The Flying Circus (33 page)

Looks like John,
Henry thought,
but she named him after you.

Cora said, “She’d rather her son live believing his father doesn’t love him or his mother, and that he basically abandoned them? If she won’t divorce you, then she should let you be a part of their lives.”

That statement gave Henry a lift of hope. Cora wasn’t trying to talk Gil
into
divorce.

“The way she looks at me hasn’t changed. She doesn’t want me near her child. Guilt penance, that’s what she calls my offers to help raise Charlie, the money I send.”

“How can she be so unforgiving? John’s death was an accident.”

“An accident that never would have happened if not for me.”

“But Charlie—”

“Looks at me like I might go berserk any minute. Mary told him I came home from the war so scarred that I can’t live a normal life, no matter how much I love them. It’s best to just let it be. I owe her that. Divorce is a sin she’ll never commit. She’s become quite pious. I sup
pose it’s a comfort to her.” Gil sighed. “I just can’t believe God wants people to be this unhappy.”

“Would you be happy? If you were free?” Henry thought he heard just a hint of hope in her voice. And it cut him deep.

Gil was silent for a few seconds. “I haven’t been happy since the instant I beat my best friend into a bloody mess. So, no. Married or free, I’m the same. It’s Mary that needs freeing.”

The grandfather clock chimed, startling Henry and setting his shamed heart to racing.

He retreated silently upstairs and lay awake in his bed, listening to the slow, sad creak of the swing.

24

H
enry and Cora arrived at Miami’s Chapman Field in the EV-1—now dubbed by Cora as the Evie—four days before the event. They wanted plenty of time for Cora to get used to taking off and landing while buffeted by Atlantic winds and shifting air currents caused by the water-land mix. They had been unsure if it would be the same as the air turbulence caused by crossing from a sunbaked bare-earth field to a lush green one, or something entirely different.

Henry had expected Miami to be like Southern California, both being the southernmost reaches of the country. But about the only things they had in common were palm trees and warm winter weather. The people he met were mostly East Coast birds gone south, Jamaicans gone north; only a handful were true Floridians. It was low and flat here, water seeping up everywhere as it tried to overtake dry land; nothing at all like the sparse vegetation on the dry, rocky hills and mountains around Hollywood and Santa Monica. The air was different, too, heavy and moist, as opposed to California’s ethereal lightness. When he crawled into his cot at night, inside a tent that was more mosquito netting than canvas, the sheets were damp. The towel from his shower never completely dried.

They allowed themselves the first afternoon to see downtown Miami and search for a reasonable hotel. In the end, the thirteen-mile distance was more than Henry wanted to deal with, considering they had to rely on buses and the charity of others for transportation, so they decided to rent a couple of tents at the airfield, where Henry could keep a close eye on the plane.

Between there and the city, they’d passed huge hotels under construction and signs for new developments that promised to change scrub and swamp into homesites, golf courses, and tennis courts. Henry couldn’t see how. The locals at the diner where they stopped for lunch—once they’d discovered Cora and Henry were here for the air race and not among the offenders—had complained about the “land rush”; Northerners who would never set foot in Florida buying up big chunks of land they’d never set eyes on, looking to turn an obscene profit. Cora told Henry her father would have been one of the first—and probably the most crooked.

Henry studied her across the table after that statement. She didn’t seemed shamed by it, hadn’t made excuses out of love and respect. It simply was. In the same way Henry’s pa had been a landless farmer, a poor immigrant. A German. Henry decided he’d rather be poor than have a man he couldn’t respect for a father.

And what would Pa think of
you
now? Runner. Coward. Choosing self-preservation over honor and principle. Letting the one man who’d shown you kindness believe you betrayed him, without even fighting for the truth. Hiding from your own name.

These thoughts put another turn in the continually tightening spring inside him. He worried that before long he wouldn’t even resemble the man his father had intended for Henry to become.

Just a few more days, Pa. A few more days.

Excuses. Feeble, pathetic excuses. He seemed full of them. Temporary splints on the weakness of his character. Would he find another reason to delay turning himself in once the race was done? The solid moral ground on which his father had placed him was now shifting sand and sinkholes. An ever-evolving parade of justifications. Every day he spent with Cora made him weaker, less inclined to sacrifice his life with her—whatever it shaped into—and more willing to let that sand suck him down. It would be so easy, now that she knew the truth and had not condemned him for it, just to continue on with Henry Jefferson’s life and hope against hope that no one ever came after him.

Henry pushed away his half-eaten lunch.

