K. Weiland - Storming

Really, though, it wasn’t the doctor Earl was mad at. It wasn’t the doctor’s fault he was hurt. It was Walter’s.

Walter leaned his cheek against Taos’s neck. If he hadn’t been so scared earlier, if he had dodged faster when that wing had started swinging, then Hitch’s partner would never have gotten hurt.

The corners of his eyes pinched. One side of his mouth kept twitching downward. He rolled his lips in and bit them. Crying on top of everything else—good sweet angels, that would be too much.

His hands hadn’t stopped shaking for even a little bit. People had died. Pilots had gotten blown up. And even Hitch hadn’t been able to stop the outlaws in the ship.

Maybe this was what the Great War had been like. Some of the men who had gone across the sea to fight in it a few years ago told stories about planes crashing and people getting burned alive. When they told it, it had sounded bad, sure enough. But it always sounded like an adventure too.

Heroes liked adventures. They weren’t scared of them, and they didn’t sit around afterward, shaking and blinking back tears.

He blinked again.

He’d been scared all his life, ever since that day when he’d been so scared he’d almost let Evvy and Annie die. Maybe once you started being scared, you never stopped. That was the scariest thought of all.

Taos perked both ears.

Hitch strode in from the field, headed toward the motorcars. He glanced at Walter once, then again. He slowed, and then stopped. He looked at where Earl was hollering something new at the doctor. Then almost reluctantly, he turned and walked over to Walter.

If Hitch saw him like this, he’d know for sure Walter was a coward. He was just a little kid who couldn’t stop shaking and wouldn’t start talking—who didn’t even fit in quite right at home, much less out here. He hugged Taos tighter and bit his lips harder. A hero like Hitch wouldn’t want to be around him. Might even be ashamed to be seen with him.

Hitch stopped and stood over Walter. He looked around, almost like he was afraid he was going to get yelled at.

Then he looked at Walter. “What are you still doing here? Nan’s going to be looking for you.”

Walter shrugged. She probably thought he’d gone home with Molly and the girls, but he’d run back to make sure Taos was all right—and, also, so nobody would see him shaking like this.

Hitch wrinkled his forehead. “What are you doing down here?”

It was all too hard to explain—even if the answer hadn’t been awful anyway. He shrugged.

Hitch shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Then, with another look around, he lowered himself into a crouch and reached to scratch Taos’s ear. “Well, I reckon this isn’t such a bad hidey hole. Keeps you kinda dry anyway, right?”

A smile just wouldn’t come. If he stopped clamping his teeth, he’d start bawling right here in front of Hitch Hitchcock. He turned his face into Taos’s neck.

Across the way, Earl yelped.

Walter winced again.

“Don’t worry about Earl,” Hitch said. “He’s as tough a bird as they come. You know, I heard it was you who thought up tying the wing to the bottom of the ship. It was a good idea. Not everybody can think that fast under pressure.”

Walter had to make Hitch understand. It wasn’t right to let him think Walter had been brave when he’d been anything but. He peeked up.

Hitch met his gaze and looked right back. “Scary, wasn’t it?”

Was it written on his face that plain? His whole chin trembled, but he made himself duck his head in a nod.

“I was scared too.”

What? Walter looked all the way up from Taos’s neck.

Hitch let the corner of a grin slip. “Sure. Everybody’s scared, don’t you know that?”

Walter shook his head.

“Well, they are. And not just of big things like this. I’m scared every time I go up in a plane.”

Was Hitch making fun of him? Was he trying to fool him just to make him feel better?

“Any pilot who’s not a little scared when he gets in a machine that’s going to take him a thousand feet above the ground is a fool. And I’ll tell you this too—I don’t like heights one bit. What Jael and Rick do, climbing out there on the wing? You couldn’t pay me to do that. Inside a cockpit, it don’t bother me for some reason. But the top of a high building”—he whistled—“that’ll get me every time.”

Walter’s stomach stopped swirling around. If Hitch was scared, did that make him more of a hero—or not one at all?

“Fear’s not a bad thing, son. Keeps us cautious. Also gives us that nice little thrill.” He grinned. “If flying didn’t scare me, I probably wouldn’t like it so much.”

Behind Hitch, Earl had stopped yelling. While the doctor tidied up for the next patient, Earl sat there cradling his newly wrapped arm against his chest and muttering.

Jael looked over her shoulder and spotted Hitch and Walter. She walked toward them—or rather she limped. She winced with every step and supported herself, first on the automobiles and then on the bleacher seats above her head. A few steps off, she stopped and listened.

Walter glanced back at Hitch.

“Let me tell you a secret.” Hitch looked him straight in the eye. “There’s no such thing as being brave. We’re all scared, sometime or another—scared down to the soles of our boots—and all we want to do is curl up and cry and shake all over.”

Walter clenched his fists. When had his hands stopped trembling?

“But if you pretend you’re brave, well then, you are brave.” Hitch reached out and ruffled Walter’s hair. “And from what I heard, you did a good job pretending today.”

A hot feeling filled his stomach. It was a good feeling—the hot-water-bottle-at-the-bottom-of-your-bed-on-a-January-night kind of feeling. The rest of the world might be all icy cold and howling wind, but you were warm and snug and safe inside. That kind of feeling.

His lip stopped wanting to droop, and he smiled.

Hitch smiled back. “You’re quite a kid, you know that?”

The good feeling spread. Hitch Hitchcock was an explorer and a pilot, and if he was scared sometimes, then nobody’d know about it. And he liked Walter. He thought Walter was smart and brave.

Hitch must have seen Jael out of the corner of his eye because he darted a glance in her direction.

She was smiling too—that glowy smile of hers that lit her up from the inside and shone through all her scrapes and spatters. The way she looked at Hitch was kind of funny, like maybe she was saying things with just her eyes, like she was thanking him. She looked tired and hurting and pinched around the corners. But she looked hot-water-bottle happy too, like maybe what Hitch had said to Walter had also given her the safe feeling.

Hitch didn’t smile at her like he had at Walter. The back of his neck got kind of pink, though maybe that was from the drizzle making him cold. He cleared his throat and turned back to Walter. “Anyway, you better get home as quick as you can before your mama thinks you ran off again. We’ve got work to do now. It might not be too safe around here for a while.”

When grown-ups said that to him, what they really meant was they wanted him out of the way. He slumped his shoulders and huffed. If he had to pretend he was brave, then he needed to keep pretending. Back home, there was nothing to pretend about.

“Hey, get rid of the long face, huh?” Hitch said. “You can still help us find that thing from home.” He dug around in his jacket pocket and came out with a small pair of binoculars.

Walter’s breath snagged halfway up his windpipe. A real live set of binoculars, like soldiers used.

“You take these, and you keep an eye on the sky. You see anything, you report it to Deputy Griff. Can you do that?”