Amelia Earhart: Lady Lindy

by Ann Hood

“Something really, really great,” Pidge said, grinning.

  “We’re going to the state fair!” Meelie announced happily. “Mama, can we take Felix and Maisie with us?”

  “I don’t see why not,” her mother said.

  The state fair? Maisie thought. She imagined pigs and cows and pie-eating contests, none of which sounded the least bit interesting.

  Felix loved the fair. He loved all the animals with their big, blue ribbons. He loved all the farmers with their vegetables—corn and giant tomatoes and deep orange carrots with the greens still on. He loved the women standing proudly beside their homemade pies, a dizzying array of lattice and double crusts, berries and cherries and custards, streusel toppings, and shiny pecans or walnuts.

  But Maisie thought it was boring to look at smelly animals or stare at a bunch of food you couldn’t even eat. Plus, the day had gone from very warm to hot, and the fairgrounds offered little shade. And all Meelie and Pidge wanted to do was ride the merry-go-round, again and again, changing which brightly painted horse they sat on each time.

  She was relieved when the girls’ father showed up and asked them to come with him.

  “I have the most amazing thing to show you,” he said.

  “But I still haven’t ridden on the white horse,” Pidge complained. “Or the purple one!”

  Her father laughed and tugged on one of her braids. “This is so much better than that purple horse, Pidge. I promise you.”

  Still, Meelie and Pidge kept finding things to distract them from whatever their father was trying to show them.

  “Real ponies!” Pidge said, pointing to two tired-looking Shetland ponies. “Can we, Papa?”

  Her father glanced up at the sky where dark gray clouds had started to roll in.

  “The thing is, if we don’t get there before the rain comes, you’ll miss this marvelous invention,” he said.

  “What is it?” Maisie asked, eager to see something marvelous and amazing.

  Their father turned to her, his eyes shining with excitement. “An aeroplane,” he said, awed. “It’s an amazing new invention that Orville and Wilbur Wright flew for the first time five years ago out in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.”

  Disappointed, Maisie shot a look at Felix. But he didn’t seem to notice.

  “How something heavier than air can fly . . . well, that baffles me,” Meelie’s father continued.

  “Just one ride on a pony?” Pidge pleaded. “Then we’ll go see your flying machine.”

  Reluctantly, their father let them take a ride around the corral on the ponies. But when Pidge and Meelie begged for another ride, he refused.

  “Look at those storm clouds,” he said.

  He led them to the edge of the fairgrounds. A field with a high wire fence around it and a higher wooden fence inside that had a big sign in front of it: FLYING AEROPLANE.

  Again, Maisie tried to catch Felix’s eye. Were they really going to spend the rest of the day looking at an airplane? Felix either didn’t see her or chose to ignore her as Meelie found yet another distraction.

  “Paper hats!” she shouted.

  “Oh!” Pidge said, jumping up and down. “I want the yellow one!”

  Maisie followed everyone to the booth selling the ridiculous paper hats, which were really just circles of cardboard covered with paper flowers. They tied under the chin with colorful ribbons. Once that rain started, those hats would dissolve into lumps of wet paper.

  Meelie and Pidge tried on one hat after another as their father paced impatiently.

  “That one looks pretty on you, Meelie,” Felix said.

  “It looks like you have an upside-down basket on your head,” Maisie said.

  “Well, I like it,” Meelie decided. “I think I’ll wear it every day until I’m ninety-nine years old.”

  Her father quickly paid for the hats and told his daughters, “Not one more delay, girls. You are going to see this aeroplane, and you are going to thank me profusely once you do.”

  Without anymore complaining or stopping, they entered through the fence and stood in the field.

  “That’s the airplane?” Maisie said, staring in disbelief at the thing in front of them.

