The Flying Circus

by Susan Crandall

  They both turned to Henry and said, “Well, you don’t.”

  Henry stopped short.

  “Sure you’re not hurt?” The pilot sounded more disrespectful than worried, which rubbed Henry the wrong way.

  “Yes, I’m sure! Too bad the motorcycle didn’t fare as well.” Her voice slid down a steep hill from defensive to sad. “My brother wouldn’t like it.”

  “You have a brother who lets you get out on that thing and do dangerous stunts like this?” The pilot had a point.

  “I said he wouldn’t like it. He’s dead.”

  “If his judgment was anything like yours, he was probably killed on that motorbike.”

  Henry cringed. Who talks to a girl like that?

  “His was worse actually.” A whole lot of I-dare-you was in her voice. “Signed up and got killed by German mustard gas.”

  German. Familiar guilty dread crept over Henry. Would the stink from that word ever leave him?

  The pilot sucked in a breath as if he’d been gut-punched. After a few seconds he said, “Sorry. I’m an ass.”

  “Obviously.”

  It got quiet again.

  While those two stood and stared at one another, Henry went to check the motorcycle.

  HENDERSON was written in gold letters across the rectangular gas tank. He wasn’t familiar enough with motorcycles to tell if it was an expensive model. The front fork looked okay, hard as that was to believe. The front wheel was tweaked too far to rotate, its fender twisted. The chain drive remained in place, even though the guard had been ripped half off and would flap like a broken wing once the motorcycle got moving.

  He reached down and grabbed the handlebars. When he pulled to right the cycle, his feet slipped in the mud and he landed on his backside.

  Tilda mooed loudly, making sure the pilot and the girl looked Henry’s way. That cow was really itching to turn into a side of beef.

  “Now who looks like an idiot?” the girl said.

  The pilot walked toward Henry and gave him a hand up. “Charles Gilchrist. Call me Gil.”

  “Henry S—Jefferson.”

  “What’s the S stand for?”

  Stupid. “Sam-uel.” All the way with the red, white, and blue.

  Gil turned toward the girl, his voice sounding the slightest bit apologetic. “And you?”

  “Cora Haviland—of the New York Havilands.” The way she said her name made Henry think he should have heard of her family—as if she were a Carnegie, Ford, or Rockefeller. Henry didn’t know anything about society, so he glanced at Gil. He didn’t look as if her name meant anything to him either.

  She nodded toward the cow. “You’ve met Tilda.”

  Henry swiped his forehead again and felt the slime. “Unfortunately.”

  He and Gil got the motorcycle up on its wheels. It was like wrestling a boar hog. No wonder he’d fallen on his ass.

  Cora took it out of gear. Gil lifted the bent wheel and they rolled the cycle on its rear tire to the tree line and leaned it up against a trunk. That’s when Henry realized the flat-bottomed, U-shaped piece of metal on the ground near the tree row must have been a stand that could be rolled under the rear wheel to hold the cycle upright. He went over and picked it up. He didn’t see how it could be repaired, but hooked it under the seat anyway, so it stayed with the motorcycle.

  “Not sure how you’re going to get it home,” Gil said.

  “Is it far?” Henry asked.

  “A mile or so. But we can’t just go dragging it up the lane.” She shot a challenging look at them, as if she was daring them to argue about the we part. “Mother thinks it’s long gone.”

  If her mother didn’t know about the motorcycle, how did Cora explain dressing like that?

  Gil didn’t look confused at all. He just raised a brow. “Quite the rebel, are you?”

  “Flyboy, you have no idea.”

  Cora insisted that taking the motorcycle home by way of the road was out of the question. Only an approach from the back of the barn wouldn’t risk being seen. Whatever way they went, Henry figured it was going to be a whole lot easier to move the cycle if that front wheel turned. He tugged on the fender and straightened it enough to allow the wheel to pass through. Then he picked up a thick, downed tree limb and tried to lever the rim until it was true enough to spin. Gil stood off to the side with his arms crossed, telling Henry it was a waste of time. Which turned out to be right.

  “Do you have any ideas?” he asked Gil.

