AUNT’S FLIGHT

Charles Augustus Lindbergh was the first man to fly alone across the Atlantic—there’s no doubt about that—but he was not the first person to do so. That honor—and I believe we can all agree it was an honor—belongs to my great-aunt, Miss Trivia Lacklustre of Goose Falls, Massachusetts, where the Lacklustre side of our family has lived since the Seventeenth Century.

She was a big, tall, gaunt woman with bright little black eyes in her pale face and her hair done in a great flat brown bun on the top of her head. (My father always insisted it wasn’t real hair at all but a specially large cow-flop she’d picked up someplace. But then he never did like her.) Anyhow, she’d inherited the old Lacklustre place, which she ran well enough, farming it with the help of a couple of hired men, and taking an active part in the doings of the Goose Falls Congregational Church, where everyone said she was sweet on old Mr. Barrow, the widowed pastor, who paid her no heed at all. Anything needed doing around the church or in the congregation, or for that matter in all of Goose Falls, what there was of it, she pitched in and did, elbowing aside anybody who got in her way. But the folks put up with it because she could always be counted on to help with the kids or take care of granny or bake a half-dozen big apple pies or come over quick if a sheep or something needed help birthing.

Goose Falls didn’t exactly love Aunt Trivia, but they sure didn’t hate her. One thing especially they didn’t like was her doing all her shopping at Monkey Ward’s down to Salem instead of at Luke Correy’s general store. It seemed like she thought Goose Falls wasn’t good enough for her. (Of course, everybody else shopped at Monkey Ward’s too, but that was only once in a while. Remember, this was back in 1904, before the Wright Brothers had got off the ground at Kitty Hawk even, and she had to get her big bay horse harnessed up to the buckboard each time and drive clear over there, all of six miles.) Anyway, she did it, and it was there she bought all her brooms—all of them, because she went through brooms like old Sherman going through Georgia. Every time she took over from anybody, first thing she did was fetch her own broom and sweep the place out, sweeping like crazy. Didn’t matter was it the church or the Odd Fellows hall or the grocery store post office corner.

Anyhow, every time she’d wear a broom out, she’d get mad as anything and hurry over to Monkey Ward’s to raise hell about it. She wouldn’t speak to anyone except the manager of the Housewares Department, Junius Brutus Badger himself—a thin, sour man with gray side-whiskers and a tight mouth, who always wore a heavy gold watch-chain with a funny green stone charm hung to it. The gossip was his family had been in Salem when the first Pilgrims got there, which made him a part Indian, I reckon. Mostly, folks were scared of him because he was so formal and cold, sort of like you’d expect of an undertaker. But not Great-aunt Trivia. No, sir!

That summer, when she’d wore out a brand new broom in just one busy weekend, first thing Monday morning she brought it in, waving it under Junius Brutus’ nose like it was something dirty the cat’d done.

“Look at this, Badger!” she cried. “Monkey Ward’s ought to be ashamed, they should, selling such trash! Why, I—”

Mr. Badger interrupted her. “Montgomery Ward’s,” he declared frigidly. “Montgomery Ward’s, Mrs. Lacklustre.”

Miss Lacklustre!” she shot back.

Well, it was sort of a standoff. There they were, looking each other right in the eye, and she told me it was like his thinking engine was going eighty to the dozen, while she kept on waving that broom so the whole store could see it. It must’ve lasted two-three minutes, but finally he actually smiled, just a little, like a one-inch crack in an iceberg, but something she’d never seen him do before.

“Mrs. Lacklustre,” he said, “You are an established customer—may I say a valued customer?—of Montgomery Ward’s. So—” He cleared his throat, and it sounded like something dry rubbing its hind legs together. “—so I shall bring you a new broom with our compliments. It is a very special broom, of an advanced design, and it will not only stand up to any usage you may put it to, but will also ease your labors.”

“I’m not asking to ease up my labors!” sniffed Aunt Trivia, indignant that anybody’d think such a thing.

“I shall have to go home to get it,” he continued, “for my family has been giving it its first trial, so I must ask you to wait—oh, perhaps fifteen minutes. If you’d care to go back to my office, I shall have one of the clerks prepare tea for you.”

