Coast to Coast (3 page)

Pop turned south at the coast, and the bright sun blazed across the windshield. “I’ll level off at a thousand feet,” he said. Birch heard the engine grow quieter as he throttled back.

The ocean was on one side, the wide Carolina beach on the other. Birch breathed the fresh salt air. People were on the sand with bright sun umbrellas, yellow rafts, striped towels. Swimmers kept to the shoreline. Two bicycles moved up the beach.

“You can see everything from up here!” Birch said.

She rested her arm on the side of the plane. It gave her a sporty, racy feeling. Her visor fluttered in the wind.

Her grandfather pointed. “Shrimp boats, and that’s Kiawah Island. Look at the size of those houses!”

She nodded. “Those people may be rich, but they don’t have airplanes. If they did, they’d be up here!”

Pop smiled.

Birch felt as if this was her first flight. She had flown on airliners, but there had been no contact with the wind or the ground. She might as well have been in a sealed room.

And the view from the jet—the tiny towns, the almost invisible roads, the snakelike rivers—had given her no feeling of height, no feeling of being way up there, just a feeling of remoteness. The airline pilot had said, “We’re level at thirty thousand feet,” but even that had not been impressive.

Now with the wind in her face and the roar of the engine in her ears, at one thousand feet above the ground, she was all of a sudden way up there in a way she had never been before.

Some children on the beach looked up and waved. Pop wagged his wings back at them.

“I love it!” she said over her shoulder.

“You want to try?”

“Is it legal?”

“Sure, I’m the pilot in command.”

She reached for the stick, then hesitated. “I’m afraid,” she admitted. “I don’t want to make us crash.”

“I’m not going to let you get into trouble. Hold the stick. I’ve got it too.”

She wrapped her fingers around the control stick.

“You want to go left or right?” he asked.

Birch nodded toward shore.

“Push the stick to the right and see what happens.”

She put a little pressure on the stick, and the right wing dipped. The J-3 banked toward the beach. She felt her grandfather put a little opposite pressure. The wings gently came back parallel to the horizon.

“Can I try that the other way?”

“Go ahead.”

“I like
this,”
she yelled. “I could go all over the sky like this.” She turned to the left, then to the right. “Can I go up a little higher?”

“Pull back on the stick.”

She pulled back and gasped as the plane rose. “Climbing’s scary. I can’t see. You take it.”

Her grandfather took the stick. “Now we’re level at fifteen hundred feet.”

“I’m ready to try again, Pop. I got my guts back.”

Birch flew until her grandfather finally said, “Have you had enough flying for one day?”

“No way.”

She heard the boom of his laughter over the roar of the engine.

“I don’t want to go back, Pop.”

“Well, we better head back anyway. Your mom’s going to be wondering where we are. You got any idea where the airport is?”

Birch glanced over her shoulder. “Back that way.”

“That’s north. Check the compass.”

“Where is it?” She glanced over the panel. “Is it one of the instruments with a little bear cub in the middle?”

Her grandfather stuck his arm over her shoulder and pointed to a circular instrument.

“North is N, so turn the plane around till the compass is on N.”

“Don’t help me now.”

Birch pushed the stick to the left and made a 180 degree turn. The numbers slipped around behind the thick glass. She could feel her grandfather’s hand helping her. “I can do it by myself!” she said. Then she headed up the coast. “See?”

“You want to land or you want me to?” her grandfather asked when the airport was in sight.

“Well, I’ll let you do that.”

Her grandfather pointed to the faded orange wind-sock. “Wind’s shifted. We’ll go in on runway three.”

Birch looked over the side as her grandfather throttled all the way back. The J-3 floated along, sinking easily. The prop swished around at idle.

There was a green field below with brown cows and white seagulls. As the plane passed over, the gulls lifted into the air and turned to the sea.

Ahead stretched the runway. A plane was taking off. It was startlingly white against the blue sky.

There was a long moment when the J-3 seemed to hang over the earth, trying not to land. Then it settled on the runway and, with a squeak of the tires, slowed to a stop.

Her grandfather taxied to the hangar.

“Oh, I really liked it, Pop,” Birch said, as she climbed out. “You know, I felt very in touch with the ground, and that’s funny because I wasn’t touching it at all.”

