Justin Stanchfield
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[Insert Pic gypsywings.jpg Here]
“Is there a Valhalla for heroes who failed, or do they simply pass from reality to reality, forever running from things they didn’t do?
I’ll admit it, I’m addicted to the sky, the joy of seeing the world slip away beneath a set of wings more intoxicating than moonshine. This story grew out of my love of flight, and a fascination with the old legends of pilots who took off, never to return.”
THE SKY GROWLED. Jerry Mackie felt it before he actually heard the odd, popping rumble, felt it deep in his guts the way he could sense a storm long before the first thunder broke. Faint, but growing louder by the heartbeat, the sound spread across the drowsy pasture. Beside him, his brother Wes, younger by three years but nearly as tall, stiffened, then began to thrash as if he was drowning.
“Ghosts coming,” the boy blurted in his strange, flat voice. He shook his head madly from side to side.
“Wes, stop it.” Jerry grabbed him by the arms and tried to shake him out of the fit, but Wes pulled away and jabbed a finger at the cloud-spotted sky. Jerry glanced upward.
“Wow.”
Garish wooden birds slid overhead, at least a dozen of them, and skimmed the cottonwoods that lined the pasture. Jerry watched, amazed as the biplanes rocked on the breeze, flames belching behind their whirring props. In all his fourteen years he had never seen an aeroplane, never in fact talked to anyone who had, so to see an entire flight buzz past was almost magical. The machines lumbered across the pale, midday sky, lifted over the low ridge to the east, then as one, banked into a slow turn back toward him. One, a sleek craft with blue and red hearts painted on its coal black fuselage, did a slow roll before it lowered its tail and clipped the tall grass. The others touched down beside it, some bouncing, some settling to ground as deft as ravens. The black machine shut down with a cough of blue smoke. A stocky man in a long, oil-streaked coat jumped to the ground.
“Hey, kid? What town is this?”
“Town?” Jerry blushed as he realized how stupid he must sound. The nearest town was three miles away and across the river, but must have seemed a hop, skip and jump to the airmen. He pointed toward the distant church spire, just visible over the waving treetops. “That’s Elk Creek.”
“Yeah?” The pilot swept his leather cap off and grinned. He had curly brown hair that looked as if it hadn’t seen a comb in months and a lopsided grin, toothy as a mongrel dog. “Elk Creek got a telephone?”
“Yes, sir.” Jerry nodded, then added quickly, “but it don’t work.”
He had all but forgotten about Wes. Now the boy staggered backwards, throwing his arms in wild circles. “Go away! All of you! Go away!” The boy picked up a rock and hurled it at the nearest aeroplane, then sprinted away. A second pilot, tall and lanky, wearing a heavy canvas coat that hung nearly to his knees, stepped out of a bright red machine with green wings. He tipped his head toward Wes as the boy vanished behind a clump of chokecherry bushes.
“Looks like we frightened your brother.”
“Don’t worry about Wes. He ain’t quite right in the head.”
“This pasture belong to your old man?” the first pilot asked.
“Yeah.” The word caught in Jerry’s throat. Farmer’s Bank of Montana owned the field, and lately had made certain they knew it, but he wasn’t about to tell that to a pack of strangers. “It’s ours.”
“Think he’d mind if we camped here a couple days?” the taller man asked. Jerry shrugged. The first pilot laughed a little louder than he needed.
“Just tell him Les Gitans are here. You ever heard of the Gitans, kid?”
Jerry swung his head in an emphatic no. The short man grinned all the broader. More pilots were stepping out of their machines now, a motley collection. Several held bottles in their hands and were passing them around. Even from where he stood, Jerry caught the sour scent of bootleg whisky.
“Well, kid,” the pilot took out a silver flask, tipped it back, then wiped the stray drops off his face with his dirty sleeve. “Now you’ve heard of us.”
Jerry’s eyes roved around the strange collection of aeroplanes, their cloth skin stiff as wood. Some had rifles fixed to the upper wings, a few even boasted round-drummed machine guns. His eyes widened as he looked back at the pilots. “Have you been to the war?”
The men laughed, all except the lanky pilot who simply nodded. “Yeah, we’ve been to the war.” He smiled in a friendly way, but his eyes were gray and sad. “Your pa have anything against the war?”
“I don’t think he cares one way or the other,” Jerry lied. For some reason, he desperately wanted the Gitans to camp in their cow meadow. “But it might be best if you laid a little low.”
“Kid,” the stocky pilot said with a flourish. “Laying low is what we do best.”
