Her Last Flight

by Beatriz Williams

  Hanalei, Hawai’i

  October 1947

  The post office in Hanalei is the kind that does all kinds of business, including the sending and receiving of telegrams. After breakfast, with no sign of Lindquist spinning back up the road in her cherry Buick, I discover a bicycle in the shed and head into town.

  I’ve already met the woman behind the counter, whose name I forget. The ancient nameplate on the counter reads lanalee, if you look closely. I smile and ask if there’s any reply to the telegram I sent yesterday. She doesn’t smile back but she fetches the yellow envelope. Before she hands it to me, she says I’ll have to sign for it.

  “Of course,” I say.

  She pulls out the list of telegrams—it’s not long—and I scribble my initials next to the entry at the bottom.

  “Miss Eugenia Everett,” she says. “I hear you’re staying with the Lindquists?”

  “Since five minutes ago. How did you know?”

  “My brother is Mr. Lindquist’s cousin by marriage.” While I try to work this out in my head, she continues in a voice that grows more threatening by the vowel. “So Mr. Leo is my second cousin, you see?”

  “I see.”

  “He’s a fine boy, Leo.”

  “I’d have to agree.”

  “The Lindquists are good people. You’re lucky to be staying with them. Mr. Lindquist, he went right out to Oahu on the morning boat to take care of poor Kaiko.” She gives me this look that seems to lay all the blame for poor Kaiko’s accident at my feet.

  “How is poor Kaiko?” I ask.

  “He has a punctured lung,” she says, shaking her head, as if it were some form of incurable cancer and they might as well dig Kaiko’s grave this minute. “Probably Mr. Lindquist will stay in Honolulu for some time. Mr. Leo too.”

  “Doesn’t Leo have a job?”

  “Family is family, Miss Everett. There’s nothing more important. Here in Hanalei, we are all family. We would do anything for each other.” She holds out the yellow envelope. “Here is your telegram.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Will there be a reply?”

  “Probably not,” I tell her, by which I mean probably not here, because I have the feeling that whatever ethics govern the sending and receiving of personal telegrams elsewhere in the world, they don’t apply in Hanalei. At least that’s what I understand from Miss Lanalee. (By now, I’ve read the nameplate on the counter.)

  About a mile up the road, I stop the bicycle and tear open the envelope. The telegram was sent last night from this fellow I know at the Associated Press.

  SENT HONOLULU CLIPPINGS AIRMAIL STOP ARRIVE DAY AFTER TOMORROW HANALEI POST OFFICE CARE OF YOU STOP COST MINT STOP THIS HAD BETTER BE GOOD STOP BILL

  I swear aloud, stuff the telegram back in my pocket, and climb back on the bicycle.

  By the time I return to the white house called Coolibah, Lindquist has returned from taking the children to school. She sits in a wicker chair on one of the porches—lanais, they call them—with a large pot of coffee. I set the bicycle against the railing and climb the steps.

  “You’re perspiring, Janey.” She gestures to the other chair. “Would you prefer water or coffee?”

  “Coffee’s all right, thank you.”

  “How was your telegram? Good news, I hope?”

  My hand, pouring the coffee into the cup, veers off to the left. Lindquist clucks and reaches for a napkin. I blot the spilled coffee and fill my cup.

  “I won’t be boring and ask how the devil you knew about the telegram. That rat Miss Lanalee, I guess.”

  “She’s very protective. They all are.”

  I sink onto the wicker sofa. “I have a friend at the AP who’s helping me with research, that’s all. He doesn’t know what it’s about, never fear.”

  “Are you sure of that? Never trust a newsman, I always say.”

  “Well, you would, wouldn’t you?” I reach for the cigarettes in the pocket of my slacks. “I asked him to pull some clippings on your flight to Australia. It’s always useful to read the news as it actually unfolded.”

  “Not all the details in those newspapers turned out to be true, you know.”

  I hold out the cigarettes. She shakes her head.

  “But before we get into all that,” she continues, “I wouldn’t mind knowing who snitched on me. It’s just not possible you tracked me here without somebody to point the way.”

  “Haven’t you heard? A journalist never reveals his sources.”

