Coast to Coast (7 page)

Birch glanced out the window. Below the broad ribbed wing of the J-3, lay the interstate.

The interstate stretched as far as the eye could see. It had taken on a special beauty in the clean early morning sunlight—the pale side-by-side ribbons of highway, the scattering of greenery between, the double bridges, the perfectly symmetrical cloverleaf ramps. The rest stops with the parked trucks and cars were as appealing as toys.

Her grandfather touched her shoulder to get her attention.

“You can get an idea of how fast we’re going from the traffic. See that Roadway truck?”

She nodded.

“It’s probably doing seventy or seventy-five. We’ve got a little head wind today, so we’re probably doing sixty. See how he’s moving ahead of us?”

Birch nodded again. She grinned at him over her shoulder.

Pop had told her that morning at breakfast that things would be easier today. “We won’t have to be doing any navigating. We’ll just follow the interstate. And there won’t be a cloud in the sky.”

“I got tired yesterday.”

“I did myself.”

“And I was nervous at times. You probably didn’t notice.”

“I noticed.”

“I had to come on this trip. I had to.”

“I did myself.”

“But not like me.”

He looked at her for a moment, squinting as if to get a better perspective.

She went on quickly. “Anyway, I knew when I woke up this morning that it was going to be a good day. You know how I knew?”

“How’s that?”

“Because on the TV news was a story about Bimbo the goat. Didn’t you see it?”

“Nope.”

“First I have to explain that what I see on the news affects my whole day like if there’s a disaster, I think about those people for the rest of the day. And today, I especially needed to feel good, and when I saw this goat—his name was Bimbo—I knew I would.

“This goat started dancing after his kids were born. His dancing was—well, some people would call it jumping up and down—but it was in time to the music. The music was ‘Celebrations.’”

“I only saw the weather.”

“Well, he had a lot of rhythm for a goat.”

Birch looked out the window. The early morning air was calm and the J-3 rode smoothly.

She was taking more interest in the landscape now that she understood her map. There was real satisfaction in seeing that every curve in the road was on the map, every river. She could find each town and call it by name. Her thumb, like Pop’s, was on the exact spot on the map where they were right now.

She noticed on the map that the railroad tracks moved away from the interstate. She looked ahead, and the real railroad tracks slanted away from the highway too.

Birch watched a slow-moving freight train coming toward them. It seemed so toylike, so appealingly slow, that she understood how people got the idea of jumping on board. It was the kind of spur-of-the-moment thing she and Pop might have done if they’d lived near the tracks instead of the airport. He would go, “All my life, I’ve dreamed of hopping a train to California,” and she’d go, “What’s stopping us?”

“See that fire over there?” Pop pointed to some columns of smoke on the horizon.

Birch nodded.

“You can tell by the direction of the smoke that the wind’s out of the west.”

“It looks like a forest fire.”

“Brush fire, probably.”

There were ugly stripped forests here too, but a row of tall trees had been left by the interstate so travelers would have a good impression of Mississippi.

“Oh, there’s another plane, Pop, and—I ain’t believing this—it’s lower than we are.”

Pop said, “Crop duster.”

Birch watched the red and white plane skimming the trees below.

“You want to fly some?” Pop asked.

“Sure.”

Birch took the control stick in her right hand. She looked at the altimeter. “You want me to stay at three?”

“That’ll be fine.”

“Pop, I’m really catching on to this. Did you notice how cool that sounded. Shall I stay at three?”

Pop reached around and took Ace from the luggage rack. He put him on his lap. “Good dog,” he said, “you didn’t know you were going to California, did—”

“Pop, watch me now.”

“I am.”

“Don’t play with the dog.”

“I thought you were so cool.”

“Pop, I just put my hand on the stick! I haven’t had a chance to mess up!”

“I’m watching.”

Birch glanced out the window to make sure she hadn’t gotten too far from the interstate, then back at the altimeter. “Oh.” She pushed forward gently on the stick. When the needle pointed just below three thousand feet, she leveled off. “It went up by itself.”

Pop said, “My flight instructor used to say, ‘Head up and out, son.’”

“Up and out?”

