Mitla Pass (50 page)

His spirits plummeted. His father would never give permission. As for Momma, she did not like Miss Winters. The two had met during the school year. Leah was aware of how deeply influenced her son had become by his teacher.

“She has a terrible body odor,” Leah remarked, sniffing the air after their first meeting. “I know that woman has lice in her hair.” Leah had even discussed with a doctor the possibility that Gideon was allergic to Miss Abigail and ought to change classes.

It was much the same with Molly’s friends. The suggestion of a dangerous and highly contagious social disease (that one does not mention by name) generally followed Molly’s second date with the same boy.

“It’s really neat of you to offer me a plane ride, but I’d never get permission.”

Miss Abigail became downright morose. “Do you have any idea how much I’m going to miss you, Gideon?”

“Me too,” he said shakily.

“Then, to hell with it,” she said, “let’s go flying. There’s something I have to share with you before we split up.”

“Okay, ma’am.”

I
T HAD JUST
turned twilight when the Granby Street trolley stopped at the cemetery near Dead Man’s Corner and Gideon jumped off. He took in a deep breath to reinforce his courage and trotted over to the airstrip. It was a small three-hangar affair with a dirt runway, mostly used for barnstorming shows and air races. On the other side of the field the Navy had a facility.

Miss Abigail greeted him wearing a leather hat with goggles, a fleece-lined leather jacket, and knee-high boots. “Come meet my dad and brother.” The older fellow, Clarence, was her father, the famous war ace. He was attired in mechanic’s overalls. Another man, in his late twenties, was her brother, Jeremy, the famous stunt pilot on the southern barnstorming circuit. As he was introduced, Gideon wore an immediate expression of hero worship.

Clarence tousled Gideon’s hair. “So you’re the culprit who’s stolen my daughter from me,” he said.

“Not really, Mr. Winters.”

Clarence turned to his son. “Jeremy, is that goddam cockpit heater working?”

“It tested out fine, Dad.”

“Well, what the hell was it?”

“Just a wiring connection in the blower.”

“Goldurn thing. Kid, there’s some clothing your size in locker number twenty. Andy’s kid’s stuff should fit you.”

As Gideon dressed, Abigail and her father and brother went over the flight plans.

“New moon. Should be like silk up there tonight,” Clarence said.

The two men put their backs into opening the hangar door and were greeted by the outstretched arms of the most magnificent flying machine one could envision. They unlocked the wheels and each got behind a wing and pushed her onto the tarmac. The craft was a monowing Consolidated P-30, a two-seater pursuit fighter.

The Army had tested a number of prototypes and made a number of modifications, until it abandoned the craft. The test planes were sold off to former fliers like Clarence Winters. New, the plane had cost the taxpayers the staggering sum of over fifty thousand dollars.

Clarence, Jeremy, and Miss Abigail got the plane for a pittance and tinkered endlessly with it. They named her
Jenny
after Miss Abigail’s mom.
Jenny
was one of the hottest barnstormers on the southern circuit. She had everything, a turbocharger that could push her to the lightning speed of 275 miles an hour, at over twenty thousand feet.

They turned the tail gunner’s seat around and set it under a sleek sliding canopy and added a variable-pitched three-bladed propeller.

“Well, what do you think of her, son?” Clarence asked.

“Nifty,” he replied with a voice that suddenly shot up to falsetto.

“Then let’s go flying, pardner.”

Clarence stood on the wing and leaned into the rear cockpit, which had all but swallowed Gideon up, and he explained the gadgetry, use of the oxygen mask, and how to speak over the radio.

Gideon did a white-knuckled clutch as the plane zipped down the runway. He caught a fleeting glance of Jeremy and Clarence waving to them. Off the ground they went! After a stunning loop around Norfolk and the grand flotilla of warships at anchor, he could see the amusement park at Ocean View and make out the cars shooting around the roller coaster and even see the flagpole sitter! They flew parallel to the beach for a while, then banked out over the ocean, straightened out, and climbed. Higher ... higher ... to infinity and a blanket of enveloping darkness.

“Gideon, can you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Everything okay with you?”

“It’s wonderful, Miss Abigail, wonderful!”