  “But it was a person, wasn’t it?”

  I finish lighting the cigarette and take a long drag. “It was both. A wee birdie told me about a certain airplane that made its way out of Spain in May of 1937. It was up to me to figure out where it flew.”

  “Was this the same birdie that told you where to find Sam’s wreckage?”

  I zip my lips. “Enough about me and my birdies. I’m here, that’s all. I tracked you down, and frankly I’m surprised I was the first. It was all there, once you knew where to look. Spain to Paris to Newfoundland. Across Canada. Once the trail went cold in Vancouver, why, I just had to use my intuition.”

  “And your intuition said Hawai’i?”

  I held up my hand and ticked off the fingers. “It’s remote. It’s got some of the best surfing in the world. And it’s got sentimental value for you, doesn’t it? Your first flight together. Hawai’i’s where it all began.”

  “My flying career, you mean.”

  “Not just your flying career. You and Sam.” I reach for the ashtray, and her eyes follow me keenly. “Am I right?”

  Lindquist sets down her coffee cup and rises from the chair. She walks to the edge of the lanai and holds her hand up to her brow, as if she’s looking for something out to sea. Her hair is dry now, curling softly around her ears. She sticks her other hand in her pocket and says, “You know, I never did understand why people cared more about this idea of romance between me and Sam than about the flight itself.”

  “Don’t be naïve. Of course they did. Sex is what makes the world go round. The human species wouldn’t survive without it. And when one of the parties happens to be already married . . . well. You can bet those newspaper editors were rubbing their hands with glee.”

  She turns and moves her hand to the side of her face, fingering the scar. “Well, they were all wrong. I wasn’t in that airplane because I was in love with Sam. I was in that airplane because I wanted to fly, and Sam was the best pilot in the world.”

  I stub out the cigarette, even though it’s only half finished. “You’re fooling yourself, sister. I’ve seen the photographs of the two of you. You’re goofy for each other.”

  “Of course we had feelings for each other. We had a partnership, a friendship. But he was already married. He had a family. I understood that.”

  “You might have understood that,” I say, “but I don’t believe Mallory did. He was always a bit of a ladies’ man, wasn’t he? That poor wife of his.”

  Lindquist props her hands on the railing behind her and crosses her ankles. “Yes,” she says flatly. “His poor wife.”

  “You don’t agree?”

  She looks out to sea again and back. “Miss Everett, I wasn’t the only one who showed a different face to the world than the one I showed in private. Sam Mallory hid more of himself than I ever did. He gave more of himself, until he lost who he was, and I will never forgive myself that I cared so much about what the world thought, I let him go. I let him go to wander alone, right when he needed me most.”

  Again she puts her hand to that scar on her face. Finally, I think. Finally we’re getting somewhere.

  “But first, there was Hawai’i,” I suggest.

  Lindquist pushes herself off the railing and walks back to me, except this time she plops herself right down on the wicker sofa, so close our knees knock together. I stare in horror at this point of incidental contact.

  “I am going to tell you a story,” she says. “A story about a man and a woman who both married
the wrong people.”

  Aviatrix by Eugenia Everett (excerpt)

  July 1928: California

  In summer, the ocean current was considerably warmer, and dawn tumbled over the distant San Bernardino Mountains at about half past five o’clock. Irene liked to arrive at the beach before Sam did, though it took some discipline. Sam was an early riser, and he lived only a short way up the coast, in a tiny house overlooking the water.

  But on the morning of the thirtieth of July, when Irene pulled over onto the shoulder of the road next to the beach, there was no yellow Nash parked there before her. When she emerged from the wooden shack in her surfing costume, it still hadn’t appeared. Nor did Sam arrive down the cliff path while she rode the waves, or when she came off the water and headed back up the hill into the full force of the sun, and Irene understood that he wasn’t coming this morning. Sometimes he didn’t. Some days he rose and drove straight for the airfield. Still, she would have liked to have a private moment with him, on this particular morning. She loitered another minute or two before she changed back into her dress and drove home.