She didn’t answer him, but sat down, managing to convey the idea that she’d never accept tea from anyone who sold brooms that wore out before you could even get the school house swept out. While she waited, she voiced her complaints to every customer who came within range, and when Junius Brutus returned she was feeling quite a bit better.

She regarded the broom he was carrying, and remarked she’d never seen the like of it in her born days, and wasn’t it too big to get into corners? and what kind of straw was it made of, all funny and foreign looking? and that sort of silvery wire it was bound to the stick with?

Dubiously, she took it in hand. “Why, it hardly weighs anything!” she exclaimed, taking a couple of test swipes at the carpet.

His hand on her elbow, Junius Brutus started escorting her to the door. “I can promise you that as your workday advances it’ll weigh less and less if you want it to. You’ll find it a most versatile broom, Mrs. Lacklustre—a true scientific triumph. And you’re the first to have one anywhere in these parts, at least nowadays—I mean before they come on the market, as it were. You’ll find it responding to you, Mrs. Lacklustre, so you mustn’t—” To her amazement, he actually winked at her. “—let too many people know about it. For business reasons, that is, yes indeed. No, don’t thank me. Thank Montgomery Ward’s.”

He walked her clear to the buckboard, and helped her up into it, and it seemed to her that the broom in her hand was also giving her a help up.

“Well, it better last longer than the last one you sold me,” she said ungraciously as she gathered the reins.

“Oh, it will, it will!” Junius Brutus Badger assured her.

•••

As I may have suggested, Aunt Trivia was a woman of great strength of character, and when she began to find out what her new broom really could do, it didn’t faze her one bit. She started right off by sweeping her kitchen, and right in the middle of it the egg man knocked at the door. “Well,” she said to the broom, like one talks to things when one’s alone. “You just stand there till I see who’s here. I’ll be back in two shakes.”

Without looking she went to lean it back in a corner, got her eggs, said good-bye to the egg man, and turned back to it. It wasn’t leaning against the wall. Broom end up, it was standing straight up on its end, waiting for her.

“Sakes alive!” she exclaimed, mightily pleased. “Why, I bet you could fly clear up to the ceiling had you a mind to!”

Slowly, the broom rose till its straws touched the ceiling, where it brought down a cobweb she’d not seen before.

“Why, it’s just like those books by Mr. Jules Verne!” she thought; and after that there was nothing for it but she had to experiment. It didn’t take her more’n half a day to find out the broom could not only fly by itself, but also carry anything she put on it, including herself.

“It’ll be just the thing to take little rides on in the cool of the evening,” she thought, “specially if I fix me some sort of sidesaddle. I’m sure not going to try straddling a hard, narrow thing like that broom handle. Besides, it wouldn’t be modest.”

She got to work and fixed up a sort of sidesaddle out of an old leather seat cushion, with a clamp to fasten it on with, but so she could take it off in no time when she had sweeping to do; and she started taking short flights after nightfall, first making sure the hired hands wouldn’t catch on. She knew about the old days in Salem, and what they did to women they suspected of broom-riding and such, and she didn’t want anyone getting ideas even though she knew her broom was some kind of new French invention.

I was probably the only person she told the whole story to. She was pushing eighty at the time, and I was only a little squirt, but I was her favorite grandnephew, and she knew I wasn’t one to go gossiping round. She told me how she stitched a stirrup to that saddle, and fastened a sort of horn to it like regular ladies’ saddles used to have for her other leg. It was then, too, that she suddenly got suspicious of Junius Brutus’ intentions. I’ll just bet, she told herself, old Badger’s figuring on me getting interested and flying way up high and maybe a big wind hitting me and my falling off. That’d get me out of his hair, wouldn’t it just! That was when she invented the first safety belt, something she should’ve gotten a patent on, making it out of the cinch from her daddy’s old Whitman saddle. “With that round me, I was safe as houses,” she told me. “Why, I could even doze off and sleep like a baby, my head resting on the straw part.”

