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We were attached at the hip after that. Wherever Arthur went, I went. Wherever I went, he went. Unless, of course, I was going home. I lived in such a poor, run-down old place that I was embarrassed to ever have him see it. Not long after I met Arthur, Mama met her next husband. We all called him Willie, but I don’t think that was his name. I guess he’d been in prison for a while, but none of us knew why. He didn’t seem like that nice of a guy, but he brought in a little money for us to eat, and he gave my mother some attention, so I guess he was going to stick around a while. They even got married, but I wished they hadn’t. I didn’t like Willie none. He didn’t like me much either.
But Arthur didn’t have the same issues with his folks, so he was okay with taking me to his home to meet his parents. They seemed like good people and were quite lovely to me. They had me over for dinner more than once, and I would always fret about picking appropriate clothes. I always felt underdressed when I was at Arthur’s home. His mother was so elegant and served tea like the English did. His father was a gentleman who smoked a pipe and spoke of politics and a lot of things I didn’t understand. I didn’t mind, though. Most of the time, I would sit in their sitting room with my hands crossed on my lap, listening to the rest of them chatter about the political climate in Europe. I had no interest in such things at the time. We didn’t spend enough time over there for me to ever concern myself with joining their conversations anyway. I had the feeling his mother didn’t much care for me, even though I also had a distinct feeling she wasn’t sure why that was.
By the time I got my job working the trapeze at the circus in Sherwood, I was an old pro at riding around in Arthur’s plane. He even started getting brave and doing stunts with me hanging on for dear life, thinking he would frighten me. All it did was make me want more. Every time he did a barrel roll, I would shout and scream, hoping people on the ground would look up and be more frightened than I was. Every time we landed and I hopped out, I made it a habit to reward his stunts with a kiss so that he knew just how much I loved flying with him.
Eventually, I worked the trapeze at the circus so well that they offered me a permanent position. The girl I had replaced didn’t want to go back to work once her broken ankle healed. There were rumors that the circus owner had gotten her pregnant, but there was no telling how true that was. It was just an ugly rumor. I told them that I’d work the circus as long as they stayed local, but I wouldn’t be going with them if they left town. I had a life and sisters who depended on me. I also was madly in love with Arthur and was waiting for him to ask me to marry him. Many times I thought he was getting close to asking me, but time passed, and he just didn’t.
After the circus left town for the winter and I became a wing walker, we got even closer. Arthur talked about our future, and I could tell that he was getting close to finally asking me to marry him, but something was still holding him back. When I asked him one day, he finally told me it was that he didn’t know any of my family and felt that he couldn’t ask me without asking my family first. He knew my father had died long ago. Still he said he thought it would be more respectful to ask Willie if he might have my hand in marriage, and it didn’t feel right to ask me without getting permission. I told him Willie wouldn’t care, but he insisted.
The day he was going to ask Willie was when we got found out. Arthur landed the plane in the field behind the church after our most recent Wing Walker show with a banner, and I was still up on the wing when Willie came out of that old shack fit to be tied. He was boiling over like a kettle, screaming his fool head off at us. I couldn’t hear him over the roar of the airplane, so Arthur turned the motor off, and as it got quiet and Willie got closer, he saw that I was the wing walker and his whole face lit like a fuse. He could have burst into a whole new sun!
“I knew you was up to no good,” he screamed at me. I took off my leather helmet to plead with him not to tell Mama, but it was too late for that. He was already heading back to the house, and we could barely keep up.
“I knew it,” he screamed at me again, this time grabbing me by the wrist and dragging me along beside him. Arthur got upset and tried to run around in front of him to stop him, but Willie plowed right through him, knocking him to the side. “You ain’t got no rights here, Boy!” He shouted at Arthur, yanking me by the wrist until I fell into the dead grass and mud.
“Yes, I do, because I’m going to marry her,” Arthur shouted back, standing tall and proud with his hands on his hips. I’d never seen anything more beautiful in all my life. “Let go of her right this second,” he demanded of Willie. Much to my own astonishment, Willie did as commanded and let go of my wrist. I stood up and dusted myself off before making a wide circle around an argumentative Willie, who had decided Arthur was his nemesis at that moment.
