Chapter 2
I couldn’t even wait for the propeller to quit spinning before I gushed forth a flash flood of words. I needed to find the right phrases to explain it all, right then, before one particle of it faded and I missed my chance to preserve it fresh and whole in a waxy casing of words.
I gasped for breath, trying to say everything at once. “Is it always that way? Is it? Ever since I first saw you, when you flew over the house and dipped your wings at us, I’ve tried to imagine what it would be like! I’d spent so much time at it that I almost convinced myself I’d gotten it right, that I’d already done it, but I was wrong! It’s just so much ... I don’t know, bigger than I thought it would be. Not the world, or the sky, but the idea, the way your thoughts expand. Oh!” I screwed up my face in exasperation. “I’m not making any sense. You must think I’m crazy rattling on like this, but I’m so excited I’m tingling! I can’t think of anything to compare it to. It’s a new world up there! A new heaven and earth. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“Yes,” he said, smiling, pulling off his goggles to reveal eyes that reflected mine. “I know. That’s why I wanted you to come. I thought you’d know what you were seeing. Most people don’t, you know.”
“How is that possible?” I wondered.
He thought for a moment, then shrugged and hopped lightly out of the cockpit and onto the ground. “They just don’t have the imagination, I suppose.”
“Papa would understand. I know he would. I just wish I could find the right way to describe it to him.”
Slim moved around the Jenny methodically, sliding wooden blocks under the wheels while my eyes followed his every move, memorizing him as if he were a vapor that might vanish into thin air if I turned my head even for a moment. “I’ve tried, a few times,” he said, “but nothing ever quite hits the mark. The first time I flew I rushed right home to write it all down in my journal. I was so afraid I’d forget just how it felt.”
I pushed myself up from my seat and swung my legs out and over onto the wing. “Yes! That’s just what I was thinking.”
“Don’t worry,” he said earnestly. “You’ll never forget it. If it speaks to you, flight stays with you always. Sometimes I find myself talking to someone and I’ll begin daydreaming about flying and realize the dream is more real to me than the person I’m talking to. Even though it’s so real, you can’t ever find the right way to tell people about it. At least, I can’t. But there’s something about you, Eva”—he nodded seriously—“you might have better luck.”
He looked up, and I saw in his eyes the same expression he’d had the first night in our kitchen, a moment of recognition, as though he sensed we’d met somewhere before but couldn’t quite remember where. For an instant, the doubt cleared away and he remembered my face and that we had been together from always. I waited for the perception to pass, for him to brush it away as a ridiculous fancy, but he didn’t. When he spoke his voice was soft as the breeze, almost as though he were talking to himself.
“I bet there are words in you, Eva, poems and songs that could make sense of everything. I can see it in your face.”
He reached up to me with both arms, and this time I let myself be helped off the wing. The touch of his hands was firm and comforting encircling my arms. My body slid steadily along his until my feet touched the ground, and I felt his hands resting too long between my shoulders and the small of my back. I knew I should pull away and say something awkward and blushing to cover my embarrassment, but I wasn’t embarrassed. How strange, I thought. Stranger still that I felt so natural leaning my head onto his chest. Without pretense of accident or confusion I raised my face to meet the kiss I knew was waiting.
I didn’t need to make myself concentrate on that kiss. It was like flying. There was no danger I’d forget how his lips felt, soft but solid, tentative and unapologetic all at once, or the gentle insistence of his fingers at the buttons of my blouse. If I had been thinking, maybe I would have told him to stop, but I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t want him to stop. If I were lying, maybe I’d say that I didn’t understand what would happen next, but I did.
I could have said no, but instead I yielded to the pressure of his arms on my shoulders, pulling me down onto a bed of crackling wheat stalks, curling beneath the safety of his body sheltering mine, covering me like a blanket. Though it was my first time, my body responded to his without thought or instruction. Natural and familiar, like opening a thick, dusty book and finding you already know the story.