On those first flights, she just went up a few hundred feet so she could look down on Goose Falls and parts of Salem, simply enjoying the air, and maybe dipping down once in a while to peek into somebody’s window. But after two-three weeks of that she found it no longer satisfied her. She remembered she’d never really been much of anywhere, excepting that one trip to Atlantic City her folks took her on when she turned twenty-one, when the seagull spoiled her best Easter hat. And she began to wonder about all sorts of places she’d read about, like New London and Boston and William Penn’s Philadelphia. And the more she wondered, the further away she wanted to go.

She dreamed about flying to Richmond, and getting there a sight faster than Daddy had when he was soldiering, and visiting New Orleans, though she’d heard it was wicked. But even that wasn’t enough. Finally she realized that it was to England she really wanted to go, where her ancestors came from and which her granny always kept talking about even though she’d never been there. So she made her decision. She’d fly over to England and then maybe to France, but she’d tell folks she was going up to visit her second cousin, Braddock Lacklustre, up in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He was from the Tory side of the family, who’d moved north when General Washington won, but still he’d be happy to see her, if he and his sons weren’t out after herring.

She planned everything very carefully. She got out her daddy’s old, black Civil War saddlebags, and her Iver Johnson revolver in case of eagles and such, and a big, light wicker suitcase in which she could stash her saddle and stuff whenever she landed, and her ma’s big rabbit-skin coat in case it got cold; and she made up a slew of sandwiches for the trip over, and bought herself a new thermos from Monkey Ward’s for her coffee. She figured she could always get water. Some of the most important things, like a little compass in a gold-plated locket and her geography book with maps from back in her grammar school days, and a new Monkey Ward catalogue in case she had to tend to the wants of nature, she added in last.

That very night she took off. There was a real harvest moon up, and a lovely soft breeze, and after she got to maybe a thousand feet up she just gave the broom its head and followed the coastline, glorying in the moon’s light on the sea and singing old favorites to herself: The Lost Chord, and John Brown’s Body, and Kiss Me Again, Nellie and suchlike.

After a bit, she started taking an occasional nap; and she reached Halifax just before daybreak fresh as a daisy. She landed out of sight behind some trees on a hillside, hid all her gear in the suitcase after treating herself to some coffee, and walked on into town.

The very first person she met, an old milkman, told her exactly where Cousin Braddock was living and very kindly gave her a ride almost all the way there; and Cousin Braddock’s wife and daughters were right glad to see her, even though he was off fishing and she’d woken them up. She stayed with them a couple of days, hoping he’d be back, but they guessed the herring must really be running, so finally she bade them good-bye, first sweeping out their whole house and their barn so she wouldn’t be too beholden to them.

She knew that, so long as she took off in the dark and kept high enough, it wouldn’t really matter whether she flew day or night, so she left before sunrise and headed for Iceland, which her geography book seemed to show as the best place to set down. She was really enjoying herself, watching the fishing boats and big ships down on the ocean, and after a bit she ate a couple of her sandwiches and one of the two kipper herrings Braddock’s wife had wrapped up for her; it seemed like no time at all before she found herself over Iceland, only she could hardly believe it because there was no ice at all.

She dropped down at dusk right near a big log farmhouse; then, carrying her broom and her suitcase, she knocked at the door, meanwhile petting the big dog that came out barking at her. Well, the farmer and his family couldn’t speak English, and she didn’t know a word of their language, but she counted up to ten for them in Norwegian, and they laughed and invited her in, just in time to set down to dinner.

Next morning, before she said good-bye to them, she swept out, not just their house, but also their barnyard, which they sure appreciated. (The broom straws looked as if they were wearing a bit, but she decided she’d not worry about it just then.)

The weather was still wonderful, but the breeze was a lot stiffer, so she had to tie down her old Waster hat with a scarf. After a bit, she began to get bored, and so once, just for fun, she swooped down on a rusty old freighter and called out hello to the crew who looked like they were maybe Portygees or Greeks. Then she felt sort of sorry, because didn’t they take on! They ran back and forth, shouting and making all sorts of strange signs, and one or two of them actually jumped overboard. So she waved them good-bye, and flew on.

