Wings

she chased all of them around the living room pretending to be a monster. Chris didn't appear again until dinner was called, and he glared at Cassie when he did. He was still annoyed at her about the loop she had done, but on the other hand she had won his father's praise for him, so he didn't dare complain too much or too loudly. They were both getting what they wanted out of the arrangement. She wanted to fly, and he wanted the money. His father's praise was an added bonus.

Half an hour later, they all sat down to an enormous meal, of com and pork, com bread and mashed potatoes. Glynnis had brought the pork, and Megan the com, and Oona had grown the potatoes. They all grew their own food, and when they needed more they bought it at Strong's. It was the only grocery store for miles, and the best one in the region. The Strongs were doing well, even in tough times, and theirs was a solid business. Oona said as much again as they finished the meal, and Cassie heard a familiar sound of wheels outside the house, almost as though on cue. It was easy to guess who it was, he dropped by almost every night after dinner, particularly now that they were both out of school for the summer.

Cassie had known Bobby Strong, the only son of the local grocer, since they were children. He was a good boy, and they had been good friends for years, but for the past two years they'd been more than that, though Cassie insisted she didn't quite know what. But her mother and Megan always reminded her that they had gotten married at seventeen, so she better know what she was doing with Bobby. He was serious and responsible, and her parents liked him too. But Cassie wasn't ready to admit to herself, or to him, that she loved him.

She liked being with him. She liked him, and his friends. She liked his good manners and gentle ways. His thoughtfulness, his patience. He had a kind heart, and she loved the way he was around her nieces and nephews. She enjoyed a lot of things about him, but he still wasn't as exciting as airplanes. She had never met a boy who was. Maybe there was no such thing. Maybe that was something you just had to accept. But she would have loved to know a boy who was as exciting as a “Gee Bee Super Sportster” or a “Beech Staggerwing” or a Wedell-Williams racing plane. Bobby was a nice kid, but he didn't even compare to an airplane.

“Hi, Mrs. O'Malley… Glynn… Meg… Colleen… wow! Looks like it'll be pretty soon!” Colleen looked huge as she tried to gather up her kids to leave, and Oona helped her.

“Maybe tonight if I don't stop eating my mother's apple pie,” Colleen grinned. She was only five years older than they were, but Cassie felt as though they were light-years apart sometimes. Her sisters were all married and so settled and so different. She knew instinctively that somehow she couldn't be like them. She wondered sometimes if there was a curse on her, if her father had wanted a boy so badly that it had somehow damaged her before birth. Maybe she was a freak. She liked boys. She liked Bobby particularly. But she liked airplanes and her own independence a whole lot better.

Bobby shook hands with her father, and said hi to Chris, and all the little kids climbed all over him. Then a little while later her mother and the oldest sisters went out to the kitchen to clean up, and her mother told her not to bother, and just to go sit with Bobby. At least Cassie had washed her face by then, but you could still see traces of the grease that had been there before dinner.

“How was your day?” he asked with a shy smile. He was awkward, but likable, and he tried to be tolerant of her unusual ideas and her fascination with her father's airplanes. He pretended to be interested, and listened to her rattle on about a new plane that had come through, or her father's cherished Vega. But the truth was, she could have said anything, he just wanted to be near her. He came by faithfully almost every night, and Cassie still acted surprised when he did, much to her parents' amusement.

She was just not ready to face the seriousness of his commitment, or what it might mean if he persisted in visiting her. Only a year from now she would graduate, and if he kept dropping by like this, he might ask her to marry him, and expect to marry her as soon as they finished high school. The very thought of that terrified her and she just couldn't face it. She wanted so much more than that. Time, and space, and college. And the feeling she got when she did a loop, or a spin. Being with Bobby was like driving to Ohio. Safe, and solid and uneventful. He wasn't like flying anywhere. And yet she knew that if he had stopped coming to see her, she would miss him.

“I went up in my dad's Jenny with Chris today.” She filled him in, trying to sound casual. Getting too serious with Bobby always scared her. “It was fun. We did some lazy eights, and a loop.”