  “Too heavy for the three of us to carry any distance.” He glanced at the sky, impatience on his face. Then he looked at Cora. “If you keep this thing in the barn, your father must know you have it. Maybe he could bring a wagon and the three of us men could lift it in.”

  “He’s dead, too.”

  Henry couldn’t believe how matter-of-fact she was when she talked about her war-killed brother and her dead father. Maybe the crash had knocked her head and she didn’t know what she was saying. She was a girl, after all. The Dahlgren girls cried over everything: baby birds fallen from the nest, moths trapped in spiderwebs, mud on their dresses. They even got weepy when anyone mentioned the name of a barn cat that had been trampled by a mule years before. From his first day on that farm, Mrs. Dahlgren had preached to Henry that girls had delicate sensibilities and it was every male’s duty to protect them. One of Henry’s jobs had been to scout the chicken yard and henhouse before the girls went to fetch the eggs in the morning, just to make sure no foxes had raided and left a bloody trail of chicken guts.

  He was starting to think chicken guts wouldn’t even make Cora blink.

  “Well, then,” Gil said, “I say we park it in this tree row for tonight, out of sight. Miss Daredevil here can get some help and haul it home tomorrow.”

  “Hey!” Henry said. “She’s just a girl. We have to help. Besides you’re the reason she wrecked.”

  “Just a girl!” Both Cora and Gil said. Henry wondered how two people who’d barely met could chime in with the exact same words twice in less than fifteen minutes.

  Cora’s mouth snapped closed, as if she realized she was starting to argue against what she wanted to happen.

  Gil looked to be gritting his teeth. “Look.” He jabbed a finger in her direction. “She wrecked because she used poor judgment. Women and machines don’t mix. Who would have thought a girl would be out here tearing around a farm field on a motorcycle? This”—he shifted his finger to the motorcycle—“is not my fault. And in about forty minutes, I’m going to lose the light and be stuck in this pasture until sunrise tomorrow. Which will be her fault.”

  “Ducky, then.” Cora sounded as if she were agreeing with good news. “You’ll have all night to help us get this back to the barn.”

  Henry looked at the sinking sun. “Where were you heading? You from around here?”

  “I’m not from anywhere, but I need to get to the next sizable town sooner rather than later.”

  “Why?” Cora asked. “The day’s almost over anyway.”

  “I need people in a number greater than the two of you and gasoline for what I do. County seats are the best bet.”

  Cora looked puzzled. “A business that requires people and hooch; now there I can see lots of possibilities. But people and gasoline? What exactly do you do?”

  “Barnstorming.”

  Henry didn’t want to show his ignorance, so he kept quiet.

  “What in the Sam Hill is that?” Cora asked. “Got anything to do with bootleg?”

  Even out in the country, enough people ignored the Volstead Act that it barely seemed like a crime.

  “No.” Gil gave her a scowl—Henry was beginning to think that was the man’s normal face. A weary, angry tension steadily vibrated under his skin.

  “So what is it?” Cora asked.

  “I buzz over a town, do a few stunts to
get people’s attention, then find a field to land in. The curious always come.”

  “For what?” Henry felt bolder now that Cora had admitted she didn’t know what barnstorming was, but one look at her face said she’d already figured it out.

  “Rides,” Gil said. “Five dollars for ten minutes. If they want a loop or a barrel roll, it’s extra.”

  Five dollars! No wonder he needed a town full of people—bankers and lawyers and the like. Henry’d give his right arm to fly in that thing, but five dollars was something he couldn’t imagine ever having to spare.

  Cora tilted her head. “You make enough kale to live on just by selling a few rides?”

  Gil made a face that wasn’t quite a smile. “I make enough to keep my plane in the air. That’s all I need.”

  “So where do you plan to sleep tonight?” she asked.

  “Camp, like always.”

  “Well, Aunt Gladys’s arthritis says it’s going to rain. If you help me get this motorbike back to the barn, you can sleep there.” Cora raised a brow. “And you can come in for dinner. I’m sure I can talk my uncle into letting you use the field for your barnstorming, too.”

  The thought of a hot meal nearly made Henry cry like the Dahlgren girls.

  Gil looked at the sky.