“Are you all right?” Cora looked concerned.

“Fine. Just anxious to get back to the plane. When is Evans supposed to arrive?” Henry asked the question as a diversion, rather than out of any real interest. In fact, he didn’t look forward to the man’s looking over his shoulder as he did the final fine-tuning of the plane.

“Tomorrow, or the next day. He wasn’t certain in his last telegram.” She took a sip of coffee. “I’m ready when you are. I want to get in a few takeoffs and landings before the day gets any hotter.”

The tension eased up a bit once he was back at the field, attending to the plane, talking to other pilots, discussing the racecourse. It made him feel he was there for a purpose other than avoiding going back to Indiana. After the race, Cora wanted to walk on Miami Beach and see Smith’s Casino—which seemed to be all anyone wanted to talk about when they weren’t discussing planes and horsepower. If he might be put away for the rest of his life, or worse, it seemed he should put his feet in the Atlantic Ocean beforehand. One more day wasn’t going to change anything.

Most of the pilots talked freely about their planes and their experiences—at least to Henry. They didn’t seem to know what to make of Cora, so they generally avoided her. It had started getting under his skin the way many of them deliberately excluded her from their conversations when she was standing right there, the sidelong looks of disdain, the turning of backs, the insinuation that she couldn’t be taken seriously. Whenever he’d started to comment about it, Cora had stopped him and whispered in his ear, “It’s better if they’ve already discounted me as a competitor. They won’t push as hard when racing me. It’s an advantage.”

Discounting her as a competitor was one thing. Disrespecting her as a person was something else. A couple of the men were teetering on the brink of crossing that line, and Henry had just about had enough.

The next day, practice times were assigned by a random lottery. Cora ran the course as well as any of the men, better than some. When the pairings were drawn and times posted for the following day’s practice with two planes on the course—the way they would race—Henry
couldn’t believe their bad luck. He looked over at the one pilot who hadn’t been satisfied with just freezing Cora out; he’d been making completely unfounded comments about her flying skills and had actively tried to get her disqualified.

A squat man with a slow plane and a bad attitude, he was standing two feet from Henry when the pairings were posted. “Hell, no! I won’t fly with her. Change it or forget it.”

The official informed him that no changes could be made.

Henry said, “She’s passed all of her qualifications. You’re her draw. You can’t just refuse to run with her.”

“I don’t have to practice at all. So, yeah, I think I can. I’m not going to risk having my plane taken out before the race by an inexperienced
woman
.”

“She deserves the same practice as everyone else.”

“Maybe you can find someone who’ll take an asinine risk like that. Not me.” As the man turned to walk away, he mumbled, “Who’d she fuck to get a ride in that plane anyhow?”

Henry grabbed the man’s shoulder and jerked him back around. He got a handful of shirt and leaned down so he was nose to nose. “Say that to my face, you spineless little shit!”

Instead of being cowed, the man shouted so everyone within fifty yards could hear, “I said, who’d she have to fuck to get that plane?”

The monster knocked the cellar door off its hinges. Henry wasn’t sure how he got there, but he was suddenly straddling the man on the ground, one fist still wadded in the shirt, the other beating the fat face. The punch Henry took in the throat barely registered.

“Henry!” He heard Cora’s voice, but it seemed to come from far away. Hands grabbed his shoulders, but he kept pummeling, his vision gone red.

“Enough! Henry! Stop!”

It took two men to pull him off. They kept a tight hold on his arms until he finally said, “Okay.” He shrugged them off, panting. “Okay.” He pointed a bruised-knuckled finger at the man on the ground. “If you ever utter another word about her, I’m coming after you.”

The men who’d pulled Henry off were now helping the bastard off the ground. “You broke my nose!” the man slurred through already-swelling lips, but made no move at retaliation.

Cora stepped directly in front of Henry and looked him in the face. “Don’t give them a reason to throw us out of here.” Her voice was calm, but her eyes revealed just how shaken up she was, how shocked by his brutality.

He stood huffing. Blood still pounded in his ears. The electric shock of his fury still sparked though him.

She gently took his arm. “Let’s go to the tent and get you cleaned up.” She tugged more forcefully. “Now, Henry.”

After leading him to her tent, she sat him on her cot and went to fetch some water, threatening him with bodily harm if he so much as stuck his nose outside. It was sweltering inside the tent, even though it was in the shade. He looked down at his shirt. It was splattered with blood. For a moment he stared at his bloody right hand as if it belonged to someone else. The skin was broken open on a couple of his knuckles. As his senses returned, he felt the throbbing in his shoulder.

