Airfield (11 page)

"With embellishments. Now, Beatty...," and Kenzie begins pointing to other things in the cockpit, naming them and telling me what they do. "See that throttle? It governs the engine's speed and power—gives you the thrust you need. Airplanes are complicated things, Beatty, and any maneuver takes working the controls together. Say you want to make a right turn, you've got to..."

I try hard to follow all he's saying, even while I ask myself, What's the use of trying to understand things I'm probably never going to see used, anyway? Grif will never let me take off in a plane again, and even if he does, Dad won't.

"Hey, Kenzie," says the pilot we've been listening to. He lights a pipe as he strolls over. "Are you trying to pack a whole course of aeronautics into that kid's head?"

"I ain't telling her anything Lindsey and Collin Donnough's daughter shouldn't know," Kenzie answers. "And you mind that NO SMOKING sign and get yourself outside where there's nothing flammable."

"I'm nowhere near—"

"Out! And don't hurry back. Your yarn swapping's making it hard for Beatty to concentrate."

Kenzie turns to the other guy, the one who owns the plane I've been cleaning. "You go on, too. Peanut butter!"

T
HE AIR SHOW
seems to be rushing toward us faster than we can do all we need to.

Mr. Granger has all the business details to arrange. He books pilots and their planes, figuring and refiguring how many tickets we'll have to sell before we start making more money than we'll have to pay for the acts. He arranges for insurance. Concessions. Where spectators will sit.

Since Grif is employed by an airline rather than by the airport, the show is not part of his job. Still he does a lot, including setting up a rented loudspeaker system.

Moss helps with that, saying, "I'll run it, long as no one expects me to do the announcing."

"You know," I suggest, "there are a couple of kids in town who just might be perfect."

And to give the others time to work on all they've taken on, I pitch in doing more and more of the airfield's regular chores.

I even sometimes help with the passenger planes, giving a hand to copilots who have cargo to load or unload. One asks, "Since when does the company hire girls for this work?"

"I'm not doing it fast enough?" I ask. I grab a bundle of magazines and toss it through the door so quickly he jumps back to avoid being hit.

Kenzie, passing by, says, "Better watch out for Beatty. If the airline ever takes on female pilots, she might just be after your job!"

And Grif calls, "Kenzie, don't give her ideas."

But he winks at me.

 

Waiting to drop off to sleep that night, I think about that conversation.

Kenzie and Grif are proud of me.

While I've been too busy with all the things that need doing to think of myself, they've been thinking about me.

Of course, I know their talk is just plain silly. I can't imagine an airline ever hiring a female pilot.

But if my uncle and Kenzie can change their minds about what kind of girl I am, then maybe Dad might, too.

I hear the night mail flight coming in and mentally check off what Grif must be doing: getting ready to exchange mail bags and to top off the plane's gas tank, jobs Kenzie does for the milk run.

I wonder, Would knowing how I've become somebody needed at the airfield be enough to convince Dad I deserve a plane ride?

The engine sound gets louder as the mail plane nears town and then veers west.

I suppose there's a chance.

But perhaps ... that's no longer all I want. Perhaps there's more that
I
can do, and just what that is will be up to me.

 

As though to show me what might be possible, the days before the air show bring three women to the airport. They're all connected to flying, though in different ways.

The first is Miss Betty Blanston, one of the company's brand-new stewardesses and the first ever to be on a plane landing in Muddy Springs.

She's gorgeous. Also really stylish, in a dark blue suit with a matching close-fitted cap. Because the flight's delayed on the ground an hour, I get to visit with her.

"How did you become a stewardess?" I ask. "Did you just think you'd like to do it and go apply?"

She laughs. "No. I was working in a hospital when an airline recruiter came offering all us nurses better wages than we were making there. Seven of us signed on before the hospital shut its doors to anyone who even looked like he was connected with aviation."

"Would you rather be a pilot?"

"Why, no," she answers. "Why ever would I?"

 

The next to come through is Amanda Winters, on her way to New York to take part in an aviation competition.