  “Sounds like a good deal, Gil.” Henry tried to keep the needy hope out of his voice. “You won’t get far before dark anyway.”

  Gil stood there looking stubborn. “Not enough people around here to make this pasture worthwhile,” he finally said.

  “But you’re already here,” Cora said. “Why not cash in before you move on? I know I’d like a ride, so you have your first customer already.”

  “What about you?” Gil asked Henry. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

  “I’m on my way to Chicago. Got a job waiting. I could use a place to sleep tonight.” Inside. Where no one will find me. “Your uncle’s name is Haviland?” Not one Henry was familiar with, but what if it wasn’t Haviland and Cora’s uncle knew Anders Dahlgren?

  “No. It’s Fessler. Aunt Gladys is Father’s older sister.”

  Henry nodded. Fessler was just as unfamiliar as Haviland.

  Gil looked at Cora. “You’re sure your uncle will go along?”

  “Ab-so-lute-ly.”

  “All right. Deal.”

  Henry’s mouth started to water. But his hopes for a quick meal were squashed when Gil said they had to tie down the plane before they could leave it. He retrieved a cross-peen hammer, three lengths of rope, and a couple of stakes from the plane.

  Cora watched them with her hands on her hips. “Afraid it’ll take off without you?”

  The thing was designed to ride on the wind. She said weather was coming in. Gil was right, women and machines didn’t mix.

  Gil gave a head shake and went on about his business. Henry didn’t feel it was his place to explain.

  Gil finished tying the tail rope to the trunk of a nearby tree. Then he wiped his hands on his thighs. “That should do it.”

  Cora nudged Henry’s shoulder. “Let’s go, Kid.”

  Kid? She looked eighteen, nineteen at most. But he kept his mouth shut. Right now, the less said, the less likely questions would be asked.

  He focused on supper. During his time on the Dahlgren farm he’d forgotten how to live hungry.

  Gil carried the front of the motorcycle by the bent wheel while Henry pushed from the rear, feeling as if he were herding a reluctant donkey. Cora walked alongside, steadying the balance. Tilda followed them all the way across the pasture to a back gate that led to a cornfield. When Cora closed the gate behind them, the cow bellowed like an abandoned kid.

  Before they started moving again, Cora took off her jacket and threw it over the handlebars, where Gil’s already hung. Henry’s mouth went dry at the sight of her. Her white blouse was stuck to her skin and wet enough to show more than a hint of what was underneath. No matter how many times Henry forced his eyes elsewhere, his curious gaze slid right back to Cora. Gil proved a gentleman, which was a surprise after the way he’d talked to her, turning his back the second she’d slipped the jacket off her shoulders.

  Henry was torn between relief and regret when they started moving again and all he could see was her back.

  It was almost dark when they went through another gate. Henry’s nose told him they were in the pig lot. The barn was a hulking, dark shadow on the far side.

  Cora scouted the open stretch between the row of hedge apple trees and the barn. When she was satisfied the coast was clear, they rolled the motorcycle across the final, sour-smelling stretch. By then Henry’s eye was throbbing and his back felt as if he’d been lifting hay bales every day for a week.

  Directing them to a lean-to on the back side of the barn, she said, “Here.”

  She opened a door barely wide enough for the handlebars to pass through. It was pitch-black inside. Stepping around Gil, she disappeared in the darkness. After a second, a light flared and she reappeared in the glow of a small oil lantern. Shameful as it was, Henry was disappointed to see her blouse had dried.

  The inside of the lean-to wasn’t packed with stuff the way Henry expected it to be. Against the back wall was a stack of wooden crates covered with about a hundred years of dust, a chair with a missing leg, and a rusty scythe. Nearer the door was a tarp-covered pile about two feet by three feet and a red, two-gallon gas can.

  “Nobody ever comes in here. Uncle Clyde thinks the door is still stuck.”

  Henry noticed the ground beneath the door swing had been dug down. He wondered if Cora had shoveled it herself. He’d never seen a girl lift a tool of any kind, so he doubted it.

  “Nobody knows you’ve got this thing?” Gil asked.

