The Flying Circus (25 page)

“Henry can do it, then,” Cora said.

“No, he can’t,” Henry said. He had new appreciation for the kind of skill it took to maneuver two planes that close together and keep them steady enough that a person standing on a wing had a chance in holy hell of getting onto the other plane. “You need the steadiest pilot. That’s Gil.”

“That’s right,” Jake said. “No offense, Henry. This time experience counts.”

Henry waved the apology off.

Cora turned to Gil. “You know I can do this.” At least she’d stopped
throwing in that technically she already
had
; at least she’d admitted consciousness counted. “I’ve been practicing for weeks.”

“On the ground,” Gil said.

“And moving! It’s not like I haven’t been on the wings enough to know what I’m doing. I’ve been hanging from the wing skid and getting back up in the show for three months. And I’m even stronger now. You know a plane-to-plane transfer will set us apart. Only a few people have done it.”

“And a greater number have died trying,” Gil said sourly.

Reece stood watching the conversation bounce, looking torn between dread and excitement. Only he and Henry knew the cause for Gil’s caution, his exaggerated burden of personal responsibility.

“You can’t possibly know the exact body count,” Cora said in her usual airy way.

Henry thought that attitude was a bad sign. “Cora, if you’re not taking this seriously—”

“I am! But getting me all worked up over the number of people who hadn’t prepared enough isn’t going to help. I’m ready to do this.”

Gil said, “We’ve been drawing plenty of people without it.”

“You know that’s not how this business works. We have to push,” Jake said. “She’s ready. Otherwise I wouldn’t risk it. She’s too damn valuable.”

Cora said, “If I don’t think I can make it once we’re up there, I won’t try it.”

Gil looked at her with disbelief. “I’ve seen evidence to the contrary.”

“I’ve learned a lot since then.”

“But have you learned enough?” he asked.

“One way to find out.”

Gil didn’t look as if he was going to budge.

Jake finally said, “Don’t you think she can do it?”

For several seconds, Gil was silent. It looked as if it pained him to say, “I know she can.”

Reece finally spoke: “Damn right she can!”

Jake slapped Gil on the back. “Let’s go.”

The ceiling was high. A shroud of thin, gauzy clouds softened the sun’s brightness. That would make it easier to watch from the ground, and for Cora to see as she changed planes. Henry wished there were some way to baby-step the transfer at altitude. But that was like baby-stepping Reece into parachuting from a plane. It just couldn’t be done. Henry assured himself they’d prepared as much as possible. Now he hoped Cora’s stubbornness didn’t push her into bad judgment. She was right, she had learned a lot. He’d seen her back off when she wasn’t comfortable with a stunt. Her concentration had improved. She was finally using her head for something other than a ramrod.

Henry stood beside Reece watching the two planes take off, one after the other. Henry was more nervous than he had been his first solo landing; he hoped Cora had a better result with this stunt.

They planned an altitude of two thousand feet at reduced airspeed; it gave them more maneuverability on this first run. When Gil tried to suggest a lower altitude, Cora had pointed out she wouldn’t be any more dead falling from two thousand than if she fell from five hundred. Henry tried not to consider what those additional seconds before impact might be like. Right at that moment, he tried not to consider a whole lot of things.

The planes disappeared from sight. They were going to try to time the transfer as close to the field as possible, since that was how it was going to have to be in a show.

Reece bounced on the balls of his feet. His left hand kept sweeping across the back of his neck, a habit of concentration.

Henry strained his eyes watching for their approach. Finally, two dots appeared. By the time he could tell they were airplanes, Cora was standing on the top wing of Jake’s plane. Gil’s plane flew beside and above, way above, just as they’d planned. He would be doing the maneuvering because he wasn’t fighting the off-balance weight of a person moving around on the wingtip. Jake’s job—no less difficult—was to hold steady. Step one was to establish that they could maintain the overlap. Then Gil would slowly close the vertical gap for Cora to reach up and grab the wing skid. And then he’d have to correct for an off-
balance plane as Cora swung herself up onto the lower wing. Once Jake was sure she had a good hold, he was to drop lower.