She saw a few whales, but not one single iceberg, and no birds of prey menaced her, so she ate her lunch and settled down for a nap. No one was watching the skies back in those days—in fine weather there was no need to. There were no aircraft out patrolling, and no ack-ack guns to go shooting you down. The eagles and hawks she’d halfway expected never did show up, but of course there were seagulls. When she woke up, she spied one of them following her, flying right below her, no more than a couple of yards off. Then she remembered what had happened to her hat back in Atlantic City—and right then nature called.

Abruptly, she got an idea. She whispered to her broom to fly really carefully, and she waited till that old gull was directly in line. The she let go—and scored a direct hit, right amidships—thwack! “It maybe wasn’t too ladylike,” she told me, “but it sure did my heart good, paying him back for my hat.”

She spent the next night in Ireland, but far up in the hills because she didn’t know anyone there, and because she’d heard things about the Irish in Boston. Then she flew off to England with the highest of hopes, only to have them shattered almost immediately. Most of all, she’d wanted to see London, but when she looked down all she could see was coat-smoke, and that in midsummer. It was the same over Birmingham and about ten other cities.

Of course, she could’ve set down someplace in the country, but she was so annoyed after all her trouble and having come all that way that she sat back on her saddle and actually wondered whether she ought to fly straight home again. Then she remembered a school teacher who was a friend of her daddy’s and who was always talking about the south of France, about Nice and those places, and how wonderful it was there.

“Well,” she said to herself, “why not?”

She looked up the south of France in her geography book, consulted her compass, and set off directly; and before very long she found herself looking down on the blue, blue Mediterranean and on Nice itself. She checked against her map to make sure, and that’s what it was, so she circled it several times, looking for a likely landing spot. The air was warm, and the land smelled just lovely, and she told herself that if she swooped down fast enough and lit may in a wood, chances were either nobody’d see her or even if they did it wouldn’t matter too much—after all, it wouldn’t be like being seen by people back home.

The truth of the matter was that all the color and the softness of the breeze and the sweetness of the smells were getting to her, and later on she realized that probably it was just as foolish to come down in broad daylight in France as anywhere, but I guess she was plain lucky. She swooped down as fast as she could behind a low hill, and around it, and suddenly she found herself in a neat little wood, standing on a carpet of grass with flowers growing at her feet. Quick as could be, she unlimbered and got things stowed away in her suitcase. Then she walked into the wood, into sunlight beaming down and golden shadows. She walked for maybe five minutes, listening to the birds singing—and the wood abruptly came to an end.

She found herself in a park, a miniature park, but one as carefully tended as if it surrounded a palace. There was a small marble fountain splashing a few yards away. There was beautifully manicured green grass, and beds of irises and roses and little forget-me-nots and any number of other flowers. Across the park rose a miniature castle, a pocket-size palace. And only a few feet from where she stood, at a fine linen tablecloth spread on the grass, a bearded elderly gentleman had been pouring champagne into a young lady’s glass. His arm was round her waist, which would have been tiny even without the corset holding the rest of her, which wasn’t tiny at all.

“Oooh!” gasped Aunt Trivia, recognizing him from his photograph.

He stopped pouring. He stared at her. He frowned. “My good woman, what are you doing here?” he demanded in French. “Don’t you know you’re trespassing?”

“Ooooh!” Aunt Trivia repeated. “I—I know who you are, sir, Your Majesty, I reckon it is. You’re King Edward, only I’ve forgotten your number. I—I didn’t mean to butt in, but I just flew over from Massachusetts—that’s in the U.S. of America—and I—well, I—”

The young woman laughed lightly. “Did you hear her, Bertie? She just flew over, and she’s one of my countrywomen. Do you suppose she flew on that broom?”

Aunt Trivia had seen the young lady’s picture too, but she couldn’t remember her name though she recalled her being on the stage or something like that and not properly what they’d have called a lady back home.