As they pushed the J-3 back in the hangar, she said, “I’m beginning to think I could learn to fly, Pop. Maybe I inherited the flying gene.”

“You could learn if you wanted to.”

“It doesn’t seem that hard.”

“That’s what the Cub was designed for—to make people think it’s not that hard.” He smiled. “The Cub’s a trainer. Piper made it to give flying lessons in. Watch the wingtip.”

“I am. You’ve got plenty of room. I can’t wait to tell my friends. Except, guess what? I’m not speaking to my three best friends, Pop. You know what they did to me? We were going in this movie—
Robin Hood
—and there’s this cute boy named David? And he was going in with his friends. Brenda knows I like David, so she goes, ‘Let’s sit by them.’ We watch where they sit and we follow. I go in first so I can end up sitting by David. Then, you know what my three best friends did, Pop? They slipped back and sat somewhere else. I sit by David and I look around and they’re gone! Pop, I was so embarrassed I just got up and left.”

Pop was standing back from the plane, watching it. Birch could see that he hadn’t heard a word she’d said.

“Flying like we were doing—just for the fun of flying—that’s freedom, that’s what I was talking about.”

He seemed exhilarated by the flight. His cheeks were pink. His eyes shone.

“Yes, I really do see what you were talking about.”

“I’m going to miss this. You know, Birch, your grandmother did jigsaw puzzles. She was always working on one, and every now and then, there’d be a piece missing. And the missing piece was all that mattered to her. The whole rest of the puzzle was nothing. That’s the way I am about flying. For the rest of my life, it’ll be the missing piece.”

With his words, the chill of the birth poem fell over her. The missing piece … She knew what it was to have one of those.

“Maybe we can fly tomorrow, Birch. Maybe go someplace special …”

She glanced at her grandfather as he broke off. The look of excitement was fading. He was on his way to being an old man again.

He turned without a word and headed for the parking lot. He opened the truck door and slid into the driver’s seat. It was as if he had forgotten Birch was there.

“Are we going home already?”

He slammed the door.

“Pop, let’s don’t go home yet. Please. I—well, don’t leave me!”

She ran to the truck and climbed in.

In the silence that followed, Birch said, “Listen, if you’re serious about going somewhere special, I’ll go. I’ll go anywhere you want to.”

“The plane’s sold.”

“But—”

He cut her off with a shake of his head. Then he backed out of the parking space and headed for home.

A
CE WAS STANDING IN
the middle of the driveway, watching for the truck. When the truck turned in, he began to bark.

He worked his way to the driver’s side, where Pop would get out. His barks lowered to a growl. He crouched.

Pop cracked the door. “Calm down, Ace,” he said. “I couldn’t take you. You weren’t around.”

“Ace is not very bright,” Birch said. “He thinks it’s your shoes that are responsible for taking you away. He’s waiting to attack your shoes. Like, wow, I’m gonna to make these shoes sorry.”

“Ace knows. He just can’t bring himself to attack me. Once a dog has been abandoned, like Ace, you have to forgive him for attacking shoes.”

Pop sighed tiredly as he stepped down from the truck. At once Ace pounced on his left shoe. Pop went down to the basement, shaking the dog off.

“That’s enough now, Ace, let up.”

Pop paused to look at a box on the miscellaneous table and Birch ran up the steps. “Mom! Guess what!”

“Where’s your grandfather?”

“Downstairs. Mom, guess what! I flew Pop’s plane.”

“What’s he doing in the basement?”

“Looking at a box of papers. You didn’t let me finish. I flew, Mom! I flew! I piloted the plane! I didn’t want to come down!”

“Did you ask Pop about the poems?”

The good feeling left Birch. “No.”

“Why not?”

Birch shrugged. “It wasn’t the right time.”

“I thought you absolutely couldn’t wait.”

Again, Birch shrugged.

“Well, you cannot take the poems without asking him.”

“Maybe I don’t want them after all.”

Her mother watched her for a moment. Birch thought her mother was—at last—going to ask what was wrong.

“Birch,” she began, but Pop interrupted.

Pushing open the kitchen door, he cut between them on his way to the table.

Pop set a cardboard box down and pulled up a chair. He lifted a map from the box and unfolded it.