  It did have two wings, but one was stacked on top of the other. Instead of a shiny plane with the name of an airline painted in bright colors on the wing, this thing was made of wood and wire. It barely looked like it would hold together if it could even take off. In the middle of the plane, between the wings, a man wearing goggles and a leather cap sat on a seat, the engine right behind him. Maisie narrowed her eyes. The tail of this “aeroplane” looked more like a box kite than a real plane’s tail.

  The engine sputtered to life. Another man, dressed exactly like the one inside the plane, turned a wooden propeller until it spun on its own.

  “Now watch,” Meelie’s father said quietly. “It’s going to fly.”

  Slowly, the plane rolled across the field.

  “I don’t think that thing can fly,” Maisie said, just as it began to rise up into the air.

  Meelie gasped.

  They all watched as the aeroplane circled the field.

  “They’ll never be used for much,” Meelie’s father said. “But they’re still quite an invention.”

  “I think they’ll carry people all over the world,” Maisie said. “And cargo, too.”

  Meelie’s father laughed. “That’s a funny idea, Maisie.”

  “Papa!” Meelie said, watching the aeroplane land. “I want a ride in it!”

  “Do you think they’ll let us?” Pidge asked.

  “I don’t know,” their father said, “but we can find out.”

  “With those clouds,” the man who had started the propeller told them, “it’s probably not a good idea to go up.”

  They all turned their eyes upward.

  “They do look ominous,” Meelie’s father agreed.

  “The ride only takes a few seconds,” Meelie reminded him.

  “Well,” he said, considering.

  “You couldn’t pay me to go up in that thing,” Maisie said, staring at the contraption.

  “I thought they were going to carry people all over the world,” Meelie’s father teased.

  “Bigger ones,” Maisie said. “Aluminum ones.”

  He laughed. “Big aluminum aeroplanes! I like that!”

  “It’s true,” Maisie said under her breath.

  Felix glared at her. And this time, Maisie pretended not to see him.

  “I’ll take the three big kids up,” the man said finally. “For five dollars.”

  “Five dollars!” Meelie’s father said. His hand went instinctively in his pocket, but he didn’t take any money out.

  “I want to go, too,” Pidge whined.

  “If it hasn’t started to rain,” the man said, “I’ll let you and the little girl go up free of charge.”

  Their father looked longingly at the aeroplane, then slowly nodded.

  “Don’t tell your mother that I spent part of her grocery money on a few seconds in a flying machine,” he said.

  Meelie whooped. “Now this is an adventure!” she shouted.

  “Pidge can take my place,” Maisie said, staring at the plane. That wire and wood looked like it could break apart easily.

  Felix had the very same thought. But he didn’t want Meelie to think he wasn’t brave, so he kept it to himself.

  Meelie spun around to face Maisie, who was lagging behind as they crossed the field to the plane.

  “Why are you so afraid of everything?” she said angrily. “If you don’t take chances, nothing wonderful will ever happen to you.”

  “I take a lot of chances,” Maisie said, remembering how it felt when she first stood on that stage for the audition. She’d thought she might faint from fright.

 
“Then stop complaining and let’s fly,” Meelie said.

  “Okay,” the pilot explained, “what’s going to happen is you three will climb in, I’ll start up the propeller, and I’ll jump in once it gets going. Boyd’s gone on home. ’Cause of the storm.”

  Meelie got in first, followed by a reluctant Felix and an even more reluctant Maisie.

  The little seat was so tiny that they had to all scrunch close together.

  “My heart is beating like a hummingbird’s,” Meelie said happily.

  Felix wanted to say something, but fear had lodged in his throat like a big stone and he couldn’t speak.

  The man warned them that it would be too noisy to speak over the wind and the engine.

  “So you just need to sit back and enjoy quietly,” he added, giving the propeller a spin.

  “Um,” Maisie said, “is that rain I feel?”

  “For goodness’ sake,” Meelie said.

  “I think I felt it, too,” Felix said.

  He was about to point out that raindrops splattered his glasses, but he didn’t get a chance.