“Yes, ma’am,” she answered. “That’s true. I did fly on my broom. I wouldn’t of set down here if I’d known about you folks. But I was getting mighty hungry, and everything was so pretty, and the air smelled so good, I figured I just wouldn’t wait. Just so you’ll know who I am, my name’s Trivia Lacklustre, and I’m from Goose Falls.”

The king chuckled. “Did you say Trivia? Isn’t that a rather unusual name?”

“Yes sir. Everybody in my family thinks it must’ve been short for something, but none of ’em can remember just what.”

He turned to the lady. “Well, Lily,” he said, “what do we do about her? Shall we call the servants and have her chucked out?”

Lily patted his hand. “Oh, let’s not do that. After all, I know she’s telling the truth about being American—she’s a real Down East Yankee—no matter how she really did get here. You heard her say she’s hungry. Why not tell her to put down her broom and that suitcase and join us? There’s lots left, and I’d love to hear her story.”

“Lily, I can deny you nothing,” laughed Edward VII. “Miss Trivia, will you join us?”

Aunt Trivia allowed as she’d be happy to, and she put her stuff down and took off her hat; and she was surprised to see that the king’s face, when he looked at her hair, had exactly the same expression as my old man’s used to have. But he himself seated her on the grass. Then he waved away two large Frenchmen who came looming up, and served her a small roasted fowl, which she found delicious, and some caviar, which she ate out of politeness; and while she ate they listened to her story, pouring more champagne for her every time her glass emptied.

She told them everything, all about buying her broom from Junius Brutus at Monkey Ward’s, and how he’d sworn it’d never wear out, but that it was getting sort of ragged even though she’d hardly used it at all, and about Iceland and how she’d swooped down on the freighter. All she left out was the seagull. She got to feeling more and more at home with them as the champagne took effect, and finally, quelling a small burp, she said, “You know, Your Majesty sir, back home we don’t hold much with kings, except a few of us who headed up north to Canada when we won, but if we’d had a kind like you, Your Majesty sir, I guess maybe we’d still have one.”

“That,” said the king, “is indeed a pretty compliment, though I must say—” And he smiled at Miss Lily. “—I do seem to get along nicely with some of your compatriots.”

Aunt Trivia said nothing, though she was pretty sure the lady was no better than she should be—but he was a king after all and they’d both treated her very kindly.

“And what do you plan to do now?” asked Lily.

“Well, I was sort of figuring on sweeping that castle of yours out for you, you feeding me that fine lunch and all.”

They thanked her, but assured her it wouldn’t be necessary because they had all sorts of servants to do it.

“Then I guess I’ll just fly on home. There’s no point to my staying away any longer. But you’ve shown me such a fine time I don’t mind if you watch me take off.” She started right in getting out her saddle and stuff, “Only—only you won’t tell anyone, will you?”

“Hardly!” exclaimed the king. “I don’t want to go down in history as Edward the Mad, like that poor Spanish Juana la Loca.”

“Goodness gracious!” said Aunt Trivia. “We wouldn’t want that!”

She got everything rigged up, tied the scarf good and tight over her hat, shook hands with Lily, did her best to curtsy before His Majesty, and took off straight into the air.

She said that when she turned round to wave back they were looking at her as if they couldn’t believe their own eyes.

She flew straight on home, stopping only in Ireland and Iceland, and not even in Halifax, and the minute she’d unloaded she had the big bay hitched up and drove down to Salem.

She marched into Monkey Ward’s Housewares Department waving her broom like a battle-ax, and right up to Junius Brutus Badger.

“Look at that, Badger!” she cried, pointing at the bent and broken ends of its straws. “You said it’d last me forever, you did. And you told me it was brand new.” She held it under his nose and pointed at a tiny inscription on the stick just back of the wire binding: Sufannah Badger, it said, 1687.

“Brand new!” she repeated, staring him right in the eye.

Junius Brutus Badger didn’t argue. He gave her a new Monkey Ward broom out of stock and didn’t charge her a dime.

* * * *

So Aunt Trivia wasn’t just the first person to fly the Atlantic all by herself; she was the first one to fly it both ways, and the first to fly it on a broom—and that’s something no one else has done in all the years since then.

I guess they just aren’t making brooms the way they used to.