“What he meant was not to stare at the instruments. Give a quick glance at the instruments, then at the attitude of the plane’s nose, the wingtip position, then a three hundred sixty-degree check for traffic. Then back at the—oh, there’s Vicksburg and the Mississippi!”

Birch leaned forward and looked over the cowling. “That is the Mississippi River?”

“Yes.”

“Pop, I’m disappointed. I expected it to be this great wide, rolling river. It looks gray. And when I think of all the songs that have been written about it.”

“If you think the Mississippi’s a disappointment,” Pop said, “wait till you see the Rio Grande. This time of year you can step across it.”

Birch felt a sharp move of the stick, and the J-3 turned left. Startled, she said, “Pop, did you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Well, tell me when you’re going to take over. Don’t just grab the stick. It makes me think something’s wrong when the stick jerks like—”

“I want to get a picture of you with the river in the background. Look over your shoulder, Birch.”

Birch glanced over her shoulder and Pop took a picture of her and the Mississippi River.

“Watch your altitude.”

“Well, make up your mind. I can’t watch my altitude and pose for a picture at the same time.” She pushed forward on the stick.

“You’re doing fine, isn’t she, Ace? She’s doing just fine.”

“Well, I am doing better,” she admitted.

“Y
OU KNOW WHAT INSTRUMENTS
I don’t understand?”

“Which ones?” Pop asked. He was on a ladder, putting gas in the plane. They were at the Lancaster County airport, south of Dallas.

This was their third stop of the day. Birch was keeping a list of all the airports they stopped at. Rayville, Louisiana, Marshall, Texas, and now Lancaster, “I understand the compass—well, let’s say I’ve learned to live with the compass, and I understand the altimeter—it tells height, and—”

“Height above sea level, not above the ground,” Pop said.

“I said I understood!” Birch was sitting on a bench, sharing a pack of cheese crackers with Ace. A thin collie watched intently from the gas pumps.

Birch threw half a cracker to Ace. “I understand oil pressure and oil temperature—that’s like a car.”

“So what don’t you understand?”

“I’m getting to that. The air speed indicator.”

“That’s like the speedometer in a car.”

“Yes, but it always reads sixty-five or seventy when really we could be going forty-five miles an hour or ninety.”

“It gives you your speed through the air.”

“Which actually means nothing. I also don’t see the purpose of the tachometer.”

“The tachometer tells you how fast your engine is running, so you don’t overtax the engine or use too much gas.” Pop wiped his hands on a paper towel. “You ready to stop for the day or you want to keep going?”

“What time is it?”

“Three o’clock. We picked up an hour.”

“Oh, let’s keep going. I like flying over Texas. Everything’s so open. I liked the Blacklands.” She said the word dramatically.

“My granddaddy worked there for a while.”

“In the Blacklands?”

“He drilled salt wells. Then he met my grandmama. My grandmama was the most superstitious woman ever born. At night she’d turn her pockets inside out to ward off ghosts. If you had a wart, she’d steal a dishrag and hide it, and the wart would go away.”

“I never thought of you as having grandparents,” Birch said.

He eyed her for a moment. “Believe it or not, I am human.”

“I didn’t mean that. I never thought of you with grandparents who moved around,” she added.

“Why’s that?”

“Because you stayed in one place your whole life. You worked at one job.”

“Maybe I liked my job. Did you ever think of that?”

“You liked maintaining machines?”

He ducked under the wing.

“I didn’t mean that as an insult.”

“I didn’t take it as one. Yes, I liked maintaining machines. Well, let me pay for my gas and check out a J-3 they’re restoring in the hangar. Then we’ll get going.”

“I’m beginning to think every airport in the United States has two things—a J-3 being restored in the hangar and a dog.”

“You want to see the J-3?”

“No, I’m enjoying the Texas sun.” She stretched out her legs as Pop wheeled away.

Ace had given up on getting any more crackers and gone to check out the collie. The two dogs were now circling each other warily by the gas pumps.

“Be friendly now,” Birch called.

A man came out of the terminal. “Where you folks going in the J-3?” he asked.

“California.”

He looked interested. “Where are you planning to cross the San Gabriel Mountains?”

