Soaring Home. Christine Johnson
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faint drone froze Darcy. The aeroplane. Within seconds she located it low in the eastern sky, heading toward them.
“What is that sound?” Beatrice looked everywhere but up.
The plane dipped and veered toward town. It was landing. It had to be. No plane would fly that low if it wasn’t landing. If only she could be onboard. If only she could fly. Darcy danced across the road.
“Where are you going?” Beatrice called. “We’re already late from the nickel show. Your mother will be furious.”
“No she won’t.” Which wasn’t quite true.
“She’ll make us roll extra bandages.”
Darcy motioned for her to wait. “Just one moment longer.”
The hum intensified until it sounded like a whole hive of bees. An aeroplane. Darcy hung transfixed at the edge of the field. She couldn’t leave now. She hadn’t seen an aeroplane since the 1911 Chicago air exhibition, the day she knew God intended her to fly. In the air, women flew alongside men as equals. That’s where she belonged, not in lowly Pearlman, where not even the scent of an aeroplane could be found.
Until now. The biplane wobbled slightly as it descended, the left wing dipping before the pilot righted it at the last minute. It did not resemble the planes she’d seen in Chicago. This pilot sat farther back, below the upper wing, in a partially enclosed cockpit. The engine was located forward, giving the machine a sleek, fast appearance.
Beatrice shaded her eyes. “What is it?”
“The answer to my prayers.”
The aeroplane headed straight toward them at low altitude. Beatrice shrieked and clutched at her impossibly flowered hat as the plane zoomed overhead and banked to make a run down the length of the empty field. The grass bent flat under the roar, and the turbulence sent Darcy’s hair swirling. The plane swooped onto the field, bouncing once before mowing a wide swath through the grass.
“Whooee!” Darcy ran after it, and then, seeing as Beattie was still hunched on the ground, came back. “An aeroplane. Here, in Pearlman. Imagine.” God had sent Darcy’s dream on canvas-covered wings.
“Tell me it’s gone,” Beatrice whimpered.
“Of course it’s not gone.” Darcy peeled Beattie’s gloved hands off her ears. “It stopped by old man Baker’s empty barn.” Already, Hendrick Simmons from the automobile garage and Dennis Allington from the train depot raced down the road on their motorbikes, twin trails of dust rising in the dry September air. “I wonder if something’s wrong.”
“I don’t care, and neither should you.” Beatrice smoothed down her dress. “I thought that horrible thing would kill us.”
“It wasn’t going to kill us. The pilot knew where he—or she—was going. Imagine! It could be a woman pilot.” Darcy had to meet her somehow.
The beep of a motorcar horn sent them scurrying to the edge of the road. Frank Devlin, editor of The Pearlman Prognosticator, chugged past in his dusty Model T touring car. That was the answer. The newspaper. She could write a story on the plane and talk the pilot into giving her a ride.
“I need to talk to the pilot, Beattie.” Darcy squeezed her friend’s hand. “This story will make the front page, and I’m going to be the one to write it. Tell Mum I’ll be late.”
“We’re already late. Your mother won’t like it. She’ll say your duty is to the Red Cross.”
“My duty is to the people of Pearlman. Tell her I’ll roll double the bandages tomorrow.” Darcy itched to run. A plane. A pilot. Everything she’d dreamed the past seven years had come directly to her. She had to see it.
Beatrice clutched her arm. “Don’t do anything foolish. Promise?”
Darcy pulled away and bounded down the road. “I’m going to ask the pilot to give me a ride.”
“A ride?” came the cry from behind her. “You’re going into the air in that thing? Stop, stop.” Beattie panted, struggling to run in her hobble skirt and heeled shoes.
As much as Darcy loved her, Beattie was such a perfect Jane, all frills and lace. She’d faint from this much exertion. Darcy went back to her. “What are you doing? I said I’d meet you at the grange.”
“You could die,” Beatrice insisted breathlessly, “like that heroine of yours. What’s her name? Harriet Quincy?”
“Quimby, and it was an accident. The passenger moved suddenly and threw the plane off balance. That’s not going to happen here.”
The pilot, dressed in knee boots and leather jacket, climbed out of the plane. A man. Too bad.
“How do you know disaster won’t happen?” Beatrice insisted. “She fell a hundred feet.”
A thousand, actually, but Darcy didn’t correct her. Though silent now, the plane beckoned to her. The smell of burnt oil hung in the air. A sizeable crowd had gathered around the plane, and opportunity was slipping away. If the pilot had only stopped to fuel, he might be gone within the hour.
“Sorry, Beattie, but I have to go.”
“But, your father. He won’t like it,” Beatrice huffed. “What will he say?”
Darcy knew exactly what Papa would say. No, with a capital N. Respectable young ladies don’t fly aeroplanes.
But they did. They did.
“He doesn’t need to know,” Darcy insisted.
“He’s your father.”
“I’m a grown woman.” Nothing and no one would keep her from her dream. “And if he doesn’t know, he won’t be hurt. Promise me, Beattie.”
Across the field, the pilot had returned to the cockpit and the crowd was turning the plane, readying it to fly off. Her future was about to disappear into the pale blue sky.
“Only if you promise to go on the picnic with George.”
Darcy gritted her teeth. It was extortion. “All right, but only if I reach the plane before it takes off.” Without waiting for confirmation, she hitched up her skirts and ran across the field. The wiry grass tangled around her ankles. She stumbled on the uneven ground.
Dennis Allington pulled on the propeller. The engine coughed and rumbled to life.
No time. No time.
Darcy gasped for air, her lungs burning. She couldn’t run any faster. She couldn’t get there in time. Her whole future was flying away.
Her hair tumbled from its pins as the plane inched forward. Then the motor spluttered, choked and died. A thistle caught her shirtsleeve. She tore loose as the men gathered along the back of the wings. They pushed. She stopped, gulping for air, as the machine coasted into the barn.
Thank heavens. She composed herself and twisted her hair back into a knot, so she’d look professional for the interview.
By the time Darcy slipped through the open barn doors, Devlin, Allington, Simmons, old man Baker, and half of the supposedly employed men of the town had gathered around the aeroplane in a big semicircle. Darcy tried to wedge through, but they stood like a fence between her and the plane.
She circled around, looking for a gap, and spied Hendrick Simmons. Her childhood friend would let her through. She made her way toward him as the pilot climbed out of the cockpit. He tossed his goggles into the forward seat before jumping to the barn’s dirt floor, still seeded with trampled bits of straw.
“Should be a matter of two, three days at most,” the pilot said to Baker, who was doubtless calculating precisely how much rent he could weasel out of his new tenant. “Do you have a telephone?”
“Don’t need them newfangled contraptions,” Baker said, his lower lip drawn over his upper, due to the few