Pillar to the Sky (17 page)

Who did not know Franklin Smith, what with the hoopla and controversy raging around his insane project? Eva stepped out next: and one person did recognize her, Victoria breaking out of her group and racing up to embrace her, the two instantly in tears. Gary followed, and the joy of seeing his “little girl” simply overwhelmed him. She had grown so much in the last six months, maturing into such a beautiful young lady, taller by a couple of inches, with her mother’s dark blond hair, still worn long, but pulled back, tied off into a ponytail this morning, tucked under a Purdue baseball cap, so that it wouldn’t blow into her face if she hit some turbulence.

With the consent of Victoria’s flight instructor, they had a few minutes to chat, but then he was dragging her off for her lesson. The last thing he or Victoria needed was anxious parents standing by the runway; the instructor reciting a cautionary tale where a student panicked and circled the field for a half hour, crying, while her father got on a handheld radio and started to cuss her out for embarrassing him. He finally talked the girl down, and the FAA had a long talk with the father about violations of radio usage. NeSmith’s firm policy, ever since the incident with the hysterical parent, was zero tolerance for their clinging presence, but given who was coming to visit along with Gary and Eva, he would relent this one time as long as they obeyed
his
rules without question.

They had agreed that the crowd would follow Franklin into the hangar while Gary and Eva quietly slipped off with their daughter, and for heaven’s sake, NeSmith absolutely forbade them to say anything more than that they were dropping in with Franklin so he could give a talk, and there would be time later to catch up on things after she did her flight.

Franklin was in his element. Those gathered round him pulled out cell phones to take pictures and call friends who had blown off the idea of actually getting up at nine in the morning to listen to some most likely boring guest speaker. This was
the
Franklin Smith, triggering the same reaction Steve Jobs used to when he showed up for the release of a new product at an electronics show. Franklin, knowing the game, gestured toward the open hangar, asking if there was any coffee to be found. Half a dozen students raced ahead for the honor of giving him a cup.

Gary and Eva stayed by the Gulfstream. Victoria was reluctant to leave them, but her instructor shouted good-naturedly that he didn’t have all day and it was time to shoot some landings. As the two walked off, Brandon shot a glance back at Gary and Eva that was a clear enough warning. Gary forced a smile and waved. Eva held his hand and actually started to step forward.

“Don’t,” Gary whispered.

“I just want to look in the plane and make sure it’s safe,” she said, and he could sense her classic Ukrainian temper going up a few notches.

“You take one step toward the plane and the instructor told me he’d cancel her flight.”

“Then maybe I should.”

“And Victoria will all but kill you. Today is her day; we’re just her parents and it’s time we stepped back.”

He felt her tense up but then nod in agreement.

While Franklin fell into an informal question-and-answer session around several coffeepots and some donuts set up in the hangar, Gary and Eva tried not to look nervous as their “baby” did a preflight check then hopped into the Cessna 172, suddenly all serious, went over the checklist, opened the side window to shout “Clear prop,” started up the engine, let the oil pressure and temperature build, ran through her magneto and carb heat checks, and then taxied out to the end of the runway. Danny McMullen, their pilot with the Gulfstream, came up to them with a handheld radio so they could listen in.

“She’s doing just fine,” Danny offered. “No sweat. Today you see your girl get her wings, and she better not like that shirt she’s wearing.”

“Why so?” Eva asked.

“After she solos, the instructor and her friends will cut it off.”

“All of it?” Eva cried.

Danny laughed. “No, just the tail. It is an ancient ritual.”

They listened as Victoria announced she was taxiing onto the active runway and would left-turn depart runway 28. Just hearing her voice like that sent a nervous shiver through both her parents.

She lifted off easily in the cold morning air, climbed out, executed a neat left turn, then announced she was entering downwind for a “touch-and-go.”

Danny, holding the radio, stood intently watching, nodding his approval as she turned from downwind, to base, to final. Eva turned away, unable to watch.

“The instructor is still on board, Eva,” Danny said. “No sweat.”

She came in, wings wobbling a bit, a touch of throttle sounding, then easing back as she “cleared the numbers,” touched down, tires squealing on the pavement, throttled up, and seconds later lifted off again.

