Coast to Coast (9 page)

“Now you tell me.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

“Pop, didn’t you even bring me a cold drink?”

“We’ll get drinks later.”

“That’s what you always say. When later? All I’ve had is a cup of stale water!”

“Be thankful.”

Pop pulled the chocks out from the wheels. He took the wing and slowly swung the plane around.

“Get in.”

“Pop—”

“If you’re going with me, get in.”

Birch took her time putting Ace on the luggage rack and getting into the front seat. She buckled her belt, put her heels on the brakes.

“Brakes and contact.”

“Brakes. Contact!” He swung the prop and the plane came to life. Birch watched through the whirling blur of the prop as they taxied the way they had come. “Watch the wings,” Pop said as they went through the gate.

“I’m watching.”

When they were lined up facing the wind, Pop said, “At least this head wind will shorten our takeoff distance. Is your belt tight?”

“My belt stays tight.” She looked through the shimmering heat at the line of tires blocking the taxiway. “You’re sure we’re going to make this?”

“We got two thousand feet. It’s a piece of cake.”

He slid the throttle forward. Birch closed her eyes and held on tight.

She felt the wheels leave the ground, and she opened her eyes in time to see them lift off halfway to the bales of hay and turn toward the city of Big Spring.

Sighing she leaned back and watched the Texas landscape below without interest. She was tired and hungry and hot. Sweat ran down the backs of her legs. “He could at least have brought me a coke,” she muttered.

Neither of them spoke for an hour. Birch sat with her arms crossed over her chest. It was Pop who broke the silence. “That’s the Midland-Odessa area ahead.”

“Nice airport,” she said pointedly. “They probably have a cold drink machine.”

“Oil storage tanks down there, but they’re empty.”

“I’m not that interested in oil storage.”

In some fields all that remained of the tanks were the pale circles where they had been. In the distance oil well pumps rocked back and forth on the dry, cactus-dotted landscape.

“The only place trees are of any size is the cemetery,” Pop commented.

“Oh, look!” she cried, leaning forward. “A swimathon! Those lucky, lucky people. Pop, I want to be in that pool so bad I’d jump if I had a parachute.”

“You want to fly some?” Pop asked.

She closed her eyes. I am hot and tired and sweaty and getting too close to something I don’t like. The last thing I want to do in the whole world is fly.

She opened her eyes. She said, “Oh, all right, I’ll fly a while,” and she took the control stick.

“H
I, DAD, IT’S ME
, checking in.”

“Birch, where are you?”

“Monohans, Texas.”

“Wait a minute. Let me open your mom’s map. Hey you’re almost across Texas.”

“Almost.”

“So what did you do today?”

“We did what we always do—we flew and flew and flew.”

“I’d like to hear some details.”

“Well, we flew three hundred eighty miles—Pop just figured it out. We had a head wind. It took us six hours and twenty-eight minutes. We used twenty-six and one tenth gallons of gas.”

“Where’d you land?”

“First we landed at Cisco. There was nobody there. There wasn’t even a drink machine. Dad, a lot of Texas airports are deserted, but a real nice man in a Honda took Pop to the gas station. I waited with his wife. She told me she joined the Civil Air Patrol so she could fly and she marched for three years.

“Then we gassed up and went on to the next airport which had been turned into a race—”

She hesitated, because her grandfather gave her a warning look.

“We landed on an airport which is not used much anymore—for airplanes.”

Pop allowed himself to smile.

“So once again Pop went for gas and I waited. I was so hot I was panting harder than Ace. Then we put the gas in and flew to Monohans, and I was so happy to be here I fell down and kissed the ground like the Pope. We’re at the Holiday Inn, getting ready to go to the seafood buffet. Where’s Mom?”

“She’s over at Joyce’s.”

“Oh. And, Dad, guess what? I saw my first mesa today. The west looks just like it’s supposed to look.”

“Are you doing any of the flying?”

“I fly all the time. It’s like driving. I stay on the right side of the interstate and maintain my altitude. I can tell how fast I’m going by the traffic. Today we went slow. The only vehicle we passed was a motor home.”

“How’s Ace?”

“Ace’s doing fine. He gets out of the plane when we land, finds a weed to go to the bathroom on and then he’s ready to get back in. He went on a cactus today—that was another first.”

