Voodoo Heart Part 18

Helen warmed the soup over the fire. Back in Gunnison, she'd bought some pairs of men's long johns to use as camping pajamas, and she was wearing one set now. The knuckles of her spine were visible through the waffled fabric and John felt a sudden urge to trace them with his finger, the way she'd drawn the plane's path on the map.

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "So, what's the story, Mr. Barron?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," she said, "when did you first realize you were in love with me? What was the moment?"

John felt his stomach tense up. He stared at her.

She laughed, causing the soup to slosh around in the pot. "Relax. What I'm saying is, if we're going to be a flying couple, we need a story to tell the customers.... So?"

John considered the question, but nothing came to mind. "I don't know," he said. "When was it you realized I was the guy for you?"

"Hmm." Helen dipped a finger in the soup and tasted it. "It'd have to be," she said, "the night you first took me flying."

John waited for her to go on.

She raised her eyebrows at him. "What?" she said. "You don't remember? It was only six months ago. You were just back from the war-"

"I never made it overseas," John said. "I wanted to, but the army kept me stationed in Texas. Place called Platter. I did get to learn to fly, though."

"Like I said, you were just home from your time in Texas. I was still living in our hometown of Layman, Missouri. With my parents." She held the pot low over the flame, moving it in a slow circle. "I hadn't seen you in two whole years," she said. "I was so lonely. You didn't write much-you couldn't-so I had no idea whether or not you were coming back. I used to sit alone in my room at night and just cry. My folks bought me a phonograph to cheer me up. But the records always made me sadder. I used to listen to them and feel sorry for myself. Everything I heard was about something I'd never get to do, someplace I'd never see with you."

She put the pot on the ground to cool. "The night you came back, I remember, I had on that record 'My Dark Star.' About the guy and girl who're separated. And they wish on the same star? It's such a sappy one, but it really got to me. I kept listening to it over and over. And then, out of nowhere, I heard a knock on my window. I didn't even know you were back yet.

"You had this airplane with you, too. It was parked right out in my parents' yard. I could see it from my window, gleaming in the moonlight.... I almost screamed, I was so happy. But you didn't say anything to me. Didn't even say h.e.l.lo. You put your finger to your lips, to tell me to keep quiet? And then you took my hand and we went out the bedroom window and climbed down the rain gutter together. You flew me all around town. Past the water tower. Down over the rooftops. I still remember the weather vanes spinning behind us, because you flew so low."

Helen fell silent.

"Wow," John said. "I'm a romantic guy."

"You can be. When you try."

John took two spoons from his pocket and handed one to her. "Oh, I'm always trying."

"That's the problem, actually," Helen said, taking a spoon from him. "Lately you've been a little too romantic."

"Do tell."

"Oh, I don't know," Helen said, spooning soup into her mouth. "It's just that, these last few weeks, it's been a bit much. With all the lovey-dovey stuff, I mean. The kisses and the hugs and the constant I love yous."

John took a swallow of soup. "You're saying I'm smothering you."

"A little. It's like every second: 'Oh, Helen, I just love you so much. I mean, you're so beautiful and smart and funny and-'"

"I'll try to rein it in."

"That's all I ask," Helen said, tipping the pot for him so he could get at the heavier noodles. "Too much romance just scares a girl off sometimes."

"You know," said John, "you're a pretty good actress, Helen."

Her face broke into a wide grin. "You think so?"

Though it was hard to tell in the dim firelight, John thought he saw a blush rise on her cheeks. My blushing bride, he thought.

"I half believed you myself," he said.

"I used to take lessons, when I was a girl," she said.

He offered her the last of the soup, but she shook her head.

"I wouldn't have thought they had acting cla.s.ses in a cow town like Bunting," he said.

"Where?"

He finished drinking the final bit of soup. "Back in Bunting, Kansas," he said.

"I'm sorry," Helen said, grabbing the pot from him. "I've never been to Kansas. I'm from Layman, Missouri. Born and raised." Then she headed down to the river to clean up for bed.

