Daniel handed her the cigar box he had been clutching firmly. “Great show, Liddy.”
“Thanks. Now give them a thrill.” And off she strolled toward the barn.
Daniel Cooper seemed much older than his twenty years. He had six inches greater height than Liddy, but life had settled on his shoulders, so you would never think him a tall man. Not that Daniel had met great tragedies in his young life. He came from a fine farm family, and he and his brothers and sisters had enjoyed love and comfort in their childhoods. He just took on all the unwanted possibilities as weights and let them share his day-to-day. Some people are like that.
Why Daniel wanted to learn to fly was anybody’s guess. Liddy thought it was because he had to know he could do something brave. Once he went up, he had the bug. He wasn’t one to take risks in the sky, but he had become a good pilot, and it was his badge of courage.
A line about ten deep trailed out behind the plane ride sign. Daniel took the money handed to him by the woman at the head of it and zipped the bill into his jacket pocket. He led his first passenger of the day to a plane sitting next to the one that was cooling off from Liddy’s go. The woman leaned on Daniel as he guided her onto the wing and then into the cockpit where he helped her strap in and then carefully snugged down the goggles over her eyes. When her whole head of hair slipped backwards, Daniel jumped a little and quickly pulled the wig back into position. The woman was too excited to notice.
Right where she left them, Liddy found Orrin, Jensen and Crik playing cards off a wood crate. Muck was posted at Crik’s side with the scruff of his shaggy neck at just the right height for scratching. The air was scented with the memories of manure and straw but was bullied by the oil and gasoline that fed the barn’s current life. Planes and plane bones were neatly arranged about the place, dwarfing the space and exaggerating their mass. Two huge doors were rolled open on opposite ends of the building. A breeze ran through the room in one door and out the other, leaving the cool spring air to prick at the skin. Liddy tossed her leather gloves onto the makeshift table, making the pot of coins jingle. The men kept their attention on the opportunity in their grasp, and Liddy stood and admired the trio.
Orrin’s rheumatoid tangled fingers balanced the cards so precariously that any advantage a deal might give him was always at risk of being exposed. His shell had the abandonment of a man who was widowed for a good many years—a man who no longer moved fast enough to get done basic chores before the day was done, and a new day dawned and presented its priorities. Orrin had run the post office in town from the time he was a young man, until he retired of age. He had been retired as long as Liddy had known him, which was all of her life that she had memory of. He had delivered mail by plane at some point in there. At least many legends existed that included that detail. So Orrin, as did most of the hanger-rounds, flew or at least used to. It wasn’t the flying that drew old flyers together—it was the tales.
Jensen Laughton was not a flyer. Well fitted in his crisp three piece suit, he sat tight-in like a man wrapped in plastic. His elbows pressed in against his ribs, and he held his cards inches from and below his spectacles. Jensen played poker with the insecurities of a domesticated dog tossed in the wild to fend for itself. All Liddy knew of him was that he worked for the bank, and he found himself to Crik’s place three or four times a week to play cards. Or he’d just sit and sip a pop and watch Crik check and heal the planes. He burned the midnight oil at the bank to make up for his time away during the day and to avoid a wife he feared—that was the rumor anyway. Jensen didn’t fit here. This was exactly why Liddy figured he chose this refuge—it would be the last place anyone would look. Liddy had asked Crik what Jensen’s story was, but he said he didn’t know and didn’t care, which she knew was true. Crik could know a man for years, without knowing him, and be perfectly satisfied with the relationship.
Crik was decked out in coveralls stiffened in spots by layers of old grease. Both pant legs were tucked into his black western boots. His crown was completely free of hair, which suited his smooth, round head. A smudge of grease was on the back of his hand and on his forehead—one was sure to have painted the other.
“She’s still pulling to the left. Thought you went through her, ” Liddy complained.
Crik didn’t look up from his hand. “Soundin’ like your old man, girl.”
“I should be flying somewhere else.” Liddy plucked her gloves from the pot.
“Been sayin’ that since you were sixteen. Why don’t ya’?” Crik tilted back in his chair and reached for the cigar box. Liddy handed it over, and his fingers rapidly flipped through the pile of bills inside. “Did real good, honey, Orrin even heard the whoops.”
Orrin shook as he placed one end of a pounded brass ear trumpet in his ear and aimed it at Crik as he asked for a second go at the words, “What’s that?”
Crik counted and then pinched a stack of cash from the box and held it up the way a deal maker does when trying to entice the seller. Liddy flattened her palm open in front of him, and he laid the bills across it. His sleeves were rolled-up displaying a collection of scars creased in skin that loosely clothed his well used muscles. The scars came mostly from time working on the engines of planes—the deeper ones had come from a plane crash he’d lived to tell about from the first war. A story that was true. He had spent much of the following year in a hospital bed fighting for his life.
It was the telling from Crik’s sister, Liddy’s mother, which assured Liddy of this history of Crik’s. Edda Hall had spent that year in prayer and service to ensure her little brother’s recovery. He was her only living relative and the main focus of her life until she married Jack Hall, Liddy’s father, when she was past thirty. Marriage didn’t release her from the bonds of being older sister to Crik though. After leaving the hospital, Crik went to the Hall home before he was on his feet again. So with three year old Liddy underfoot, Edda was nurse and mommy. Her husband was soldiering overseas at the time, and the presence of a man in the house was a welcome addition.
When the war ended, Crik bought his first Jenny off the Army for two hundred dollars. He hooked up with some war buddies and started storming. Eventually he found a good place with the Great Gilbert Flying Circus, and took his pay from them. In order to draw the crowds, the air shows started to push the risks. Crashes became more frequent, and the government stepped in and wrote some laws. The new regulations grounded many of the planes the stormers flew and called their more risky stunts illegal. The circuit couldn’t make it after that, and Crik returned home to Holly Grove.
He set up dusting farms and put on a show every few weeks during the warmer months. As long as he only drew a crowd to his own place, no one bothered him. And it was useful to have a pilot in farm country. Things needed to be picked up and delivered, including people that needed emergency medical care that a small town doctor couldn’t offer. Farmers wanted to dust more and more fields as the practice took hold, and Crik also became known as the plane doctor. With the exception of the cut he took from the show that Liddy and Daniel flew at his place in his planes, repairing engines, skins and wings was the way he now got by. It had been over ten years since Crik had flown for a crowd.
“Okay, sit down here and give us a stab at that money there,” Orrin prodded Liddy.
“You’ll never give up, will ya?” Crik hollered to his friend.
“It’s worth askin’,” Orrin said to Crik and then looked up at Liddy. “What’s it gonna take for you to sit a hand with us, girl?”
Liddy leaned toward Orrin’s ear, patted his back and raised her voice, “When there’s no chance of losing, you give me a holler.” She stuffed the money deep into her pocket then moved behind Crik, circled his neck with a hug, kissed the top of his head and polished it in with her hands. “See you later.”