  A gust of wind sent the propeller spinning like a pinwheel and before the pilot could jump in with them, the plane lifted up, up, up.

  Meelie screamed, no longer impressed by flying.

  At first, Felix thought the loud rumble he heard was coming from the engine. But then he realized it was thunder.

  He clenched the steering wheel.

  A bolt of lightning cracked blue across the black sky.

  Rain began to fall, softly at first, then harder and harder, soaking them.

  More thunder.

  Another crack of lightning, closer this time.

  All three children gripped the steering wheel now.

  But even that couldn’t stop the plane from plummeting downward, spinning toward the ground below, fast.

  CHAPTER 9

  AMELIA EARHART

  “Do something! Now!” Meelie screamed. Felix did do something. He let go of the steering wheel and covered his eyes. And just like he’d heard people say happened right before you died, his life flashed before him.

  Almost like a home movie, he saw himself as a very little boy. He remembered the feeling of his father pushing him in a swing, the bucket kind that held you in nice and tight. They were probably at the Bleecker Street Playground, and Felix could practically feel the spring sunshine on his face, and the nudge of his father’s strong hand. Beside him, his mother pushed Maisie in her own little bucket swing, but Maisie wanted out. She wanted to play in the sandbox or slide down the curly slide, and Felix could hear her young voice demanding, Out! Out! Out!

  Then there were the four of them at Florent, their favorite neighborhood diner, and the salty taste of the skinny fries that came, improbably, with eggs. His father lifts one French fry and dips it in ketchup and feeds it to Felix’s mother, who looks up at his father like she loves him.

  He saw himself learning to ride a bike on bumpy Hudson Street. Running on the beach at Cape May. Petting the classroom guinea pig, Cinnamon. Whispering to Maisie in the dark in their apartment on Bethune Street. He heard the crack of the bat when he hit his first home run, his mother singing as she cooked spaghetti carbonara, the sound of his father’s key in the lock when he came home from his studio.

  If someone had told Felix that they’d remembered all of these things, he would have thought it took some time. But in fact, they truly flashed through his mind, like lightning bugs on a summer night.

  And they stopped as soon as the plane began to gasp and burp.

  Felix opened his eyes. The rain was falling steadily and his hair and face and shirt were already drenched. But, he realized with relief, the plane had leveled off.

  He held his breath, prepared for the nose to turn downward again.

  Instead, it began to climb again, though not at all smoothly.

  They had dropped low enough for Felix to see the surprised faces of the pilot and Meelie’s father and Pidge and maybe a dozen other onlookers, all standing in the rain staring up at them.

  Felix’s ears popped like crazy.

  The wind made it hard for him to turn his head, but when he did what he saw made him yelp.

  Maisie was flying the plane!

  Meelie had let go of the steering wheel, too, and she sat, her face frozen in a terrified expression, her eyes wide, her mouth opened.

  But Maisie looked determined. Her jaw was set and her eyes were narrowed with concentration.

  The plane seemed to buck rather than fly. It ascended with a lurch, and then it dropped. Over and over again.

  Meelie’s face turned pale first. But before long, her skin took on a vaguely greenish cast.

  Below, the pilot waved his arms and shouted at them, though his words got lost in the noise of the engine and the loud wind and the sound of the rain hitting the plane.

  “He wants me to land!” Maisie shouted above the din.

  Although Felix knew they had no choice, he also knew that his sister had no idea how to land a plane.

  Maisie clenched her jaw and focused on the pilot.

  He was pointing to a particular spot. He was moving his arms as if to say “go slow.”

  The important thing, she decided, was to keep the plane straight. At first, it had seemed like a living thing—a bucking bronco, maybe, like they had in rodeos. But clutching the wheel so hard that her knuckles had turned white and pulling up on the rudder, Maisie somehow was keeping the thing straight. Kind of.