She's not
the
most famous woman flier in the world, but she's got a name in Texas.

Amanda Winters does not leave her plane to Kenzie and Moss's care alone. She supervises every drop of oil going in it, inspects the propeller blades herself, spends half an hour adjusting a rudder pedal just the way she wants it.

"She sure is picky," I whisper—to Kenzie, but Miss Winters hears me.

"And alive," she calls down.

 

The third is Annie Boudreau, who hasn't been around in quite a while because some state official hired her to take him to every air strip in Texas. "And there are dozens," she tells me. "All of them dusty. But it is about the steadiest work I've ever had."

We're sharing my lunch—some of Clo's chili—while we watch Moss service Annie's plane. It's as good a chance to talk with her as I'm likely to make.

"There's something I'd like to ask you about," I say. "Kenzie and others have been telling me about my mother—things she did that I never knew about before—but their stories don't make her seem real. Not like a person I can picture."

Annie looks at me, troubled. "I don't know what you want me to add." She seems thoughtful, though, and I wait for her to continue. But then her passenger shows up, and Moss signals that his work's done. Rising, Annie says, "We'll talk, Beatty. The first time I'm back here, we'll talk."

"When will that be?"

"I'll he over for the air show for sure."

 

As though we're not already busy enough, a dust storm a few days before the show causes us extra work.

It starts as a brown cloud on the western horizon. Sweeping our way in a sun-hiding murk that makes us have to turn on the field lights for the midmorning plane, it blows around everything loose outside and lays down a layer of grit on every surface in the terminal and hangar.

It terrifies Millie, who stays wrapped around my ankles for two solid hours, tripping me up every step I take.

"Millie," I say, reaching down to pet her, "you may be smart and talented, but you are also a coward."

Moss, helping Grif clean out the operations room, calls, "Might be she's smart enough to be acting."

"I think she was really scared."

We're interrupted by a radio transmission coming in and the telephone ringing both at the same moment. "I'll get the phone," I say.

It's an electrician from the lighting manufacturer, wanting to speak to Grif.

"He's not available at the moment." I reach for paper and a pencil. "May I take a message?"

"Tell him I'll come by this afternoon to look at that bad field light. Have him bring it in where I can get to it quick."

"I'll let him know."

I've hardly hung up, though, when the terminal door opens and a husband and wife come in wanting schedules and prices for flying to California. Clearing a space on the counter, I take out a system timetable and turn to the page showing coast-to-coast flights.

"There's a westbound plane every afternoon. You'll have only—let's see ... one, two ... six intermediate stops, and you'll be there in less than thirteen hours. A round-trip fare is one hundred forty-seven dollars and seventy-six cents."

 

Late in the afternoon, Grif and Moss and I are helping Kenzie with the hangar cleanup when a man appears at the doorway. He's carrying a toolbox and some sort of meter.

"Hey," he says, "you all didn't have to order a dust storm to prove you need your lights working. Where's that broken one?"

Grif breaks into a smile. "Are you ever welcome, even if you weren't expected. The one giving us the most trouble is on the boundary where—"

"Oh, Grif, I am so sorry," I say, taking from my pocket the note I'd written earlier. "I forgot to give you the message."

The man interrupts. "Don't you have the light pulled down and ready for me? I only have half an hour I can spend."

"But the whole layout needs work," Grif tells him. "Can you at least look at some temporary repairs I made?"

The man shakes his head. "Not today. If you'd had that one light ready for me, I might have fixed it, but trouble-shooting the entire system—that's several hours' work at least. Wish I'd known sooner that's what you needed: I could have switched today's work for tomorrow's."

"We've got an air show planned for Sunday," Grif tells him. "I sure hope the lights don't go down between now and then, not with all the planes that will be coming in."

"They're not likely to," the man says. "If the system was that iffy, this dust storm would have knocked it out. I'll come back next Wednesday or Thursday. Meanwhile, I guess you just keep changing bulbs as they burn out. Need some extras?"

After they've gone to get them from his truck, I ask Kenzie, "So you think we're going to be OK?"

