The Flying Circus

by Susan Crandall

  He went through the window, dropping down right on Pierce’s still, soft body. The man’s breath left in a whoosh.

  Gil sat twenty feet away in the grass . . . right in front of a line of white-robed and hooded men.

  “People are dying in there!” Henry shouted, waving to the men. “Come on!”

  One by one, they turned around and walked away.

  Henry grabbed Pierce by the heels and dragged him to Gil. Then he ran around to the front yard, hoping to hell that Cora had made it out.

  He shoved the dazed and the panicked, jumping to see over heads, calling her name.

  He heard her call to him.

  Spinning, he couldn’t see her.

  All of the windows on the first floor were nothing but flames. People stumbled over and stepped on those who’d fallen near the front door. Several of the paper lanterns on the porch were balls of fire.

  “Henry! Around here! On the side!”

  He ran around the corner of the house, to the side without a porch. Her upper body leaned out a second-floor window, smoke rolling out over her head. Flames were climbing up the outside wall. Henry realized it had been doused with gasoline.

  “The stairs are blocked,” she yelled.

  A man ran around the corner of the house, his coat on fire. Someone knocked him to the ground, beating at the flames with bare hands.

  Henry moved as close as he could and smelled his own singed hair.

  “Jump to me!” He held out his arms. “Push off. You have to clear the fire.”

  She folded herself up, feet on the sill, hands on the frame. “Get out of the way! I’ll just hurt you.”

  “Come on! Move!”

  A loud pop came from behind her and she leaped off.

  Her body hit Henry square in the chest and knocked him backward off his feet. He wrapped his arms around her and held her in front of him to keep her from hitting the ground.

  “Holy hell!” she said against his chest.

  “Is there anyone else up there?” He rolled to his side and let her go.

  “I don’t know.” She jumped to her feet and they both stepped farther from the heat. “Everything was so crazy. The bathroom window exploded, then there was all of this fire. What happened?”

  Henry ran his hands over her arms, her hands. “You didn’t get burned?”

  “No. Where’s Gil?”

  “Around on the side. Safe. Go to Pierce’s car and wait there.”

  For once, she didn’t argue.

  Henry made a circle of the house to see if he could help anyone else out a window or off the porch roof. He didn’t find anyone.

  Gil and Pierce lay like two rag dolls on the ground, far enough to be safe from the fire. That’s where Henry found Cora, not by the Packard. Gil’s head was in her lap. The sight of it stabbed Henry’s heart as surely as any knife could have.

  Why not me? I went to find you in the confusion of the fire. Me. Not Gil.

  Henry sat a few feet away, as if the space might take his heart out of striking distance. But his eyes were drawn to the sight of Cora stroking Gil’s head more than they were to the fire consuming Belle’s—which at the moment felt less destructive than what was happening inside Henry’s chest. They should leave. Before the sheriff or fire department showed up. Before questions could be asked. Most everyone else had fled. But suddenly, Henry didn’t care. Cora was with Gil. Nothing else seemed to matter now.

  Belle’s burned to the ground. Neither the sheriff nor the fire department showed up. By the break of dawn nothing was left but embers and smoking ash . . . and the blackened marble bar, now sitting in the basement.

  Belle walked in ceaseless circles around the ruins, her lace-trimmed hankie pressed to her mouth.

  The injured had been loaded into cars and taken away. Were there dead? Who knew? Four cars other than the Packard were still in the yard.

  Finally, Cora looked at Henry. Her eyes were hollow. He couldn’t help but move closer and put his arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him. “It was so fast. How did this happen?”

  Henry told Cora about seeing the Klansmen.

  Cora looked up at him. “My God, why?”

  Gather’s words echoed in Henry’s mind. Mine trouble. Strikes. Been nothin’ but beatin’s and guns and lynchin’ round here for quite a spell. Had ourselves a regular massacre of scab foreigners last year. Course, bootleggers is still a problem. But the Ku Klux Klan’s gettin’ involved in the fracas, cleanin’ things up.

  “Bloody Williamson,” Henry said under his breath. “Bloody Williamson.”

  10

  The newspaper reported the fire at Mrs. Thomas Franklin’s private residence as accidental, a tragedy that cost the “quiet widow” all of her worldly goods, a lifetime of memories, her aged cat, and a pet canary. No mention of the hundred people inside. No mention of bootleg liquor. No mention of the Klan—even though he’d overheard someone telling Belle about seeing the hooded men. Henry wondered if there really were no deaths, or if that, too, was a fiction of reporting. He quickly scanned the paper but found no mention of “missing” people.

  He tucked the paper under his arm and headed toward the train station. He’d drawn the short straw and had to go into town to check the freight depot for the propeller. He didn’t like being separated from Cora. And he sure as hell didn’t like leaving her alone out there with Gil. But what choice did he have? He was used to being alone, but Cora stirred a new sort of loneliness, one he’d never before experienced, a peculiar aching of the soul.

  “You there! Hold up!” The voice startled him. He was usually more aware of his surroundings, wary of eyes locked on him for a second too long, but his thoughts of Cora had waylaid his caution.