“Oh, Pop, I’m glad you’re back. I found a cigar box full of coins. Some may be valuable.”

“Sell them … sell everything.”

“I can’t put a price on them without knowing what they’re worth.” She waited, then sighed. “Is it all right if I divide them up for the grandchildren?”

“That’ll be fine.”

“Did you have time to look at the tools while you were downstairs? I know you won’t need the lawnmower and the gardening things, but you ought to keep a set of tools. Even in a retirement community there’ll be times when you’ll need a hammer or a screwdriver.”

“All right, I’ll keep some. Just don’t bother me right now.”

“When? After supper?”

“Yes, if you’ll let me alone.”

She turned swiftly, pushed open the swinging door with both hands and went into the dining room. “Birch, will you come in here for a minute?” she called.

Birch followed and stood with her back against the door, her arms crossed. She had had a lot of happy meals in this room, but now the table was piled with boxes of things her mother was keeping, and the pictures were down from the wall.

She took a deep breath to prepare herself for her mother’s question.

“Birch, I need your help.”

“What?”

“I need your help with Pop. You see what he’s doing in there, don’t you?”

“What?”

“Looking at maps—aviation maps. He’s going to be poring over them all night. I know the man. Please see if you can get him to go down and look at the tools.” She ran her hands through her hair.

“Mom, if he doesn’t want to look at tools, he shouldn’t have to look at tools.”

“He doesn’t want to look at anything—tools, books, you name it—he doesn’t want to look at it. He begged me to come down here, begged me, and get rid of things for him, and now he won’t help me.”

“He just wants his airplane!”

“Birch, this is my whole girlhood.” She made a gesture that took in the entire house. “This is my life. I am throwing away my life, and he won’t even look at a few measly tools.”

“Mom, please don’t cry.”

“I can’t help it. I’m tired. If he would have waited one month, your dad could have come to help me, and I wouldn’t be falling apart every five minutes, but, oh, no, it had to be done right now.”

“So, what do you want me to do? I remember—look at tools.”

She pushed open the swinging doors to the kitchen. “Want to go downstairs and look at the tools, Pop?”

“No.”

“I don’t either, but I think we’re going to have to.”

“I’m busy.”

He adjusted his glasses and pulled his nose. He always did this when he was deep in thought. He peered closer at a map. He marked a spot with one finger, and then he moved his hand across the sheet of paper to another spot.

“What are you doing, Pop?”

“Looking at maps. Don’t bother me.”

Birch came closer and leaned over his shoulder.

“Your mother was going to sell my box of maps,” he said. “These are the maps Dwane and I marked our route on. Remember I told you we were going to fly coast to coast? You mom was selling this whole box of maps for fifty cents.”

“That’s why she wants you to go through stuff.”

Birch leaned over the map, looking curiously at the pale green expanse of low country, the yellow cities, blue lakes and curling rivers, the blue and magenta keyhole shaped lines around some of the airports. Across the map was the slash of red magic marker.

“Show me where we went today,” she said.

“Well, here’s the John’s Island airport.” He put his index finger on a magenta circle. “We took off on runway nine, this one. Remember seeing a nine?”

“Yes.”

“That nine stands for ninety—ninety degrees. That means that when we took off, our heading was ninety degrees—due east. We went over the Stono River and turned south at the coast. Right about here, you turned us around and we came north to the airport.”

“I always wondered what those numbers on the end of the runway stood for.”

“Now you know. If your runway’s twenty-seven, your heading’s two hundred and seventy degrees—due west. If your runway’s three, your heading’s thirty degrees.”

“That’s neat. Is this magic marker line your route to California?”

“Yes, we were going to head west toward Atlanta, stopping at Allendale … Berry Hill … Louisville, Georgia. Just past Atlanta we’d meet up with Interstate Twenty and follow it.”

His finger went off the map. He reached in the box for the next one. Birch waited while he spread it out.

“We’d pass over the Mississippi River at Vicksburg, hit Texas, still on I-Twenty … Wait a minute, I’ll get the next map.”

As he unfolded it, he said, “We were going to land at little airports where we could get car gas. It’s cheaper. Here we are—we’d go south of Dallas—” He broke off. “I’ll spread them all out so you can see.”