Airfield (2 page)

"Mr. Kenzie?"

"Just Kenzie. I can't talk now." He hurries in a kind of limping run for several items that he throws in the back. "Catch me after I get that Ford Tri-Motor serviced."

"Tri-Motor ... you mean the airplane? I think this note is about something that's supposed to go
on
it."

Kenzie reads the message and spits. "Somebody always wanting yesterday what I ain't ready to send. Come here."

He moves, his limp deeper now he's not running, to a workbench where a piece of machinery soaks in a pan of kerosene. "Here," he says, sticking a brush in my hands, "clean that part and bring it out."

And then, just like that, he's gone, driving his service truck over to the plane that has now rolled to a stop near the terminal. I see Grif and him run a hose from the truck up onto a wing.

About a dozen thoughts tumble through my mind all at once, the main one being that I don't have time for this now.

And cleaning an airplane part! It's not a girl's job!

But I reach in and pick the piece up, surprised at how heavy it is. A splash of filthy liquid spreads an oily ring on my skirt.

Quickly I scrub the part and then hurry it out to the service truck. Kenzie scowls and tells me, "I said, 'Clean it
good
'"

But Dad is running my way, swooping me up in a bear hug, standing me back so he can look at me. He searches my face like he's got to see for himself I'm not hurt, and I rush to explain that the scratches aren't anything, a bike fall.

"I'm fine, Dad. Truly. And Aunt Fanny is, too."

"Then you ride more carefully! And while you're at it, stay out of windstorms!"

That sets us both laughing, a relief that prompts Dad to tease, "Or did you wish up that storm yesterday just to throw off the Beatty Rotation?"

That's what the aunts call it, my annual calendar of living four months with each of them.

"And rotate myself to the middle of nowhere on purpose? You must be kidding!" Then I add, "But now that I'm here, maybe I'll get to see you a little more often? When you're here at the airport, I mean?"

"You know I rarely fly the transcontinental route," Dad answers, his attention already moved on. He's watching what's being done to his plane, glancing at his watch, observing the sky, and checking to see which way the wind sock is blowing.

It's how Dad always is, worried to make certain I'm safe and well but believing that's all that's important.

I can understand. He lost my mom, who died from pneumonia, when I was a year old. What I figure is that having someone he loved die was such an overwhelmingly
big
thing, it made him just shut down his feelings. And I guess it might explain why he won't talk about her.

Anyway, that was when the Beatty Rotation got started, when Dad first deposited me with his family and they began taking turns keeping me as they had time and could.

"Collin, is this that daughter you brag about?" The question comes from Dad's copilot. He's young and nice enough to grin at me and suggest, "So, does she get to do the next leg with us? There's extra seats."

The suggestion, coming so suddenly when for years I've been trying to talk Dad into taking me for a plane ride, about takes my breath away.

"Oh, Dad ... Please? Can I?"

The copilot winks at me before adding, "My wife's in El Paso, Collin. She can put your daughter up for the night and see she gets on the flight back tomorrow morning."

Always before, Dad has had some reason to say no to me— full loads, or I'm too young to manage the return trip by myself, or just, "Beatty, I don't want you flying, and that's that." But this time, maybe because the idea's come from someone else, Dad actually seems to be considering it.

Just then, though, a motor cuts the air, and the small biplane—the one I was wishing would just go away—lands and rushes toward us. As it slows to a stop the painted gold lightning on its side becomes just jagged stripes.

The pilot climbs down from the back of an open cockpit, pulling off a leather helmet and shaking out short, permed hair.
A woman!
She unsnaps the front of a leather flying suit as she strides toward us, showing a plain white shirt underneath. I hear her call to a staring passenger, "Yes, women can fly!"

And then she spots me. "You! I've got something to say to you."

She says it to everyone who's in earshot. "This
fool...
right in my landing path and about as visible as a scared jackrabbit ... only good luck and a wind gust kept me from killing her."

She's still carrying on when she reaches us. "Any
child
should know not to wander about an airfield ... Who's in charge here?"

"I am," Grif says, "but I don't understand. Did you try to land before?"

