Velva Jean Learns to Fly (12 page)

Duke flew the plane steady, no dips or spins this time. I breathed a little easier. Then I looked out over the earth and at the water and the mountains far in the distance, at the blue of the sky and the rays of the sun that cut the sky into shining, glowing stripes, and I felt the wind in my face and the stinging in my eyes. I thought of Carole Lombard again and then I pushed the thought away. Up here there was no looming mountainside to crash into. There wasn’t any sadness or loss or even death. There was no guilt over Harley, no lost daddy, no dead mama, no faraway family, no worries, no fear. There was only sky and sun and wind and the earth spread out beneath me

I touched the controls once or twice, trying to get a feel for them, pretending I knew what to do and what they meant and how to fly this plane. I let my hands rest on the different switches and levers, hoping that something would come over me and suddenly I would start flying, like I’d known how to all along.

In the truck all the way back to the Lovelorn, I could still feel the light of the sky on my face, on my arms, in my chest. Johnny Clay talked and talked about what it felt like going up and how he couldn’t wait to do it again and to one day jump out of planes bigger than that one. I listened to him just like I would if he was far away and I couldn’t make out every word. I didn’t say anything, just let him talk on and on, but I couldn’t sit still. I kept hearing Ellen Tillman’s voice: “Women pilots are a weapon waiting to be used.”

In my mind I knew exactly how to use those controls. I was flying dangerous missions in the dark of night and rescuing soldiers that were dying or wounded or taken prisoner by the Germans.

THIRTEEN

D
uke Norris chain-smoked Camels, his fingers stained brown from the tobacco, and he always seemed to be looking through us at something else, as if expecting to see someone come walking over the horizon. He never said much, but there was a kindness in his eyes underneath the shadow of dark circles and the sadness, and I decided he wasn’t bad looking, in a faded, tired sort of way.

He could fly loops, barrel rolls, and spins in his yellow Aeronca Defender biplane. At our second lesson, one of the old men said that Duke’s wife had died after stepping into the propeller on their honeymoon. He said Duke had become a full-time farmer then and that he shut the plane away in his barn. Sometime later—no one knew why—Duke started barnstorming, stunt flying, and air racing. He seemed to be daring the plane, punishing it, pushing himself to fly higher and faster and wilder. But he never had an accident. I wondered if he’d wanted to, if maybe he wanted to die just like his wife. The old man said Duke wanted to teach but no one would take lessons with him because they said he was cursed. I didn’t know if he was cursed or not, but I thought he was romantic, and Johnny Clay thought it had just been some damn bad luck.

The Aeronca used gasoline from a car, and there were things about it that Johnny Clay said weren’t allowed on new airplanes anymore—external wire braces, fabric construction, single-ignition engine, and no airspeed indicator. It had a 65-horsepower Continental engine, and the rear seat sat up higher than the front seat so you could see over the head of the pilot. You could also fly the plane from either position, front or back. Duke said it was almost impossible to make a rough landing in the Aeronca because it was a glider. Even if the ride itself was bumpy, coming down was smooth as could be.

The second time I went up, I took my turn before Johnny Clay. I sat behind Duke with my feet on the rudders, one hand on the throttle, and my other hand on the stick. Duke told me to follow his every move, and I did my best. The Aeronca bounced along the grass runway, propeller spinning, until suddenly it roared up into the air, banked to the left, and then swept into the deep blue of a clear August sky.

Just like before, the world opened up and I could see the green of Nashville spread out below like a blanket. We practiced level flight, climbing turns, and gliding, which all seemed pretty easy except that I couldn’t keep my mind and eyes away from the earth. It was a different world up there—a world of blues and whites, gold streaks of sun bouncing off the propeller, color everywhere. I thought that the world looked different now that I’d been up there. I thought that maybe the world would always look different now, even when I was back on the ground.

At night I lay in my bed and pretended it was an airplane and that there was nothing below me but sky and earth and the green, flat grass of the runway. I closed my eyes and thought hard on it. I thought so hard that I could almost feel the wind on my face, the rumble and rattle of the engine, the pressure of the altitude closing in on my head, the shake of the throttle in my hand, and the cold metal of the wheel. I thought so hard that I could see the old men and Duke and Johnny Clay watching me from way down below, so far below that I couldn’t make out the details of their faces. From the clouds, I waved at them, knowing I was only a speck to them—a yellow, zooming blur—just like they were only specks to me. And then I started to sing.

