K. Weiland - Storming

Jael and Walter both laughed and jumped up to run around the back end of the plane, practically daring Earl to chase them. He didn’t, of course.

Hitch stopped a few yards off and waited for them to circle back around the front. He rubbed the sweat from his palms onto his pant legs. Almost involuntarily, he looked over his shoulder.

Still kneeling on her picnic blanket, Nan shaded her eyes with her hands and watched him. Her shoulders lifted in a breath, and as she let it out, she lowered her chin in a deep, consenting nod.

Walter rounded the front of the plane, without Jael, who must have realized what was in the wind and backed off. He saw Hitch and danced over, eyes sparkling.

“Howdy,” Hitch managed.

The boy grinned up at him all the harder.

“What’s this? Don’t tell me you’re back to not talking?”

Walter shrugged. He seemed to think about it, then said, “Howdy.”

“That’s more like it. ’Cause, you and me, we got things to talk about.” He knelt and set his hands on Walter’s shoulders.

Every minute in that jail cell, he’d been trying to figure the best way to say this. Nan and Byron had promised to prepare the way for him.

He wet his lips. “What would you think if I were to start being your dad?”

Walter cocked his head and raised his eyebrows. He looked intrigued.

Hitch kept going. “What would you think if it turned out I was your dad? And maybe, one of these days, if you wanted to, you could come live with me?”

Walter kept staring. If anything, the look rising in his eyes seemed to be one of hope. He flung himself against Hitch’s chest, wrapped his arms all the way around, and hugged him.

Hitch’s breath ripped right out of him. How could anybody forgive that fast? Or trust that easy? He didn’t deserve it, that was sure. But here it was, like a gift someone had slipped into the palm of his hand. And he’d almost missed catching it altogether.

Walter stepped back from Hitch’s arms and looked up at him, fairly glowing.

Then J.W. hollered, “Hey, kid, you playing or not?”

Walter glanced over, then again at Hitch, eyebrows raised, asking for permission.

Hitch nodded. “Go along. We got more to talk about, but it’ll wait.”

He stayed on his knees and watched Walter scamper off.

So help him God, he was going to make good this time. He’d be there for Walter, every single day of his life. He’d accept this gift, and he’d do his best to take care of it like it deserved to be taken care of.

Beside the plane, Jael stood with her hands in her back pockets. She grinned.

He pushed up to his feet and joined her. “I hear Livingstone offered you a job?”

She inclined her head.

“Me too.” He took a breath. “I don’t have any kind of right to ask you to stay, after everything that’s gone down. But just in case it might mean anything to you, I am promising I’m going to stay.”

Her grin faded. She stitched her eyebrows together and pursed her lips. She’d never seemed to have much trouble making up her mind about things. But right now, she looked downright indecisive.

He tried again. “I reckon you don’t have to say anything right now.”

“It is not that.” She moved a step closer. “It is that I am not knowing right word for… this.” She set her palm on his chest. Without so much as a blush this time, she leaned in and kissed him right smack on the mouth. Then she pulled back, shook a few loose tendrils of hair out of her face, and grinned wickedly.

He blinked. “What? No slap this time?”

She shrugged one shoulder. “Not this time, I think.”

“What about this time?” He cupped a hand around the nape of her neck and pulled her back in.

From behind him, voices started hollering.

“What kind of umpire are you?” J.W. demanded.

“The boy was safe,” Matthew said. “I make the calls the way I see them.”

“Well, maybe the fact you’re wearing spectacles is a hint you shouldn’t be umpire!”

“And maybe the fact you’re not wearing them is a hint why you weren’t voted umpire in the first place.”

Hitch stopped kissing Jael, but kept her close, and looked over his shoulder.

Livingstone wheeled his way over to where Matthew and J.W. stood nose to nose. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, was this not supposed to be a friendly ballgame?” He turned to Hitch. “Perhaps our resident flight instructor might be persuaded to give free rides instead?”

Hitch looked at Jael. “What do you say?”

She tilted her head all the way back to see into his face. “I have lived in sky for as long as my life. Take me home, Hitch Hitchcock.”

“My home too.” And he didn’t mean just the sky this time.

He stepped away from her. “All right, who wants a ride?”

Several people whooped, Walter loudest of all.

Hitch hopped up into the rear cockpit. Almost before he’d settled, Walter scrambled into his lap. Taos jumped right in without so much as an invitation—barking his head off, of course—and somebody coaxed Nan and Molly into the front cockpit. Jael perched herself on a wing, while Earl swung the propeller. The Jenny couldn’t take off with all of them, but Hitch could taxi them around the field.

“Contact!” Earl shouted.

Hitch flipped the magneto switches. “Contact!”

Earl swung the prop again, and the engine started chugging. Inch by inch, the Jenny lurched forward, until she was bumping across the field. The wind touched their faces with the scent of cut grass.

Walter leaned back against Hitch’s chest, one hand on the stick, the other on Taos’s ruff.

Hitch glanced over at Jael, on the wing, and she laughed, delighted.

His stomach got that same old weightless feeling. He faced forward again, feeling the Jenny’s rhythm beneath him. Flying a biplane, especially one as rickety as a war-surplus Curtiss JN-4D, meant being ready for anything. He just hadn’t ever expected “anything” could turn out to be quite this good.