Afterward, we lay talking, encircled by a protecting wall of wheat that hid us from the world. He told me of his growing up in Michigan and of the first time he saw a plane fly and how wonderful he thought it would be to have one of his own and be part of the sky. He told me how he had saved up to buy the Jenny and how he’d worked as a wing-walker with a flying circus before he’d started barnstorming on his own, but what he really wanted was something bigger, something to test himself against. He told me a million things about himself while I memorized the lovely flat vowels of his midwestern accent and practiced pacing my breathing to his, making my lungs expand and contract to his rhythm. Then he was quiet a long time, content as I was to stare up at a perfect elegant circle of evening sky. Finally he raised himself up on one elbow and turned toward me, resting his other arm on the flat of my belly.
“Now tell me about you. Tell me about that,” he said simply, indicating my lame leg with his eyes. If someone else had asked me that question, I’d have felt ashamed, but with Slim it was different. I liked his honesty. He was genuinely interested in me and wise enough to know that my twisted leg was part of the story.
“Right after I was born, the doctor told Mama and Papa I’d never walk and they ought to take me to Texas to see a specialist. Mama asked if a specialist could make me walk, and the doctor said no, but they could brace my leg so at least it would be straight. Mama said she didn’t see how a straight leg would do me much good if I couldn’t walk on it, and besides, she wasn’t going to travel four hundred miles to see a bunch of doctors who’d given up on me before they’d ever seen me anyway, so we never went.”
“I like your mother.” Slim laughed. “She doesn’t let anyone get around her, does she?”
“Nobody except Papa, and I don’t think that counts. Anyway, after that Mama started exercising my leg on her own, trying to make it stronger. She made a kind of bag that strapped on to my ankle, and she put a few washer rings in for weight. I’d kick my legs to hear the washers jingle. Gradually she added more and more weight, and my leg got stronger and stronger. By the time I was a year and a half old I could stand holding on to something. I could walk with a crutch before my third birthday. Later I just needed the cane.”
“And after that you walked everywhere?”
“Not quite. I’m so slow they knew I’d never make it to school and back without help, so Papa taught me to ride, and when I turned five he gave me Ranger, our old plow horse, as a present. I loved riding. I used to gallop across the fields with my arms spread wide, pretending I was a bird. I’d imagine I was running a race and none of the other kids could catch me. But I couldn’t have been going too fast,” I said with a smile. “Even in his younger days, Ranger wasn’t exactly a speed demon.”
“You still have him?” Slim asked.
“Oh yes.” I nodded. “I still ride him to school and town, but I never go to Dillon unless I have to.”
“Don’t like school? I don’t blame you. I never saw the point of learning something out of a book that you could learn better if you just went out and experienced it for yourself. My mother is a teacher, and she’s always on me for not taking my studies seriously, but I’m too restless to be much of a scholar. I went to college for a while, but I dropped out so I could learn to fly.”
“You’ve been to college!” I marveled. “Really? Oh, I’d give anything to do that! I love books and learning things. Papa’s just the same. He reads everything he can get his hands on. If there’s nothing else available he’ll read the Sears Roebuck out loud so Mama and I can hear all about the new advances in farm implements. You know, I actually like it.” We laughed, and Slim reached over and wound a lock of my hair around his finger.
“So, you’re a lot like your Papa, and you love school. Tell me more,” he said and seemed so sincerely interested that I did.
“I don’t love school. I love learning. School would be fine if it was just me and the teacher and a pile of books, but it’s not. I hate going there.”
“The kids tease you?”
“Not so much now as when I was little.” I shrugged. “Now they mostly ignore me, all except Ruby. She’s the girl I was with today. My best friend. My only friend.”
“You don’t have any beaus?” he asked. For a moment I thought he might be teasing me, but his question was genuine, and I was pleased to think he supposed anyone would be interested in me.
“No. Of course not.” I blushed.