It should all work. It
had
worked, for a few. And failed for others. Henry wished he’d convinced Cora to wait until he could figure out a way to tether her to Gil’s plane before she made the transfer. But there was nearly as much danger in hooking a rope attached to a belt onto the skid. If she decided to abort, there was no way to undo it. Hit an updraft and it could yank her off Jake’s wing before she had a grip on the skid. Then she’d have to shimmy up the rope before she pulled herself up over the lip of the wing—assuming the jolt didn’t knock her unconscious or break her neck.

Untethered was probably safer—that thought nearly drew a hysterical laugh from him.
Safe
was a word that seemed absolutely ludicrous right now.

The planes were close to the field. Gil slowly lowered his Jenny.

Henry imagined the wind buffeting Cora, the muscle strain of just remaining upright. She kept motioning for Gil to drop lower, but from Gil’s position, he wouldn’t be able to see her hands. He’d better be keeping his eyes on Jake’s signals—following the plan.

Cora reached up for the skid—and missed. For a heart-stopping second she leaned off-balance. She seemed to recover, right before she disappeared from Henry’s sight as the planes passed directly overhead. Henry compared their tails. Perfectly even.

By the time Henry could see her again, she was hanging from the skid with both hands, and Jake was dropping away, falling in under her, a hopeless tactic to catch her if she fell.

She swung her legs, just as she’d done on the practice setup Henry had built, but that had been at a safe eight feet off the ground. Wing skids had been added to the Jenny’s design early on to keep a dipping wing from digging into the ground on landing, which meant Cora hung a good twenty inches below the actual wing.

She’s come up from this position in the air before. She should be home free.

She hooked her foot on the wing just before they were too far away for Henry to see details. He kept his eyes on the plane as it grew smaller and smaller, praying not to see anything fall from it.

When Jake peeled away Henry finally breathed again. With that first intake of breath he felt as light as a dirigible, ready to float off the earth himself. He shot a fist in the air and thought of Cora’s Warrior Maiden pose. He bet she was doing it right this minute as she stood victorious on that red-and-white wing.

Reece whooped and jumped up and down like a little kid.

They spent a few minutes congratulating each other and rehashing the stunt moment by moment before Henry went to retrieve Mercury. He’d tied the dog to one of the cots in his tent so he wouldn’t have to witness Cora’s untimely end. It seemed important then, but silly now.

Jake landed first. He was out of the cockpit before the prop stopped turning.

“My God, she did it!”

Henry didn’t like how surprised the man sounded.

Cora was out on the wing as soon as Gil set the Jenny down, waving wildly, shouting something no one could hear.

They rushed toward the plane. Gil cut the engine. Henry pulled up short when Cora dove into the rear cockpit, toes trailing just off the wing, and kissed Gil on the mouth.

After a few seconds, he pulled her the rest of the way in onto his lap.

Reece whooped it up, cheering them on.

Jake’s excited smile slipped.

Henry’s mouth went dry and his heart turned to lead.

The boundary had been breached.

16

S
omething deep drew Cora and Gil together, deep and destructive and fueled by unrealistic fascination. Moths to flames came to Henry’s mind when he thought of them, helpless against the lure, even when it singed. That evening, still euphoric over Cora’s success, she and Gil sat next to one another during dinner, a first. Henry had hardly been able to eat for trying to hear every soft word that passed between them. Afterward they walked side by side into the darkness and disappeared. Henry nearly crawled out of his skin imagining what might be going on. He tried instead to work on drawings for modifications he was going to make to the planes over the off-season.

