The Wings of Morning (40 page)

“No.” Pastor Miller stood in front of his wife. “No.”

Mrs. Miller pleaded. “He could live, Jacob, he could live!”

“No.”

She put her head against his chest and began to cry. “We have lost Samuel this very day. We could lose Naomi and Jonathan and Paul. What if we lose our baby too? Then there is no one, no one.” She looked up into her husband’s stern face. “When I put the kettle in his room just now…he was not moving…and the color of the blue in his face… had deepened…”

Dr. Morgan was already heading up the staircase.

Fresh pain and dismay filled Pastor Miller’s eyes.

Amidst her sobs, he gently removed his wife’s hands and rushed up to the baby’s room. Lyyndaya took the woman into her arms and let her weep.

Only minutes later, Pastor Miller came down with Joshua wrapped in blankets and a woolen hat and a sheepskin, the doctor trailing him. Mrs. Miller cried out to God, looked over how the baby was bundled up, then took him from her husband and gave the child to Lyyndaya.

“Please,” she said. “Hurry!”

Lyyndaya took Joshua and cradled him. Then she looked at Pastor Miller. He lifted one hand as if in a blessing. “Go with God.”

Dr. Morgan raced his carriage out to the road. It was a clear day, and mild, the middle of February. He stood up and looked toward the east. Then he sat back down and called out to his horses. They broke into a gallop.

“Where is the plane?” asked Lyyndaya.

“I can’t see it. But we must go by the Whetstones on the way to your house in any case.”

The carriage bounced along the frozen road. The aeroplane wasn’t at the Whetstone house or in any of the nearby fields, so they thundered past.

“How is the baby?” asked the doctor.

“He is breathing.”

When they were two or three hundred yards from her home Lyyndaya saw the aircraft. It was in the same field of stubble where Jude had first landed in the summer of 1917, and it was a Curtiss Jenny with stars on its wings.

The horses pounded up the Kurtzes’ lane to the house and the door swung open before they had pulled to a stop. Jude stepped out in his leather flying suit, followed by Lyyndaya’s father in his black hat and jacket.

“What is it?” called Jude from the porch. “What’s going on?”

“Do you have fuel to get to Harrisburg?” shouted Dr. Morgan.

“Harrisburg? That’s less than fifty miles by air. I have more than enough.”

“We have a sick baby. There is a doctor there who may be able to save him. Can you fly him to the city with Lyyndaya holding him?”

Jude came down the steps quickly. “Who is it?”

“Joshua Miller.”

“Joshua? He’s not even two.” Jude came up to the buggy and looked at the child in Lyyndaya’s arms. Jude touched his hand where it poked out from under the sheepskin. “He’s so young. The oxygen gets thinner the higher we go. And the air gets colder.” He hesitated, looking at Lyyndaya. “We will have to fly very close to the ground. Take off a few rooftops. Frighten a few cows. People with telephones will be calling in complaints to the police from now until we land.” Then he smiled, and said, “Let’s go.”

Dr. Morgan held little Joshua while Lyyndaya pulled on a flying suit Jude had brought that covered her from foot to neck. Once she had put on a leather helmet and goggles, climbed into the front cockpit, and tightened her harness, she took the baby again. Jude got into the pilot’s seat, behind her.

“Keep Josh as warm as you can,” he said. “Keep him close to your heart.”

She put the child inside her flying suit and let his head peep out at her throat, sheepskin all around him like a shield.

Lyyndaya’s father placed a hand on her arm. “God bless you in this, daughter. I will speak quickly. I have just received a letter from my friend Nicholas in Washington, the one in the War Department. They have taken a particular interest in Jude’s case because he is a war hero. Several generals have looked into the matter of his enlistment. They do not want anything to cloud his name or record.”

“But what can they do to sway people like Pastor Miller?”

“These generals will be able to tell us whether Jude was coerced or enlisted willingly. From what Nicholas writes in his letter it looks very favorable for Jude. So I have asked them to come to the spring communion service. Bishop Zook has promised me the entire issue surrounding Jude will be settled there once and for all. A delegation from Washington bearing proof that Jude was forced to fight would make all the difference.”

“Will they come, Papa?”

“It is my hope.”

“What does Jude say about all this?”

Mr. Kurtz patted his daughter’s arm and smiled. “What do you think? He says nothing.”

Lyyndaya twisted her head around to look at Jude. He was busy checking the gauges on his instrument panel. Feeling her eyes on him he glanced up.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Papa was talking to me about Washington sending a delegation to clear your name.”

He went back to his instrument panel. “I know. He told me.”

“And you still have nothing to say about all that?”

He played with a dial. “No, my love. I don’t.”

Dr. Morgan suddenly stepped over and handed Jude a slip of paper. “The man you want is Leif Peterson, Dr. Leif Peterson. He is at the large hospital in downtown Harrisburg. I will get a telegram to him immediately so he knows to expect you. Godspeed, my boy.”

Jude pulled his goggles down over his eyes. Around his throat was his white silk scarf from the war.

“Can you spin the prop?” he asked Lyyndy’s father.

“
Ja
. I will try my best.”

When Jude gave him the signal, Mr. Kurtz yanked down sharply on the propeller blade, but the engine didn’t catch. He did it again and still there was nothing. A third time brought a look of fierce determination to his face and he swung down with all his might. The engine sputtered, coughed, and roared. Jude gave him a thumbs-up and started forward, turning into the wind. In moments they were lifting off the ground and swiftly climbing to five hundred feet, where he leveled out.