“Why not?” he asked incredulously. “You’re beautiful, Eva. The most beautiful girl I ever met. Are all the fellows in this town blind or something?”
“Not blind. They just can’t see past my leg. I’m the crippled girl, that’s all.” I sat up and started picking wheat stalks off my dress, suddenly wishing he’d change the subject.
Slim got up and kneeled in front of me, enfolding my hands in his. “I see you,” he whispered looking square into my eyes. Then he leaned forward to kiss me again, softly, an endearment. “I see you just like in a looking glass, but better than that. I see you front to back and head to toe. I see you, crippled leg and all, and I’m glad for it.”
I raised my eyebrows doubtfully. “You’re glad I’m crippled?”
Slim bit his lip, searching for a better phrase. “Not exactly glad, but if you weren’t you wouldn’t be the same person, would you? From that first moment, in your parent’s kitchen, I knew there was something different about you. I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then, when you walked away and I saw how hard that was, something as simple as walking across the room, I thought maybe that was the difference. You know what it is to have to work for what you want. If not for that, you might be just as empty and twittering as any of those small-town girls that come hanging around my plane. But you’re not. I never met anyone like you, Eva.”
“I never thought about my leg that way.” I couldn’t help but smile at him. “That’s the nicest thing anybody’s ever said to me. But what about you? You must have lots of girlfriends.”
“Not me,” he said dismissively. “There are plenty of girls that come out to watch me fly, but they don’t interest me. They flirt and bat their eyelashes at me, all painted up and squeaking. They remind me of a bunch of circus monkeys.”
I laughed out loud at the picture he’d painted. The description fit Mary Kay Munson and her crowd to a tee.
“I mean it,” he continued earnestly. “Most girls are just ridiculous, nothing in their heads but fluff, with no more interest or idea of how a plane works than a rabbit has of how the magician pulled it out of the hat. No,” he said solemnly, almost to himself, “no girls for me. I’ve got plans. Aviation is going to change the world, and I’m going to be right in the middle of it. I don’t have time to go and get myself tangled up with some girl.”
I knew his words weren’t intended for me, that he was only repeating his own resolutions to himself so he wouldn’t forget, but they stung all the same. For a moment, I felt foolish sitting there with him, wondering what I’d gotten myself into, but then I remembered his ambition. It had been there from the beginning. Before he’d ever touched me, before we’d said a word, I’d known who he was. His pull toward me was strong, but the pull of a future he saw outlined only in shadow was stronger and always would be. I’d known that, and still I’d come to the field, flown with him, held him close instead of pushing him away. I told myself I had no right to feel hurt now.
“Anyway, I’ve never been much good at talking to girls.” He shrugged off his reverie. “My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth whenever I meet one. It’s different with you, though. I can’t explain it. Right from the first moment I knew I could say anything to you and you’d understand. Isn’t that strange?”
“I know just what you mean.” I leaned over, kissed him, and pulled him down next to me as I lay back on the grass and nestled close to him, content for a time to say nothing, just watching the moon as it rose full overhead.
“Eva?”
“You know, my real name, my full name anyway, is Evangeline.”
“Really? That’s my mother’s name, too, and that’s what everyone calls her.”
“Nobody calls me Evangeline except Papa. I think of it as almost a secret, like a pet name that only the people who really know me can use. I wish you’d call me by it.”
“All right, I will. Evangeline, I ...” He lowered his eyes to look where his hand rested stroking the soft fabric of my dress. “What I mean is ... did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to. I didn’t plan any of this.” Finding the courage to look at me, his eyes were anxious and sincere. “I wouldn’t want you to think this was what I was planning when I invited you to ride with me. I wanted to share the sky with you, that’s all.”
I reached up and pulled a strand of golden grass from his hair, “Shush. You don’t need to explain. I didn’t feel tricked, if that’s what you’re thinking. I felt ... oh, I don’t know ... alive! All my veins were running hot and cold at the same time, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. The truth is, I didn’t want to stop it. It would have been wrong to try, like standing against a force of nature. If we’d have fought it we would have been altering our destiny somehow.”
