Authors: Walter J. Boyne
They grabbed a bus to Greenwich Village. His appetite, always
hearty no matter what his mood, was returning, signaling im
peratively that he wanted a regular meal. Millie was sampling the pushcarts, snacking as they walked, obviously searching for some
thing.
"Funny-looking trees. I'll take you out and show you the redwoods and sequoias someday."
"These are ailanthus—supposed to be good for purifying the air."
He stopped, dumbfounded. The woman knew everything!
"Aha! Patchin Place! I've found this for you."
He looked bemused.
"Didn't you tell me your dad was a Wobbly?"
"What's a Wobbly?"
"You know, a socialist, a communist, one of those 'ist' words, people throwing bombs, wearing beards, you know."
He couldn't believe it. He'd told her once about his father, and she'd stored it away.
He nodded, and she went on, "Well, John Reed lived here."
Bandfield smiled. "He was Dad's hero!"
"Well, a lot of people think he was a communist. He's buried in Moscow, you know. If you haven't read his book,
Ten Days That
Shook the World,
I'll get you a copy."
A huge Irish policeman loomed up, a comic-strip figure with his
giant fists and huge billy club.
"Excuse me, officer, do you know which is John Reed's house?"
The cop smiled benignly at Millie, answering in a deep brogue, "Sure an' I don't, my darling, but you can ask the postman."
Stifling their laughter, happy with another secret joke, they walked on, hand in hand, Bandfield wondering if a person as
sensitive as Millie could be a pilot, or even a pilot's wife. Flyers were
a rough lot. Would she fit in?
Bandfield was starving, and as they walked, the restaurants looked
successively better. They passed Bertolotti's, and the sharp scent of
oregano almost buckled his knees; finally he dragged her into Fortu
no's on Bleeeker Street, telling the owner, "Bring us food, lots of
food." They started with a plate of thinly sliced tongue, slathered in
oil and vinegar. Soup, spaghetti, and a broiled chicken followed, and despite all she'd eaten, she stayed even with him. He wondered if he could afford to marry her.
They went back to the hotel and napped for two hours, cuddling
ly with their clothes on. He stared at the ceiling, wondering what
Lindbergh was doing. Gradually the realization came that whatever
it was, it wasn't as good as being there with Millie. Even with clothes on.
He thought she was sleeping, and he slipped out of bed.
"Where are you going?"
"To get the papers and see how Slim is doing."
She was primped and ready to go when he came back an hour later. "I thought you were like the man who went out for a jar of olives and didn't come back for twenty years."
He grinned, washed hurriedly, and took her downstairs. The light
was bright in the street. At the curb was a horse and carriage. He put
her inside, enjoying her squeals of pleasure. He wouldn't let her
look in the big paper bag. In Central Park he kissed her and brought
a bottle of champagne out of the bag, along with two of the thick glass tumblers from the room.
"This is supposed to be good, aged champagne. The bellboy said
he made it last week." He popped the champagne and poured. Then
he produced two smaller boxes. From one he took a ring; from the other a magnifying glass. He handed them to her and said, "If you look close, you'll see a diamond. Will you marry me?"
*
Roosevelt Field, Long Island/June 24, 1927
Bandfield slowly folded the newspaper on its original creases and
laid it back on the floor of the Stutz, where he had tossed it the week
before. He slumped back in the seat, twisting his cap in his hands,
trying to erase the front-page picture of two people he knew. Short,
lean-faced Raymond Orteig was handing a check for $25,000 to
Bandfield's old flying-school buddy,
Colonel
Charles A. Lindbergh.
Even the check was an affront, an ornate oversize vellum sheet decorated with an American flag and a drawing of the
Spirit of St.
Louis.
Lindbergh had gotten a check from Orteig; Bandfield himself
had gotten onion soup!
It was depressing. No pilot, not Icarus, not Orville, no one, had ever been so honored. The President had sent the cruiser
Memphis
to bring him home, and there had been tumultuous ceremonies in Washington at which Slim was promoted from captain to colonel
and got the Distinguished Flying Cross. He'd flown to New York in
an Army pursuit plane and been brought to the parade on Mayor Jimmy Walker's official yacht, escorted by everything that could
float, from fireboats to destroyers. Millions of people had lined the
parade route, spraying a confetti welcome from every window. The
papers had said that eighteen hundred tons of ticker tape and shredded phonebooks had showered down on Lindbergh's parade.
A glutton for punishment, Bandy had brought Millie to watch. He had muscled his way to the front of the crowd, leaving Millie
pinned against a shop window, as Lindbergh's car edged by, flanked
by grinning mounted police. The tall pilot was standing in the back,
Mayor Walker on his left, Grover Whalen in front of him, smiling
from behind a walrus mustache. Bandfield had yelled "Slim!" at the
top of his lungs, but just as the big open Packard touring car rolled
by, Lindbergh had turned to wave at a man who had shinnied up a lightpole, his child clinging precariously to his neck.
The gap between them, the planeless, out-of-work Bandfield and
Colonel Lindbergh, the new emperor of aviation, again drove home
just how much he had lost.
His hard conscience chewed on the injustice of it all. Yet in a way
it was perfect, Lindbergh's turning his back on him just as fate had.
If he had done as he should have done, stuck by his airplane every minute, it wouldn't have burned. If it had been an accident, some
freak wiring problem in the hangar, he would have been able to save
it. And his presence would have prevented sabotage. In either case,
he could have been the man in the Packard, waving to the crowd.