  With his heart off to the races, he stopped and adjusted his cap just a little lower over his eyes before he turned around.

  A middle-aged man in a dark suit and fedora was getting out of a car parked at the curb. He carried himself like a lawman—the serious kind.

  Henry’s mind raced to organize his story, all the while he was praying this was about the fire at the supper club.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jefferson.”

  “You’re not from here.”

  “Sir?”

  “Where do you come from?” The man opened his coat and showed a badge pinned to his vest. Not a sheriff’s star.

  Henry’s heart stopped beating. He was sure of it because it stopped rushing in his ears. He forced air out of his chest. “St. Louis.” Why did I say that? I don’t know anything about St. Louis. It was the only place he could think of that was in the opposite direction from where he’d really come from.

  “You’re with that airplane pilot. The one advertising the show?”

  Henry nodded.

  The man stepped closer and Henry’s muscles tightened. If he ran, where would he go? He couldn’t go back to Cora and Gil.

  “How long you been with him?”

  “Three years.” An oil slick of panic rose in his belly. What if the man goes straight to Gil and asks the same question?

  “He ever fly to Canada?”

  It took a second for Henry to process this unexpected question. “Canada?” He’d gone so dry the word clicked against the roof of his mouth.

  “You a parrot? Yeah. Canada.”

  “No. Never. We just fly to farms and little towns . . . in the United States. Mostly west of here.”

  “Been to Chicago?”

  “What? No.”

  “French Lick, Indiana? West Baden Springs Hotel?”

  “No.” Henry did know mineral springs were in French Lick. Supposed to cure anything that ailed you.

  “Ever heard of Johnny Torrio or Al Capone?”

  “The gangsters?”

  “Aren’t you just as green as spring grass
? Yeah, the gangsters. Ever cross paths?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You and that pilot ever deliver anything for them?”

  “Never met them. Never been to Chicago. Don’t do anything but do shows and sell rides.” His gut unclenched. This was about bootleg, not murder. So much for Pierce’s assurance to Cora that the prohees were all well-oiled. “Is that all?”

  “For now. I might just be here long enough to check out your show.”

  “We’re grounded. Broke the propeller.” Henry walked away on legs as wobbly as two wet mop strings.

  He felt the man’s eyes on his back as he went straight to the depot. He was so distracted that he stepped in a pile of horse manure as he crossed the street.

  The propeller wasn’t there yet.

  When he came back out of the depot, the lawman was standing in front of the hotel, leaning with his back against the corner of the building, his raking gaze peering from under the brim of his hat.

  Henry took the long way around to head back out to the Jenny.

  When he reached the Gather farm, he still felt as if he were filled with ants. He had to figure out a way to get Gil on board with his story, just in case the lawman showed up out here. But how to do it without giving himself away?

  When he got to the pasture, he slowed and lightened his step. He couldn’t see Cora and Gil from the gate. Some perverse need to torture himself arose, the need to sneak up on them and catch them in whatever they were doing.

  Cora’s laugh tripped across the field. Not a ha-ha laugh, something more . . . intimate.

  Henry’s stomach soured. He crept even more slowly.

  They were on the far side of the Jenny’s tail.

  Henry moved as if he were tracking a deer. He edged closer. Peered around the tail. He didn’t want to see. He had to.

  Gil was sitting on the ground with his legs crossed. He looked to be gapping spark plugs. Cora was behind him, one arm draped over his shoulder, leaning forward, tickling his chin with a piece of foxtail grass.

  “Stop it.” Gil dropped the spark plug and reached up, pulling her around and onto his lap.

  That’s when she saw Henry and her eyes widened. “Oh!” She scooted off Gil’s lap, looking embarrassed. Cora looked embarrassed. That fact shot straight through Henry. He wanted to run. But that would let Cora know how much he cared. He stood stock-still with his ears ringing.

  Gil looked up. Guilt clouded his eyes the second he saw Henry. “Was it there?”

  Henry willed himself to stop trembling like a leaf in the wind. “No. But we might have another problem.”

  It surprised him that Cora, not Gil, jumped up. “What problem?”

  Something overtook Henry. Suddenly he wanted to make her feel as badly as he did. It was wrong. But it was true. The only way he knew how was to draw out the anxiety that had unexpectedly shown on her face. “There was a man in a suit. Asking questions.”

  “What kind of questions? About me?”

  Henry stood there and looked at her for a moment. Why was she so jumpy? He began to think maybe she worried that her ma hadn’t just rolled over and accepted that her little girl had decided to be a gypsy. “Why would he ask about you?”

  She was quick to shrug. “Well, you were looking at me when you said it.”

  He stared at her long enough that she looked away. “I think he was a prohibition agent. He thinks we might be flying bootleg for gangsters in Chicago.”

  “Why on earth would he think that?” Gil asked.

  “We have a plane. There was a supper club that just burned to the ground. Maybe somebody was killed in that fire. I don’t know. But I was thinking, it might be best if we make people think we’ve been working together for several years, knocking around west of here . . . far away from Chicago or the Canadian border.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Cora said. “A very good idea. It’ll make us seem more established to our customers, too.” He couldn’t figure her enthusiasm, but Henry wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  Gil shrugged. “Anything that keeps the government out of my business.”

