Going to Chicago (11 page)

We unloaded several wire baskets of milk and cream. Gus made Will take a picture of the milkman with Gladys and him, then launched into his speech about the three of us being unwilling kidnappees. He made the milkman promise to report the holdup as soon as his route was finished. The milkman promised and drove off fast.

That's the way the ruse went. By midmorning Gus and Gladys had hooked more than a dozen such suckers. Stacked in the cabbage by the river were trays of bread, cases of Coca-Cola, several big bags of ready-mix cement, baskets of eggs, a salesman's sample case full of doorknobs and hinges, two bundles of the
Indianapolis Star
, all that milk and cream of course, three gumball machines and a bag of pennies, assorted wallets, watches, pocket change, and jackknives. Every victim got his picture taken with Gus and Gladys.

After a few hours traffic completely stopped. Which made Gus a happy man. “I'm sure roadblocks are up by now,” he said. “Only a matter of time before we see the law sneaking up. This is all so perfect, ain't it Gladys? I couldn't have picked a better spot to die if I was George Armstrong Custer.”

Clyde asked who George Armstrong Custer was.

Will, nose in his
Official Guide Book of the World's Fair
, told him.

The morning wore away. So did the afternoon. No sign of the law. Gladys sat on the ground and went through the wallets, then counted the pocket change and finally the bag of pennies liberated from the gumball machine man. She announced the take: “Forty-nine dollars and thirty-seven cents.”

Gus wasn't the least bit heartened. He wanted a hail of bullets, not a pile of cash. He climbed to the road and shook his shotgun in both directions. Yelled and whistled. Nothing. That's when Gladys began recounting her acting job with the milkman, the bread man, the Coca-Cola man, and all the rest. Will put down his guidebook and listened to every word. So did I. Clyde hummed and drank several warm eight-ounce Cokes. Gus gave up and joined us. He cracked an egg in a quart bottle of milk and sipped it lying flat on his back, head propped up on a cabbage.

“All in all,” Gladys said, “I think my amnesia act with the doorknob salesman was my best work.”

That's when Gus blew. “Judas Priest, Gladys! All you ever do is think about yourself.”

Gladys blew back. “My career is just as important as yours!”

“It's important. But don't forget that you're not going to have any damn career until I'm riddled with lead.”

“Just because you haven't been riddled yet you think it's the end of the world.”

Gus wilted. “I was sure today would be the day, that's all.”

I was playing with the pile of stolen watches. “There's still plenty of time,” I said. “According to these it's still somewhere between 4:50 and 5:03.”

Tiny rivers of milk and egg yoke were meandering through the stubble on Gus's unshaven face. “I appreciate your trying to cheer me up, Ace. But you don't know these small-town badges like I do. They are strictly nine to five. If they ain't come yet, they ain't coming. All on their way home to supper by now.” He jumped up and stalked down the row, angrily kicking cabbage heads. He stopped and turned thoughtfully toward us. “How'd you like to be the poor saps who have to pick all these bastards?” Then he lifted one of the bags of ready-mix cement over his head and heaved it in the river. We watched it splash and sink. “Now that's what I need to do,” he said.

Gladys was as puzzled as the rest of us. “How do I become a famous actress by you drowning in a river?”

Gus came back up the row, excited. “Not drown, sweetie pie! Make a bigger splash! I've been thinking too small. No hick-town hundred-a-month badge is going to risk his life over greasy spoons and Coca-Cola men. I've got to think of a crime so stupendous that the local badges got no choice but to come after me, guns puking lead.”

I'd already driven a wedge between Will and me by not shooting Gus in the head when I had the chance at Hal's Half Way. Now I drove it further. I grabbed one of the cabbages Gus kicked off its roots and hurled it into the river. It didn't sink like the cement, but bobbed like a headless green duck. “You ought to rob a bank.”

Will's rebuke was instant. “Jeez, Ace.”

Gus hurled a cabbage into the river, too, several feet farther out than mine. “You're thinking big, Ace. I like big thinking. But there ain't no money in robbing banks in Indiana no more. What John Dillinger hasn't stolen by now, the damn bankers have themselves.”

“How about a train, then?” I said.

“Jeez! Now we're going to play Jesse James!”

Gus threw another cabbage. “Don't stifle Ace's imagination, Will. Robbing a train is a good idea. Unfortunately what we need here is a great idea.”