"Yes," she answers, "and I'd like to know why—"

"I'm sorry," I break in, embarrassed and wishing I'd told Grif right away about what happened. I don't want him blamed for something I did. "I was taking a shortcut, and nobody knew I was out there."

Grif, after a quick, disbelieving glance at me, repeats my apology.

But by now the pilot's gaze has settled on my father.

"Collin! Is that you? And..." She looks at me, and what seems like recognition sweeps her face. "Oh no, Collin. Is this your
daughter
I almost ran down?"

Then she gets really angry. "What are you doing, letting her grow up without good sense?"

Dad's face is rigid, his lips thin and tight. "Beatty," he says, "I want you to leave here now."

I
DON'T EVEN TRY
the shortcut again but pedal furiously down Airfield Road and turn east onto the highway.
How could things have gone so wrong so fast?

Nobody even let me explain. Or let me ask any questions.

Who is that woman? What business is it of hers how I'm raised? And how did she know who I am, anyway?

I don't even have a name for her, except to think of her as Gold Lightning. Her and her airplane both.

Dad was so angry he could hardly talk—far more than I deserved.

"Dad," I told him, "I did something stupid, but I didn't get hurt. Nobody did."

But he turned his back to me, rigid, with that tight control he shows when my mother is mentioned—and he never explains that, either.

"What are you so mad at?" I insisted.

But by then he was walking to his airplane, calling to the passengers, "Let's board."

***

Before I know it, I'm almost to Joe's Texas Auto Parts, and the scene there jerks my thoughts back to the present.

The old car is still in front, engine running and blown-out tire replaced, but the car's people are standing outside, arguing, it looks like.

A man flings himself away from them. He grabs together a small bundle of things and commences walking up the road toward me. Bitter voiced, he's talking to himself as we pass: "...won't go on, that's their doing. But I ain't goin' back."

The others, all except the boy I noticed before, get in the car. I reach them as a woman asks, "Moss, you comin' with us or goin' with your pa?"

The boy, looking as if neither's much of a choice, answers, "I guess I'll try here a spell, Ma."

His mother flinches, but all she says is, "Well, see folks know you're worth something. Tell 'em you're magic with machinery." Then, sagging into herself, she sets the car struggling back the way it came.

The boy she called Moss turns my way. Sun-faded hair hangs on his forehead, and his body is that kind of bony, long-muscle, tight-skin lanky that comes of scrabbling-hard work. Hurt or anger makes his face harsh.

He says—to himself or me, I can't tell which—"She knows there's nothin' for me home, and Pa didn't ask my company."

I hardly know what to answer. He's got troubles a lot bigger than mine if I understand right—his family has just broken apart and he's suddenly on his own. "I'm sorry."

The boy flushes. "It ain't your worry." Then he heads across the lot to where Joe is still sorting radiator caps.

I ache for him, just imagining...

"Hey, Moss! My name's Beatty," I yell, not stopping to think why I want him to know. "Beatrice Anne Donnough. You hear?"

 

Back at the tourist court, I find Clo setting up her sewing machine. She's underneath it, doing something to the treadle. "There's Ovaltine waiting, angel," she tells me. "And cookies. Did you see your father? This thing's jammed..."

Then, turning, she catches sight of my face. "Beatty? What's wrong?"

"Everything," I tell her, explaining about the old car and its family, about Dad being so angry, about the woman pilot getting mad at Grif because the field wasn't clear.

I describe her and add, "Clo, she knew me, or knew Dad, anyway."

It's the kind of mystery we can usually talk about for hours, but now all Clo says is, "I've no idea who the woman is." My aunt seems distracted, and after a bit she walks down to the tourist court office. Through the window I see her at the telephone.

A pang goes though me as I realize she must be calling Grif.
Surely what I did wasn't enough to cause a problem for him?

 

The fold-out sofa in the front room of our cabin has been made into a bed for me. It's night now, and I should be going to sleep, but instead I'm wide awake, thinking about the day.