  “After Jonathan was killed, it sat in our garage at the country house under a tarp. Everyone forgot about it . . . except me. When we packed up and moved here, a couple of sawbucks got the men to crate it up without a word to Mother. And here it is.”

  “Where’d you live before?” Henry asked.

  “I told you, New York City. But Mother preferred that dreadfully boring Hudson Valley house most of the time. We wintered on Jekyll Island. It was all very . . . you know”—she gave a flip of her head and lifted her nose in the air—“high-hat.”

  Gil whistled through his teeth.

  Henry had no idea where Hudson Valley or Jekyll Island were. Anybody with more than one house was rich, that much he did know.

  “If you gentlemen will wait outside, I need to change my clothes.”

  Henry hurried out, the image of her body under that wet blouse burning in his brain. Gil followed more slowly, then leaned against the barn, putting one foot on the wall behind him, and pulled out a pack of Chesterfields from his shirt pocket. He held the pack out to Henry, who waved off the offer. Gil shook one out, struck a match, and lit it.

  “Been flying long?” Henry asked.

  Gil pulled a long drag on the cigarette, then blew out the smoke. “A while.” He kept his eyes on the sky. It was dark enough that a few stars had peeked out.

  All of the questions that came ready to Henry’s mind could easily lead to questions asked back. Keep to the machine. That was safe. And he was curious about it. He’d always liked figuring out ways to make something useful out of scraps and discards. Early on he discovered his knack for patching the irreparable back together—necessity had been a good teacher. During the past five years he’d earned his keep by coaxing Mr. Dahlgren’s finicky Fordson tractor into good behavior, finally silencing the man’s threats to return to mule power. Henry’s ability to decipher the code that smoothed out an engine’s running had been a bitter pill; he blamed tractors for stealing his pa’s job and the last of his will to live. But once his love for the hum of pumping pistons, the clatter of a crankshaft, became useful to Mr. Dahlgren, it felt a little less like betrayal.
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  “How fast will it go?” Henry asked.

  “She ain’t fast and she ain’t agile. She ain’t reliable, either. Tops out at around seventy-five. Lucky to get sixty.”

  “Seventy-five!”

  “That’s not fast. And speed burns too much fuel.”

  “Eight cylinder?”

  “Yeah. Water-cooled Curtiss OX-5.”

  “I read about Glenn Curtiss in Scientific American.”

  Gil finally looked at him. “Most folks only know about the Wright brothers, Eddie Rickenbacker, and the Red Baron when it comes to planes.”

  “Yeah, well, I know about them, too. Love machines. What’s the horsepower?”

  “When she’s working good, ninety. She’s usually not working good.”

  “Maybe I could take a look at it. I’m pretty good with engines.”

  Gil picked a piece of tobacco off his tongue and flipped it onto the ground. “Nobody touches her but me.” He said it as if the plane were his woman.

  Cora came back out of the lean-to. Her hair was pinned up proper and she had on a dress with a low sash and short, sheer-ruffled sleeves—far too short for decency according to Mrs. Dahlgren; the loud arguments between her and her older daughters came up like clockwork, right after the arrival of Harper’s Bazaar magazine or the new Sears, Roebuck catalog. Other than that, she looked like the well-dressed Dahlgren girls. Her wide-brimmed straw hat had a ribbon band that matched the green stripe in her dress, and she wore tan stockings and strap shoes. Over one arm she held a basket holding a book and some pencils. You’d never guess she’d just crashed a speeding motorcycle.

  “Oooh.” She reached her palm out and flicked her fingers at Gil. “Give me a puff of that ciggy.”

  He passed it to her as if women smoked all of the time. The tip glowed orange as she drew on it. She handed it back and waved a hand to shoo the smoke away when she exhaled.

  As they walked toward the house, she said, “I must warn you, everyone here is quite serious and old-fashioned. I’m losing my mind stuck out here with nobody but the three Victorians. But”—she changed to a high voice that Henry took to be mimicking her mother’s—“we must do our best until our circumstances improve.” She sighed. “Mother’s spent the past four months eating humble pie—and looking for a way to change her daily diet. Which means looking for a rich husband for me.” The last words were said with a detached flatness that said Cora wasn’t all that happy with that solution.