The Flying Circus

by Susan Crandall

  The monster knocked the cellar door off its hinges. Henry wasn’t sure how he got there, but he was suddenly straddling the man on the ground, one fist still wadded in the shirt, the other beating the fat face. The punch Henry took in the throat barely registered.

  “Henry!” He heard Cora’s voice, but it seemed to come from far away. Hands grabbed his shoulders, but he kept pummeling, his vision gone red.

  “Enough! Henry! Stop!”

  It took two men to pull him off. They kept a tight hold on his arms until he finally said, “Okay.” He shrugged them off, panting. “Okay.” He pointed a bruised-knuckled finger at the man on the ground. “If you ever utter another word about her, I’m coming after you.”

  The men who’d pulled Henry off were now helping the bastard off the ground. “You broke my nose!” the man slurred through already-swelling lips, but made no move at retaliation.

  Cora stepped directly in front of Henry and looked him in the face. “Don’t give them a reason to throw us out of here.” Her voice was calm, but her eyes revealed just how shaken up she was, how shocked by his brutality.

  He stood huffing. Blood still pounded in his ears. The electric shock of his fury still sparked though him.

  She gently took his arm. “Let’s go to the tent and get you cleaned up.” She tugged more forcefully. “Now, Henry.”

  After leading him to her tent, she sat him on her cot and went to fetch some water, threatening him with bodily harm if he so much as stuck his nose outside. It was sweltering inside the tent, even though it was in the shade. He looked down at his shirt. It was splattered with blood. For a moment he stared at his bloody right hand as if it belonged to someone else. The skin was broken open on a couple of his knuckles. As his senses returned, he felt the throbbing in his shoulder.

  He wished he could say he felt better, that the rage had been sated. Something was different inside, that much was certain. He now knew the monster couldn’t be tamed. Is that what had happened with Emmaline?

  Nausea gripped him, but he clamped his jaw tight and willed it away.

  Cora returned, took one look at him, and said, “Lie down. You look like you’re about to pass out.”

  He stretched out in defeat. He would never be the man Pa expected him to be. Never.

  She carefully cleaned his hands with cool water. “You know that wasn’t necessary . . . defending my honor like that. Gallant, for sure, but unnecessary.”

  She was trying to make light of what had just happened.

  “It’s no joke, Cora. This is me. This is the person I am deep inside. I lost control. Completely. If I hadn’t been stopped . . .” He shifted his gaze to the outside.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Henry.” Her words did not match what he saw in her eyes. Fear now resided there; Henry had carried its bags in with his sudden burst of violence.

  Only it wasn’t sudden, was it? He’d known it was there, hiding in the cellar.

  He pulled his hands from her and swung his legs over the side of the cot. “Now you see what I’m capable of.”

  “Henry. The man is an ass. I didn’t hear anyone speak in his defense, did you? And they let you get in some good licks before they pulled you off.”

  “You’re missing the point. No one should have had to pull me off. I lost my mind, Cora.”

  She stopped trying to recapture his hands and looked at him. “Has this happened before?”

  “Like with Emmaline, you mean? Did she say the wrong thing and set off my insanity?”

  “Well, from what you said about her, I imagine that is likely exactly what happened . . . just not with you.” She paused, picked up his right hand, and kissed his wounded knuckle. “Just now you were angry for my benefit, not for yourself. You were protecting me. You went to where Emmaline was because you were worried about Johanna. Have there been other incidents where your need to defend overtook you? Something that people might misconstrue? Something that will hurt us when we get back to Indiana?”

  He closed his eyes, and all he could see was that man’s bloody face, all he could taste was his own shame. “No.”

  “Good.” She said it as if there was no more to say on the subject and went back to tending his hands. “As for that ass, I don’t need to practice the course with another plane. You did a great job of preparing me. I’m ready.”

  He stood. “I’m going to talk to the officials about getting you another pilot to practice against.”