I did my apologizing to Grif over supper, until finally he said, "Beatty, stop worrying about what's done. I don't think anything will come of it, anyway." He turned to Clo and gave her this sappy, silly look. "Water under the bridge, right, honey?"

Lovers' good humor, I guess. I laugh quietly myself now, remembering how nobody argued when I said I thought I'd go for a walk.

Through a window and shade open to any breeze, I watch the flash of the Hi-Way Tourist Court sign. Headlight beams swing in and out of a malt-shop lot across the road, and kids call good night to each other.

I hear a plane go overhead, probably the 10:35 mail flight that Grif had to go meet. It's a lonely sound, over the town but not part of it.

Abruptly I remember that lonely boy, Moss. Is he hearing it, too?

I hope Joe helped him somehow—told him, at least, someplace he could sleep.

 

Moss is one of the first people Clo and I see when we go into town the next morning to get cleaner for my dress.

We're walking down a block of nice old houses when I spot him pulling weeds from a rose bed.

"Clo," I say, "look yonder ... I'm sure it's that boy I told you about, the one whose family left him."

"He didn't waste time finding work."

"Moss!" I call. "Moss!"

His head whips around, but when he sees me he gives a half wave and returns to the weeding.

I wonder if he was hoping it was his mother, or maybe a sister, come to ask him to change his mind.

I start to call out again, but Clo puts a hand on my arm. "Beatty," she says, "the person he's working for might not want him visiting, and besides, you don't know him."

***

Clo and I take our time finding the cleaning fluid. We poke into this store and that, Clo being almost as new to Muddy Springs as I am. In the dime store she picks out some yellow gingham to make curtains.

"For a tourist cabin?" I ask.

"I'm going to put in deep-enough hems that they ought to fit wherever we go." My aunt looks a little embarrassed, but proud, too. "I thought if we could always see our own curtains, it would help make all the motor courts we're living in feel like home. Since, as long as Grif's got this relief job, we won't really have a place of our own."

"But don't you like moving around? Thinking there might be something exciting waiting at the next place?"

Clo looks at me curiously. "Is there usually?"

"No. But I like knowing there might be. Anyway, it's not as though I'm leaving family, the way that boy's doing by staying here..."

I pause, seeing my aunt's smile lessen and hearing how my words must have sounded to her. "Of course," I amend, "you are family, especially you, and I'm always sorry to say good-bye. I just meant—"

"I know what you meant, Beatty. And I guess since it's true, we better both be glad you like moving around."

"But you don't?"

"It's not what I'd pick." Then she laughs. "I'm not Beatty, happy to be footloose!"

We find thread and a packet of rickrack on the notions counter, and Clo counts out change for her purchase. "So," she asks as we leave the store, "how was Waco this spring?"

"Good. The day I started back to school someone put a
WELCOME BEATTY
sign on the trophy case, so it was the first thing I saw."

"Cupcakes to go with it?"

I shake my head, knowing Clo's reminding me of the sendoff my class in San Antonio gave me when I left there in January.

I don't think my friends in either place have skipped giving me some kind of good-bye or hello once in all the time I've been making the midyear switch. Not any more than my teachers have missed reporting to each other exactly how far along I am in my textbooks.

Of course, the routine will be broken this fall, since I won't be returning to San Antonio. Grandpa's dead, and with Clo married and moved away there's no one there for me to go to. The plan was for me to stay on a few extra months in Dallas with Fanny, enroll in North Dallas High, but now that she's trying to figure out what to do herself...

As though Clo reads my mind, she says, "Beatty, we'll work out something."

"I know. You guys"—I mean my aunts—"always do."

By this time we're again passing the house where we saw Moss, but now the yard is empty except for a woman in a lawn swing. Before Clo can stop me, I go over.

"Why, no," the woman tells me, "I don't know where the boy's gone. I gave him breakfast in return for cleaning out my garden, but that's all the chores I had."

"Beatty," Clo tells me, "I know you mean well, but you can't make a strange boy your concern."

B
ACK AT THE
tourist court, Clo stands at the open door of the icebox and says, "For pity's sake, now Grif really
did
forget his lunch."