Girl Flees Circus Read online

Of course, folks back home were curious about her prospects. She kept mum because speaking of Leonard might raise eyebrows. To this point in her life, she’d never had a fellow fall be-smitten under her supposed spell. He had what they called a “crush,” and that was endearing and flattering. Of course, he was too young at eighteen and too much like an eager puppy, but he was good-looking and sturdy, well-intentioned and full of curiosity. Pity Mabel was one of only a half-dozen unattached females of marrying age around. Cruel indeed how they called him “Lonesome Lennie” behind his back. His adoration and attention were hers to enjoy, even at the expense of a nagging guilt.

  Normally she’d not be behind the wheel of her automobile on a late Saturday afternoon such as this, putting herself and that poor pilot in such mortal danger. But Louise Larsen had been upstairs above the Owl Café where Wally Jackson had finished reupholstering the seat of her one good parlor chair, and Louise had hinted to Mabel that it would be “lovely” to have Mabel come to supper, only she had to pick up her chair from Wally first. Louise was a dandy cook and Mabel wasn’t, so giving Louise and her chair a ride home was a very fair exchange.

  She’d heard a sputtering motor before she’d pulled out into the street, but she’d just presumed it came from that drilling contraption behind Roy Bentley’s corral. She saw Otis step off the porch of the Owl to peer up the street, wide-eyed. She straightened the wheel and suddenly an aircraft hardly three feet off the ground was zooming right at her windscreen, looming like a threshing machine a giant had flung at her, and all she could do was shriek, slap her hands to her face, and turtle her head into her shoulders. She heard the wind in the wings as it swooped up to avoid a crash, the motor coughing, and luckily her own engine died else the auto would’ve driven itself right into the cafe’s front door.

  When she sat up, Leonard was wheeling past fast on his Hawthorne DeLuxe Streamline, chasing after the aircraft as it jittered on.

  3

  THE OLD SAW THAT IN A SMALL TOWN EVERYBODY KNOWS your business got a rigorous test in the West, where a contrary frontier law holds that nobody asks your business. Case in point was Otis Jefferson and Mildred (“Wally”) Jackson. They ran the Owl Café—he cooked, she cleaned up, managed the cash and the provisions. Nobody knew if they were married, but their spacious upstairs abode was one long room stretched to the footprint of the building, and it had only one bed. Other useful furniture took up space, but just the bed figured into people’s speculations.

  Supposedly, he’d been a Buffalo Soldier in the US Cavalry in Texas after the Civil War and had been born a slave—they figured his age at sixty-something, but nobody could say he’d claimed that. Aside from cooking, he had a garage out back where he kept smithy’s tools to shoe a horse or rim a wagon wheel. He owned an old GMC platform truck, new in 1915, and he made runs to Loving for gasoline that he sold to the hamlet’s other motorists at a slim profit all considered fair. Lately, he’d done welding for the driller, brazing the seams of the casing as it was pounded into the ground, and he’d made one overnight trip to the train station in Seagraves to get cable for the job.

  Wally was white and somewhat younger, thin-lipped and thin-hipped, with one eye that detoured on its way to seeing something (hence the nickname), and when she talked, you heard remnants of a long-gone accent that people couldn’t place. Whether from temperament or their particular circumstance, they gripped their cards bosom-tight, and though Wally was talkative, she was never personal. Like almost all the women, she made many of her own clothes, though she seemed better at it than most and did odd jobs for others, such as putting new upholstery on Louise Larsen’s parlor chair. Their community service included keeping the town’s only public telephone. It was posted on the cafe’s rear wall, and a side table stood there with a big pickle jar for honors-system users to drop coins into. Two other telephones were in the homes of outlying ranching families.

  Now and then, Otis had “moods” whose arrivals and duration no one could account for. Sometimes, inexplicably, he might mutter, “Dark days, dark days,” shaking his head. People suspected that his trips to Loving included a secret stop for a Mason jar of illegal hootch, but since he never howled at the moon or even raised his voice, it didn’t matter, and he wasn’t alone in sneaking a slug behind closed doors. The only lawman around was the sheriff at the county seat in Loving, who wouldn’t rouse himself over such a trifle.