Wes was already home by the time Jerry returned. Relief that his brother was safe quickly faded to worry about what the boy might have told his parents. He washed his hands and face in the chipped enamel bowl on the porch, shook the water off, then went inside. His father looked up as the screen door banged shut, but said nothing. Garr Mackie was not a large man, but he was strong and stiff as sun-baked leather. Jerry hung his hat on the peg near the stove, then quickly took his place at the table. His mother leaned over his shoulder and set a plate of cold biscuits beside a pitcher of water. Jerry caught her eye as she straightened, the unspoken message plain.
Be careful.
“You find the break in the fence?” Mackie speared a thin slice of deer meat onto his plate.
“Yep. A tree fell across it and knocked the top three poles off.” Jerry tried to sound nonchalant. “Wasn’t too hard to find.”
“You fix it?”
“I will.” Jerry stole a glance at Wes, but the boy was silent, his attention fixed on a hairline crack on his plate. His father chewed slowly, then looked pointedly at him.
“You see those aeroplanes go by?”
“Yes, Pa,” Jerry said.
“Wes said they landed in our field. That so?”
“Yes.” Jerry stole a look at his mother, but she steadfastly kept her face turned away. He took a deep breath. “They landed up by the cottonwoods.”
Mackie’s eyes narrowed. “You tell them to leave?”
“They were just passing through,” Jerry said.
“They better be.” Mackie took another bite and spoke as he chewed. “I won’t have gin-runners and warmongers on my place. Understand?”
Jerry nearly said it wasn’t his place anymore, but quickly thought better of it. Instead, he simply nodded. He forced himself to eat, but his mouth was so dry he could barely swallow. A breeze sprang up and rattled the door, the air heavy with the touch of coming rain.
“Storm’s here,” Wes muttered, his gaze still fixed on his plate.
A peal of thunder rolled over the house. Jerry flinched as it shook the windows and faded, certain he caught the sound of whirring engines skipping bird-like on the wind.
The rain shower was brief, more bluster than downpour. Jerry wished it had been longer as he sweated through his chores. It took him longer to patch the broken fence than he expected and by the time he was finished the afternoon was on the wane. All the while Wes stood in the middle of the yard, throwing rocks at chickens or drawing crooked lines in the dust with a stick. Now and then the boy would speak to someone who wasn’t there, the one-sided conversations unintelligible. Annoyed at having to work while his brother did nothing, Jerry scowled as he herded the milk cow into the barn and locked her in the stanchion. The alternating streams of hot milk against the tin pail wove a ragtime beat in his mind, and again his thoughts drifted with unbridled envy to the aeroplanes less than a mile away. Once he heard an engine and rushed outside, but was disappointed to see nothing but a rusted Model T truck rumble down the dirt road at the end of the lane.
“My luck,” he thought bitterly as he tromped back inside the reeking barn and plopped down on the low stool. The cow flicked her tail as he grabbed her teats, dotting his face with tiny green freckles. He scrubbed them off on his shirt-sleeve then bent back to milking.
The repetition lulled him as he fell into a rhythm, and he imagined himself in one of the planes, racing above the treetops, firing long volleys of machine gun fire at a fleeing zeppelin or strafing the traitorous Czar’s trenches. Once, years ago, his mother had taken him to the movies. Jerry had sat enthralled with the flickering picture, some tear-stained war epic, lost in the make believe. He had long forgotten the story but remembered every second of the dogfight scene, the dipping, whirling melee an intoxication to his young imagination. When they had returned home he had run across the dusty yard and proudly told his father he intended to enlist and become a pilot when he was old enough.
Instead of a beaming, fatherly reply, he received a back-hand slap across the face. “I’ll be damned if any son of mine becomes a soldier.”
Jerry could still feel the slap. It had been the last time he had seen a movie, and the last time he had spoken with his father about leaving home, but Jerry hadn’t forgotten. He was nearly old enough now to run away. Canada lay less than a hundred miles to the north. It would be an adventure, he told himself. He would sneak across the border then proudly present himself at the Mounties Post where he would tell the man in the bright red uniform why he was there.
“Aren’t you an American?” the Mounty would ask.
“Yes, sir, I am,” Jerry would say.
“Don’t you know your President Bryant has declared it against the law for an American to fight in the Great War?”
“I don’t care, sir. I’m here to fight. I want to be a pilot.” And there and then, Jerry dreamt, the Mounty would swear him in and usher him with a hero’s welcome to the train depot for the long ride east. He smiled grimly as he milked, his resolve stronger than ever.
Finished, Jerry hauled the bucket to the house. Foamy milk sloshed over the brim as he hefted it onto the battered cupboard. He washed his hands, then, making certain he wasn’t noticed, slipped off toward the cow pasture. His heart sank as he broke over the low hill and found the meadow empty.