I threw another cabbage, too. I was straining to think of a great idea. Gus laid back down and pulled his fedora over his eyes. Sipped his milk and egg.

Now Will threw a cabbage in the river. It went farther than all the rest. “You want a great idea? I've got the greatest idea in the world.”

Gus slipped back his fedora, very interested. “What is it?”

“Let us go and then kidnap someone who isn't on such a tight schedule. Then you can take all the time you want thinking how to get yourself riddled.”

Gus's fedora went back over his disappointed eyes. “Judas Priest! You're as selfish as Gladys. You ain't going nowhere until I'm dead. The sooner you all get that through your heads, the happier we're all going to be.”

“Who's Jesse James?” Clyde asked.

“Jeez!”

“Judas Priest!”

We all took a nap. Cabbages for pillows.

Somewhere around six I heard the sky chattering and opened my eyes. Airplane. I watched Gladys's chest swell and fall. The chattering got louder. Today there's not an inch of America where your ears aren't filled with the chainsaw of a jumbo jet or at least the bee-buzz of some little puddlejumper—Bennett's Corners is right on the southern flight path into Cleveland Hopkins and the air there shakes continuously—but in 1934 hearing or seeing an airplane was still an event. I stood up and searched the tree lines. I couldn't see it yet, but I could tell it was coming straight toward us from the west. Low, too.

Finally a double set of wings popped over the treetops. The air quivered like the inside of a church bell. The plane sank to within a few yards of the field. Came right toward us. There was an explosion of white powder. I could feel it settling on my face. See it settling on the cabbage heads. On Gus's head. Gladys's head. Will's head. Clyde's head. We were being crop dusted.

The plane slipped over the river and climbed. Turned for another pass. Everybody was awake now, coughing and pawing at their hair and faces. “It's a Curtiss JN-4,” I said. “A Jenny! Just like my father trained in before going to France.”

Gus didn't care what kind of airplane it was. “Judas Priest! Can't he see us?”

Another cloud of insecticide boiled down. “Get that thing of yours cranked up, Ace,” Gus shouted. “We're going to blast that crazy bastard out of the sky.”

By
thing
Gus meant the Gilbert SXIII. A minute later Gus and I were in rabid pursuit, chasing that real airplane all over that field of cabbage. Squished heads flew in every direction. “Stay on his ass,” Gus shouted. “Stay on his ass!”

It was the strangest thing. Eight years later when I returned to Weebawauwau County and looked the pilot of that old Jenny up—his name was Bud Hemphill—I asked him why he'd let us chase him around that field. “You were in a real plane for christsake! Up in the air! You could have just flown off!”

“I was a'scared,” Bud said.

“Of a Model T?”

“Not of you,” he said. “A'scared of losing my job. My boss Bill McDougall said if I didn't get them cabbages dusted by six I was fired. Couple nuts in an old car with wings wasn't going to get me unemployed.”

So that's why the Jenny stayed over the cabbage field, boiling insecticide, while we gave chase in the Gilbert SXIII. I tried to apply the Dicta Boelcke to our pursuit.

Tried to close on his tail so Gus could get off a useful shot, but Bud had the upper hand. He was really up in the air. Soon as I'd close the gap he'd fill our faces with insecticide and roll out of the way. “Land, you damn fool!” Gus kept yelling. “Land, you damn ding-donged fool!”

We finally got to Bud. He made a nice pass over the cabbages, but he must have been watching us instead of the tree line. When he finally saw that mountain of maples he had to swing up sharp to the left. Too steep. Wings lost their air. Went into a stall. Nose down. Plummeted toward the cabbages. I figured he was dead. But Bud was a pro. He rammed the throttle and lowered the elevators on his tail wing. He nosed up and scraped safely over the ground. Unfortunately for him, I was right on his tail. Gus put a shell into the insecticide tank. Dust and tin flew. Bud panicked. Cut the throttle. Yanked his elevators up. Bounced to a landing.

We drove alongside. “Ace,” said Gus, “we've bagged us an airplane!”

Bud slid out of the Jenny. Hands over his head. He was wearing a cap and goggles not unlike mine. Which I suddenly wished I was wearing. I pulled them from under the seat cushions and put them on. I smiled at poor Bud and wondered if any of those three Germans my father shot down made it to the ground alive?