He smiled and rolled onto his back, sliding his arms under my shoulders and pulling me close, “I’m glad. I’d never do anything to hurt you, Evangeline.”
“I believe you, Slim, but some kinds of hurts you can’t help. Sometimes hurt and happiness are all part of the same package, so you’ll always know it really happened. You know how when something wonderful happens people say, ‘Pinch me so I’ll know I’m not dreaming’? Life is like that sometimes, a little pain thrown in so we know we aren’t imagining the whole thing. The pain will help me to remember it all after you’ve gone.” I took a deep breath and tried to sound light and brave. “I guess that will be pretty soon, won’t it?”
It made me feel better to say it first and give voice to the thought I knew was worrying him, how to tell me that even after what had happened he would have to leave. It would have been nice to lie there and imagine a life together, to pretend for a little while that we would never part, but there’s too much of my practical mama in me to give in to daydreams. He shifted away from me ever so slightly, and I felt his breathing find a new rhythm, separate from mine.
“I’ll go tomorrow morning. I’m supposed to fly down to Texas to do some stunts in a flying circus.” He sat up and looked me in the eye, and I knew it was because he wanted me to believe his words. At that moment, he believed them himself.
“I’ll be back, Evangeline. I promise. Just as soon as I can, I’ll come back, and then we’ll ...” He hesitated for a moment trying to think how the sentence ended, but I could see him struggling with the choices before him. Whatever he said next would either be a lie or alter everything he’d ever envisioned for himself. I interrupted him before he was forced to choose.
“Slim, my papa and mama love each other as much as two people can. They don’t talk about it, of course, but what they’ve got is real special. Every once in a while, though, I see Papa standing on the porch watching the horizon, and there is a lonely look comes into his eye and I know he’s thinking of the sea. He misses it. He loves us, but there is this silent part of him that wonders what he might have done if only.” I sat up taller and smoothed the wrinkles out of my skirt. “I’d never want that to happen to anyone I loved. If someone I care about is going to dream about something, I’d rather it was of one more hour with me rather than one hour away so they could find out how the story might have turned out ‘if only.’ Wouldn’t you?”
He took my hand and pressed his lips to my palm. “I barely know you, but I love you, Evangeline. Is that possible? I don’t want to go.”
“I know.” I didn’t tell him that he had to go. There was no need to pretend to discuss what we both knew had been decided.
Papa was furious when I got home. I’d figured Mama would be the one who would want to skin me and Papa would be the one trying to talk her out of it, but nothing that day happened the way I thought it would. When I arrived, well after nine o’clock, Papa was pacing the floor and Mama was sitting calm in her chair, rocking and knitting as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened. She told Papa to shush, that I was home now and that was the important thing. I explained about the airplane ride and that Slim and I had gotten to talking and lost track of the time. It wasn’t a total lie. I figured they didn’t really want to know the rest anyway.
“You won’t let it happen again, will you, Eva?” Mama asked, more to reassure to Papa than to exact any promise from me.
“No, Mama,” I replied contritely. “I’m sorry I worried you.”
“Worried us!” Papa barked. “I was half out of my mind with worry! You try a stunt like that again, miss, and I’ll take my strap to you! I swear I will!”
“Now, Seamus,” Mama soothed, “that’s enough of that. You’ve never laid a hand on her and you know you never would, for all your bluster. There’s no harm done. It’s late. We’d better get to bed. Eva, we’ll want to get started on those pickles early tomorrow, before the heat sets in.”