  The Owl always closed after lunch, though lately they’d held off shutting down until that driller, Ralph Johnston, or his helper came to get sandwiches.

  Otis had just taken off his apron and stepped out onto the porch to sit and smoke his pipe when the aircraft’s engine caught his ear; he stepped into the street to locate it coming in low from the south, engine sputtering, and it had all the appearance of preparing to land on the one unpaved thoroughfare, but suddenly up popped Mabel’s Lizzy square in its path. He gawked, cringing, but then the craft swooped up and over it—the word BEECH-NUT emblazoned in yellow on its silver flank—and toddled on north; he trotted farther into the road to watch it stagger away on the cross wind, slipping sideways, the engine sneezing it sounded like, emitting oily puffs of exhaust. Looked likely to crash.

  4

  LOUISE LARSEN WAS THE CLOSEST THING IN THE SETTLEMENT to a doctor. She’d grown up in Kansas City on the Kansas side near a veterinary office, and as an adolescent she’d hung about asking questions. The vet had taken such a shine he brought her on his calls to assist birthing calves and foals and lambs. Soon as the Big War broke out, an upswell of patriotism pushed her to enroll at the Illinois Nurses Training School attached to the new Cook County Hospital. Then she was a trainee at the Fort Sheridan Hospital #28 just as the first wave of injured from France arrived in 1919. Howard was a shellshock and mustard gas patient; she was by his side for two weeks and felt such pity that when he asked her to marry him, she had.

  Then he revealed he was a widower whose wife had died of the Spanish flu while he was overseas and that his twelve-year-old daughter, Isabel (Izzy), then living with his sister in Indianapolis, would be joining their new family as they moved to New Mexico where the good clean air would help his lungs and the absence of threatening noises offered a peace that might soothe his tortured nerves.

  That news stunned her. Aside from how he’d kept it from her (anything else?), that already half-grown daughter seriously scarred her dormant dreams about children of her own. How to jockey around this new development? She worked herself up to asking Howard had he thought of having more children. He chuckled nervously, vaguely waved a hand over his torso, and said, “One thing at a time, darling.”

  Did that mean getting well or raising Izzy?

  Try as she might, Louise could not make Izzy like her—definitely not as a step- or surrogate mother, and Louise’s efforts to be friend, big sister, aunt, or mentor were met with a rejection so dedicated it seemed inspired. Izzy only begrudgingly accepted Howard’s authority. She had the worst disposition of any child Louise had ever met—a virtuoso saucebox, a world-class whiner, she hated everything about living out here. Louise was once tempted to sneer at Howard, Are you sure your other wife is dead? but flogged herself for such uncharitable thoughts. After all, the girl had indeed lost her mother and a home in a civilized place, etc.

  Louise had farm wives’ chores—they kept cows, a flock of laying hens, a couple of hogs and horses, a dog, and a sizeable patch of alfalfa, grain sorghum, and cotton, plus a kitchen garden. But she was also expected to school the girl. Before Mabel Cross was hired, people taught their children at home, or, if they had the money, sent them off to boarding school (especially the girls). The Larsen budget could never stretch that far, so it was up to them. Louise had hoped to pass along her rudimentary skills for nursing and veterinary care, at least, but the child was far too squeamish; she was fond of “dressing up” in an old nurse’s hat, though, and forcing their indulgent canine into playing the role of “wounded soldier,” inventing tragic love scenarios with melodramatic dial
ogue clearly gleaned from the moving pictures.

  She’d turned fifteen three years ago. For about five minutes, it looked as if she might strike up an interest in horses—more as an equestrienne than a caretaker, for sure—but that was related to wanting to curry favor with the Binkleys’ more affluent daughter. Next thing they knew she was spending too much time with a young rep of an Abilene hardware firm scouting locations for an outpost. Howard balked, protested, tried to rein her in, but the result was a note laid on her unmade bed that claimed she loved her father but yearned to be out in the world. She promised to write.