From that time on I practiced once a week, depending on the weather. Summer in Nashville was hot and rainy, which meant that more than once we had to sit inside with the old men, waiting for the rain to let up and the sky to clear. Sometimes we played cards and sometimes we just sat and listened to them talk about the Great War. Lessons were three dollars an hour, and this took a good bit of my earnings from the café, but even with that Johnny Clay and me spent every Sunday at the airfield. Johnny Clay loved talking to the old men. He asked them a million questions about their time in the war, and they told us tale after tale about their adventures. He was learning to fly himself, but Duke wouldn’t let him jump from the Aeronca no matter how much he pestered.

Because I was working most days, Johnny Clay went out to Duke’s some mornings to take lessons on his own. This meant that he earned his solo time before I did—you had to have eight hours up in the air with Duke before you could fly by yourself. I was mad and jealous, but the one good thing about it was that Johnny Clay and I could now go up in the Aeronca together, him flying and me sitting in the seat behind.

At first he flew just like Duke had taught him—no spins or dives or loops. Just gliding nice and peaceful over Duke’s farm, and then back around and down to the landing strip, steady as you please. Duke stood on the ground, hands shoved in his pockets or on his hips, and watched us with that gaze of his that didn’t flinch or blink, no matter what.

But about the third time up with just the two of us, Johnny Clay decided to let loose. You could tell he just couldn’t hold himself in anymore. The first thing he did was fly off the regular path and take us over the main road leading to Duke’s and then beyond that to the farms that spread out wide around it. He swooped down low over the ground like a bird hunting for prey, and just when I thought he was going to crash us headfirst into the earth he pulled up sharp and we were back in the sky.

I let go of the stick and the throttle long enough to pinch his neck hard. I hoped it left a bruise. Just for that, he took the plane into a loop—first one, then another, then another, then another, until I thought I was going to be sick on my stomach. I started yelling at him: “Johnny Clay Hart! Dammit, Johnny Clay!”

He just laughed. And then he took the plane into a dive, and I leaned up to his ear and I yelled, “So help me Jesus, you better stop it right now.”

He shouted, “I can’t!”

“What do you mean, you can’t?” I caught sight of his face, the part I could see from the side, and he looked scared. This terrified me because Johnny Clay was never scared in his life. I shouted, “Bring us up!”

He said, “I can’t!”

Then I saw the fuel gauge. I pinched him again. “We’re out of gas!” We were losing altitude fast. The little plane seemed to be picking up speed as it headed down, down, down.

He was pulling on the throttle, pulling on the wheel. He said, “What do I do? Shit, Velva Jean. Shit, shit, shit!”

I held on tight to the sides of the seat and leaned into the glass so that I could see the ground. Farms everywhere. Corn and high grass and barns and silos. I’d lost sight of Duke and the old men and the barn where he kept the airplane and the little cracker-tin building. And then, just ahead and to the right, I saw a pasture full of cows grazing. I shouted, “There! Take it down there! Can you land it?”

He peered to the right, and I knew he’d seen the pasture. He said, “Goddamn cows.”

“Can you land it?!”

“Dammit, Velva Jean!” And then he swore a blue streak—words I’d never heard before, not even from my daddy when he’d had too much to drink. The nose of the plane was pointed straight down toward the ground, and I could tell Johnny Clay was freezing up, not sure what to do. Without thinking, I gripped hold of my controls and pumped the rudders and slammed the throttle and did my best to level her off. I felt like my arms were going to rip out of my sockets, but I held on hard as I could, leaning back into the seat with all my strength. I gritted my teeth so hard that I saw stars and I could taste blood where I’d bitten the inside of my cheek. Suddenly the nose of the plane started to inch upward, just like it was going through swamp water, and then it inched up a little more, a little more. We were still free-falling, but she was getting more level.

I steered us toward the pasture. We were coming down hard and fast, and I wondered if this was what it felt like to jump from a plane. I heard my brother’s words: “Did you know that when a human body falls out of an airplane it takes eight and a half seconds to hit the ground?”