“Sounds like Chris is getting good,” Bobby said politely, but like Chris, airplanes didn't do much to excite him. “What else did you do?” He was always interested in her, and secretly he thought her beautiful, not like the other boys who thought she was too tall, or her hair was too red, or liked her because her figure was great, or thought she was weird because she knew a lot about airplanes. Bobby liked her because of who she was, even if at times he recognized the possibility that he might not understand her. But that was endearing about him too. A lot of things were, which was why her feelings about him confused her. Her mother told her that she had felt that way about Pat at first too. Commitment was always hard, Oona said. And that made it even harder for Cassie. She didn't know what to think of what she felt for Bobby.

“Oh, I don't know…” Cassie went on to answer his question, trying to remember all she'd done. All of it had to do with airplanes. “I gassed a bunch of planes, tinkered with the engine on the Jenny before Chris took it out. I think I might even have fixed it.” She touched her face self-consciously then with a grin. “I got a lot of grease on my face doing it. My dad had a fit when he saw me. I couldn't get it all off. You should have seen me before dinner!”

“I thought maybe you were getting liver spots,” he teased and she laughed. He was a good sport, and he knew how much her dreams meant to her, like college. He had no plans to go himself. He was going to stay home and help his father with their business, just as he did every day after school, and all through the summer.

“You know, Fred Astaire's new movie Follow the Fleet is coming to the movie theater this Saturday night. Want to go? They say it's a great movie.” Bobby looked at her hopefully, she nodded slowly, and smiled up at him.

“I'd like that.”

A few minutes later, the last of her sisters and their children left, and Cassie and Bobby were alone on the porch again. Her parents were in the living room. She knew they could see them from where they sat, but her parents were always discreet about Bobby's visits. They liked him, and Pat wouldn't have been unhappy if they'd decided to get married when she finished school next June. As long as they didn't get themselves into trouble first, they could spend all the time they wanted cooing on the front porch. It was fine with him. Better than having her hang around the airport.

Inside the house, Pat was telling Oona about Chris's loop that afternoon. He was so proud of him. “The boy's a natural, Oonie.” He grinned and she smiled at him, grateful that he had finally gotten the son he had so desperately wanted.

On the porch, Bobby was telling her about his day at the grocery store, and how the Depression was affecting food prices all over the country, not just in Illinois. He had a dream of opening a series of stores one day, in several towns, maybe as far reaching as Chicago. But they all had dreams. Cassie's were a lot wilder than his, and harder to talk about. His just sounded young and ambitious.

“Do you ever think of doing something totally different, and not what your father does at all?” she asked him, intrigued by the idea, even though all she wanted was to follow in her own father's footsteps. But those footsteps were totally forbidden to her, which made them all the more appealing.

“Not really,” Bobby answered quietly. “I like his business actually. People need food, and they need good food. We do something important for people, even if it doesn't seem very exciting. But maybe it could be.”

“Maybe it could,” she smiled at him, as she heard a sudden droning sound above, and looked up toward the familiar noise of the engines. “That's Nick… he's on his way to San Diego with some cargo. Then he's stopping in San Francisco on the way back, to bring back some mail on one of our contracts.” She knew he was flying the Handley Page, she could tell just from the sound of the engines.

“He probably gets tired of that too,” Bobby said wisely. “It sounds exciting to us, but to him it's probably only a job, just like my father's.”

“Maybe.” But Cassie knew different. Flying wasn't like that. “Pilots are a different breed. They love what they do. It's almost as though they can't bear the thought of doing anything else. It's in their bones. They live and breathe it. They love it more than anything.” Her eyes shone as she said it.

“I guess,” Bobby looked baffled by what she was saying, “I can't say I understand it.”

“I don't think most people can… it's like a mysterious fascination. A wonderful gift. To people who love flying, it means more than anything.”

He laughed softly in the warm night air. “I think you just see it as very romantic. I'm not so sure they do.