The next morning they woke to find that the weather had turned on them. The winds had picked up; dark storm clouds crowded the sky. They tried to fly farther south, but the going was difficult. One rattling jump after another. John would take the plane up through the cloud cover to see if the air above was calm, find out the atmosphere was all roiling turbulence, and have to come back down. He'd land in a field, wet and chilled, wait a while, and then try again. It wasn't fun, but through the whole ordeal Helen never questioned him, never complained. She never got scared either-never seemed to, at least. Even when the plane hit wind swells that nearly tipped them out into the sky, she just put her hand on the rim of the c.o.c.kpit to steady herself and waited, trusting that soon enough, John would set things right again.

She was a strange bird, he thought, studying the back of her head. The interlacing weave of her braid. The small white cups of her ears. He liked her, though. He could tell already. She was intelligent and funny, with opinions on everything under the sun. Whenever they landed to gas up, she started in: Charlie Chaplin was the best actor in Hollywood; didn't John think so? Prohibition was one of the stupidest ideas in history. In a hundred years, the country would have at least eighty states to it. Maybe even a hundred.

Around one in the afternoon, the weather finally cleared, and they made a hurried push south. Helen used the map to help guide them, and John quickly discovered that she had a keen eye for navigation; she often spotted subtle natural markers in the landscape before he did. A dried riverbed. An overgrown cattle path. A road sign, bleached white by the sun.

By three o'clock they were into Oklahoma. By four they were less than a hundred miles from the town of Mooney, their destination. The only trouble they had came when the plane's radiator cap snapped off at six hundred feet up. Exposed to the open air, John knew, the radiator fluid wouldn't be able to cool the engine, and the plane would be in danger of overheating and stalling out. There was no way to reach the cap from the c.o.c.kpit, though. To reseal it, he'd have to climb out on the wing-a maneuver he'd managed in the past, but hated to perform. The wing doping was slippery, and the slipstream was tricky; the current could shift violently behind the propeller.

Helen's face went pale when he told her what he was about to do. "What are you talking about?" she screamed. "Who's going to fly the plane?"

"Just hold the controls as tight as you can!" he yelled, already standing up in the back c.o.c.kpit. "This'll take less than thirty seconds!"

The stunt went smoothly; Helen held the levers dead-steady while John slipped out onto the wing and screwed the cap onto the radiator nozzle. As he was climbing back into the c.o.c.kpit, he gave Helen the thumbs-up, but she stayed frozen in position, gripping the controls, apparently afraid to let go. Her brown eyes looked huge to him, magnified behind her goggles.

They reached Mooney around seven o'clock, too late in the day to start barnstorming. John landed the plane in a scrub field just outside town. He figured they could relax that night, then go charging into Mooney early in the morning. Get in a full day of s...o...b..ating. Besides, it was a Friday night. No better time to barnstorm than a bright weekend morning.

They set up camp beside a small pond, cooking a can of tomato soup for dinner. By the time they were done eating, the sky was dark.

"What did it feel like out there today?" Helen said as she laid her blanket beneath the starboard wing.

"What did what feel like?" John asked. He was already wrapped in his blanket on the port side of the plane.

"What does it feel like to be out on the wing like that?"

John laced his fingers behind his head. The night sky was clear, the stars brilliant. The full moon sat low on the horizon, like a dime balanced on its edge. "It was cold," he said. "The wind's strong out there."

"But what did it feel like?" Helen said, lying down. "Out there all alone? So high up?"

"I don't know, Helen. It felt like being out on the wing."

"Would you teach me how to do it?"

John glanced over to see if Helen was kidding, but she was just a shape in the darkness.

"What's to teach?" he said. "You just climb out. There's nothing special about it."

"So can I try tomorrow?"

John laughed. "No."

"Why not, if there's nothing special about it?"

"Because," he said. "There's no reason for you to go out there. The cap is fixed. Plus, it's dangerous. You could get blown off. I had trouble holding on myself today."

"Just for a minute. I won't even let go of the c.o.c.kpit rim."

"Forget it."

Helen sighed and lay back down. "What a mean husband I've got."

"I thought that was how you liked them."

"I said I didn't like it when my man gets too romantic on me. I didn't say I wanted him mean."

"Go to sleep."

"Do you think we'll get a crowd tomorrow? The town seemed pretty big on the map."