“Nicely done,” Danny said reassuringly.

She did a second, even better than the first, tires barely brushing the pavement before throttling up, and then went around for a third.

“Lafayette traffic. Seven-seven-seven Bravo Xray, downwind for runway 28. Full stop.”

Danny grinned.

“She’s ready.”

The Cessna touched down, came nearly to a stop, taxied halfway back to the hangar, and stopped. Then the right door opened and Brandon got out.

The plane turned, taxiing back to the end of the runway, and again her voice came over the radio; her parents could hear the excitement and tension. He had a flash memory of the day she first “soloed” on a two-wheeler bicycle, not aware at first that her father had stopped running alongside her and had let go. That look back over her shoulder, first grinning, then panic, and then ten seconds later tears as she held her skinned and bleeding knee, Eva furious with Gary that he had let go too soon. Then the argument about whether she should try again or not, until they both turned in amazement and saw Victoria flying down the street on her own, laughing with glee, having slipped from their grasp while they were arguing.

It felt the same now, and Gary felt his chest swelling with pride that he had been blessed with such a wonderful, gutsy daughter even though his stomach was a bit knotted up. That was his “baby” out there, about to solo a plane for the first time.

“Lafayette traffic. Cessna 777 Bravo Xray. Entering active runway 28, left-turn departure.”

She started to throttle up, and Eva all but had a death grip on Gary’s arm as the plane lifted off.

“Why in hell did we come here?” Eva gasped.

“Our kid is getting her wings,” Gary whispered, trying to reassure her.

Victoria lifted off gracefully in the cold morning air, banked gently—no showing off—into a left turn, announced another turn on to downwind, then there was the cutting of the throttle. Eva’s head was now buried in Gary’s shoulder.

“Damn my grandfather,” Eva said. “I never should have told her about him!”

“She’s doing just fine, and, sweetheart, your grandfather is riding copilot with her, so don’t worry, it’s in her blood,” Danny offered reassuringly, and Gary smiled wistfully at the thought that his grandfather and father were up there with her as well. The skill to actually fly might have skipped a generation with him, but it was continuing now with his girl. Gary could see that Danny was watching intently, completely focused on every nuance of what she was doing. It was part of being in the wonderful “brotherhood” of pilots: they were delighted to see someone about to get their wings, watching intently, whispering comments, sending along prayers, and in their hearts remembering their own first moments “up there” alone for the first time, knowing the joy so best described by a poet who wrote “because I fly I envy no man on earth.”

Victoria turned on to final, throttle back, flaps down, a bit of waver, a touch of a gust sweeping across the field causing her to lift slightly. A bit too much throttle for a moment, then settling back down, still fifty feet too high as she cleared the faded numbers at the end of the runway, settling down; then the squeal of tires, full throttle, and she was back up several hundred feet later.

“Great, Victoria, now give me two more like that.” It was her instructor standing down by the runway.

The second one was actually much worse: even Danny tensed up slightly as she came in too low this time, throttled up too much, and finally came to rest a thousand feet down the runway.

“A little long on that, Victoria. Just relax,” her instructor clicked in.

“It’s normal,” Danny finally said as she lifted back off, all three of them exhaling nervously. “They always try to come in and want to kiss the numbers to impress their instructor, then get a bit antsy when they start to come in short and give it too much throttle. I did the same thing. She’s got 6,000 feet of runway ahead of her, plenty of room in a 172 to land. She can play with short field landings later.”

Eva had finally unclasped herself from her death grip on Gary’s shoulder and was now watching intently, Danny providing a running commentary, all complimentary, as Victoria climbed up to pattern altitude, did her calls, cut clean ninety-degree turns from downwind to base, and then to final approach.

“Oh, she is going to kiss this one!” Danny announced gleefully.

Even her instructor clicked in.

“Looking great, Bravo Xray, you are in the groove. Now just let her land herself.”

A dozen or so students had broken free from the crowd around Franklin, which was growing by the minute as students—and even some professors who obviously had been abed only a half hour ago—were racing out to the airport to see the man who was actually going to build a tower to the heavens.