“We’ll see how far we can get at this altitude!” he shouted to Lyyndaya. “How is the baby?”

“Breathing!”

“You keep breathing too and we’ll be all right! This is a JN-4H! It has a more powerful engine, a Hispano-Suiza 8! We can go like the wind—up to ninety-three miles an hour! Our last Jenny could only do seventy-three!”

“How did you get it?”

“It was a gift! The army is selling them off to civilians!”

“A gift? From who?”

But the shriek of engine and airstream combined to deafen his reply. They were streaking over brown and white farm fields and she could see horses running away from them and one vaulting a fence. People came out of their homes and pointed as they roared overhead. Cattle were running too, and crows scattered at their approach. Roads, carts, barns, cars, and smoke from chimneys flashed past. Always there were men and women and children darting out to look at a plane that was flying lower than any aircraft they’d seen over their houses and yards before.

The plane whistles like Jude whistles
.

Joshua was warm when she put her face against his. Fever or not, she was glad. If he had felt like ice she would have been more worried than she already was. He wasn’t crying, but neither was he sleeping. His lovely brown eyes were open and he was taking everything in. The boy’s breathing was still troubled yet he seemed to be in less distress than he had been on the ground.

But she knew not to trust the illness. It had a mind of its own, and that mind was sinister and treacherous. A patient could look like they were improving one minute and the next go into a sudden and irreversible decline. She prayed and rocked the child and willed the Jenny to go faster and faster. Finally she blurted out, “Push it!”

“What did you say?” called Jude from behind her.

She twisted her head around as far as she could. “Push it!”

He laughed. “Where are you picking up all these English expressions? Were you a pursuit aircraft pilot in France and never bothered to tell me about it?”

“
Ja
! I was just one aerodrome over! You thought I was the odd little man with a mustache the color of your girlfriend’s hair! But please, go faster, go faster!”

“We are doing almost ninety miles an hour!”

“You said we could do ninety-three, didn’t you? The boy has to make it, Jude, he has to!” Then a verse from the Bible flashed into her mind. “‘
They shall mount up with wings as eagles!
’”

“I’ll see if I can coax ninety-five out of her!”

She checked the baby again and his skin was cooling off though his eyes were still active. “He’s cold, Jude!”

“I’ll drop down!”

Jude swooped so low over a road that Lyyndaya could clearly see the expression of a woman who was a passenger in a black Ford. Her mouth was open and her eyes were popping. The car went off the road and into a bank of snow and stopped dead.

Electricity poles pelted past. She thought she could reach down and skim the tops of them with her hands. A group of boys were sledding on a snow-covered hill and she smiled to see their mouths move in shouts and cheers. One little girl standing off to the side unwound the red scarf from her neck and began to wave it like a flag.

A verse popped into her head, a verse her great-grandmother had written about in the red book the day before—
Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday
.

“How is he?” Jude yelled.

“Warmer!”

“Warm enough?”

“I’m not sure!”

“Hang on!”

How could he possibly fly lower?
Lyyndaya wondered. But he did, now swerving left and right to avoid flocks of birds that could damage the engine or wings, or wound them with a bullet-like impact against their bodies, and send their aeroplane crashing to the ground. Fear fought with excitement as they screamed over haystacks and leafless orchards and frozen ponds with boys and girls skating in circles and then raising their arms as the Jenny ripped past—almost, it seemed to Lyyndaya, capable of pulling the skaters’ caps and toques from their heads with the prop wash. She hardly ever saw American flags in Lancaster County, but here they were unfurling from flagpoles in backyards and porches and schoolhouses. She found them beautiful, so much lively color and pattern against a landscape gray and white and brown.

The baby closed and opened his eyes and then closed them once again. She put her ear to his mouth. Yes, there was breath, but it crackled. She exhaled over his mouth and nose, trying to imitate in some small way the effect steam would have. A worry about catching the disease came and went. It was more important to her that the little boy survive than that she avoid close contact. She continued to breathe warm air into his nose. The landscape hurried past.

So this is how you flew in France, didn’t you? This is how you outflew the Germans and your own men as well. It’s the kind of skill that made you an ace without killing a single person so that even your enemies admired the way you handled an aircraft, though they could not comprehend your mercy. Such tributes poured in from the Germans and Austrians when they thought you had perished! In that war you fought to preserve life as well as end the conflict. Now you are flying with all the ability you possess to preserve life in a different kind of fight. And you are my man. Thank God, you are my man
.

“Here we are!”

The large brick buildings of the city swept rapidly toward them. Jude banked right to a field, where Lyyndaya could see other Jennys lined up on the grass and ice and half a dozen flags snapping in the breeze. They didn’t have far to descend. She saw soldiers running out of huts as the plane circled once and touched down. A car came racing out to them as Jude pulled off his leather helmet and sprang to the ground. She could hear an officer shouting, “Who are you and what do you think you’re doing buzzing a U.S. Army aerodrome? Do you want to get yourself shot?” And Jude replied calmly, “Major Jude Whetstone, U.S. Army Air Service, lately returned from France. Captain, I’m flying a mercy mission. I have a sick child here and I require immediate transport to a hospital.”