The Aviator's Wife (6 page)

“I’m sorry—I haven’t had a chance to see Mexico yet, except from the train.”

“I understand,” he said. Then he turned and stared straight ahead, his chiseled cheekbones and smooth brow immobile.

I thought and thought of something to say; something important enough for him. But I couldn’t, and so we rode the rest of
the way in silence. It wasn’t long; soon the car turned off the road and bumped across a wide, flat field dotted with several outbuildings. The platform where Daddy and all the dignitaries must have stood, waiting for his landing days earlier, still remained; now-tattered bunting featuring the colors of both the Mexican and United States flags was suddenly illuminated by the headlights of our car.

Outside the largest structure, a horse stood, tethered to a railing.

The car stopped, and we both got out; I followed the colonel into that building, so large it resembled a barn. Instead of being divided into stalls, however, the place was cavernous. Instead of horses, planes were housed within it. And instead of the fragrance of sweet hay and horse manure, the air was noxious with the fumes
from oil and gasoline.

“Good morning,” the colonel called to a man wearing mechanic’s coveralls who scrambled hastily from a camp bed. There was a rifle next to the bed. The man yawned, but then his face creased into a proud grin as he recognized his visitor.

“Oh, it’s you, Colonel!”

“I trust there’s been no trouble?”

“None at all! But of course, you see, I have my weapon. Just in case, Colonel.”

Nodding briskly, the colonel grabbed a wrench and strode in the direction of an airplane parked at the far end of the barn. It took me a moment to realize that this was his plane;
the
plane. The
Spirit of St. Louis
.

I took off after him, glad for my flat golf shoes, as there were treacherous puddles of slippery grease dotting the ground. “Oh, Colonel, may I see it?”

“Please, call me Charles,”
he called over his shoulder.

“If you’ll call me Anne.”

My escort stopped for a moment. He nodded slowly, as if mulling over the proposition. Then he said, “Anne.”

It was a good thing he didn’t say anything else, as suddenly my ears were filled with the roaring sound of my own pulse. How can I describe how it felt, to have
him
say my name? Oh, it was rubbish, ridiculous, I knew, but for once
I felt as if I might understand the literal definition of the word
swoon
.

Then he continued toward his plane. “I just want to tighten an axle. I noticed it was loose when I landed.”

“Why did that man have a rifle?”

Charles sighed. “To protect my plane from souvenir hunters. They tore off pieces of it when I landed in France. Since then, I’ve had someone guarding it at all times.”

“Oh.” I scrambled
to keep up with him; he was so tall, his stride so long. And I was so short. We passed several planes, and I wondered which one we would fly in. Of course I knew, even before I saw it up close, we couldn’t fly in the
Spirit of St. Louis
. It was famously built just for one; one courageous, lone flyer.

Who was now on his hands and knees, crawling under his machine. I watched, awed; I had seen this
plane only in newsreels. So while I recognized the wide, blunt wings; the cockpit built so that its pilot could see only out the sides, not the front—there was some technical reason for this, I remembered, but couldn’t recall it; the jaunty
Spirit of St. Louis
painted on the nose, black against the silver of the body; still, I couldn’t help but think that it was so much smaller in person. Just
like a movie star; just like Gloria Swanson—I giggled, remembering. How odd to think that this plane was now even more famous than she was!

“What’s so funny?” that reedy voice demanded, from beneath the plane.

“Nothing.”

“When I landed the other day I thought I felt something give. I thought—aha! There it is!” And after a few methodical grunts, the colonel emerged, still on his hands and knees,
from beneath the plane; his face was greasy, and his hair flopped down into his eyes. He had a grin on his face as he remained on the ground, resting his back against the wheel of his plane.

He looked so relaxed now, not the stiff, uncomfortable figure in evening clothes from the night before. I hadn’t realized how
tense he had been then. Now his limbs looked loose, lanky; he patted the plane
in the same manner as a cowboy caressing his favorite horse. I almost felt as if I was intruding on an intimate scene.

“May I touch it?” I asked, surprised by my boldness.

“Of course!” Charles leaped to his feet. “Go on—you can’t hurt it!” He grinned again, this time so wide that his entire face relaxed, his eyes crinkling up boyishly.

