair clippings that were dangling from the end of his nose. “Timmy Collins’s dad isn’t coming home. He died.”

  I stopped cutting. I had heard about Mr. Collins the day before. I petted Alvin’s head. “I know.”

  “Timmy said his dad promised him he would come home.”

  I knelt down. “Hey. Remember how I told you last year, you could only climb in my bed if ten monsters came in your room?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You can climb in my bed anytime you want. Okay?”

  “Okay.” He smiled. “All done, sir?”

  I saluted him. “You’re ready for duty, Private.”

  He tucked Mom’s wooden spoon against his shoulder like a rifle and marched off to play in the backyard.

  As soon as I got Alvin’s hair clippings cleaned up, I hurried upstairs to the bedroom, where I found Margaret packing pajamas in her pillowcase for a slumber party. Was there anything dumber than Margaret and her girlfriends stuffing themselves with burnt popcorn and grape Nehi, playing records and giggling until all hours of the night about boys who were never gonna ask them out for a date anyway? I mapped out my strategy. Should I play up the close, unbreakable bond, which, Dad said, “only two sisters could ever know”?