“You ain’t gonna marry that girl,” he shouted. “She got nothin’ to offer you, flyboy. Her mama and sisters need her to do their cookin’ and cleanin’ while you don’t need nobody. Everybody already does everything for you.” Willie inched closer to Arthur, his finger raised and pointing in Arthur’s direction until he got close enough to repeatedly poke him in the chest.
“She loves me, and I love her. That’s enough,” Arthur defied him. “I’m going to marry her.”
“Not if I say you’re not,” Willie demanded. He looked over at me as I made my way toward Arthur and stood defiantly with the man I loved.
“I will,” Arthur asserted again. “With or without your permission. You’re not her father anyway. You got no say in this.”
“But her mama does,” Willie sneered down his long nose. He reeked of sour gin and swayed as he spoke.
“He’s drunk,” I told Arthur. “Let’s go.We don’t have to listen to this.”
“I ain’t drunk,” he argued, looking around to see if anyone had heard us. Prohibition was still in full swing, and Willie knew he could get in a lot of trouble for drinking at all, not just public intoxication.
“You are too drunk,” I yelled back at him, seeing the flash of fear in his eyes. “You’re so drunk you can’t even stand up straight!” I grew bolder, reminding myself that I had been a trapeze artist all summer and was now a wing walker, and there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do. “You’re DRUNK!” I screamed as loud as I could, hoping someone would overhear.
“I ain’t, I tell ya!” Willie’s words slurred as he tried desperately to defend himself with blatant lies.
“Go home, Willie.” I knew nobody would come to find him in the open field behind the church. There was no point in having Arthur try to stick around until he was sober to ask for my hand in marriage. Obviously, he and my mother still only had their own selfish purposes in mind. They wanted me at home to continue taking care of everything the way I always had. They didn’t care about me or my happiness.
“I ain’t drunk,” Willie mumbled again before spinning on his heel and heading back toward the shed he had came out of. As he turned, he lost his footing and fell headlong into the ground, knocking himself completely unconscious. Instantly he began to snore soundly.
“Well, we can’t leave him here,” Arthur sighed.
“Why not? I could see if I could go find someone to be a witness, and we could get him arrested.”
“That wouldn't go over too well with your mom, I don’t think, and I still want at least her to like me if she’s going to be my mother-in-law.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I nodded. “But how do we get him back home? He weighs as much as the two of us put together do.”
“I have a medical cot in the back of the plane,” he offered and jogged back to the plane to fetch it. Once we had it assembled, we heaved with everything we had to roll Willie onto it so that we could drag him the two miles back to the house.
Mama was surprised, to say the least. Here I came up the road with a young man she’d never seen, dragging what looked to be a dead Willie on a cot behind him. She came screaming out of that house so fast he might as well have been dead. I tried to tell her that he was just drunk and passed out, but she wouldn’t hear me. She’d been drinking too. Jonnie came around the side of the house and stared at us, wondering what was going on. She made her way slowly toward us, with Mama wailing loud enough to bring the neighbors out onto their porch, crying about how her husband was dead. I was trying to explain that he was just passed out. Arthur was trying his best to fend off Mama’s shrieks, accusing him of having killed Willie, and Jonnie just burst into laughter so loud it echoed off the side of the house. Jonnie doubled over, grabbed her knees, and howled. The chaos paused for a moment, and we all turned to look at her.
“Look at the goose egg on that melon! I’m willing to bet anything that he deserved it!” She burst into laughter again, and Willie stirred a bit. Mama was relieved at seeing he was still alive and fussed over him a minute while Arthur put the cot down so Willie could climb off. Still howling with laughter, Jonnie came through a broken section in the fence to help Mama get Willie into the house. The three of them struggled up the porch and through the front door. The storm door slammed shut behind them before either of us wanted to speak.
“I don’t believe I won your mother over today either,” he sulked.
“It doesn’t matter,” I reassured him. “You know I’m going to marry you if you ever get around to asking, and I don’t care what they say. I love you. That’s all we need.” I leaned over to kiss him on the cheek, and Jonnie came bouncing outside and down the porch with her pigtails braided. She very much looked like my kid sister, even younger than she actually was.
“You Arthur?” Jonnie stared Arthur in the face, waiting for him to respond, chomping on a wad of bubble gum.
“Yes, I am.”
“You gonna marry my sister?” Jonnie was persistent. Arthur turned to look at me for a moment and nodded.
“Yes, I am.”
“Good,” she harrumphed. “Welcome to the family. We’re lunatics, but it stays interesting.”