Alone in my room, I took off my shoes, dress, and slip, and poured water into the flowered basin. I lifted the sponge out of the washbasin and squeezed tiny streams of water over my skin before putting on my lightest nightdress, enjoying the feeling of the damp cotton against my body, a cool, caressing hand against my tingling new breasts and thighs. Would it last, I wondered, this burning, enlivening sensation that spilled, inside and out, over every part of me that he’d touched? Did it happen that way to everyone? Had Mama felt like this? Had stout Mrs. Dwyer who sold aspirin and cough syrup behind the counter of the drugstore? Or Corinna Leslie, Ruby’s cousin who’d gotten married last April? Picturing them each in turn—canning pickles, making change, hanging laundry—I couldn’t remember seeing a shadow of anything as wonderful as the awakening that surged through me. It couldn’t have been the same, I thought. Surely if they’d felt it, even half as strong as I did, they’d never be able to hide it.
I was glad to be alone, not because I wanted to escape Papa’s anger, but because I was afraid they’d be able to read what had happened on my face. I wanted to think, to hold it all close without trying to explain it, willing myself not to remember that in the morning Slim would be gone.
I opened the window and lay down on top of the quilt Mama had helped me patch when I was only ten years old, a blue and red Ohio Star pattern. As I lay there, looking at the moon and wishing for a bit of breeze to stir the hot night air, I could hear Mama and Papa getting ready for bed in the next room. The hinges of their door squeaked in a familiar pitch, and the drawer on their chifforobe scraped against the frame just like every night. Papa always swore he was going to oil the hinges and plane the drawers, but he somehow never got around to it. I was glad. Those night sounds were like a lullaby to me. I don’t suppose I’d have been able to sleep without them.
Papa’s boots thumped on the wooden floor, and I could hear the sound of his voice murmuring something to Mama as he walked to the window and struggled to open the sticky sash. Then I could hear his voice as clear as if he and Mama were addressing me face to face, but of course they weren’t. They’d have never shared with me the things they told each other that night.
“Just for tonight, Clare. The night air won’t kill us this once. It’s so hot, and I feel so restless. I’m suffocating.”
“All right, Seamus, but don’t blame me if you catch pleurisy. At least come away from the window and get into bed.”
“I won’t be able to sleep. I keep thinking about Evangeline, out with that boy, so late, in our field. In our field! I let him park his plane there, fed him at our table, lent him my tools, and he has the nerve to take my daughter up in his plane without even asking my permission. She could have been killed up there in that contraption of his!”
“But she wasn’t, and everything is fine,” Mama replied factually, “so come to bed and forget about it.”
Papa grumbled as he paced. “She was so late! What could they have been doing out there that time of night?”
I could hear my mother shift under the covers and roll over to face Papa. Her voice was quiet and more patient than it had been. “Seamus, you know what they were doing. You know,” she urged.
“Clare! What are you talking about? Evangeline hardly knows him. Never even spoke to him when he came to dinner. Besides, she wouldn’t, she—”
“Why not? Why wouldn’t she? I did, Seamus. We did.”
“That was different. We were in love and we couldn’t ... Well, it wasn’t like this. Some stranger passing through town. We were in love. It was for life, you and me.”
“Yes, I’d known you for three days and it was for life. What makes you think it isn’t just like that for Eva? Oh, Seamus.” Mama sighed, and I heard a rustling of bedclothes and then footsteps as she got out of bed and crossed the room to stand near him. I could see her in my mind’s eye, her arms wrapped around Papa as he stood looking out the window, frowning at the full moon.
“Did you see her when she came in?” Mama asked. “Did you see her face and how her eyes shone? It’s love for her, and for her it is for life, even though for them it may not be more than a night. She’s your daughter, Seamus. She wouldn’t have settled for less than the real thing.”
“The real thing,” he scoffed. “What would she know about that? She’s a child. The real thing is with someone who’ll stick around for more than a week; someone who’ll be there when the crop fails, or your sight grows weak, or the baby gets sick. There’s nothing fancy to real love, but you can count on it, like the earth under your feet. You don’t get that with some clown in a flying circus! Oh, leave it,” Papa huffed. “I don’t know why I’m letting you get me so tied up in knots over this, anyway. This is my Evangeline. She’d never waste herself on someone like that. Nothing happened,” he stated with finality. “I know it. She’ll wait for the right one. I know she will.”