There was a pause, and her dad said, “Actually, I’m glad your mom’s not here at the moment.”

“Oh?” Birch felt a pang of unease.

“Yes, I want to talk to you.”

“Oh?”

“Birch, I’m sure you are aware that your mom’s been under a lot of pressure lately.”

“Yes.”

“That’s one of the reasons I came down. Selling the house and going through all those memories has been hard on her.”

“I was there, remember?”

“Yes. In some ways, Birch, your mom got out of touch with what was going on around her. And now that she’s getting more in control, she’s starting to wonder about things.”

“Like what?”

“Like that box of your grandmother’s poems, for one thing.”

“Oh.”

“She looked for it after you left. She wanted to check one of the poems, but the box was missing.”

“I brought it with me.”

“She was particularly concerned, Birch, about the poem written on your birthday.”

“I was concerned about that too.”

“It’s something we need to talk about.”

“Yes, but not over the phone—please.”

“No, not over the phone.”

She was surprised that she felt relief.

“As soon as you get back—”

“I’ll come down to the office,” she finished for him, forcing a laugh. Then she said, “Oh, here’s Pop. He wants to say something.”

Birch handed the phone to Pop and went into the bathroom. She drank a glass of water and watched herself in the mirror. The talk with her dad had made her tense and now, as she relaxed, her knees began to tremble.

She closed her eyes against her reflection. She was still standing there, leaning against the basin, eyes closed when Pop called, “You ready to eat?”

“Yes, I’m starved!”

She joined him, and they walked out into the late afternoon heat. It was five o’clock and the sky was building with towering cumulous clouds. Birch heard a rumble of thunder in the distance.

“We’ll have thunderstorms tonight.”

“Just so we don’t have them when we’re flying. Have you ever flown in a thunderstorm, Pop?”

“Not since the war.”

Birch pushed open the door to the dining room. “Oh, look, Pop. We’re the first ones. I love to be first at a buffet. We’re not too early, are we?” she asked the waitress.

“No, help yourself.”

“This looks so good. I’m going to start with fruit.” She filled a plate with cantaloupe, honey dew melon, pineapple, salad, strawberries.

She sat down opposite her grandfather and put a strawberry in her mouth. “This is the best strawberry I ever ate in my life. One bad thing about a life of starvation is that when you finally get food—you make a pig out of yourself!”

She stopped talking. She put the half-eaten strawberry down on her plate and looked at it. “Is there such a thing as being too hungry to eat?”

“Not for me.”

Birch picked up the half-eaten strawberry and looked up. “Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you. Will you tell me the truth?”

“I’m too tired to lie.”

“Were we in danger today when we landed on the drag race track? I wasn’t nearly as scared as I thought I would be.”

“No, that was an old military airport. The taxi strip was as wide as most runways. I did a lot of landings in the war that made that one look like a piece of cake. I’m not going to take any risks. This trip is important to me.”

“Well, it’s important to me too, but—” She shrugged.

“But it’s not your last chance.”

“Pop, don’t say things like that.”

“When your grandmother lay dying—”

“Oh, Pop, please don’t.”

“When your grandmother lay dying, she didn’t know what she was saying half the time, or maybe she did. But she talked about the things she hadn’t done.”

“Like what?”

“It turned out she’d always wanted to go to England. She’d never said a word about that to me. She wanted to visit the homes of poets. She could call out the names of their houses. She wanted to write books and paint pictures. Come to find out she never did care much for all those puzzles I bought her and she made such a fuss over.”

“She loved doing those puzzles.”

“Well, you wouldn’t have known it to hear her at the end.”

“Pop, at the end she was on so much pain medicine she didn’t know what she was saying.”

“But on her deathbed, she had regrets.” He took a breath. “When I lay dying—”

“Pop, now stop it! I mean it! I’m putting my fingers in my ears!”

“When I lay dying, if I babble—and most people do—I want to babble about landing on a racetrack at Big Spring, about coming through the Soledad pass and seeing the Pacific, about taking off at dawn at Monohans, Texas, about—”

“Dawn, Pop? Why does it always have to be dawn?” Birch dropped her hands into her lap. “Just once couldn’t we take off at ten o’clock in the morning?”