  That was three years ago. One postcard from Santa Monica, California, several months after she left. Louise kept the thought Good riddance! to herself, and since Howard wasn’t one to share his own, she believed he was relieved. But when she heard him stifling his sobs in the barn one day, a wave of guilt just floored her. Then she had to ask—did I do enough? Was it because of me? Does he blame me for this? What can I give him to make up for it? Does he want another child now? Do I want one at this point? Would we be good parents? All this while she’d been careful to monitor her cycle out of respect for that one thing at a time,but also trusted her luck to the device she kept in the washroom drawer.

  She’d heard the aircraft’s engine but just thought the sound came from a motor car. She was up in Wally’s place inspecting the newly upholstered chair seat. Wally had made coffee, and Louise had bummed two cigarettes and smoked them on the spot. (Howard was dead set against women smoking, but Otis had no beef about it.) She’d brought her copy of The American and Liberty magazines to trade with Wally for Time and The Woman’s Home Companion. A half dozen women were in the trading circle, and the magazines arrived at their “post office,” an apple crate in George Purvis’s sort-of general store.

  Wally said, “You want this?” The Farm Journal.

  “No thanks. I already know too much.”

  “I’ll offer it to Mabel, then.”

  They laughed. Mabel’s tastes ran to the likes of McClure’s.

  Then Wally had to move aside a pair of overalls she was patching for Leonard, and that set off another round of tsk-tsking about what are they going to do about that poor boy? At eighteen, he was still everybody’s pet but was wasting his potential. Odd-jobber—well, he was good at fixing things, Otis had taught him that, and it was always handy to call him when you needed an extra body on the farm. But the boy is smart, ought to be studying something like electricity somewhere. Worry about him living in that Indian teepee, though in truth his Uncle George’s one-room place behind that store isn’t a whole lot more civilized. Wally had gone back there to bring a shirt of Otis’s that she’d remade for Leonard and, my, you would not tolerate that sort of dirty mess for two seconds.

  “He’s getting better-looking all the time,” said Wally. Since Leonard was the same age as the runaway Izzy, Louise had once imagined them as a pair, then had snatched the thought back. Wouldn’t wish that on poor Leonard. She considered Wally’s comment. Yes, he was handsome, especially when his face was at rest. Tumbling blonde curls, grey eyes, square jaw—his mother must’ve been a Swede.

  But he was so rambunctious, tripping over his own feet, and way too talkative—a happy chatterer more like a twelve-year-old than a man—so that diminished his appeal. He was fun, very good-natured, you liked him, though his stories about, say, the trouble he had fixing a flat on his bicycle tire or helping his uncle pluck and dress a turkey left no detail undescribed.

  “It’s such a shame Mabel thinks she’s too good for him.”

  “Oh, I don’t think it’s that,” said Louise. “He’s just … too young.”

  “Won’t always be.”

  Wally lit another cigarette and Louise was tempted to ask for a third but didn’t. “You know that boy is strong as an ox. Otis had him lift up one end of a wagon yesterday while he slipped a wheel on, and it was full of stuff.”

  Wally had a mental list of Leonard’s attributes, and she often trotted them out one by one. Louise didn’t need to be convinced of Leonard’s eligibility as a bachelor in want of a wife. But Wally bore a stronger maternal impulse, maybe because, thought Louise, she hadn’t had children or hadn’t had to endure living with one who hates your guts night and day.

  About then Otis was hollering up the stairs, “Louise, you better come down! There’s been a wreck up the Carlsbad road.”

  5

  —THE CRAFT DID LEAPFROG THE AUTO STOPPED DEAD IN THE street, but when Katie flew down the other side of the mountain you could say it was like skiing on new snow fast and slippery, fighting the wind to stay on a line, hoping the engine had a few sips of gas left. But suddenly the airplane dipped back to the road, and her right wheel hit something, and she went alley-oop, a ground loop left, digging the left-wing tips into the turf, swinging up up up, then down and coming to rest half hiked up on a fence, her hanging almost upside down in the harness. She unclipped fast in a panic and tumbled to the dirt.

  Her left wrist smarted. A big rip high on that sleeve showed a bloody gash on her shoulder. She clasped her hand over it and, panting, stood looking at the damaged airplane. Like being a babysitter and you turn your back and the kid you’re supposed to keep safe has fallen down a well.

  She bent over to the side and puked.