“Why, it’s fabric!” I couldn’t believe it; this machine
that had carried him all the way across the ocean was made of nothing but cloth and wire!

“Yes. Fabric covered in dope—that’s a kind of strengthening liquid. That’s what makes it strong enough but also light enough to fly.”

“Is the plane we’re going up in made of fabric, as well?”

“Yes. But don’t worry, Miss—Anne. I assure you, it’s perfectly safe.”

“Oh, I’m sure it is.” I wanted to explain
to him that I wasn’t afraid; how could I be? There was no one I trusted more than Charles Lindbergh, even though I had just met him. Who else could I trust to launch me into the sky?

The next minutes were full of activity; after Charles inspected it, the guard hooked up the nose of a different plane—a biplane, I recognized from Charles’s discourse the night before—to a tractor. This one was painted
blue with a vivid orange trim, not the monochromatic silver and gray of the
Spirit of St. Louis
. With a startling roar that scattered the swallows gathered near the entrance, the tractor fired up and towed the plane out of the building. Charles found a helmet and goggles for me, and I followed him—again, running to keep up—out of the barn and to the plane, which was now at the end of a narrow,
closely cropped strip of grass in the middle of the field. In the faint morning light,
I could barely make out a flag at the end of this runway, waving in the gentle breeze.

The air was warm and smelled sweet, like rock candy. There were a few white, puffy clouds high above, and I couldn’t believe that in a few moments I would be among them.

Buckling my helmet beneath my chin, I eyed the plane;
the two seats were in tandem, the one in back slightly higher than the one in front. They were both open to the sky.

“How do we get in?”

“We climb up on the wing,” Charles answered. Then he leaned toward me and tightened the helmet strap. “There.” He studied me solemnly, nodding, as if assuring himself that I was as snug as possible. I felt the careful weight of his attention yet knew, at the
same time, that I was merely part of his preflight checklist, represented by a piece of paper he had tucked in a pocket; he had already measured the fuel, tested the throttle, wiped the smudges off his goggles. Then he busied himself with pulling on his leather gloves.

“It’s very loud and very windy up there,” he told me, his voice suddenly all business, brisk and gruff. “We won’t be able to
communicate. There are controls in your seat, but don’t worry, they’re not operable. I’ll be in back, you’ll be in front. Make sure you buckle your harness strap when you get in. I’d keep my hands inside if I were you. Oh—and chew this.” Reaching into the pocket of his jacket, he pulled out a stick of gum.

“Why?”

“It’ll pop your ears. You’ll see.”

“All right.” Obediently, I removed the wrapper
and popped the gum in my mouth. “Anything else?” I mumbled, chewing away until my jaws ached.

“No. Just relax. And have fun.”

Then I was being helped up onto the wing, made of that same
fabric as the
Spirit of St. Louis
, but it felt sturdy, stable, beneath my feet. Climbing into the small seat in front, I found a harness that reached across my chest, and secured it. The top wing of the plane
formed a kind of canopy above me. There was a stick and a round instrument panel in front of me: the controls Charles had told me about. There was also a pedal at my feet. I was cramped in this cockpit and couldn’t have stretched my legs. I wondered how he had stayed in such a place for forty hours, even in the larger cockpit of the
Spirit of St. Louis;
his legs were so long.

I felt, before I
heard or saw, the propeller turn in front of me; the plane shuddered, and a slap of wind hit my face. The engine sputtered, then roared to life, and I chewed my gum vigorously to drown out the surprisingly loud whine. Then we were rambling down the field, picking up speed; I could feel every rut and bump in the ground as we tumbled over it, still clumsy, so clumsy—how could we ever take wing? The
ground came toward me faster and faster, bumpier and bumpier, until suddenly, it was smooth; no more clumsiness, no more friction. It was as if I were suspended in time, suspended in air—and then, as my stomach decided to test its own boundaries, I realized that I was.

I was
airborne
. My heart was rising in my throat, my stomach first leaping, then tumbling, as we went up, up, up … the tips of
trees, green, leafy, so close I was sure I could touch them. Then they were below me.