“Damn it to hell.” Jerry swore under his breath. His mood brightened after a second look. At least one of the planes remained, partially hidden in the trees that lined the field. More than a little nervous, Jerry screwed up his courage and marched across the grassy stretch toward it.
The pilots had built a hobo camp among the cottonwoods, crude tarpaulin lean-to’s strung between branches. The aroma of wood smoke, beans, and gasoline hung thick on the languid air. Jerry looked around, wondering where the airmen had gone, then finally spotted a pair of legs sticking out from beneath the front of the aeroplane. Still nervous, he sauntered closer.
“Howdy,” Jerry said, desperately hoping his voice didn’t crack.
The lanky pilot he had spoken with earlier scooted out from under the thick wooden prop, and grinning, wiped a smudge of grease off his forehead. “Howdy, yourself.”
“I thought,” Jerry said hesitantly, “you fellas had pulled up stakes.”
“Not yet. Some of the boys just took a jaunt up North.”
Jerry didn’t ask why. It was common knowledge, even in Elk Creek, that the roving gangs of pilots operated unhindered across the border, hauling Canadian whiskey southward. Even his father kept a bottle of it hidden behind the canning jars.
“How come you didn’t go?” He nodded at the front of the aeroplane. “The engine busted?”
“No. At least not too badly.” The tall man laughed, then extended his arm. “Give me a hand up, would you?”
The man was heavier than he looked, and Jerry nearly lost his balance as he helped him to his feet. The tall man arched his back to work out the kinks. “My name’s Albert Aimes, but most folks call me Preacher.”
“Are you a preacher?” Jerry asked, surprised at the thought. Preacher laughed again, the sound of it infectious.
“Let’s just say I’ve been known to pray a time or two.”
The pilot took a wooden handled screwdriver from his back-pocket and methodically began to tighten the unshielded wires that bridged the magneto to the sparkplugs atop each of the finned, gray steel cylinders. Jerry watched with interest. The motor was nothing like the little flat-headed engine in his father’s Model A. His gaze roved over the strange machine, amazed at the spiderweb of cables and struts that bound it together. His eyes settled on a painting of a dark-haired woman with exaggerated breasts, a tambourine in her slender hands. Above her long, flowing hair, painted in elegant black letters were the words “Les Gitans.” Beneath the painting ran a long line of blimps, a trail of smoke out the top of each.
“What’s Gitan mean,” Jerry asked.
“Huh?” Preacher turned, surprised it seemed that Jerry could read. He nodded at the painting, then bent back to the engine. “It’s French for gypsy.”
“You were in France?”
Preacher nodded.
“Why’d you came back?”
“Guess I got tired of fighting.”
“But, we’re winning, right?” Jerry asked, a little more eagerly than he intended. “I mean England and Canada. You know, the good guys. We’re going to beat the Huns, right?”
Preacher’s face darkened. “I don’t think anyone’s going to win that war. Fifteen years is a long time to spend killing each other.”
A distant buzz swept through the trees and became a roar as one after another the rest of the Gitans flew over the meadow. Jerry rushed out to watch, entranced as the aeroplanes rolled and twisted at treetop level, playing a dangerous game of follow-the-leader. The black machine with the blue and red hearts led the procession as they swooped low then settled to earth. Their engines sputtered and died, leaving the meadow ominously silent. The airmen crawled out and laboriously began to push their ships toward the trees.
“Hey, kid?” The stocky pilot of the black machine waved Jerry toward him. “Give me a hand, huh?”
Glad to help, Jerry hurried across the meadow and took up position on the opposite side of the fuselage, his hand wrapped around a leather-edged pocket recessed into the wooden frame. He was surprised how light the craft was as they rolled it toward the sheltering woods.
“So, you and the Preacher been swapping war stories?” The man stretched his neck until he could look over the plane’s narrow back, a boyish grin plastered on his oil-smudged face.
“He said he was in France,” Jerry admitted.
“France. Belgium. Poland. Hell, the Preacher was in ‘em all.” They swung the machine around until the nose pointed back toward the field. The stocky pilot lowered the tail to the ground, then pointed at Preacher. “You are looking at the second-best balloon buster in the history of aviation. Only Frank Luke brought down more observation blimps than the Preach. And that’s only ‘cause we busted out of the Legion and come home.”
Jerry stared at the gangly Preacher with newfound admiration. Puffing a little from exertion, the short pilot drew his flask from an inside pocket, took a long drink then sighed with obvious pleasure. “Damn, that’s good. So, what do they call you, kid?”
“Jerry. Jerry Mackie.”
“Pleased to meet you, Jerry Jerry Mackie.” The little man’s grin broadened. “I’m Stumpy O’Toole. Say, you know the roads around these parts, right?”
