The Flying Circus (6 page)

There wasn’t any place that looked big enough to land. And Jenny didn’t have brakes.

It sounded as if one cylinder wasn’t firing—when had that started?

Henry sat as tall as he could, leaning right and left, trying to see where they were headed. The sound of the engine changed as Gil throttled back a bit.

The left wing dipped and they swung sideways. Henry’s stomach jumped up and slid across the wings.

Gil brought the wings back to level.

All Henry could see were trees ahead. He slid low and braced himself.

The nose of the plane lifted slightly. His seat dropped as if he’d gone over a hill.

There was an impact, a rough jolt. Then the plane bounced along on its wheels. With a little jerk the tail skid hit the ground.

Henry’s head popped up. They were in a pasture, the trees behind them . . . no cows in sight . . . unless they were directly in front of the plane where neither Henry nor Gil could see over the high nose.

Henry slithered a little lower and kept his eyes squinted, just in case a propeller-ground cow splattered them.

They stopped rolling. The engine cut off.

No cow guts.

A minute later he stood beside Gil on the ground, wiping the oil spatter off his face and wiggling his pinkie fingers in his ears trying to
get them to clear. It seemed the roar of the engine and the rush of the wind continued inside his head after the propeller had stopped.

“What’d you think?” Gil asked, looking like the owner of the blue-ribbon boar at the county fair.

“Amazing! Just incredible!”

“You’re shouting. It’s the ears.” Gil tossed his leather helmet and goggles up into the cockpit. “Time to earn your ride.” He started walking toward the dirt road on the far side of the pasture.

Henry wiped the oil from his face and hurried to catch up. “You’ve got a cylinder not firing.”

“I’ll clean the spark plugs before I take off again.”

“You shouldn’t do it with people watching. You’ll scare them out of riding.”

“Bullshit. They’ll be more confident knowing I take care of my ship.”

Henry shook his head. “No, sir. Once they get the idea that a machine isn’t one hundred percent reliable, you won’t get them in the plane.”

“How would you know?”

“It’s the reason most farmers won’t get off mules and horses. Worry over a tractor breaking down. Only
you
want people to trust their lives to a machine racing along hundreds of feet off the ground. You can’t let them get even a hint that the thing could fall out of the sky. They need to see it as infallible.”

“Never bothered anybody before.”

“I’ll bet you scared plenty of them off. You just didn’t notice.”
If not by working on the plane in front of them, then just by your general contrariness.
“Of course, you might be a whole lot more persuasive and likable when you’re working an exhibition.”

Gil shot him a narrow-eyed look that made Henry wish he’d just kept his mouth shut. He’d wanted to travel on with Gil before, just to get farther down the road, but after flying in that mechanical miracle, he didn’t ever want to leave it. And what better way to get lost in this world than to never stay put in one place, never let anyone really get to know you?

They reached the road. A truck was coming toward them, kicking up a rolling plume of dust. It skidded to a stop and an angry man hopped out. “Hold on there, young fella! What gives you the right? Get on”—he waved his hand at Gil as if he were scaring off geese—“and get that contraption outta my field.”

Gil kept walking. “Can’t. Needs gas.”

“Well, that’s poor plannin’ on your part. You got no right just droppin’ down on my land like you own it. Scare the milk right outta my cows.”

“Airplanes don’t bother cows.” Gil sounded so condescending that Henry cringed.

“So you’re a dairy farmer,” the man said. “Know all about it.” Not questions.

Gil huffed, “There aren’t even any cows
in
that pasture.”

“Neither was I.” The man pointed to the sides of his red-faced head. “They got ears! I want you off my land.”

Henry stepped between Gil and the farmer. “Sorry, mister. We came on your land without your say-so, and that’s not right, for sure. But, you see, there’s no way for us to ask from up there, so we gotta land first, then ask. Which is what we were just heading to do.” The man continued to frown. “Hope you’ll give us pardon.” Henry looked things over. The truck was old. The man’s barn needed paint. Farm prices were in the shitter. “And we’ll . . . we’ll pay for the privilege.” Gil groaned behind him. “And as soon as we get fueled up, we’ll be off to find another pasture nearby to hire out for our barnstorming act. So don’t worry about the crowds.”