“Are you scared?”

“No, ma’am.”

“All right. Put on your oxygen mask. We’re going to climb. Got that?”

“Got it.”

She opened the throttle. “Hang on, pardner, we’re shooting for the moon.” Higher and faster Miss Abigail pushed the craft until the coastline and Norfolk were but tiny toys. Two great arms of darkness wrapped about them. Gideon could see the back of Miss Abigail’s head and her hair flowing out under her leather cap. How he worshipped her doing all this just for him.

“Gideon?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m going to change the pitch of the propeller so that the engine makes the least amount of noise. When I do that, it may sound as if the engine is sputtering, but it’s quite normal. Do you understand?”

“I’ve got it.”

“We’re almost there, son.”

“Where?”

“Heaven.”

Miss Abigail found the darkest part of the sky and settled
Jenny
into a huge circular pattern and slowed her down to a glide.

“Now! Open your canopy!”

Hands trembling, Gideon unlocked and slid the glass cover forward.

“Look up, son! Look up!”

Gideon, Miss Abigail, and
Jenny
seemed to be one and the same, flirting like a dolphin among a trillion lights, blinking, taunting, beckoning, and then a trillion more. Here and there bolides and shooting stars and comets rocketed by to what almost seemed touching distance, some for a blink of a second, some with showy flashes that made him gasp.

Round and round
Jenny
played, a darling little elf poking around in an infinity of splendor. But all they could really have was a peek, a tease. Take me higher! Can’t we stay forever, Gideon thought. He felt as though he could step out of the plane and hurl himself outward and catch the tail of a flamer and hang on.

But nothing is forever, especially a gas tank. Well, maybe he could freeze this time into memory and live it again and again, nothing is forever.

He slid the canopy shut and sat stunned as Miss Abigail revved up the little bird and they rejoined the earth ... and Communist rallies ... and redneck Jew-baiters ... and wheezing for breath when Momma crushed him in her arms ... and Dad ripping up the Sunday Hearst paper that Molly had brought home.

When they landed, the field was ghostly. Clarence and Jeremy were gone and Miss Abigail eased the plane into the hangar. Gideon went to the lockers and changed and met her in the rickety office, where she had fixed some hot chocolate, which sent shock waves of wonderful warmth through him, even though he was allergic to it.

“Do you know why I took you up there?” she said.

“I think so.”

“Why?”

“It embarrasses me,” he said.

“No, go on and tell me.”

“You took me up there because you think I’m one of those comets. Because ... because ...”

“What, Gideon?”

“You want me to know what it’s like to live up there.”

“You’re pretty smart for a writer,” she said. “You’re going to have to be very tough to get through. And you’re going to have to take a lot of pain.”

“I know,” he said, “but I can’t help myself.”

She filled his cup from the pot on the hot plate. “I’m going to Spain with my brother to fight for the Loyalists.”

They did not speak for a time.

“I’m not going to Spain as a Communist. I’ve quit the Party. I’m going as an American. You see, the people of Spain have voted for a democracy and the Fascists are trying to destroy that. There is a strong Communist Party in Spain, in the government, but that doesn’t mean Spain will go Communist. It means there is a chance for a democracy with the Communists as one of many parties. The French and the British are afraid that the Communists will take over if democracy wins. So they are acting neutral. That means they’ve let the floodgates open for Hitler and Mussolini to help the Fascists.”

“I understand all that,” Gideon said.

“If Franco and the Fascists win in Spain, it will lead to another world war. A war in which you will probably have to fight. We have to stop them now. It must remain another of our secrets, Gideon, but I have to go. I’ll write to you as soon as I can.”

The boy shook his head.

“Let me drive you home,” she said.

“No, ma’am, I’d like to walk for a while. I’ll always remember my sixth grade, Miss Abigail. And when I write something worth publishing, I’m going to dedicate it to you.”

“Gideon ... Gideon ...”

“I love you, Miss Abigail,” the boy cried and ran from the shed.

M
OLLY WAS MOSTLY
seeing one boyfriend, Danny Shapiro. Danny worked in his father’s grocery store. It was a small neighborhood store with groaning, sagging wooden floors and bins of beans and a coffee grinder that could send you into ecstasy with its aroma and gunnysacks filled with flour and sugar and a long pole with grips to snatch the cans on the top shelves and a glass case filled with penny candies.