The plane banked toward the right, and suddenly I was looking back down at the airfield, the buildings, the horse getting smaller and smaller until it turned into a toy. The air slapped and then tore at my face; my eyes stung, even behind the goggles. My ears felt as if they were full of water. This pressure
in them built until I remembered the gum. Chewing furiously, I felt first my
left, then my right ear pop, and I could hear again the reassuring groan of the engine, the wind whistling past my face.

The plane leveled out. Now I couldn’t stop looking, craning my head this way and that; below, on my right, were hills. Tops of hills! And houses that looked like dollhouses. Fields were laid out neatly
in geometric shapes, squares and rectangles.

The clouds remained above us; it appeared we wouldn’t be touching them, after all. But it didn’t matter; there was too much to see, anyway. Too much for me to absorb—I didn’t feel weightless; there was no danger of me floating out of the plane, as I admit I had feared. Although I did feel curiously light,
above
. Above all the troubles of the world,
above all my fears and doubts. Just as Charles had said.

Charles!
My heart thrilled at my casual memory of his name, as if, for a brief moment, I was one of the golden people, too. And he was behind me! Again, I had almost forgotten about him even as I trusted him completely. Without a single doubt, I had placed my very being in his hands, certain he would take care of it, of me. And in that
moment, that first moment of flight, of my breaking of the rules of gravity—I broke the rules of my heart, as well. For I had strictly governed it until this moment; this moment when I gave it, literally and figuratively, to the man seated behind me. The man steering me through the air, making sure I didn’t fall. No longer did I need to be responsible for my own destiny, to worry about what to do
today, tomorrow, next year. I needed only to give in and
be
, like the simplest of creatures. Like the birds flying miraculously below me.

I wasn’t frightened. Hadn’t I always wanted to be carried away by someone stronger than me? As much as I had told myself that life was no fairy tale, I had always hoped, deep down, that it was. What young girl doesn’t dream of the hero rescuing
her from her
lonely tower? I had been no different, only more diligent, perhaps, than others in constructing that ivory tower of my own design—a foundation laid of books, the bricks formed of the duty drilled into me by my parents; dreams may have been the paintings on my walls, but doubts and fears were the bars on my windows.

Yet here I was, swept away through the very atmosphere—higher than any tower,
far beyond any bars—by the most heroic one of all.

Fiercely, urgently, I needed to see his face, to see if he was real, after all. I didn’t dare turn around, however; I didn’t know how I
could
. The wind was pinning me to my seat. It took all my strength to look left or right; up or down. It was easiest simply to look ahead.

And so I did. I relaxed, gazing in delight at the rolling land coming
up beneath us, marveling at the shadow of the plane racing us on the ground even in this half-light, like a tagalong friend. My ears adjusted to the engine until it was simply background noise. My eyes still stung and watered, but I was used to the cold now. My limbs were stiff, but I didn’t care. I would have been happy to remain up in the sky forever, circling this valley. I was glad for the smooth
ground below, the fields in which we could land, if necessary. I couldn’t imagine how he had flown across that endless, forbidding sheet of water for all those hours. How could he have landed, if there was trouble? He couldn’t have. Yet he had taken off anyway, knowing that.

At some point, I became aware that we were gradually descending; what had been blocks and ants were becoming houses and
even a few people, once more. Now I could see that the people were jumping up and down and waving; I laughed, they looked so joyous and strange, like primitive cave drawings come to life. I tried to wave back, but my hand was almost ripped from
my wrist; sheepishly, I stuck it back into the cockpit, and hoped that Charles hadn’t noticed.

The airfield was now on the horizon, far ahead but getting
closer, closer, as the trees began to grow again, the tips just below us, now even with us, now higher … and now we touched the ground. We sped down the runway as swiftly as when we’d taken off; once more I felt the ground, the bumpy, rutty ground, and my teeth rattled in my head. Even though I had been chewing the gum the entire time—it no longer had any flavor, and was the consistency of rubber—my
ears popped again.

We slowed; the engine sputtered, and then, with a shudder, the plane came to a stop. It took me a long moment to realize the engine was silent, save for a stray hiss; my ears continued to ring with the noise of it.