It grew late. Henry sat up long after the other men had gone to bed, chewing his pencil, the drawing forgotten. Finally, he turned off his Coleman lantern and went to his cot. Twenty minutes later he heard whispers outside his tent. He strained to catch the words, even going so far as to hold his breath to reduce his inner noise, but had no luck in even deciphering the mood let alone the content. He heard Cora’s whisper grow harsh. A bit after that a sniffle. Gil entered the tent a short while later.

Henry felt foolish and juvenile as he pretended to be asleep, listening as Gil sat on his cot with a regretful-sounding sigh. He rubbed his hands over his face with a rasp, and his cot creaked as he lay back. He didn’t take off his shoes.

An hour later, Henry was still awake. Gil, however, was thrashing in a fitful sleep.

The wind sock was shifting.

At some point Henry fell into dreams of his own; dreams woven from the rags of memory.

Henry was small enough he could sit at the table and rest his chin on it. This always made Ma remind him, “Table manners,” as she did this time, but with a big smile on her face as she brought the roasted hen to the table. Henry knew some people had turkey for Thanksgiving, but his family didn’t have a turkey house, just a henhouse. And they only ate hens on special occasions. When he’d asked his ma why, she’d told him that hens were precious because they gave every day, but roosters were good for only one thing. She didn’t explain what that one thing was, but he figured it was pretty insignificant.

Pa sat at the head of the table. Henry was shocked by what he saw. Pa wasn’t the faded man Henry was used to seeing. Pa’s face was shaven, his hair still thick and his eyes bright blue. He still looked stern, but not broken.

Peter sat on Henry’s right, pulling at the collar of the clean shirt Ma had made him wear and button all the way up to the neck. Baby Marie was in her cradle because she was too little to eat roasted hen. But when it was time for the blessing, Ma got her and brought her to the table. “A family should always be together for the blessing. When we cannot, we must hold one another in our hearts.”

Henry closed his eyes and bowed his head. After Pa said, “Amen,” in a strong, clear voice that had grown colorless and weak many years before he died, Henry opened his eyes and looked around the table. Ma and Pa and Peter and baby Marie were gone. Sitting with him were Gil and Cora and Mercury.

T
he next morning Gil’s wind sock had changed direction entirely, and not for the better. He watched Cora from the shadows. Henry saw the undisguised longing in Gil’s eyes as she went about her business, ignoring him completely. That Henry saw all of this only meant he was
watching Cora enough to notice Gil watching her. Henry was forced to admit he was probably a moth, too.

All of these repressed emotions and the strained silence were going to be the end of a good thing. Already Henry saw Jake looking perturbed with the curt answers and crappy moods Gil and Cora were offering. And they were acting like twelve-year-olds not talking directly to one another. How long would Jake tolerate it?

“No romantic hoo-ha.”
Henry’s coming right out and confronting Gil about keeping away from Cora when they’d joined the circus would have been about as well received as a knife in the back. Henry had already driven one wedge between him and Gil the day of the storm. The tornado had dislodged it, but you couldn’t always count on a handy tornado to undo the damage to a relationship. And then when Gil had seemed better than he’d been since the day Henry had met him, Henry had been glad he’d avoided the subject.

How naive he’d been.

He was packing up the kitchen, getting ready to load it into the trailer, when he heard Jake’s uncharacteristically raised voice across the camp. “Dammit, Gil! Get that burr out from under your saddle.”

Henry looked toward the voice, but couldn’t see more than two pairs of feet on the far side of the three tied-down planes.

All Gil had to do was keep himself together for one more day. Surely the man could do that. They were heading into a two-month off-season. All of the equipment was headed to Reece’s cotton farm in the Mississippi Delta—Thomas had already delivered his plane there. Then Jake would head to Omaha, away from all man-woman drama, except for whatever he stirred up himself. Hopefully, Gil would have rediscovered his equilibrium again by February when they reassembled to practice and settle on a show schedule. The circus wouldn’t perform again until the first of March.

Gil startled Henry out of his thoughts by appearing and saying, “I’m heading out.”