  She put her hands on his upper arms. “There’s no need to make enemies. And what if they force him to fly or face disqualification? I’d rather not fly with an angry pilot nipping at my heels. He’ll be more likely to make a mistake and take both of us out. And of course, as the woman, it would be my fault. I’ll prove myself in the race.”

  What she said made sense. To his rational mind. But his real concern was her overconfidence if she didn’t have a taste of a stranger racing her on the course before the green flag flew.

  Then he had another thought. “What if they try to disqualify you because of this fight?”

  “I got these first-aid supplies from the office. Didn’t hear a word about anything like that. And the ass was in there getting the nurse they’ve hired for the event to check out his nose. Whining like a little girl.”

  “It could still come.”

  “I don’t think so. This is a rough-and-tumble man’s sport, men get into fights all the time. Besides, they can’t afford the bad publicity if they disqualify me, and I can guarantee bad publicity. Evans will toss in his weight, too. And remember, I wasn’t even in the fight. How can they disqualify me?”

  For the next few hours, Henry held himself wary and waiting for the officials to show up and tell them to get packing. By the next morning when they hadn’t heard a word, he began to relax again.

  He was replacing the spark plugs in the Evie when Cora called to him, “Henry, look who’s here!” He turned with a pleased-to-meet-you look on his face, expecting to see Mr. Evans in his wheelchair. But Gil walked beside Cora.

  Henry’s smile became forced. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

  “You knew I asked him,” Cora said.

  Henry wiped his hands on a cloth, wincing at the pain in his right. “I guess I got the impression he wasn’t inclined.” He tried to squash the flare of resentment. The three of them were a team. And God knew, Gil was more of a lost soul now than he’d ever been. He’d continued his downhill slide after coming back from Ohio. Henry should have been doing everything in his power to keep an eye on him. Still, Henry had wanted this air race to be like California, something just he and Cora shared. “Did you fly one of Jake’s planes in?”

  “Took the train.” Gil lit a smoke and blew out the match without taking the cigarette from his mouth. “Didn’t mean to intrude.”

  So Henry wasn’t masking his feelings quite as well as he’d thought.

  Gil went on, “I didn’t want to be sitting around Reece’s farm waiting for a telegram to know the outcome.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “Besides, I was curious about Chapman Field.”

  “Why?” Cora asked.

  Good question. There really wasn’t much to it, not now that the army had deemed it surplus and sold part of the land to some plant-study program. The airstrip was only used for Reserves’ training now.

  Gil said, “Victor Chapman was the first American pilot killed in the war. The first of many.”

  Gil’s voice had a hint of envy that Henry didn’t like one bit. He felt even worse for his ill-concealed reaction to Gil’s arrival. The man needed looking after. He had a strange glasslike fragility about him now, worse even than upon his return to Mississippi.

  A black car motored up and stopped nearby. A man wearing a bowler called through the open driver’s window, “Miss Haviland?”

  “Yes?” She was smiling her publicity-photo smile.

/>   Haviland. The man had called her Miss Haviland, not Miss Rose. That car, that bowler . . . Henry felt sick.

  The man got out of the car. When he got close, he tipped the brim of his hat. “I need you to come with me, Miss Haviland.”

  Henry edged closer to her. We’re about to get the boot.

  As he opened his mouth to explain the fault was all his, Cora’s moneyed voice, the one she used to either intimidate or poke fun, surfaced. “Oh, you do, do you? Are you with the race organizers, then?”

  “If you’ll just get in the car, please.”

  “Not until Miss Haviland ”—Henry hoped she got his message—“knows what this is about.” He took her arm, as if ready to get into a tug-of-war with the man over her.

  “In the car,” the man said, then added an insincere “Please.”

  “I will not.” Her chin came up. “Not until you tell me who you are and what you want.”

  Gil, too, inched close to her.

  The man pulled a leather wallet out of the inside pocket of his jacket. He flipped it open to an identification card. “I’m Edward Burrow with the Pinkerton Detective Agency.”

