pang of excitement through John; he might actually get to sleep in a bed that night.
This, he thought as he took it all in—the party, the pumpkin patch, the warm afternoon sunlight—this was what he loved best about barnstorming. Between the last five towns combined he’d made seventy-two dollars profit, but this morning he’d landed to a champagne toast and a warm bed. You never knew when your luck would turn. You just cranked the propeller, lifted off, and followed the silver thread of the railroad tracks.
John climbed out of the cockpit and stood on the plane’s wing. Everyone, the men, the women, seemed stunned to silence by his arrival. Probably none of these people had ever seen a plane before, John thought. And even if they had seen a plane, they’d never had one roar to a stop right in front of their faces. He scanned the crowd for Marlene.
“Ladies and gentlemen of Bunting,” he said, unzipping his leather aviator jacket. “I can’t thank you enough for this warm welcome. When I saw all of you gathered here, I almost cried tears of joy.”
A young man approached John with a bottle of champagne. “Now you’re really trying to make me cry,” John said, taking the bottle. He popped the cork and let the fizz run down his glove before taking a long sip.
The man’s fist hit John on the side of the head. It flew up out of nowhere and knocked him backward against the fuselage. Champagne splashed across John’s face and chest. Through the ringing in his ears, he heard people shouting, rushing around. The man who’d hit him climbed up on the wing and stood over him now, a huge silhouette blocking out the sun.
John braced himself for another blow, but before his attacker could swing again, an arm slid around the man’s waist and yanked him down off the wing.
A hot throbbing started in John’s temple. When he touched the side of his head, his fingers came back wet with blood. Two men were struggling beside the wing of his plane. The man being restrained was young, about John’s own age, with a thick black mustache. The man holding him was older, his beard streaked with gray.
“This boy is probably a present from someone, Charley,” said the older man. “I’m sure he’s here as a gift to you.”
“Who sent him, then?” said Charley, writhing.
“Why don’t you stop thrashing about and ask him?”
Charley glared at John. A vein shaped like a tiny lightning bolt pulsed at the center of his forehead. “Well?” he said. “Are you a gift?”
“I’m here to offer you the gift of flight, if that’s what you mean,” John said. He scanned the crowd, waiting for a reaction, but they seemed frightened and confused. Some of the women looked like they were about to cry. John felt a cold, sinking sensation in his stomach.
“This party is for me, right?” he said. “John Barron? The pilot?” He gestured to his plane. Strings of pumpkin seeds dangled from the lower wings. “Is there a Marlene here?”
“For you?” the older man said. “Son, this is a wedding. You’ve crashed into my daughter’s wedding.” He pointed to the aisle runner—the long strip of white cloth John had mistaken for a runway—lying rumpled and torn beneath the wheels of the plane.
“I’m the groom,” said Charley, pointing a thumb at himself. “And that was my champagne, asshole.”
John felt very weak all of a sudden. It was then that he noticed, standing at the far end of the field, behind the crowd, a young girl in a white dress. She stared blankly at John, her dark red hair pinned above her face. She had one hand on the fence railing; the other hung limp at her side. Her dress was decorated with intricate beadwork that sparkled in the late sunlight. A bouquet of pink roses lay at her feet.
Then, all at once she turned and ran toward the house, her dress dragging behind her in the grass. Charley ran after her.
John felt a growing, painful pressure on the side of his head.
“Come down from there. You’re bleeding,” said the father of the bride. “Let’s get you some medical attention.” He put out his hand.
John reached for it but grabbed only air. A wave of panic hit him. He felt an overwhelming need to escape from there, to climb back into his plane and lose himself in the cold, oceanic emptiness of the sky. But he was so dizzy.
He turned to the crowd. The men and women were blurs to him now, watery shapes smearing into one another. “Sorry about the misunderstanding, everyone,” he said, blinking hard. “If one of you would just point me to the nearest petrol station, I’ll be on my way.”
Then he stepped down from his plane and passed out in the grass.
John woke with a start. The skin around his temple felt hot and swollen, and when he touched it, he found that someone had taped a small gauzy bandage over his cut. He knew he should lie back down and ice his head, but all he could think about was getting back to his plane. He threw off his blankets and sat up. How long had he slept? Slipping on his aviator jacket, he opened the door to his room and peered out. The hallway was dark and empty.
John snuck past the other bedrooms and headed downstairs. When he reached the foyer, he stopped and wrote a note on a pad by the telephone.
John placed a stack of dollar bills beside the note—practically everything he had. The bills were wrinkled and dirty and the pile sponged to one side. John frowned and picked up the pen.
He read over his work one more time and, satisfied, opened the front door and slipped outside into the foggy morning.
The light was still poor. It had to be at least an hour before sunrise—not a good time to fly, but John didn’t care. He looked around until he spotted the silhouette of his Jenny, still parked in the pumpkin patch, ready to lift off again. He hurried over.
As he approached the plane, though, he noticed a figure sitting on the lower port wing. Lord God, he thought. Charley. Waiting to pound him. John struggled to come up with some way of avoiding a fight, something he could say, but when he neared the plane he saw that the figure wasn’t Charley at all, but a girl. The bride.
She was still wearing her wedding dress. On her feet were a pair of scuffed black boots. Her hair hung down the front of her shoulder in a long red braid. To John she looked like a discarded fairy-tale character, a princess plucked from a storybook and dropped onto the wing of his plane in a heap of twinkling fabric.
“I left a note,” John said to her. “I’m not trying to sneak off.”
The girl nodded at a valise sitting beside the plane’s wheel. “I am,” she said.
It took John a moment to understand her.
“You’re joking,” he said.
“I don’t weigh a pound more than a hundred and ten,” she said. “And I’m good with maps.”
John ran a hand over the back of his neck. What was it about pilots? he wondered. What made the lonely girls fall so hard for them? Maybe it was the outfit?—The cap and gloves, the scarf snapping in the wind.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” said the girl, as though she’d sensed what he was thinking. “I’m about to leave a man behind. I’m not looking for a new one.”
John climbed aboard. “Sorry,” he said. “I don’t need a copilot.”
“I won’t get in your way.”
“You’re in my way now,” he said, brushing past her. He opened the supply box and removed the doping tape. “I need you to move off the wing. I have to check for tears in the linen.”
But the girl didn’t move.