  Two kids stood watching her. They wore matching denim overalls and looked like twins, but one had hair in pig tails. It dawned on her that she’d hit something while landing. Her heart thonked in her chest.

  “What happened? Is everybody all right? Is anyone hurt?”

  “Kilt are pig,” said the boy.

  She followed his gaze up the road to where sure enough a pig lay.

  “Aw, Jiminy Christmas, I am so sorry!”

  “He wasn’t no pet,” offered the girl.

  “He run off when Pa got out the butcher knife.”

  “Fugitive,” the girl said. She smiled at herself.

  “Pa called him Bacon,” the boy said.

  They walked to the porcine corpse and peered at it. Her legs were shaky. Her wrist was throbbing now. She felt nauseated and light-headed, the sort of woozy dizzy you got from an all-nighter on too much coffee. White noise in her brain cavity, a hissing. She turned to look back at the aircraft. The tip of the lower left wing had carved an arc in the hard red sand of the road, and the lower right jammed up against a fence post. Dimly she remembered that for an instant the ship had cocked up vertical after the impact and that had crushed and ripped the tip of the upper wing, and the elephant-ear aileron. The airplane’s unnatural posture all at once disturbed her immensely—it was like a scream you did this! and she was desperate to right it, as if restoring its proper stance could undo the damage.

  Ignoring her aching wrist and the bleeding gash, she scurried to where the lower wing was jammed against the post, tried to lift it up and away but failed, then scrambled to the fuselage near the tail assembly and heaved with all her might to back the machine away from the fence.

  Someone appeared beside her, shoving, grunting, straining mightily, and together they managed to free the wing, and the plane settled into its normal horizontal position but cock-eyed in the road. But when her helper backed away from their task, he stumbled, and in an effort to catch his balance planted a boot right through the skin of the elevator. She winced and groaned.

  “Oh, golly, sir!” He went to all fours, scrabbled under the elevator, and cradled the torn surface in his lap, head hanging over the ragged boot hole. “I can fix it, I promise! I’m …” He kept shaking his head. He was a young fellow, likely her age. He’d ridden up on a bicycle that now lay nearby, the back wheel slowly turning, as if dying; her dazzled gaze flicked to where that dead pig had lain only to see it running down the road with the two kids chasing it. Everything was happening too fast and all at once.

  “Oh my gosh, sir, you’re bleeding!” The fellow looked horrified. He was standing beside her now, over her.

  She shoved back the tattered ears of th
e fabric’s tear, and they inspected the cut. She felt herself sliding away from her body while her self levitated into the cockpit. She couldn’t tell whether the cut was serious, but her wrist ached like crazy. Maybe broken?

  “Thanks for the help.” He looked confused. She realized her voice had boggled his misperception of her gender. She tugged her goggles onto the top of her helmet so that he could see her eyes, her face.

  By then, the accident had drawn a crowd that included three women in a Model T. One was apparently a nurse who insisted that she be taken home to have her injury seen to.

  The Guest

  1

  AFTER HIS HUMILIATING FIASCO AS A RESCUER OF THE INJUREDpilot, Leonard slinked back to his teepee and brooded with gusto. His innards churned; his heart took a lengthy tour of the underworld. Just one awful blunder after another. Called her sir, to begin with, and, sure, it wasn’t his fault that in a washtub full of pilots, wouldn’t be but one or two females, maybe, but for Pete’s sake, she was itsy-bitsy maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet, so tiny fellows on racehorses flashed through his mind while he heaved beside her.

  Then he had to stomp a size 10 hole in that tail part that made her darn near faint with dismay.

  On top of that!

  On top of that she slid her goggles up onto her head. Looked him right in the eyes. Sprigs of reddish blonde curls peeked cutely around the helmet’s rim, and across her adorable little nose and flushed cheeks lay a bountiful spread of golden flecks, and then—her brows and lashes—molasses! Molasses lashes!—framed two big brown orbs that when his own bumbling gaze met their regard, they telescoped to the bottom of his soul. It was all he could do to stay upright. KO’d. Snatched his breath, juggled his heartbeats.

  Right before they took the pilot off to tend to her injuries, Louise had pulled him aside to say likely they’d have supper for the aviatrix, and she’d love to have him at the table to reward him for his help.