"Go to sleep."

"I could see the cemetery from the air, too, right before we landed. And it looked huge."

"Go to sleep."

"The stars are too bright. I can't."

Less than a minute later, though, Helen was asleep.

John lay awake beneath his wing for a long time. He stared up at the night sky, trying to let its twinkling clockwork lull him to sleep. But Helen's mention of the Mooney cemetery had reminded him that tomorrow was Sat.u.r.day; in the morning, Rollie would visit the Williamsburg Cemetery, where John's mother was buried. He made the excursion every week of the year, no matter the weather. He always went early, just after dawn, when the grounds were still empty and glistening wet, crows roosting on the gravestones. John had accompanied him on many occasions, but June, John's mother, had died giving birth to him; he had not known her, and standing with his father before the small bronze plate in the gra.s.s, he always ended up feeling strangely excluded, his presence an intrusion.

John pulled the blanket around his shoulders. Down in the pond the fish were busy feeding, leaping from the water, snapping caddis and mayflies from the air. He closed his eyes and listened to them as they broke the surface, gasping, then splashed back down. As a young boy he'd often fantasized about a world in which death affected people the way it did fish: where, instead of dropping to the ground, a dying person would suddenly begin to float, lifting from the earth, drifting higher and higher. He had not thought about the notion in years, but it came back to him now as he lay beneath the wing of his plane, and he fell asleep picturing a sky full of floating bodies, men and women rising toward the clouds.

John woke the next morning to find Helen standing over him in a blue satin dress.

"Well," she said. "What do you think?"

"What time is it?" he said, rubbing his eyes.

"It's six. The sun's just coming up. So? What do you think?" She planted her hands on her hips and turned a full circle.

He yawned. "Ballroom open early today?"

Helen dropped her arms to her sides. "It's called showmanship, thanks."

"Where'd you get it?"

"You don't think this makes for a good costume? Sort of a 'lovely lady of the skies' thing?"

John sat up. The dress was sky blue with a white silk flower pinned to the belt, and Helen looked very beautiful in it.

"It's nice," he said.

"Nice?"

"Pretty."

Helen curtsied. "Why, thank you kindly, Mr. Barron. I bought it back in Gunnison, with some of the money I got for my bridely duds."

John stood up and stretched, his muscles sore from lack of sleep. "You sold your wedding dress?"

"Sure. It hurt like h.e.l.l to wear. Charley's mother was the one who picked it out, not me. Made me bleed beneath the arms. Will you fasten this for me?" She turned around and held up her hair, revealing the smooth plane of her back, crossed at the center by the lace webbing of her bra.s.siere. The sight sent a slight tingle through John, and as he began fastening the dress's hooks, he realized that this was likely the first time he'd ever seen a girl's full back exposed to daylight. All of his romantic experiences had taken place at night, under the added darkness of secrecy. Hurried trysts in closets and barns and the back of cars. All whispers and fumbling.

"You have a mole on your lower back," John said, working his way up the hooks, "that's shaped like a peanut."

"I suppose that's good to know."

"I thought so."

A loose strand of hair dropped through Helen's fingers, falling to the nape of her neck.

"I haven't thanked you yet," she said. "Have I?"

John paused. "Thanked me?"

"For taking me with you." She turned her head slightly, eyeing him over her shoulder.

He went back to fastening the dress. "I didn't have a choice, remember?"

"You did, though," she said. "You could have just taken off yourself."

"All done," John said, clasping the final hook.

She turned to face him, releasing her hair, allowing it to fall down her back. The first sunlight was in her eyes, making them sparkle. "You could have left me in Kansas. With Charley," she said. "But you didn't."

John stepped away. "Who's this Charley you keep talking about?" he said, pulling his pants up over his long johns. "I don't know any Charleys. Never have." He stepped into his boots. "Now come on, before some other husband-and-wife flying team beats us to Mooney."

Helen leaned in and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "Yes, dear."

They made a strong buzz over Mooney. John took the plane all the way up to eight hundred feet before dropping into a steep dive. By the time they leveled out over the town's eastern edge, they were traveling at nearly eighty miles an hour, so fast the Jenny's bracing wires began to vibrate and hum.