Eight and a half seconds . . . eight and a half seconds . . .

I shouted, “Hold on!” And I thought, What a stupid thing to say. Of course he was holding on. We were both holding on for life. As I struggled to land that little plane, I was thinking about everything that had happened to me so far—from Mama dying to Daddy leaving to the panther cat to Harley Bright to the Wood Carver to Butch Dawkins to learning to drive to recording my songs to leaving home and coming to Nashville. My whole life was going by like a newsreel only faster and faster, gathering speed, until the images were blurred and fuzzy.

The ground came toward us hard and fast, and I started praying.
Dear Jesus, please don’t let us die. I don’t want to die. Not like this. Not smashed against a pasture full of cows. I’ve got too much to do in this world. Please help me land this plane safe and, so help me, I will earn my leaving home.

We bumped and bounced through the air, and I held on for dear life and kept up my prayers. And then suddenly—we were floating. For a second, I wondered if I was dead, and then I saw that we were just over the pasture and the plane was gliding fast, skimming the top of green, but we were smooth and steady. The cows scattered in a hundred directions, and then I felt the landing gear touch the ground once, twice, three times, and we were coasting fast through the pasture, wheels on the earth.

I thought about crying and then I slapped the back of Johnny Clay’s head instead. I shouted, “Don’t you ever do that again!”

Then I climbed out of the plane and nearly fell on my face because I was so mad and grateful to be alive and my legs didn’t work. Johnny Clay jumped down, and I could tell he was a little wobbly, but he was grinning at me the same way he did after the panther got my leg—with admiration. He said, “Velva Jean, you just flew that plane.”

I said, “Don’t you even talk to me.”

I kept the cows off the Aeronca while Johnny Clay hitched to the nearest farmhouse to beg for gasoline. “Shoo, cow, shoo.” Every time I waved one away, another would come wandering up. They seemed to like the yellow of the plane. They stood there chewing grass and staring at me with their sad brown eyes and then they’d try to climb up on the wings. It was something to see, but we couldn’t have a cow on the plane, so I ran round and round, hollering at them to stay back.

After about an hour, Johnny Clay came sauntering back, gas can in hand, whistling a tune. That was the thing about my brother. You couldn’t rush him. You couldn’t make him do anything he didn’t want to do, even after we’d almost died.

As he poured the gasoline into the tank, he said, “We had ourselves an adventure, Velva Jean.”

I didn’t say anything because I still wasn’t speaking to him.

He said, “Yes, sir. Feels good, don’t it? After all this time? Good for the soul. Like running away from home and hopping the train and being chased by the panther cat. We was nearly killed but we weren’t.” He finished emptying the gas can and then he leaned back against the plane and ran one hand over his hair. He said, “Yes, sir.” He closed his eyes and took in the sun.

I looked at him hard then and wanted to say something about how the last thing that was good for my soul was nearly dying in a field of cows, but he looked so gold and happy and peaceful, and suddenly I had a flash of him in uniform, jumping out of an airplane bigger than this one, carrying a gun, being shot at in some strange place by men that didn’t even speak English. And I couldn’t help it—I felt my heart go soft at the center. And then I thought: I flew an airplane. I landed an airplane. I saved our lives.

I said, “I’m glad you’re here, Johnny Clay.”

He opened one eye and said, “Don’t you get sentimental on me.” Then he went loping off toward the farmhouse, swinging the empty gas can. “Be right back,” he hollered.

It was August 23—one year to the day since I arrived in Nashville—and getting close to time for him to go. We didn’t talk about it, but I knew he didn’t have much longer before he had to report for training. Every time I went up in the Aeronca I pretended he was in my plane, getting ready to jump out of it, and that I was making it my duty to know that plane as good as I could so that nothing at all could ever go wrong.

One of the cows shuffled up to me and stood, not blinking, just chewing and watching my face. I said, “Shoo, cow.” We stood there looking at each other and finally I said, “I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to him.” The cow just chewed and stared. As I stood there staring back, a great heaviness gathered around me till I wondered if that little plane would be able to even get off the ground to carry us back to Duke’s.