“The right one? Just who do you think that will be?” Mama’s voice sparked with impatience the way it sometimes did when she’d burned the bread or broke a dish, but I’d never heard her speak that way to Papa before. “Seamus, Eva is all the things you imagine her to be. She’s bright and beautiful, and she’s crippled. That’s part of the package. It’s part of what makes her special. Why won’t you see that?”
Mama’s voice was cold and hard as she continued. “Her leg is twisted like a corkscrew, and no one around here is going to make her their wife, not ever. Even if they did, who would she find here? Clarence Parker? Harold Jessup or some other illiterate dolt with no imagination and no plans? It would suffocate her. No, I’m glad she was out in our field with that exciting, handsome boy with the big dreams. She deserves someone like that, someone as remarkable as she is.” She choked, and her voice lowered until it was almost a whisper. “I hope it was wonderful, Seamus. Lord, I hope it was, because it’s going to have to last her a lifetime.”
Then I heard the muffled sound of Mama crying, and I knew that she was in Papa’s arms, her face against his chest, wetting his shirtfront with her tears. I buried my head into the mean comfort of my pillow and wept quietly by myself. I cried because I’d never known before how much Mama loved me—not just doing her duty, but really loved me—and how love forced her to see me sharper and deeper than she’d have liked. I cried because I’d always known what she said about my being crippled was true, but like her, I’d never said it out loud because that would have made it too real, solid and visible and hard, like words on a page. Once true words are released into the air you can’t ever take them back. I cried because the truth cuts so deep. Most of all, I cried because the night was nearly over and in the morning Slim would be gone.
I dreamed of Slim that night. We were back in Papa’s field, hidden in a den of sweet-smelling wheat, our arms around each other. Then, without any warning, the Jenny’s propellor spit and sputtered and spun all by itself, and the plane started taxiing across the field without her pilot. Slim had to run alongside and climb onto the wing to get hold of her, a rider racing after a renegade horse, before she took off without him.
I ran as best I could, limping behind them, but it was no use. I was too slow. Slim never reached his hand back to grab mine. I could see as I ran that the Jenny, which had formerly been a two-seater, now only had a cockpit for one. There was simply no room for me. I gave up the chase and stood where the little sapphire plane had rested a moment before, waving halfheartedly at its retreating shadow, my legs so heavy I couldn’t move another step.
Then, just when the plane was so far away it looked like a dot on the horizon, Slim turned back and flew straight toward me, dipping his wings and waving, like the first time I’d seen him. He sailed overhead, stirring the air the way a fountain troubles still water. Reaching skyward, I caught the breeze in my hand and felt Slim in it. His power and life, the cool familiarity of his skin, the rhythm of his heart, the pull and pain of his destiny were physical reality in my hand. I had eyes in my fingertips and knew everything that was coming, though I knew I would forget it all before waking. None of that mattered.
“All right,” I consented and let him disappear into a cloud, content to wait below, remembering how it was going to be. Then in an instant he was gone, and I was alone with only the hum of the Jenny’s engine to remind me that he’d ever been there at all.
The engine noise woke me. It took a moment to separate myself from the dream, though I knew for certain, sleeping and waking, the buzz overhead was real. Slim was leaving.
I could hear Mama in the kitchen, clanging skillets and making coffee. The smell of my favorite breakfast, pancakes and Virginia ham, wafted in from the kitchen, and I knew Mama had heard the plane leave too and was cooking comfort into my meal, whisking the unspoken words of understanding into the silky batter, knowing I wouldn’t miss her meaning.
I stood at the window until the engine sounds died away completely, until I was certain he wasn’t turning back, and a little longer than that. Finally I left off waiting and got dressed. There was nothing else to do.