Birch had not been aware there would be mountains. She said, “I don’t know. Where do most people cross?”

“Banning’s about the lowest. I hope for your sake the winds aren’t blowing from the west.”

“Why? Because we’d be slow?”

“Because you could get pushed into the ground. I’m a flat-country boy myself. At Banning’s where I learned about downdrafts.”

Birch sat up straighter. “What are downdrafts?”

“The wind is pushed up one side of the mountain and then when it goes over the top, it starts down and it’ll be chopped up and rough. You come to this down slope side and you sink, sometimes below the mountaintop and—”

Her grandfather came around the terminal building then, combing his hair with his hands.

“Pop, I’m talking to this man about going over the mountains.”

Pop asked, “Which mountains?”

She turned to the man. “What was the name of those mountains? I don’t even know which mountains we’re going to be pushed into.”

“We’re not getting pushed into any mountain,” Pop said.

“I was talking about the San Gabriels,” the man said. “I had a bad experience at Banning last year—” He broke off and watched the J-3 Cub. “Well, look at that.”

“What?” Birch turned and looked too.

As they watched, the right front tire slowly went flat and the right wing tilted down. Pop said, “Oh,” as if the air had gone out of him at the same time.

In the silence that followed Birch said, “What are you going to do, Pop? Do you have a spare?”

He shook his head.

“Can you get one?” Birch got to her feet.

“Not likely.”

Birch looked at her grandfather, the downward slope of his shoulders. “Whoopee!”

He looked at her sharply.

“What was that for?”

“Now I get to see you do your thing.” She grinned. “Maintain machines.” She pushed her sun visor back on her head and challenged him with her eyes.

Pop ground his teeth and turned to the man, “Will you help me get the tire off and see the damage?”

“I’ll be glad to.”

“I guess the first thing to do is get the weight off of it.”

“I’ll get some blocks. Buck, give us a hand here,” the man called to the line boy.

Birch watched while the men lifted the J-3 wing and put wooden blocks under the axle. Then Pop came to life. In five minutes he had the hubcap off, the cotter key out, and the nut and wheel off.

With the wheel in his hand, Pop started for the hangar. He said to Birch, “I got to take the tire off and check the inner tube. There’s a man here who might be able to fix it. If not, we’ll have to take it into town. And this is a new inner tube too. I paid eighty dollars for it.”

Birch followed. “Pop, can I ask one more thing about the mountains?”

“You let me worry about the mountains.”

“Well, it would be me getting pushed into them too, you know.”

“Nobody’s going to get pushed into any mountains. Right now we got one thing to worry about and one thing only—this here tire.” He shook the wheel at her. “When we get to California—and it looks more like if we get to California, then we’ll worry about the San Gabriel Mountains.”

Birch walked slowly back to the bench and sat down. Ace and the airport collie had finished smelling each other and lost interest. The collie was lying in the shade.

Birch felt the heat as an actual force. Her shoulders sagged.

“Ace, you know what?”

Ace’s tail brushed the dry ground.

“Last night, Ace, I had bad dreams again. It didn’t have anything to do with flying. It had to do with something in my past.

“This baby had died,” she went on, looking down at her hands, “and it must have been my mom’s because the doctor was talking to her. He said, ‘Don’t bother about it. Just take this other one.’ And my mom was crying. She didn’t want me—I was the other one. She wanted the dead baby. ‘Give me my baby,’ she kept saying.

“And it was so real, it was like it had actually happened, like I heard those exact words, and even though I heard them when I was a baby, they went into my brain and got stored and …”

Birch trailed off. She looked down into Ace’s sympathetic eyes.

“It doesn’t sound like such a bad dream, I guess. But when I woke up, I was all sweaty and there were tears on my cheeks.

“And I wanted to wake Pop up, right then, in the middle of the night, because I know he could explain that dream.

“As soon as I get a chance, Ace, I’m going to ask Pop to do just that.”

“O
NE TIME WHEN I
was little—I know you must be getting bored hearing about when I was little, Pop, but there’s nothing else to talk about. Also, little things that happened back then keep popping into my mind.”