  “I was thinking maybe three years would be logical—anything longer might flag us up because of Cora’s age.”

  “My age!”

  “You could maybe pass for twenty,” Henry said. “But more than that is stretching it.”

  Gil picked up the spark plug he’d dropped. “Help me get these back in the Jenny. I want to be ready to get out of here as soon as that prop arrives.”

  The relief Henry felt over getting Gil to agree to saying they’d all been together for three years was weighted down by his surety that Cora was in love with Gil. Gil was a man. To Cora, Henry was still Kid.

  There wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

  And he couldn’t bring himself to leave them. Not yet.

  The propeller arrived the next day. Mercury’s Daredevils pulled out of Marion without putting on a show. They gave Mr. Gather three dollars and free plane rides for him and his son for helping them pull the plane out of the ditch and allowing them to camp in their field. Gather was decidedly unhappy about the loss of imagined massive revenue from the show, but took the three dollars and the rides.

  Cora and Mercury took off in the plane with Gil. Henry watched them lift off with jealousy coloring his vision. Was his heart hurting just because of Cora? Or was it because, as he watched that plane climb into the sky without him, he realized how much he loved flying?

  He supposed that was the way of human beings, wanting what they couldn’t have, not appreciating the things they did until they were gone. Through all of his years of loneliness and isolation, Henry had promised himself he wouldn’t be like everyone else. He would never want what belonged to others. He’d appreciate everything, no matter how small, and take nothing for granted. And yet there he was, loving both Cora and the Jenny more as they disappeared into the distance. He truly did not want Cora traveling on the motorcycle alone, but all the same he wished she weren’t leaving with Gil.

  He pointed the motorcycle west, his destination Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Cora had made a good point when they’d been discussing moving on: “You know this kind of stuff happens everywhere. The Klan’s declared war on liquor and gambling all over the country—not to mention trying to rout out Catholics, Jews, Negroes, Germans . . . well, pretty much everybody else. We can’t let it stop us from putting on a show.” Even so, in the end they’d all agreed to leave as soon as possible, to put a significant distance between themselves and the cold ashes of that supper club.

  In the years without Peter, Henry hadn’t had anyone to talk to about his troubling thoughts, his painful emotions. Maybe that’s why they were suddenly clamoring for release. Although he viewed Cora and Gil as his family, in truth they all kept their deepest selves hidden from one another, dancing on the edges of intimacy but never stepping in. A big part of him wanted to tell them everything. Carrying a secret alone was bad for the soul. It fed the darkness.

  As the graveled miles rolled under his tires, Henry’s thoughts circled back around to the fire. The anger in his soul that night had matched the heat of the flames. But what had he done? Nothing. He’d watched those hooded men turn and walk away just as if they’d been leaving a church social. He should have done something to stop them. At the very least he should have gone to the sheriff and told what he’d seen. But he’d been too worried about his own skin.

  He’d seen Klansmen in Indiana, marching in parades with their white robes, peeking out of the eyeholes in their pointy hoods. It was laughable, those hoods in their small town. A lady standing beside him at one parade had pointed and said, “There’s the mayor. That’s Judge Chamberlain. John Haskins. Fred Williams.” She leaned Henry’s way and whispered, “I recognize their shoes.”

  He hadn’t given the Klan much thought before now. They
were politically powerful, for sure. What those men had done at Belle’s supper club was based on a blanket belief that left no room for individual humanity, the same as the way people treated German Americans during the war. He was pretty sure not one of those men would have attacked Belle’s if he’d been alone. Like all bullies, the KKK traveled in packs.

  Henry thought on that cowardly kind of broadcast hate, hiding behind masks in the dark, delivering sneak attacks. He supposed maybe generalized hate was easier; you didn’t have to look a person in the eye.

  Was what those men felt any different from the anger Henry had stored up inside? Suddenly just locking it away wasn’t enough. He had to kill it. To stamp it out before it invited his old friend disaster in to sit down at the table once again.

  He pushed the motorcycle faster, the wind tearing at his hair—but he only felt angrier.

  Henry’s first sight of the Mississippi River made him pull off the gravel road and stop. For several minutes he sat there, his eyes moving up and downstream. He knew it was the biggest river in the country, but he hadn’t been prepared for the astounding width, the amount of river traffic. The bank was low and muddy on the east side, the last mile or so leading up to it a flat plain. The land was higher on the west side. The current didn’t flow like that of the Indiana rivers he was used to, the White and the Mississinewa, rippling steadily in a single direction, so shallow they could only float a canoe or a fishing boat. Here the water seemed to roil, reverse itself, and in some places it looked as if it flowed straight up from the bottom and spread in all directions. It was so muddy it was opaque as brown paint. He supposed that its concealing everything beneath its surface made it even more forbidding.

  He wished he could see it from the air, the splits around sandbars, the curves and twists of that wide brown ribbon. A giant barge, assisted by two big boats, was carrying side-by-side strings of railcars, the brown water behind them looking as if it were stirred by a massive underwater tail. He could see two steamboats, belching smoke from their twin stacks. A coal barge chugged north—Williamson County was following him.