Irv Shapiro, Danny’s father, couldn’t say no to a neighbor out of work, or on the shorts. He made a living, but barely. He always said if he collected all his IOU’s he could buy out the entire A&P grocery chain.

Although Molly was Gideon’s security, particularly with Miss Abigail gone, the boy knew his sister was entitled to her own life. Not only did Danny not pose as a threat, Gideon took to him as an older brother. He could always shake Danny down for a nickel or even a dime, to send him off to the ice cream parlor, so Danny could neck with Molly on the front porch swing.

Moreover, Danny had use of the family car, an Essex, and let Gideon tag along on a picnic, or to the beach, or the movies. Sometimes Gideon and Danny would go off to a ball game by themselves, which made Molly sore, but she wasn’t much interested in sports and kind of liked the closeness between her brother and her beau.

Molly got a summer job as a salesgirl at Kress’s five-and-dime store and bought a radio with her earnings. It livened life up considerably. On Sunday nights there was “The Jack Benny Program” and it seemed as if half of America was listening. There were other great programs, like “The Fred Allen Show” and “Major Bowes and His Original Amateur Hour” and “The Shadow” and “The Texaco Star Theater.”

Gideon sorted out and studied the really fine and original writing, particularly the radio dramas of Arch Oboler and Norman Corwin and Orson Welles and the adaptations of the great plays on the “U.S. Steel Hour.” There was “Metropolitan Opera Broadcasts” and Toscanini leading the NBC Symphony.

Nathan had shunned buying a radio because the programs were either “bourgeois trivia” or “reactionary propaganda.”

“That Gabriel Heatter is a fascist with his dirty news.”

When Molly brought home the Atwater-Kent table model set, Nathan realized he wasn’t going to get rid of it. It sat in the kitchen, which also served as the living room. If Nathan was caught listening, he’d quickly shrug in disgust and leave the room, or place himself between the radio and the family, open his copy of
Freiheit,
and read to himself aloud and make so much noise rustling the paper no one could hear. Nothing seemed to interest him but the Party. The hard-and-fast rules of life had been laid down by the Central Committee, so there was nothing further for him to explore.

Even Leah, with all her comings and goings, was reduced to tears by the soap operas, Bess Johnson in “Hilltop House” and “Orphans of Divorce,” which reflected the daily agonies of ordinary people she could identify with.

Life between Leah and Nathan had become rotten. Their arguments quickly turned into shrieking matches filled with terrible verbal violence. Nathan’s veins would protrude on his forehead almost to bursting, and Leah, of late, was given to beating herself in the face with her own fists. On other occasions, she would throw open the front window and scream out her misery to the entire neighborhood and constantly threaten suicide. The police knew the address well.

“I’m going to throw myself out of the window!” she’d yell. Nathan would then open the window and stand aside. Leah would invariably faint and lie “unconscious” until it was time to revive and drag herself off to a meeting, bravely.

Gideon had become an accepted member of the neighborhood gang, even though his mother and father were considered crazy. He told too many good stories to them and had become nifty with the glove as a first baseman. He was one of the guys even though he was a Jew boy.

There was a garage in the rear of the flat, but all it held was an excess of old furniture and piles of junk. It had a small loft and he could bury himself there and read and write stories by the hour. Only Molly and a few close pals knew of the secret office. His greatest joy was corresponding with Miss Abigail.

Getafe Air Base

Madrid

August 3, 1936

My Dearest Friend Gideon,

Jeremy and I have made it to Spain, at long last. To get here we had to endure a difficult route through the Pyrenees Mountains from France. I’ll write more about it later. Fliers are desperately needed and we were immediately assigned to the Malraux International Squadron. My plane is a Boeing P-12, an old bird, but she does what I ask. We are up against the Italians and Germans of the Nazi Condor Legion, who are running the latest Fiats and Messerschmitts. The Condors were okay as long as they didn’t have any real opposition, but in our first three patrols we’ve given them flying lessons. Jeremy has shot down his first enemy... .