Christine Johnson - Soaring Home

Beatrice shaded her eyes. “What is it?”

“The answer to my prayers.”

The aeroplane headed straight toward them at low altitude. Beatrice shrieked and clutched at her impossibly flowered hat as the plane zoomed overhead and banked to make a run down the length of the empty field. The grass bent flat under the roar, and the turbulence sent Darcy’s hair swirling. The plane swooped onto the field, bouncing once before mowing a wide swath through the grass.

“Whooee!” Darcy ran after it, and then, seeing as Beattie was still hunched on the ground, came back. “An aeroplane. Here, in Pearlman. Imagine.” God had sent Darcy’s dream on canvas-covered wings.

“Tell me it’s gone,” Beatrice whimpered.

“Of course it’s not gone.” Darcy peeled Beattie’s gloved hands off her ears. “It stopped by old man Baker’s empty barn.” Already, Hendrick Simmons from the automobile garage and Dennis Allington from the train depot raced down the road on their motorbikes, twin trails of dust rising in the dry September air. “I wonder if something’s wrong.”

“I don’t care, and neither should you.” Beatrice smoothed down her dress. “I thought that horrible thing would kill us.”

“It wasn’t going to kill us. The pilot knew where he—or she—was going. Imagine! It could be a woman pilot.” Darcy had to meet her somehow.

The beep of a motorcar horn sent them scurrying to the edge of the road. Frank Devlin, editor of The Pearlman Prognosticator, chugged past in his dusty Model T touring car. That was the answer. The newspaper. She could write a story on the plane and talk the pilot into giving her a ride.

“I need to talk to the pilot, Beattie.” Darcy squeezed her friend’s hand. “This story will make the front page, and I’m going to be the one to write it. Tell Mum I’ll be late.”

“We’re already late. Your mother won’t like it. She’ll say your duty is to the Red Cross.”

“My duty is to the people of Pearlman. Tell her I’ll roll double the bandages tomorrow.” Darcy itched to run. A plane. A pilot. Everything she’d dreamed the past seven years had come directly to her. She had to see it.

Beatrice clutched her arm. “Don’t do anything foolish. Promise?”

Darcy pulled away and bounded down the road. “I’m going to ask the pilot to give me a ride.”

“A ride?” came the cry from behind her. “You’re going into the air in that thing? Stop, stop.” Beattie panted, struggling to run in her hobble skirt and heeled shoes.

As much as Darcy loved her, Beattie was such a perfect Jane, all frills and lace. She’d faint from this much exertion. Darcy went back to her. “What are you doing? I said I’d meet you at the grange.”

“You could die,” Beatrice insisted breathlessly, “like that heroine of yours. What’s her name? Harriet Quincy?”

“Quimby, and it was an accident. The passenger moved suddenly and threw the plane off balance. That’s not going to happen here.”

The pilot, dressed in knee boots and leather jacket, climbed out of the plane. A man. Too bad.

“How do you know disaster won’t happen?” Beatrice insisted. “She fell a hundred feet.”

A thousand, actually, but Darcy didn’t correct her. Though silent now, the plane beckoned to her. The smell of burnt oil hung in the air. A sizeable crowd had gathered around the plane, and opportunity was slipping away. If the pilot had only stopped to fuel, he might be gone within the hour.

“Sorry, Beattie, but I have to go.”

“But, your father. He won’t like it,” Beatrice huffed. “What will he say?”

Darcy knew exactly what Papa would say. No, with a capital N. Respectable young ladies don’t fly aeroplanes.

But they did. They did.

“He doesn’t need to know,” Darcy insisted.

“He’s your father.”

“I’m a grown woman.” Nothing and no one would keep her from her dream. “And if he doesn’t know, he won’t be hurt. Promise me, Beattie.”

Across the field, the pilot had returned to the cockpit and the crowd was turning the plane, readying it to fly off. Her future was about to disappear into the pale blue sky.

“Only if you promise to go on the picnic with George.”

Darcy gritted her teeth. It was extortion. “All right, but only if I reach the plane before it takes off.” Without waiting for confirmation, she hitched up her skirts and ran across the field. The wiry grass tangled around her ankles. She stumbled on the uneven ground.

Dennis Allington pulled on the propeller. The engine coughed and rumbled to life.

No time. No time.

Darcy gasped for air, her lungs burning. She couldn’t run any faster. She couldn’t get there in time. Her whole future was flying away.

Her hair tumbled from its pins as the plane inched forward. Then the motor spluttered, choked and died. A thistle caught her shirtsleeve. She tore loose as the men gathered along the back of the wings. They pushed. She stopped, gulping for air, as the machine coasted into the barn.

Thank heavens. She composed herself and twisted her hair back into a knot, so she’d look professional for the interview.

By the time Darcy slipped through the open barn doors, Devlin, Allington, Simmons, old man Baker, and half of the supposedly employed men of the town had gathered around the aeroplane in a big semicircle. Darcy tried to wedge through, but they stood like a fence between her and the plane.

She circled around, looking for a gap, and spied Hendrick Simmons. Her childhood friend would let her through. She made her way toward him as the pilot climbed out of the cockpit. He tossed his goggles into the forward seat before jumping to the barn’s dirt floor, still seeded with trampled bits of straw.

“Should be a matter of two, three days at most,” the pilot said to Baker, who was doubtless calculating precisely how much rent he could weasel out of his new tenant. “Do you have a telephone?”

“Don’t need them newfangled contraptions,” Baker said, his lower lip drawn over his upper, due to the few teeth he had left and his general disinclination to spend money on luxuries like false teeth.

“There’s one in town—” Darcy began, but Devlin cut her off.

“Closest one’s at the Prognosticator office.” He stuck out his hand. “Frank Devlin, managing editor of our fair city’s most highly esteemed publication. I’d be glad to loan you the use of our telephone.”

Oh, no. Devlin was going to beat her out of the story and steal the pilot, too.

“Jack Hunter.” The pilot shook Devlin’s hand. “I’ll take you up on that offer.”

Mr. Jack Hunter ruffled his sandy-colored hair with the luxurious ease of a cat rising from a nap. Standing perhaps six feet tall, Hunter had the confident manner to be expected in a pilot. And he was handsome. Easily as athletic and dashing as Douglas Fairbanks. Every unmarried woman in town would swoon over him, but not Darcy. Darcy Shea did not swoon.

“Tell me what fair city this happens to be,” Hunter said.

With one quick thrust, Darcy burst through the circle of men. “Pearlman,” she said before Devlin could answer. “Pearlman, Michigan.”

Jack Hunter took notice, his gaze traveling up and down Darcy’s frame, as if sizing her for a dress, but if he thought he would unnerve her, he was sorely mistaken.

She stared back. Square between the eyes.

One eyebrow rose. “Pearlman? Never heard of it. Anywhere near Chicago, Miss…?”

“Shea. Darcy Shea. And yes, about a hundred miles, less by air.”

“That so?” Hunter chuckled as he fetched a cap from the cockpit. He tipped it slightly. “Many thanks, Miss.” He turned to Devlin. “With any luck, Burrows—he’s my mechanic—will have reached Chicago by now.”