  By six thirty she had turned off Wilshire Boulevard onto Selby Avenue, where she lived with her father—when he was around—in a modest bungalow that encompassed two bedrooms and a clipped, rectangular lawn of tough grass. Out front, there was a lemon tree, on which Irene lavished most of her love and care. The houses on Selby all looked alike to Irene, so she aimed for the lemon tree and turned left into the short drive so she could park the Model T in the lean-to garage she’d built with her father last year.

  This morning, however, the garage was already occupied. Irene reached down for the brake lever just in time. She stared at the curved rump of the car in front of her and rattled her thumbs against the steering wheel, until the engine, starved of fuel, started to sputter and miss its beats. She shut off the ignition and climbed out. The surfboard she removed carefully from the back and set in its place at the back of the garage, next to the workbench.

  She entered through the side door, which wasn’t locked. “Dad?” she called out.

  “In the kitchen, pumpkin!”

  Irene smoothed back her hair and turned right into the kitchen, where her father sipped coffee at the wooden table. Mr. Foster stood up and opened his arms. Irene stepped into his embrace and kissed his cheek, then turned her own cheek to be kissed.

  “This is a nice surprise,” she said. “You must’ve set out early from Victorville.”

  “I wasn’t in Victorville. I was out in Nevada. Reno way. Drove through the night so I could eat breakfast with my best girl.” He sat. “Weren’t out surfing, were you?”

  “Sure, I was. Nice morning like this one.” The blue enamel coffeepot sat on the stove behind him, keeping warm. Irene had already taken a cup and saucer from the cabinet. She poured her coffee, added a teaspoon of sugar, stared at the swirling liquid as she stirred it in. The heat felt good on her fingers; she didn’t realize how cold they were.

  “How were the waves?” asked Mr. Foster.

  “Waves were good. Big, slow rollers, coming in northwest.”

  He nodded. “Could maybe join you tomorrow, if you like.”

  “Maybe,” Irene said.

  He motioned to the other chair. “Sit down a bit and have coffee with me.”

  “Can’t. I’ve got to be at work in an hour. I can fry you an egg, if you like.”

  “Why, I’d love an egg or two,” Mr. Foster said, as if the idea never occurred to him.

  So Irene fetched the eggs from the pantry, fetched the bread to make toast. Mr. Foster made no move to help, although he could make his own breakfast perfectly well, when Irene wasn’t around to do it for him. He made conversation instead, that was his contribution. He told Irene about this fellow in Reno, how he might want to buy Mr. Foster’s new idea, the patent for the thingamajig—Irene wasn’t really paying attention, hadn’t really kept up with her father’s latest gadget—for possibly a lot of money, Mr. Foster wouldn’t say how much, didn’t want to get her hopes up. But the fellow was pretty serious. Bit eccentric, lived all by himself in a ranch way out of town, rich as Midas.

  “How do you know?” asked Irene. “How do you know he’s that rich?”

  “That’s what people say.”

  Irene slid her father’s eggs on the toast—over easy, that’s how he liked them, yolk gushing all over the place as soon as you pricked them with your fork—and handed him the plate. He reached for the salt.

  “Go on,” said Irene, so she wouldn’t have to talk, and Mr. Foster went on. He told her about the drive, how he figured to save the money for another night at the motor lodge and set out at nine p.m. over the Sierra Nevada, tire went flat right away in the Truckee Pass, another tire blew out near Modesto. But oh, it was a beautiful night to be out driving. The air was clear and dry, so you could see the whole Milky Way spread out in the southwest sky. Not another soul on the road, not until the sun poked up and the ranchers started their rounds. “And the smell, Irene, you know that smell. The sweet, dry grass and the dust and the sage.”

  “It’s a good smell,” she said. By now, she’d come to sit at the table across from him, drinking her coffee. The sound of his voice, it was the sound of her childhood, and it wasn’t all bad. Hank Foster could spin a good story. Whatever his faults, he could make you smell the air and taste the fried chicken and laugh at the poor sucker at the drugstore, whether or not any of those things had actually existed.

  Her father pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “You mind?”

  Irene waved her hand. Her father pulled out a cigarette, lit it with a match from a matchbook that said Lincoln Motor Lodge, and took a drag or two. Irene went into the sitting room and brought back an ashtray.