Jerry nodded.
“How would you like to earn yourself an aeroplane ride?”
“You mean it?” Jerry’s heart practically stopped at the thought of it.
“Sure, I mean it. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to get a truck-load of gasoline in here. You meet the driver at daybreak down at that railroad bridge and lead him here, and I’ll see you get a ride upstairs. Hell, you help us load up and I might even let you fly the damn thing. What do you say?”
Before Jerry could answer, another rumble cut the evening air. Everyone fell silent and stared upward. High overhead a single aeroplane drifted across the sky. It flew in a perfectly straight line, no playful loops or dives, its path business-like and serious. Out the corner of his eye Jerry saw Preacher turn and walk away.
“Who’s that?” Jerry asked softly.
“That?” Stumpy smiled, but there was no humor in his voice. “Remember I told you the Preach’ was the number two balloon buster in the world? Well, that was number one.”
A light wind stirred the willows along the river bend, and Jerry pulled his threadbare coat tighter around his shoulders. Nervously, he waited near the footing of the railroad bridge, the river’s swoosh and gurgle somehow ominous, as if the swirling water was filled with dark spirits eager to trap the unwary. He glanced up at the sky, sunrise only a pale swath along the rolling hills to the east. It had taken him nearly an hour to make his way to the bridge in the dark, stumbling and tripping along the shadowed road. The night had been short and he had barely slept, his mind filled with worry. It left him hollow, sick to his stomach, all too aware what would happen should his father discover where he had gone.
A sputtering engine broke the stillness. A flat-bed truck rattled along the narrow dirt road then ground to a stop. Jerry shrank closer to the cement footing, but the promise of an aeroplane ride was too tempting. He took a deep breath then stepped out. An unshaven, jowly man, face lit by the cigarette dangling from his lower lip, stared at Jerry from the driver’s window.
“You the kid ‘sposed to take me to them flyboys?” The man’s voice gurgled like the river, his breath reeking of cheap tobacco and whisky. Jerry nodded. “Get in then.”
He hurried around to the passenger side and crawled inside the little cab. The seat cushion was long gone, replaced by an upturned apple crate. Jerry clung to the door frame as they pounded down the rutted path, tin cans banging against each other in the back. The driver remained silent, grunting now and then at the worst of the jarring bumps.
“Turn here.” Jerry pointed at a gap in the sagging barbwire fence. The driver dropped into a lower gear as they climbed along the slowly rising terrain. The narrow tires spun as they neared the top of the wooded hill, then, just when it seemed the engine would stall and send them hurtling backwards to their death, the truck topped the ridge. The familiar sight of their cow pasture gave Jerry only momentary relief, the thought of his father weighing him down as the truck rolled to a stop at the edge of the trees.
The morose driver popped the hand-clutch to kill the engine, and Jerry nearly slammed into the dashboard. Figures ambled out of the trees and slowly surrounded the battered Ford. Stumpy O’Toole circled the front of the truck and peered inside. Satisfied they were who they were supposed to be, he gave a backhand wave to the men around him. Jerry pushed the door open and jumped gratefully to the ground. The hair on his neck stiffened at the unmistakable sound of gun hammers being lowered.
“Hey, kid!” O’Toole slapped Jerry on the shoulder. “Give me a hand with the gas cans, would you?”
For the next half hour, Jerry was too busy to worry about his father or anything else except staying upright as he hauled the heavy, over-filled cans from the truck to the aeroplanes. Sweat poured down his back as he hefted another of the square containers up to O’Toole, the stocky pilot balanced precariously one foot on the lower wing of his plane, the other on the wire-spoked wheel.
“Thanks, kid.” O’Toole upended the can into a dented tin funnel crammed into the fuel tank nestled in the center of the upper wing.
Jerry passed another fuel can into the pilot’s waiting hand. Behind him, he heard the clink of bottles as wooden cases were loaded on the truck. The sky had brightened enough to make out individual faces. Jerry tried to spot Preacher, but didn’t find him.
“Where’s Preacher?” he asked as he took the empty can back.
“Huh?” O’Toole leapt nimbly to the ground then wiped his hands on his filthy pant legs. “The Preach? He had some night flying to do.” He left it at that and walked off toward the truck. The other pilots were already rolling their machines out and pointing them into the wind. Some swung their props in slow, ponderous arcs while others oiled and primed the cylinders. One after another, the machines roared to life, the air whipped into an oil-soaked storm of exhaust and dust. Jerry had the sinking feeling that the promised ride was not going to happen as he watched the truck bounce away and vanish over the hill. He felt a tap on his shoulder, and startled, spun around. O’Toole stood grinning behind him.
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