"I'd say so, unless a lot stronger storm than the one we just had blows through. The forecast is for good weather."

"I thought you didn't trust forecasts."

"I don't," Kenzie says, "unless they agree with what my nose is telling me. But right now, my nose doesn't smell a hint of rain." He nods toward the push broom to indicate I ought to be using it. "And in the unlikely event both the forecast and my nose are wrong and those lights fail just when we need 'em—maybe we could put you out on the airfield with a couple of strong flashlights!"

Hearing Moss chuckle at the idea, I say, "Moss, too!"

"No, not Moss, too," Kenzie says. "He didn't forget to pass on any durn messages."

T
HE WEATHER DOES
hold. And Sunday! It's a clear-blue-sky, beautiful, not-too-hot, barely breezy day like doesn't come once in a hundred Augusts in Texas

A banner that Clo made—
AIR SHOW TODAY
—flutters between the hangar and the terminal.

The show's not supposed to start until two-thirty, but by noon people from town are arriving in a steady stream. Some stake out seats on the temporary grandstand. Others spread blankets on the airport grounds and open picnic baskets and lemonade jugs. Lots more just pull their cars off the road and roll down their convertible tops or perch on their hoods.

As starting time approaches it looks like all Muddy Springs is at the airport, and a lot of people from other towns, too.

The group parked along Airfield Road upsets Mrs. Granger. "They're not paying," she says. She has to shout to be heard over the noise of airplane motors being turned over, of pilots calling greetings to each other, of marching-band music pouring from loudspeakers. "Nobody's supposed to watch for free."

But Mr. Granger is too happy, excited, and busy to mess with a few freeloaders. "It's a success," he tells her. "Sweet, our air show is a success!"

"Grif," I say, as we give pilots carbon copies of the timetable I've typed up, "how can he say the show's a success when it hasn't even started yet?"

But my uncle asks, "Are you sure it hasn't?"

A wave of laughter comes from the grandstand, and looking to see why, I spot Millie. She's out in front of the crowd, performing all by herself, tossing a ball and then chasing it. Sitting up and clapping her front paws. Taking a bow. Turning and leaping and flipping over and then waiting for more applause.

The crowd loves it.

"Grif!" I exclaim. "She's not supposed to be on yet. Her act is playing Monkey in the Middle with Moss and me, trying to get a ball away from us—"

"Beatty," he tells me, "I think you and Moss better leave crowd pleasing to an expert."

Mr. Granger approaches the microphone stand, and as though Millie understands what a good introduction is, she covers the apron in a lightning series of half somersaults and winds up jumping into Mr. Granger's arms.

He staggers back but hangs on. "Ladies and gentlemen," he says, "I'm honored to present an exhibition team from the army, opening our spectacular First Annual Muddy Springs Airport Air Show."

Millie leans in toward the megaphone and howls, and every person in sight is clapping when three military planes soar up from the airfield, circle, and fly into the distance.

They're followed right away by Annie taking off in
Gold Lightning.

Julie Elise's voice on the loudspeaker system tells the crowd, "The army planes will be back, but first, pilot Annie Boudreau will show what she can do. She'll demonstrate some patterns, make a climbing turn called a chandelle, and then show you what the word
spin
really means. Watch for a vertical roll followed by a loop and a barrel roll."

"And after her," breaks in Milton's voice, "look for those Army Air Corps planes to return with some spectacular precision flying."

Overhead the gold stripes of Annie's plane flash as she traces a tight, twisting figure eight. She layers on dizzying patterns, one after another, each just a little higher than the one before, until it's hard to know which she's flying and which are just lingering in my mind.

What must it feel like, to be able to do that?

I'm startled to realize that I'm pressing my foot into the grass as though I'm the one pushing down on a rudder pedal. I struggle to picture the actions: When Annie's pushing on the right pedal, she must also be pulling back the stick and moving it right.

By the time I get the figure eights figured out, Annie's flying off in another direction, moving from maneuver to maneuver so fast I give up trying to do more than just lose myself in the joy of watching.