  “Say, now,” said Mr. Foster. “Here’s an idea. I hear there’s an air show in Burbank this afternoon.”

  Irene dropped the ashtray next to her father’s coffee cup and stared at the end of his cigarette. “What did you say?”

  “An air show. In Burbank. Fellow’s gone and laid out an airfield there, just the other side of the Hollywood Hills. They’ll be testing out some new planes, flying stunts. You should come with me.”

  Irene snatched her cup and saucer from the table and took them to the sink and turned on the faucet. The water streamed over her fingers and swirled around the blue leaves of her mother’s second-best china. “I have to work,” she said.

  “Call in sick, why don’t you.”

  “Anyway, you should sleep. Driving all night like that.”

  “Oh, I can stay awake a few more hours. I was just thinking, out there on the highway, I don’t spend near enough time with you. Leave you all alone for days. Who knows what kind of trouble you might be getting up to?”

  Irene thought she might be having a heart attack. Her hands shook as she washed out the cup, the saucer, and dried them with a dishcloth, one by one. She heard the clink of cutlery on china, the mouthy noises as Mr. Foster chewed his eggs and swallowed.

  “Said in the newspaper, that fellow Sam Mallory’s going to be demonstrating his new airplane, the one he’s flying to Sydney, Australia, next week.”

  “Is that so?”

  “That’s so. You remember that business, last summer. The fellow who crashed his airplane in the open ocean, flying to Hawai’i in that pineapple derby, and they picked him up eleven days—”

  “I remember,” said Irene.

  “Well. Now the poor sucker’s going to fly to Sydney. What do you think of that?”

  “I think it sounds exciting. I wish him luck.”

  “That cup’s about dry, I think.”

  Irene took the cup and saucer to the cupboard. Her father drank his coffee and wiped his mouth. “Say. Have you heard he’s taking a woman with him?”

  “Is he? Well. That’s news, isn’t it?”

  “Said so in the newspaper. She’s going to be copilot and navigator. The funniest thing. Her name’s Irene Foster.”

  Irene shut the cabinet do
or.

  “That’s some coincidence, isn’t it?” her father said.

  “I guess it’s a common enough name.”

  Mr. Foster had finished the eggs. He took a last corner of toast and swiped it on the plate to gather up the last streaks of yolk. Popped it into his mouth and winked at her.

  “You know something, pumpkin? I always did think airplanes would be right up your alley.”

  After breakfast and a bath, Irene drove her father to Burbank in his car, a green Model A, not because he’d been drinking (though she was pretty sure he had) but because she knew he liked her to drive. He had taught her himself, once she was thirteen and could reach the pedals. He dozed most of the way to Burbank, even though Irene put the top down in the heat and allowed the scorching California wind to blow right through him. His eyes opened just as Irene swung the car into the row of vehicles already lined up in the airfield parking lot.

  “This is it?” he said.

  “It’s not much, but it’s home.”

  He raised his eyebrows at that. Irene expected him to ask a dozen questions, how long had she been flying, how had she found the place to begin with, who had taught her to fly, why she’d kept the whole business from him all these months. But he only nodded, as if he understood perfectly, and reached for the door handle.

  The airfield was already filling with people. They had billed this afternoon as the first public demonstration of the new Rofrano Centauri, but in fact Sam and Irene had already made several test flights. Without fanfare, they had flown it together down to San Diego and back, Sam in the cockpit and Irene in the navigator’s seat just behind him, while the earth lay flat and fascinating as a map beneath them.

  But nobody else knew anything about that. The fanfare, the crowds now gathering at the airfield, they had nothing to do with the inside of the Centauri’s revolutionary aluminum fuselage, which contained only Sam and Irene.

  Irene spotted Sam right away. He stood next to the hangar, hands on hips, grinning his wide-mouthed grin before a semicircle of newspapermen and airplane fanatics. The California sun blazed away on his hair. His face had tanned bronze to match. As he spoke, he caught sight of Irene, hurrying past with her father, and his eyebrows went up. Irene shrugged and continued on to the cafeteria, where she sat her father down with a cup of coffee.