Eva and Gary, with Danny by their side, did not notice. If prayers could give proper lift and glide to an airplane, it was certainly having its effect as she effortlessly cleared the threshold and this time did kiss the ground all so gently fifty feet beyond the numbers.

A brief announcement as she turned onto the taxiway, “Lafayette traffic, 777 Bravo Xray clear of active.” She came to a full stop on the taxiway, her instructor going around behind the plane, then climbing in for the ride back to the terminal. As the Cessna came to a stop a hundred feet away, Gary felt such a swelling of pride with how his daughter was now all focus, intent, serious, nodding, listening to her instructor, holding up a checklist for a moment, then shutting the engine down. They climbed out of the plane, walking aft, never forward, as she had been taught, tying the plane down, chocking the wheels, doing a quick walk around for a visual postflight inspect, and only then, with childlike enthusiasm, she flung herself into her instructor’s arms, hugging him, the instructor a bit red-faced, patting her on the back and twirling her around, while her friends at last raced forward to congratulate her.

Eva wanted to rush over as well, but Gary held her back.

“Give her a moment,” he whispered. “She’ll come to us.”

Friends gathered around Victoria and NeSmith, some slapping her on the back, others hugging her, and then indeed the group pulled up her short jacket and sweatshirt, teasingly threatened to pull them up higher, then laughed as she shrieked that it was “too damn cold!” They pulled out the tail of her shirt from her trousers, and a lanky young man, producing scissors, cut her shirttail off and held it up triumphantly before handing it to her and kissing her on the lips.

Eva chuckled at that, but Gary felt a bit of an icy chill.

“Well, it does seem our young lady is growing up,” Eva observed. “I wonder who
he
is.”

Gary had nothing to say, and his wife squeezed his arm again, this time playfully.

“How old were we when we met?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Gary replied a bit sharply.

The exuberant group now made their way back to where Gary, Eva, and Danny were standing. Danny came forward first, looking all formal in his flight captain’s uniform, and actually gave her a traditional military salute, which she laughingly returned. In the hours she had spent with him up in the cockpit of the Gulfstream, an obvious friendship had developed.

“You did great, young lady. I didn’t tell your parents this, but on my third landing I just absolutely froze up, bounced it three times, my instructor yelling at me to go around, then I circled out there for fifteen minutes, struggling to get my nerve back, with him cussing at me to just bring it in.”

“Oh, great,” Gary whispered. “And we trust our butts to him?”

Danny looked back at him and laughed.

“Yup, you do. And I usually never confess that. The navy ain’t so forgiving: I thought they’d wash me out that day, but I finally got my carrier wings.”

He gave Victoria a warm hug.

Victoria’s instructor was beaming.

“You are one of the best I’ve taught in a while, Victoria, even though that second landing was a bit shaky.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Next session with me, later this week, we’ll work the schedule based on weather,” and then he turned to the other students. “She did it in nine hours. Mr. Jenkins, you’ve had twelve hours now; listen to what she has to say later rather than the two of you staring at each other moon-eyed.”

Mr. Jenkins was the young man who had cut off her shirttail. “So that’s his name,” Gary said as he looked at the redheaded youth, who obviously had more than a friendly interest in his only daughter.

Jenkins, aware of the way that Gary was staring at him, reddened.

“Now, the rest of you, you’re missing out on what Franklin Smith has to say, and I want to hear it as well. Mr. Jenkins, one hour, I want you out to preflight the plane, and let’s see if you can do the same, finally.”

The group broke up and started to head to the hangar, but Victoria’s flight instructor nodded to Gary, who followed after him while Victoria stood wrapped in her mother’s arms, the two talking excitedly.

Gary extended his hand to the flight instructor, wondering if by chance this man remembered him from long ago.

“Thank you, sir.”

“No, the thanks are mine,” Brandon said. “Your daughter is a natural pilot. Piece of cake this morning. I’ll confess that when I cut some of them loose, my stomach is in a knot. I make a wrong decision on that and I have a kid augering in. No such worry with your girl. You should be proud of her.”