P
OP WAS CHECKING UNDER
the cowling. “This thing was trying to leak a little bit the other day.” Birch slumped beside Ace. “I thought that was the sump bowl.”

A small crayon-streak of peach was on the horizon. A red, half-circle of sun moved into sight.

“I have seen more sunrises …” Birch trailed off without finishing her sentence.

The three of them had fallen into a morning routine. Birch awoke as soon as Pop pulled aside the motel drape to check the colorless, predawn sky. He would be already dressed in his jumpsuit. Ace would be at the door, waiting to go for his walk.

“What time is it?” she’d ask, squinting at them.

“Five-thirty.”

“Pop! Why so early?”

“It’s seven-thirty our time.”

While Birch struggled out of bed and into her clothes, Pop walked Ace and looked for a ride to the airport. They’d drive through empty streets. Dawn was Pop’s favorite time of day. “There’s an air of reason and peace about it. I feel like I’m getting a jump on the rest of the world,” he’d say.

“I’m not a morning person,” Birch would answer.

The airport would be deserted too. As the sun came up, Birch would be undoing the ropes that held the wings and Pop would be checking the plane.

Now Pop secured the cowling. “I’m setting the altimeter on twenty-six thirteen, see? That’s the elevation of the field. Did you notice that your map looks browner than it did back in South Carolina?”

“Not really.”

“The green color on a sectional stands for low land. As the land gets higher … Open up your map.”

She pulled out her map and unfolded it. “See the background color is brown? And when we get beyond Pecos, see, it gets even browner. Here are the three thousand-foot contour lines, then thirty-two fifty, then thirty-five hundred. When we get into the Davis Mountains we’ll see fifty-six hundred-foot peaks. Right here we come to the end of Interstate Twenty.”

Birch refolded her map and put Ace in the plane. “Ace is such a satisfactory dog, because he respects my moods. If I’m tired, his tail sags. If I’m happy, he jumps all over me. If I’m half asleep, like right now, he acts like he is too.” She climbed in the front seat, put on her earphones, buckled her belt.

“Pop, can I taxi out? I’ve never taxied.”

“Not if you’re half asleep you can’t.”

“It’ll wake me up. Anyway, I want to do it when there’s nobody around to scorn me. What do I do?”

“Well, you taxi with your feet. If you want to go left, you press the left rudder pedal. If you want to go right—”

“I know. I press the right rudder pedal. Hurry and crank up so I can taxi.”

“Brakes and contact?”

“Brakes. Contact!”

He swung the prop and the engine purred. He climbed in. “Give it a little gas to get it going. We’ll be taking off on runway one-two.”

The throttle was on the left sidewall. Birch eased it forward and the Cub started to roll.

“I’m going to turn here and taxi to the runway.”

She pressed the right rudder. Nothing happened. She pressed harder. The Cub moved slightly to the right.

“Pop, I’m pressing the pedal as hard as I can but the plane won’t turn.”

“Sometimes you have to give it a little right brake.”

“How do I do that?”

“Press all the way down on your rudder pedal with your toes. Then push with your heel on the brake.”

“Like this? Oh, we turned. Pop, we turned but not enough. We’re going in the grass! Maybe you better taxi the rest of the way.”

“You have to remember that a plane is not an automobile,” Pop said. He taxied easily to the end of runway twelve. He checked for traffic. Then he said, “Want to take off?”

“Is it easier than taxiing?”

“Yes.”

“So what do I do?”

“It’ll take itself off if you let it. You ease the throttle all the way forward. It’ll start down the runway. Try to stay in the center using your feet on the rudder pedals—I’ll help you with that. When you start to pick up speed, ease the stick forward slightly. That’ll lift the tail off. Then when the front wheels leave the runway, hold some back pressure and climb. I’ll help you.”

Birch took the throttle in her left hand and slowly pushed the knob forward. She felt a tingling in her spine. It was an all-out, wide-open, go-for-broke feeling. “Yahoo!”

With a roar, the Cub started down the runway and picked up speed. Birch eased the control stick forward a little. The tail came up. It seemed a long time until the front wheels left the hard runway and the J-3 climbed into the smooth air.