  If she could manage for it to stay straight while she dropped it lower, she might be able to land the thing. Although probably not in the spot where the pilot kept pointing, ever more frantically.

  “I’m landing her,” Maisie said.

  She said it out loud, but she was really talking to herself, as if by saying it out loud she had made a commitment.

  Meelie let out a long cry: “Nooooooooo!”

  Felix decided to close his eyes again.

  “We’re going to die!” Meelie yelled.

  “Be quiet!” Maisie ordered. And for once, Meelie obeyed.

  “I need you both to look out and tell me if I’m getting to close to anything,” Maisie said. “I need to keep my eyes looking straight ahead.”

  Now Felix understood why the aeroplane was out in this field—away from the crowded fairgrounds, the rides and animals and people. And the trees that bordered the whole fair. Here, they circled the mostly empty field, and as they slowly descended, he saw the onlookers below scatter.

  As Maisie set about trying to land the plane, her nerves calmed. Just like when she had finally started to speak the lines onstage at her audition, the world around her disappeared. All that mattered was keeping the plane straight and gently descending. Her whole world became that cockpit, that steering wheel and rudder, that field in front of her. Even all the noise stopped, replaced by a quiet that seemed to come from deep inside her.

  Last autumn, when a hurricane was threatening to hit Newport, Mrs. Witherspoon had told them how hurricanes were classified, how fast their winds were. She’d pointed to the very center of the picture of the swirling storm. This is called the eye, she’d said. Inside the eye, everything was calm, despite the violent winds that surrounded it. That’s where Maisie was now, in the eye of her own storm.

  “Ready,” she said out loud.

  “No!” Meelie screamed.

  But Maisie didn’t answer her. She wasn’t asking Felix and Meelie if they were ready. She was telling herself that she was ready. Ready to land this plane.

  The ground seemed to be coming up toward the plane, as if it wanted to grab them and toss them away. The wet, green grass looked almost close enough to touch.

  Maisie kept her grip steady, though. The plane was as straight as she could keep it.

  The wheels were about to touch d
own.

  The pilot yelled to her: “Steady! Steady!”

  Meelie bawled.

  Felix held his breath.

  The wheels kissed the ground.

  Bumped up.

  Came down a bit harder.

  The plane began to skid on the wet grass. Maisie fought to control it, but she couldn’t.

  It turned in slippery circles, tipping right and then left as it did.

  Just when Felix thought the plane would flip over or fall, it slowed and finally stopped. Already, everyone was running across the field in the rain. Felix watched the faces, awash with a combination of fear and relief, rushing toward them.

  Meelie was the first off the plane, climbing hastily out and racing into her father’s arms. Felix stood, his legs so shaky that he had to sit back down until his breath slowed and the trembling stopped. Even then, it seemed his knees might give way at any moment.

  But Maisie just sat behind the wheel, looking stunned. She watched the scene unfold before her—Pidge and her father hugging Meelie, Felix standing awkwardly in the crowd, the pilot explaining aerodynamics in a very loud voice to anyone who would listen.

  “It’s that girl who saved them,” the pilot said, pointing to Maisie.

  “But how?” someone asked.

  “Luck. Blind luck,” someone else said.

  Meelie stepped out of her family’s embrace.

  “I will never, ever get on an aeroplane again as long as I live!” she announced.

  Her father tousled her hair. “You won’t have to worry about that,” he said. “These things are just for show, anyway.”

  He glanced at Maisie, still perched in the plane. “Despite what your friend Maisie thinks,” he added with a grin.

  Slowly, Maisie stood and climbed down from the plane. Her hair was wet and plastered to her head and face. Her feet sank into the soaked grass as she sloshed toward the others. Nothing seemed real to her. This place. The plane ride. The tailspin and her white-knuckled rescue. None of it.

  Meelie stared up at Maisie with wide, admiring eyes.

  “See?” she said. “You are brave. You can do anything you set your mind to.”

  Maisie nodded, letting the idea sink in.