“I thought we were all flying out together—when the truck and trailer are ready to go,” Henry said.

Reece had left an open invitation to all three of them to stay throughout the off-season. Henry had immediately accepted, having no home to return to. Cora had been talking about going to California. Gil’s plans for the break remained a closely guarded mystery. Each time Henry approached him, he got the same terse “I have something I need to do.”

Maybe that something was spending several weeks off by himself—a bear in hibernation. The holidays always made Henry extraordinarily lonely, but he suspected Gil preferred loneliness.

Gil shrugged. “I’m ready now. Weather might change.”

Henry didn’t like the look in Gil’s eyes. “You’d better be there when we get there.” He leaned close and gave Gil a poke in the chest. “You accepted Reece’s wife’s invitation to Thanksgiving dinner. Even you couldn’t be rude enough to sneak off beforehand.”

Henry’s head told him it would be better to let Gil do just that. But this was Henry’s first holiday in over seven years that he would spend with people around a table. He’d been looking forward to it for weeks. Was it too goddamn much to ask? One holiday?

Gil stared at Henry until the anger showing in his eyes mellowed to sarcasm. “No, even I couldn’t be that much of an ass.”

Henry gave a satisfied nod. “See you before sunset, then.”

When Gil’s plane took to the air, Cora stopped pulling up her tent stakes and stood watching it until it was no longer visible. Henry waited until she went back to the task before he went over to help her.

Mercury seemed to sense her mood and stuck closer to her heels than usual, which made folding and rolling the heavy canvas tent even more of a challenge. When they were collecting the wooden tent stakes, the dog took off with one, got fifteen feet away, turned to face them, flopped down, and started chewing it. When Cora went after it, he trotted a few more feet and repeated his actions.

“You’re going to be sorry you chewed that when the tent falls in on us next spring.” Her tone was harsh; she was never harsh with Mercury.

She tried to approach him again, with no better result. “Come over here right now, you little shit!”

Henry took her arm. “Hey, he’s just a dog.”

She jerked her arm away and stalked back to pick up the remaining stakes. “Well, he’s going to be a homeless dog if he doesn’t watch it.”

Henry sat on the ground right where he was and waited. In a few seconds, Mercury came trotting over and lay down next to him. With a gentle hand, Henry removed the tent stake from the dog’s mouth. Then he pulled Mercury into his lap and scratched him behind the ears for a bit. “Maybe it should just be you and me at Thanksgiving, little fella. Less craziness.” He chuckled as he thought of his dream, with Mercury seated right at the table, paws resting on either side of his plate as he waited patiently for the meal to begin.

Henry sat there for a few minutes, watching Cora try to fold the tent. He decided to let her struggle with it for a while, maybe work out some of that hostility.

She huffed and tugged, then finally stood up and shot him a glare. When he didn’t jump up, she walked over to him and shoved her hands on her hips. “Have you decided if you’re coming with me to California or not?” She used the semidisgusted tone a mother would on a misbehaving child.

“Gosh, with a lovely invitation like that . . .”

Closing her eyes briefly, she blew out a long breath, then sat down hard beside him. “Sorry, Henry. I’m just . . .” She threw a hand in the air.

Henry held Mercury up so his face was near hers. “What about me?” he said in a gruff little voice that he imagined Mercury would possess could he talk.

She finally broke a smile and grabbed the dog from Henry’s hands. Holding his nose to hers, she said, “Sorry to you, too.” She planted a kiss right between his ears. “Everything’s just so—up in the air.”

“We
are
a flying circus.”

“You should look into vaudeville with a sense of humor like that. Give eighty-year-old ladies a real good laugh.”

“Eighty-year-old ladies are not without their charm.” At least none of them would stomp on your heart. The three of them sat there for
a bit. Henry used his knife to smooth out ragged edges of the stake Mercury had chewed.

