father before the small bronze plate in the grass, he always ended up feeling strangely excluded, his presence an intrusion.
John pulled the blanket around his shoulders. Down in the pond the fish were busy feeding, leaping from the water, snapping caddis and mayflies from the air. He closed his eyes and listened to them as they broke the surface, gasping, then splashed back down. As a young boy he’d often fantasized about a world in which death affected people the way it did fish: where, instead of dropping to the ground, a dying person would suddenly begin to float, lifting from the earth, drifting higher and higher. He had not thought about the notion in years, but it came back to him now as he lay beneath the wing of his plane, and he fell asleep picturing a sky full of floating bodies, men and women rising toward the clouds.
John woke the next morning to find Helen standing over him in a blue satin dress.
“Well,” she said. “What do you think?”
“What time is it?” he said, rubbing his eyes.
“It’s six. The sun’s just coming up. So? What do you think?” She planted her hands on her hips and turned a full circle.
He yawned. “Ballroom open early today?”
Helen dropped her arms to her sides. “It’s called showmanship, thanks.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“You don’t think this makes for a good costume? Sort of a ‘lovely lady of the skies’ thing?”
John sat up. The dress was sky blue with a white silk flower pinned to the belt, and Helen looked very beautiful in it.
“It’s nice,” he said.
“Nice?”
“Pretty.”
Helen curtsied. “Why, thank you kindly, Mr. Barron. I bought it back in Gunnison, with some of the money I got for my bridely duds.”
John stood up and stretched, his muscles sore from lack of sleep. “You sold your wedding dress?”
“Sure. It hurt like hell to wear. Charley’s mother was the one who picked it out, not me. Made me bleed beneath the arms. Will you fasten this for me?” She turned around and held up her hair, revealing the smooth plane of her back, crossed at the center by the lace webbing of her brassiere. The sight sent a slight tingle through John, and as he began fastening the dress’s hooks, he realized that this was likely the first time he’d ever seen a girl’s full back exposed to daylight. All of his romantic experiences had taken place at night, under the added darkness of secrecy. Hurried trysts in closets and barns and the back of cars. All whispers and fumbling.
“You have a mole on your lower back,” John said, working his way up the hooks, “that’s shaped like a peanut.”
“I suppose that’s good to know.”
“I thought so.”
A loose strand of hair dropped through Helen’s fingers, falling to the nape of her neck.
“I haven’t thanked you yet,” she said. “Have I?”
John paused. “Thanked me?”
“For taking me with you.” She turned her head slightly, eyeing him over her shoulder.
He went back to fastening the dress. “I didn’t have a choice, remember?”
“You did, though,” she said. “You could have just taken off yourself.”
“All done,” John said, clasping the final hook.
She turned to face him, releasing her hair, allowing it to fall down her back. The first sunlight was in her eyes, making them sparkle. “You could have left me in Kansas. With Charley,” she said. “But you didn’t.”
John stepped away. “Who’s this Charley you keep talking about?” he said, pulling his pants up over his long johns. “I don’t know any Charleys. Never have.” He stepped into his boots. “Now come on, before some other husband-and-wife flying team beats us to Mooney.”
Helen leaned in and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Yes, dear.”
They made a strong buzz over Mooney. John took the plane all the way up to eight hundred feet before dropping into a steep dive. By the time they leveled out over the town’s eastern edge, they were traveling at nearly eighty miles an hour, so fast the Jenny’s bracing wires began to vibrate and hum.
John gave the tail some drag as they came shrieking past the town limits. Clapboard shacks gave way to neat rows of plain brick homes and then to storefronts, early sunlight flashing across their display windows, and then the town began to thin out again, to recede, the buildings shrinking, walls changing back to wood and then to tin and soon John and Helen were crossing out of Mooney altogether.
“What do you think?” yelled Helen.
“Can’t tell yet! See on the second go-round!”
John waited until he and Helen were a few miles out of town, flying over the neighboring farmland, before bringing the plane back around. As they neared Mooney again, John let up on the gas, dropping the plane to forty miles an hour. The purpose of a first buzz was to draw people outside, but the point of the second was to reel them in: give them time to gawk and point and read the lettering on the wings. Slow and low to get the dough, he thought, and already he could see the residents of Mooney pouring into the streets, shouting and waving at the Jenny.
“Got a full house today!” Helen shouted from the front cockpit.
John motioned to his chin. “Your strap’s undone!”
Helen felt around beneath her jaw until she found the dangling ends. “Thanks!” she said, retying her leather helmet. “Well! I guess this is my stop!”
Then, before John could say anything, she took hold of the bracing wires and hoisted herself out of the cockpit.
John gripped the levers. “What are you doing?” he screamed. “Get back in here! Helen!”
But she was already maneuvering her legs over the cockpit’s rim.
John grabbed for her arm, but there was no way to reach without letting go of the controls. Furious, he sat back down and watched, helplessly, as she lowered herself onto the wing. Once she’d found her footing, she crouched down beside the fuselage and braced against the wind.
“Here! Hold on to the mooring!” John yelled, pointing to a small loop of rope at the wing’s base.
Helen crawled toward him, the wind blowing her dress around her head. As she grabbed hold of the mooring, John seized her shoulder strap.
“Get into the cockpit!” He tried to pull her up, but her hold on the mooring was too strong. He could feel the satin about to rip in his fist.
“Just fly the plane!” she said, trying to shake him off. “I’m fine!”
“The slipstream’s too strong! You’ll fall!” John yelled. He thought about grabbing her by the hair, dragging her up into the cockpit with him.
“You’ve got bigger problems!” she said, gesturing forward with her chin.
John glanced up: the town’s telephone cables loomed dead ahead. He let go of Helen for only a second, to give a quick pull on the elevator, jerking the plane into an incline, but by the time he turned back to her, she was already halfway to the wing’s tip. The wind tore at her dress and her hair, but she moved quickly, sliding her boots across the inward struts, working hand over hand along the bracing wires. Soon enough she was at the very end of the wing, wrapping her arms around the outer posts to secure herself.
John checked the crowd. Main Street was filled with spectators; men and women were already rushing down the sidewalks in the direction of the Jenny, stumbling, tripping over one another, everyone screaming and pointing at Helen.
John saw that she was arranging herself in some sort of theatrical pose now: extending her arms, leaning all