  “If this is about yesterday—” Henry cut himself off. Didn’t make sense. Detectives investigated things, found people. Miss Haviland. Cora. He’d come for her.

  So many thoughts took to flight, if they’d been crows, they’d have blocked the sun. None of them made sense.

  “And what do you want with me?” Her voice remained authoritative, but Henry felt her muscles tense.

  “I’m here to take you home, miss.”

  “Sorry you made the trip.” She made a walking gesture with two fingers. “You can just turn yourself around and head back to wherever you came from.”

  “I’m from the Chicago office.”

  “Fine. Go to Chicago, then.”

  Gil finally spoke up. “What’s this all about? Who are you working for?”

  “The young lady’s fiancé, on behest of her mother.”

  “Fiancé?” Gil sounded stunned. But Henry thought they’d both been fools thinking no one would come in search of a woman from a rich family, even if the money was gone. He wanted to speak up, but knew this was Cora’s mess to straighten out. Him talking would only make it worse—and draw attention to himself.

  “You can’t be serious!” she said.

  “I am. Quite. Now step away from these men.”

  “Well, I’m not going. Both Mother and Theodore will have to adjust. I’m a grown woman and have made my decision.” Then she looked at the Pinkerton more sharply. “How did you find me?”

  The pictures, Henry thought. Those publicity pictures for the Evie.

  “It’s what we do, miss. Now, if you’ll come with me, you can get everything sorted out with your mother and your fiancé when we get to Chicago.” The detective moved closer, a hand extended.

  “I turned eighteen months ago!” She drew away from his hand.

  Henry had assumed her birthday was her nineteenth. He knew assumptions were as dangerous as lies.

  She took a step farther from the detective. “You can’t make me do anything I don’t want to. And I have no intention of marrying Theodore, ever. So shove off.” The haughty voice had been banished by the real Cora.

  The Pinkerton grabbed her and yanked her away from Gil and Henry.

  Henry lunged toward the detective but was shoved from behind and hit the ground before he’d taken a step. Gil was on the ground beside him with a man’s knee in the middle of his shoulder blades.

  Henry was too stunned to struggle. Too short of breath to argue.

  “Stop!” Cora screamed. “What are you doing?”

  “You’re safe now,” the Pinkerton said. “These men are headed to the Dade County jail.”

  “They haven’t done anything!”

  “Your mother said you were kidnapped by two men with an airplane. With that other murdered girl just two counties away, she feared the worst. You can imagine how relieved she was when we located you.”

  “Jesus H. Christ!” Cora shouted. “I left home by myself, of my own free will, on my motorcycle—” She stopped abruptly.

  Henry’s insides turned to water as his hands were handcuffed behind his back. His shoulder burned with the stretch. No one knew about the motorcycle. She’d been so forceful when she’d explained that her mother couldn’t do anything about her leaving, he’d made more than one disastrous assumption. The second being she’d actually informed her mother that she was leaving.

  Why hadn’t he gone back to Indiana the very day he’d made the decision? Now it was too late.

  “I left on my own! I caught up with them in Noblesville. They didn’t even want me with them. You can’t arrest them!”

  “The sheriff is going to hold them until we get this all straightened out. We can’t take any chances. Especially with an unsolved murder. And the reward money is only to be paid if the kidnappers are taken into custody.”

  “I was not kidnapped!” She looked at Henry with panicked eyes as he was hoisted off the ground. “I’ll go home.” She took the Pinkerton’s arm. “Right now. I’ll go. As long as you tell the sheriff to let them go.”

  “Out of my hands now, miss.” He nodded for the sheriff and his deputy to take Gil and Henry away.

  Gil said, “It’s all right, Cora. We’ll go. It’ll get straightened out. Don’t you dare go with him. He can’t force you. You have a race to fly in two days.”

  Henry closed his eyes and had to struggle to keep from throwing up on his shoes. So stupid! He hadn’t told Gil about Indiana yet. He was already such a mess. And with the preparation for the race, Henry hadn’t found the right time, figuring he’d do it when they returned to Mississippi, right before he headed north.