It only bothered him when he was alone. When he was with
Millie, whether pushing through the milling crowds of straw-hatted
men that jammed the streets of the garment district or doing her familiar walking-cafeteria routine through the pushcarts on Hester Street, absolutely nothing else mattered. She was a joy, a know-it-all he didn't mind knowing it all. She loved the roiling crowds of
foreigners, many still dressed in native clothes she could identify at a
glance—Russian, Armenian, Hungarian. One day she insisted that they bring a box Brownie so he could take pictures of her with women in their ethnic costumes to show her schoolchildren in
Green Bay. She took a special pleasure in using sign language and
smiles to cajole the women into posing.
They walked the streets with arms entwined, oblivious to both
approving and disapproving stares, squeezing each other, prodding, poking, sometimes stopping to kiss. They played a "goofus" game,
trying to be first to spot interesting, ridiculous, or frightening characters. She invariably won because he spent half his time
watching the intense play of emotion on her face. She could change
at a glance from a concerned moue about a shoeless child to a raucous laugh at a burly Armenian lady dressing down her tiny husband, then to tears of compassion for the often frightened, bewildered look of a new immigrant family. They had reached a point where they no longer had to talk at length; a word or a wink was enough to communicate. Like yesterday at the ball game—the
Yankees had beaten the Red Sox 11 to 4, but the high point of the game was Lou Gehrig's record-breaking third homer. She had
simply looked up at him, and he knew how truly happy and excited
she was.
The big difference now was in their planning. She had happily agreed to marry him, asking only that they keep it secret until she had talked to her mother. They planned to return to California; she would teach while he and Hadley built and sold another plane like the
Rocket.
He laid his arm lovingly on the Stutz, wondering how much longer he'd have it to drive, and when or if he'd ever have another car to match it. Glancing at his watch, he realized that Winter was due back from his hop in the Waco with Millie. Jack was de
termined to teach Millie if not to fly at least not to be airsick, and he
had been giving her an early-morning flight almost every day. For
the first time in his life, Bandfield worried whether flying was really
safe; he'd far rather have flown with Millie himself, but Winter was
adamant.
In his pocket was the latest letter from Hadley Roget, more irascible than usual, still furious about the hangar fire, complaining
bitterly about Bandfield's dilly-dallying in New York while he was
building another airplane. Inspired by the Lindbergh mania, a rich businessman had announced the Pineapple Derby, with a $25,000 first prize and $10,000 second prize for a race from the West Coast
to Hawaii. The race date was August 6, and Hadley was scrambling
to rebuild a wreck to enter. He'd enclosed a photo—hardly encouraging, for the battered Breese monoplane was in rough shape. He promised to have the engine overhauled by the end of June, pleading with Bandy to return and help.
Bandfield thought about it. Hawaii wasn't Paris, and the winning
pilot wouldn't be Lindbergh. But it was something.
The familiar sound of a Wright-Hispano engine broke into his thoughts. It was a symbol of another era, one that Lindbergh had left behind in a single flight behind his Wright Whirlwind. He watched Winter whip across the field at twenty feet before pulling up in a chandelle. If Millie could take that, she could take most anything.
When Winter taxied in, he could see from the vomit smeared along the side of the fuselage and across the tail that she couldn't take it. She was resting, her face pale, with her head against the side of the cockpit coaming. Winter shut down the engine and leaped out, obviously angry with himself for having made her airsick.
Millie gingerly climbed out when Bandfield walked up with a
bucket and pulled it out of his hands. "I threw it up, I'll clean it up."
It was traditional, but Bandfield wouldn't permit it.
"No, my fierce little rasper, you sit over there, and I'll do it." He
tenderly sat her on the Stutz's running board, taking the bucket back. As he worked, Winter apologized. "Millie, I'm sorry. You
were doing fine till I pulled that stupid approach. I was just feeling
my oats because I got news this morning that my Vega would be
ready in time for the Pineapple Derby. I was going to ask you to go
with me."
They spoke simultaneously. Millie said, "I'm going!" as Bandfield
said, "She's not going!"
It was their first argument. Millie blamed being sick on not
having breakfast. "We're going to Hawaii, Bandy, like it or not. You
aren't going to be the only one to see the ocean at sunrise, and all the other pretty things you tell me about!" Her voice softened, and
she touched his arm. "Bandy, you want to be a flyer, I want to be a
teacher and a writer. I need this as much as you do. Is that so wrong?"
The answer was easy. "Us pilots are all replaceable. If Lindbergh
hadn't made it to Paris, I would have, or Bruno would have. You are irreplaceable, and you might not make it."
" 'We pilots,' you should have said. And no one is irreplaceable,
least of all me. If you are talking about me being irreplaceable for you, what about the other side of it? Aren't you irreplaceable to me?"
"You know what I mean. It's going to be a lot tougher than Lindbergh's flight. He could have missed France, but he'd have hit
Spain or Norway, somewhere. If you're off four degrees going to
Hawaii, it's curtains. There's nothing out there but a lot of deep blue ocean!"
She hesitated for a moment and asked, "Are you going to fly in the race?" He nodded. "If you are, I am." And he knew she meant it.
*
Roosevelt Field, Long Island/June 28, 1927
Every trip back to Roosevelt Field was agony for Bandfield; he could
never avoid looking at the scar where the hangar housing the
Rocket
had been. This time he was on a mission of mercy. Richard Byrd had been very good to him when he came, an unknown pilot in an
unknown airplane. Byrd probably needed a little morale boost, but
was too proud to ask for it.