“Hire out?” The farmer stopped straining forward in rage.

“Yes, sir. Captain Gilchrist here is a
bona fide
war hero. A flying ace.” The regard Henry saw bloom in the farmer’s eyes prompted him to take it another step. “Fought the Red Baron himself! Why, people line up just for a chance to pay for a ride with him.” Peter had been the best at convincing people to do things, clever about it, too. Henry had watched and learned. It’d been a long time since he’d put those skills to much use; the war had made everyone so mistrustful, the use of persua
sion only made them more suspicious. He
had
coaxed the two littlest Dahlgren girls with some success—he hadn’t wasted his breath with the older ones or their mother.

“I can see you wouldn’t want all those folks milling around in your pasture,” Henry went on. “The crowd sometimes stays all day just to watch—sometimes runs over into two. We usually try to find a place where a wife wants to make some pocket money selling food and drink. We’ll be gone as soon as we can. Promise. But we need to gas up first.”

“Well, now, maybe you should tell me more about this barnstorming act.”

Gil opened his mouth, but Henry cut him off before he ruined everything. “Captain Gilchrist here . . . once his plane is all fueled up . . . takes off and does a death-defying exhibition of flight, just like he’s dogfightin’ those dirty Huns over France again. People fall all over themselves getting to where they see his plane land. He charges a reasonable fee for a ride.” According to Gil, some folks thought five dollars was reasonable. “Then maybe he’ll do some more stunts in between, just to keep people entertained while they wait their turn. There’s nothing like flying over your own town and seeing it from the air. Nothing!”

“I don’t think folks round here’d be interested.”

“I used to think like that, too. Turns out people
everywhere
are
crazy
about airplanes. But not to worry. Captain Gilchrist always respects a landowner’s wishes, so we’ll be gone as soon as we get some gasoline.”

The man rubbed his chin. “We might could work something out. Pasture’s empty right now anyhow.” Then he gave Gil a harsh glare. “Gotta be compensated for the milk scared outta my cows, of course.”

Gil rolled his eyes. “Cows—”

“We can work something out,” Henry cut him off.

Fifteen minutes later, not only had they settled on a deal to use the pasture, but the farmer was driving them into town with several old milk cans to get gasoline. Henry insisted he and Gil ride in the truck bed, just to make sure Gil didn’t open his mouth and say something that’d put the man off.

Henry sat with his back against one side of the truck bed, Gil the other. “We could have found another pasture—probably for free.” He sounded mad.

“And burned up time and gas doing it.”

After sitting with his lips pressed together for a while, he said, “I wasn’t an ace. You can’t tell people that.”

Henry shrugged.

“And I
didn’t
fight the Red Baron. I didn’t fight anyone.”

“Come on. You’re selling a show, an image for people to get excited about. You did fly in the war, right?”

Gil sat stone-faced and crossed his arms over his chest, but didn’t disagree.

Henry thought about the medicine shows and carnivals that traveled around, drawing crowds and relieving folks of their hard-earned money. Plenty of their barkers stretched the truth to get people’s blood up. “You know the Lizard Boy in the circus really wasn’t born from an alligator egg, don’t you?”

Gil stared at him.

“All I’m saying is that you
could have
been up there when the Red Baron was. All show folk do a little truth-stretching.”

Gil’s breath was rough, the way it had been when he’d been having his nightmares the night before. He looked as if he wanted to take a swing. “
Not
about the war. Honors were hard earned—and not by me.” He scrubbed his hand across his mouth. “As far as war goes, the truth is horrible enough, no need to stretch it.”

Peter’s face flashed in Henry’s mind, a face forever frozen at seventeen. It made his chest hurt, even after all of these years.

“Okay. Okay,” Henry said. “Sorry. I was just trying to whip up some excitement. You said yourself the biggest danger a barnstormer faces is starvation.”

Gil was silent a minute. “I make
my own
deals with landowners.”

“With your sensitivity and understanding of farm folk,” Henry said, his own irritation rising, “it’s a blue wonder you haven’t been shot yet.”