  If he argued against being taken in, against the logic of the truth setting them free, if he resisted, it would just make him look that much guiltier when the discovery was made.

  Gil said again, “He can’t make you go, Cora!”

  Her gaze sharpened. “If this man forces me to leave, he’ll be kidnapping!” she said to one of the deputies. “Tell him!”

  The deputy looked uncomfortable. “If you’re eighteen, no, he can’t.”

  She shook her finger at the Pinkerton. “If you touch me again, I’m pressing charges.”

  The Pinkerton held his palms in the air, but his face didn’t show surrender. “Let these men do their work. Then we can talk.”

  The deputy’s grip on Henry’s arm tightened and nudged him into motion.

  He locked eyes with Cora. A single tear ran down her cheek. Her lips were quivering when she mouthed, “I’m so sorry.”

  This was it. His last seconds before he was locked up, probably forever. He wanted to jerk free and kiss her one last time. But he just nodded and said, “Good-bye, Cora. Good luck in the race.”

  The last thing he saw as he was put in the back of the police car was Cora arguing with the Pinkerton, her finger stabbing him in the chest. Henry kept his eyes on her until they turned behind the hangar.

  Gil sat next to him. “Damn. Did you know she wasn’t eighteen?”

  Henry shook his head, unable to speak around the wad of fear and disappointment in his throat.

  “Well, don’t worry,” Gil said. “Plenty of people in Noblesville saw her show up on her own. She traveled alone on the motorcycle for weeks. People remember her. It’ll get straightened out.”

  How long? How long would it take? He hoped like hell Gil was out in time to finish prepping the plane for the race. The spark plugs weren’t even in it. Henry had been setting the gaps when the shit started to fly. Cora deserved her shot.

  And then he’d have to figure out a way to convince her to give up on him, to move on with Gil, the circus . . . her amazing life that lay ahead.

  25

 
The police separated Henry and Gil as soon as they arrived at the Dade County jail, but had yet to officially arrest them. Gil’s ignorance of Henry’s true identity wouldn’t have to be faked, so Henry supposed that was one good thing that came from not yet telling the truth. He hadn’t met Gil until two days after Emmaline’s death, so they couldn’t link him to that in any way.

  As they were led to different rooms, Gil dredged up a semiconfident grin and said, “Don’t worry, kid.” His assurance made Henry feel even guiltier, but he’d responded with a nod, wondering if he’d ever see Gil again. Maybe it would be best if he didn’t. Then Henry wouldn’t have to see the disappointment in Gil’s eyes.

  Or maybe he wouldn’t be disappointed at all. Maybe he’d welcome Henry’s removal from their trio. Gil’s face when he’d said he didn’t want to intrude had told Henry he’d just undone the last piece of twine holding Gil together. With Henry gone, maybe Cora would be able to retie it. He hoped so. Maybe that would make up for the betrayal and misuse of Gil’s friendship.

  The small room had no clock. Henry sat on a metal bench attached to the wall, his hands cuffed behind his back, waiting. And waiting. A peculiar calm overtook him. After months of balancing on the knife edge of dread, tasting uncertainty, smelling of fear, he couldn’t believe that all he felt was quiet relief; colorless, tasteless, and odorless. This life was over. The decision had been yanked from his hands. He was finally done running.

  He sat there long enough that he sweated through his shirt and his ass got numb. The strangest thoughts passed through his head.

  Will I be buried next to my family? Will someone make a fifth crooked cross out of fence pickets for me? Do they have a special place they bury executed murderers?

  I can’t remember my mother’s face.

  Did Gil know the right spark gap setting for the Evie?

  I don’t know Cora’s favorite color.

  Finally, the door opened.

  A man in a loosened tie and limp shirt with the sleeves rolled up pulled a chair in from the hall and sat down across the room from Henry, well out of kicking range, he noticed.