“So,” he finally said. “You haven’t changed your mind? I mean, if I had a family, I sure wouldn’t be spending Christmas alone in California.” She had made the break and her life was now her own. It seemed pointless to stay cut off from her family.

“It would just be one big fight—Mother ashamed and disappointed, trying to get me to change my ways; me frustrated with her shallow views. We’re both better off if I stay away. I sent her a letter saying I had to work over the holidays.”

“Going to Hollywood to gawk at movie stars . . . maybe get a peek at Valentino . . . is work?”

“Henry!” His actual name had been coming out of her mouth more than
Kid
lately. “I wish I’d never told you about that tour. I didn’t say I was going to take it! The only reason I’m going is to check into stunting for the moving pictures. We can work in the off-season doing pictures, you and I—Gil, too, if he’s still around—”

“Wait! What do you mean ‘if he’s still around’?”

She shrugged.

“He’s been better with this circus than he’s ever been—even without his own plane. That is, until you two lost your heads.” It came out more hateful than he’d intended.

The breath she took was so deep he heard it. “Well. That won’t be happening again. No need to blame me if he leaves the circus.”

“You think he’s going to leave?”

“Who knows? You said it yourself, he’s broken.”

“And you’ve finally given up on fixing him?”

“
I
do not give up on things. And I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I want to talk about going to California and getting into the moving pictures; they always need stunt fliers.”

“Because they keep dying off. Besides, you don’t fly.”

“Of course I do. Jake taught me. I just prefer wing walking—which they also need in movie stunts.”

“Knowing how to fly and stunting are two different things. Out
of the three of us, Gil’s the only one with enough skill to sell to the movies.”

“I’ve learned everything else. If I decide to stunt, I’ll stunt.”

Henry laughed. “I don’t doubt it.”

“So? Are you coming?”

“You know I told Reece I’d stay on his farm and work on the planes.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t take a couple of weeks off. It’ll give Reece time to be with his family without extra people around.”

Henry hadn’t thought about it that way, as if he was an intruder in the few weeks Reece had with his family. “What about Gil?”

“I’m not going to ask him. You can if you want.”

Henry’d have to think long and hard before he did that—for Gil’s sake. On the other hand, maybe being alone with Cora for two weeks would be Henry’s own undoing. “What’s going on with you two?” There it was, out there. Finally.

She turned her head to look square at him. “Absolutely nothing.”

Henry’s frustration outweighed his reluctance to face the truth. “So you two just kiss and run.”

“Never again.”

“How can you say that? It hasn’t looked like there’s been planning in the previous instances. Unless there’s more—”

“No! Oh, God, no!”

He was a little taken aback by her vehemence.

“Gil is not . . . available.”

He wished she’d stop talking in disjointed statements. “I did warn you, he’s a dried-out corn husk, emotionally. He’s been through things he can’t—”

“That’s not what I meant by
unavailable
. He’s married.” She shoved Mercury back into Henry’s hands, got up, and walked off, leaving him to sit there with his head spinning.

J
ake took off for Reece’s farm. Henry watched him gain altitude as Henry propped his own plane. He hoped the hours alone in the air
would help clear his head . . . and his heart. This life was suddenly feeling as if it were being held together by as many wires as a Jenny, and one by one they were snapping free.

He hoped the wings wouldn’t fall off completely.

He aimed the plane into the wind at the end of the field. Just as he was throttling up, movement off to his right caught his eye.

A car was fast approaching, going much too fast for the rough field. The driver stuck his arm and head out of the window. His bowler blew off. He waved frantically for Henry to stop.

The prohibition agent came to mind. A lawman.

Henry throttled up and took off down the field.

He didn’t look back.

The entire way to Mississippi, he assured himself that no one knew where the circus kept its equipment over the winter. His alarm was probably foolish. That man could just have been someone wanting a ride. Or a reporter wanting an interview. Or a dozen other things. Why had Henry assumed he was a lawman?