“I do fine.”

“You could do better.”

“Not your concern.” Gil shifted his gaze to the passing fields.

“You’re right. Makes no difference to me if you starve to death and your plane falls to pieces when a little showmanship could prevent both.” And it shouldn’t matter to Henry. But he felt invested. Today was the first day since Peter had left that the world showed all of its colors. It was as if a gray fog had lifted from Henry’s heart. It got his nanny just thinking how Gil was ruining the opportunity to live the life he wanted just because he couldn’t stop being a sullen ass.

What Henry wouldn’t give to be in Charles Gilchrist’s footloose shoes.

I
t took a long time to repeatedly fill the large glass reservoir at the top of the gas pump and empty it into milk can after milk can. Gil said it was a rare thing to have this many containers. Normally he had to make multiple trips for gasoline, often between giving rides, making people wait.
Or wander off with their five dollars still in their pockets,
Henry thought. For a man who continually griped about burning daylight, Gil sure wasted a lot of time searching and borrowing to transport fuel. The system begged for improvement.

Henry waited on the tailgate for Gil to go inside the station building and pick up a case of oil and pay. The courthouse clock chimed the hour. Henry glanced at it over the top of buildings across the street. He was damn lucky not to be sitting in one of those right now. The fact was, he was only two counties away from the Dahlgren farm. Not near far enough to be out of danger. Would he ever be far enough?

Nothing but forward. Nothing.

So he sat tight and swung his feet, trying to look as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Being in a town full of people was different. Someone could be watching him that he couldn’t see. To keep the nervousness from giving him away, he busied his mind with ways to improve Gil’s efficiency.
How much gas Gil’s plane must burn per hour; dividing that by the number of rides he could probably give in that much time and how many miles he probably averaged between towns. How far could that engine go between overhauls?

The farmer returned from Craycraft’s Dry Goods with a brown-paper-wrapped parcel under his arm, whistling an off-key version of “Put On Your Old Gray Bonnet.”

A shout sounded from across the street and down about a half block. A tall, skinny man wearing a blood-smeared white apron ran out of a small storefront, a meat cleaver in his hand. “That’s the last time you steal from me, you little bastard!”

Henry got up and looked to see whom the man was chasing.

A silver-gray streak ran past Henry’s knees. A single dark sausage link landed near his feet.

The skinny butcher held the cleaver over his head, barreling straight for Henry. The man stepped on the sausage and his foot logrolled forward, throwing him off-balance. The meat cleaver sliced so near the side of Henry’s head that he felt the air move.

Oblivious of Henry’s near de-earing, the butcher regained his footing and followed the thief’s path around the truck.

The streak passed Henry’s knees again. A dog. With a rope of cured sausages hanging from his mouth.

The butcher screamed in frustration and passed Henry a second time.

On the dog’s third orbit of the truck, he jumped up into the bed and hid behind the milk cans. A single sausage link remained visible.

The butcher caught himself on his fourth lap around the truck, realizing he was chasing only himself. He looked right, left, up and down the street, toward the open station door.

Henry stepped between the butcher and the telltale sausage. “He took off down the alley. That way.”

The butcher took off, shouting and shaking the cleaver.

“You’d probably do better if you sneaked up on him!” Henry called behind the man.

Gil came out of the brick building, looking around. “What’s all the shouting?”

The station man followed him out, laughing. “Third time this week the little booger’s made off with some of Chet’s goods. That stray is so good at it I’ve started rooting for the pooch. He deserves to win.”

Henry knew something about being a hungry stray. He climbed in the truck bed, sitting between Gil and the dog’s hiding place. The mutt could use a few miles between himself and that meat cleaver.

Gil cranked the truck, then came around and hopped on the open tailgate.

When the truck started, Henry worried the dog would bolt. He looked up to see the butcher coming back their way, taking time to look behind every trash barrel and stacked crate in the alley.

The dog stayed put. Henry supposed the stray hadn’t survived this long by being stupid.

At the edge of town, they stopped for a train to pass. Gil sniffed. “I smell . . . sausage.”