Fields Of Gold

Dear Slim

Thank you for your letter and your good wishes to Paul and me, though I assure you I’m the lucky one, not Paul. But the deed has been done and now he’s stuck with me for good! We really are very happy together and every day I marvel at my good fortune.

It is truly so good to hear from you and know you are well too. We should have handled it this way all along. Morgan says thanks for your most recent letter. He’ll be answering it soon, but in the meantime sends his love. Thanks to you, he is recovering quickly and will be his old self in no time.

It bothers me too when you say that even though you are now so happy to know Morgan and want to find where you fit in his life, you are still filled with remorse about not doing it sooner. Please, don’t punish yourself that way. It took great courage, greater courage than I have, to sit down with a son who was a stranger to you and introduce yourself as his father. If there is blame to be handed out, I certainly must claim a share of it.

Oh, we have been through so much, together and separately, made so many mistakes and changed so much in the past twenty-odd years! It’s a wonder we bear any resemblance at all to what we were; two children, innocent and trusting, heedless and hopeful, walking hand and hand through a sea of wheat, ripe for harvest. Slim and Evangeline. I had begun to think of them as just shadows, memories or myths long dead, but now I think I was wrong. They are buried in us somewhere still. Perhaps the peace and the wisdom of years will yet wipe out some of our mistakes and bring those two innocents back to the surface. That is my hope for us all.

Sincerely,
Evangeline

The propeller sputters and hums quick and smart, as though it had been cranked only yesterday instead of sitting in mothballs for three years. It’s almost as if the old girl has been expecting him all this time and now wants to show him she’s fit and lively, as good as any fancy plane he’d flown for the military. Watching him grin and yell, “Atta girl!” as the engine comes to life, talking to her encouragingly as he checks the tires and struts, leaning against her body and smiling with pleasure as he feels the purring vibration within, it’s clear Morgan sees his plane as more human than machine.

He hobbles carefully but confidently over to inspect the wing. He needs only one crutch now, more for balance than strength. Dr. Townsend sawed the heavy plaster cast off his right leg this morning. A beige-colored bandage is still wrapped around his foot where the two small toes were amputated because of gangrene. The doctor says once he gets the feel of walking without those toes, he’ll be right as rain, probably won’t even need a cane, though I’ve joked about lending him one of mine. Still, because of the injury, he’s classified 4-F for combat and is entitled to a discharge. So he’s pursued, and gotten, a position as a flight instructor at the new training base right up the road in Liberal.

He will start training P-38 pilots in a month, showing them how to mix their fuel the way Slim taught him, stretching their range another three or four hundred miles. It was that extra range that gave Morgan time to find an island where he could ditch his plane and wait for help. He was farther out than anyone thought possible, but Slim insisted the search area be expanded, knowing that Morgan would remember what he had been taught. Now Morgan will pass that knowledge on, and maybe another life will be saved. It makes me proud that after all he’s been through, he’s more determined than ever to keep flying.

“Now, Mama,” he hollers over the roar of the propeller, which has become a spinning blur, seemingly as anxious as Morgan himself is to be up and off, free of the weary earth. “I’ve got a box set up on that side for you to climb on after I’m in. Paul will give you a hand. If you’ll just let me steady myself on your shoulder, I think I can boost myself up.”

“Mama, I’ve waited three years and I’m not waiting any longer! I feel better than ever. I’m young, I’m strong, and the wind’s behind me!” He yells even louder with the sheer joy of being alive, a wolf howling at the moon. “Look up there, Mama! This is my sky! I own it! Now, get up here, old woman, or I’m taking off without you!”

Everything is just as I left it, perfect. The view from above is unchanged, as miraculous as it was twenty years before, fresh and humbling as seeing it for the first time. I can barely make out Paul standing next to the car below, his face turned skyward, scanning the clouds for a look at me as I search the ground for a glimpse of him.

We fly southeast toward the farm. I see the house and barn outlined in shadow against the rich red and gold of the earth, just as I remember it from years before. I see Ruby run out of the house, alerted by the noise of the engine, and Mama following more slowly behind. Their faces aren’t clear from so far away, but their silhouettes are as dear and familiar to me as if touching their hands. I would know them perfectly were I standing on the surface of the moon.

I reach out my hand to touch the wind, and the splendor of the skies reaches back, cool and welcoming, as though it had all been imagined for us and sits waiting patiently, rich and deep, waiting for those with hunger enough to journey on and heart enough to rise up, those who love life enough to be ready to lose it in the barest hope of seeing things from God’s perspective, the world new and unblemished, without war, or malice, or boundaries, or blame. Things as they might be.