“
No one ever looked forward to hand-propping a Hisso engine after a cold night in the open, or washing the cow dung from the underside of the wings, or sitting miserably under a wing during a thunder-storm, your raincoat draped over the wooden propeller to keep it from soaking up moisture which could cost you rpms. But we were flyers and the whole vast sky out there belonged to us alone and that was enough
.”

B
ARNSTORMER
E
ARL
C. R
EED

Twelve/Descending Like a Dove

My father not only trained in a Curtiss JN-4. He barnstormed in one for a while. For a few years after the war it was a good way for former dogfighters to make a buck, and more importantly, stay in the sky. The Jenny was too clumsy for combat, but most American flyers had trained in them before shipping overseas to fly French-made Spads and Nieuports. After the Armistice you could get an old Jenny dirt cheap. Flying was still new. Still an adventure. Farm folk would pay as much as twenty bucks for a three-minute ride over their own cow pastures.

My father barnstormed like that for about a year, all over the Midwest. Finally my mother's threats of divorce—never seeing his Little Ace again—got him thinking straight and he returned to Columbus for a normal family life as a race-car mechanic.

Today when I see one of those television programs about people living out in the middle of nowhere being abducted by space aliens, taken up in their saucers, I tend to believe them. Those aliens are nothing but barnstormers, dropping out of the heavens to give earth folks the best three minutes of their lives.

By the late twenties the barnstorming era was over. Everybody who wanted to go up, had been up. Price of a three-minute ride over a cow pasture fell to a buck or two. Regular passenger service was starting. Airplanes were as common as crows.

So that Jenny was no stranger to me. My father had told me a thousand times how they flew, what you could do with them in the air and what you couldn't. I had drawings of them on my bedroom wall. And now I was standing right next to one. It could have been the Jenny my father trained in. Maybe it was the one he barnstormed in. Goddamn it could've! Sonofabitch it could've! Only about a thousand Jennies had ever been made! So why not?

Whether it was or wasn't, Bud Hemphill's Jenny was in piss-poor condition. Its canvas skin was covered with patches. More than one of its wing struts was cracked and mended with baling wire. The engine had scabs of rust and lots of oil drips. And of course now it was caked with cabbage juice and insecticide. Still it was grand to see.

I felt Gus's hand on my shoulder. “Think you could fly it, Ace?”

“Absolutely,” I bragged, unaware that he meant it.

“Then let's do it.”

My entire body went clammy. “What you saying, Gus?”

“I'm saying my prayers have been answered! This is my bigger splash, Ace! This is my great idea! This will get me riddled for sure!” He grabbed the top of my head and danced around me like I was a maypole. “We're going barnstorming, Ace! A-barnstorming-we-shall-go!”

“Barnstorming?”

“That's right. Barnstorming. We're going to float above Weebawauwau County like hungry buzzards and when we see somebody rich on the ground, we're going to set down and put our sweet beaks right down their pants pockets.” Gus kept maypoling around me. “I ain't a religious man, but I truly believe the Almighty sent you to me, Ace! You are my guardian angel! My ticket to the grave!”

“Ace ain't no angel,” Clyde said.

“The hell he ain't,” Gus said. “The hell he ain't.”

So that was Gus's big idea. And I was all for it. I didn't dare look into Will's eyes, of course. I knew what they were telling me: You've crossed the line, Ace, gone from unwilling kidnappee to unadulterated criminal. Naturally that wasn't how I looked at it. What choice did I have? If Gus told me to fly the Jenny, I had to fly the Jenny. If Gus told me to set down and rob people, I had to set down and rob people. What right did Will's eyes have to judge me? He'd helped unload that milk truck and the Coca-Cola truck and all the rest, hadn't he? How was this any different? Same thing, only higher in the air!

“Sure you can fly this thing?” Gus asked me again.

“Absolutely.”

I kept my own eyes away from Will's and crawled in. Gus crawled in the front passenger seat. Bud Hemphill got ready to prop the propeller. I glued my eyes on the instruments, wiped my palms on my pants, adjusted my goggles several times. Then I heard Gus say something that just sucked the blood from my brain: “Say, Clyde! You wouldn't want to come along, would you? There's plenty of room up here on my lap.”