He wished he could say he felt better, that the rage had been sated. Something was different inside, that much was certain. He now knew the monster couldn’t be tamed. Is that what had happened with Emmaline?

Nausea gripped him, but he clamped his jaw tight and willed it away.

Cora returned, took one look at him, and said, “Lie down. You look like you’re about to pass out.”

He stretched out in defeat. He would never be the man Pa expected him to be. Never.

She carefully cleaned his hands with cool water. “You know that wasn’t necessary . . . defending my honor like that. Gallant, for sure, but unnecessary.”

She was trying to make light of what had just happened.

“It’s no joke, Cora. This is me. This is the person I am deep inside.
I lost control. Completely. If I hadn’t been stopped . . .” He shifted his gaze to the outside.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Henry.” Her words did not match what he saw in her eyes. Fear now resided there; Henry had carried its bags in with his sudden burst of violence.

Only it wasn’t sudden, was it? He’d known it was there, hiding in the cellar.

He pulled his hands from her and swung his legs over the side of the cot. “Now you see what I’m capable of.”

“Henry. The man is an ass. I didn’t hear anyone speak in his defense, did you? And they let you get in some good licks before they pulled you off.”

“You’re missing the point. No one should have had to pull me off. I lost my mind, Cora.”

She stopped trying to recapture his hands and looked at him. “Has this happened before?”

“Like with Emmaline, you mean? Did she say the wrong thing and set off my insanity?”

“Well, from what you said about her, I imagine that is likely exactly what happened . . . just not with you.” She paused, picked up his right hand, and kissed his wounded knuckle. “Just now you were angry
for my benefit
,
not for yourself. You were protecting me. You went to where Emmaline was because you were worried about Johanna. Have there been other incidents where your need to defend overtook you? Something that people might misconstrue? Something that will hurt us when we get back to Indiana?”

He closed his eyes, and all he could see was that man’s bloody face, all he could taste was his own shame. “No.”

“Good.” She said it as if there was no more to say on the subject and went back to tending his hands. “As for that ass, I don’t need to practice the course with another plane. You did a great job of preparing me. I’m ready.”

He stood. “I’m going to talk to the officials about getting you another pilot to practice against.”

She put her hands on his upper arms. “There’s no need to make enemies. And what if they force him to fly or face disqualification? I’d rather not fly with an angry pilot nipping at my heels. He’ll be more likely to make a mistake and take both of us out. And of course, as the
woman
, it would be my fault. I’ll prove myself in the race.”

What she said made sense. To his rational mind. But his real concern was her overconfidence if she didn’t have a taste of a stranger racing her on the course before the green flag flew.

Then he had another thought. “What if they try to disqualify you because of this fight?”

“I got these first-aid supplies from the office. Didn’t hear a word about anything like that. And the ass was in there getting the nurse they’ve hired for the event to check out his nose. Whining like a little girl.”

“It could still come.”

“I don’t think so. This is a rough-and-tumble man’s sport, men get into fights all the time. Besides, they can’t afford the bad publicity if they disqualify me, and I can guarantee bad publicity. Evans will toss in his weight, too. And remember,
I
wasn’t even in the fight. How can they disqualify me?”

For the next few hours, Henry held himself wary and waiting for the officials to show up and tell them to get packing. By the next morning when they hadn’t heard a word, he began to relax again.

H
e was replacing the spark plugs in the Evie when Cora called to him, “Henry, look who’s here!” He turned with a pleased-to-meet-you look on his face, expecting to see Mr. Evans in his wheelchair. But Gil walked beside Cora.

Henry’s smile became forced. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

“You knew I asked him,” Cora said.

Henry wiped his hands on a cloth, wincing at the pain in his right. “I guess I got the impression he wasn’t inclined.” He tried to squash
the flare of resentment. The three of them were a team. And God knew, Gil was more of a lost soul now than he’d ever been. He’d continued his downhill slide after coming back from Ohio. Henry should have been doing everything in his power to keep an eye on him. Still, Henry had wanted this air race to be like California, something just he and Cora shared. “Did you fly one of Jake’s planes in?”

“Took the train.” Gil lit a smoke and blew out the match without taking the cigarette from his mouth. “Didn’t mean to
intrude
.”

So Henry wasn’t masking his feelings quite as well as he’d thought.

Gil went on, “I didn’t want to be sitting around Reece’s farm waiting for a telegram to know the outcome.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “Besides, I was curious about Chapman Field.”