The Flying Circus Read online

  Everything looked the same in all directions: planted fields in corrugated stripes of green and brown; woods like rough, rumpled green blankets; rivers and creeks green-brown yarn batted around by a cat. Even the grids of towns all looked pretty much alike—and they all looked too small from up here to actually hold people and stores and automobiles. It made him feel insignificant, a nearly invisible speck in the vast world that spread beneath him. It made him believe Henry Schuler could disappear forever, replaced by Henry Jefferson, a man untainted by a past. His irrelevance would be his protection.

  He would start a new life. His third in eighteen years. It hadn’t been of his choosing, but he now had the opportunity to reinvent himself. And he would. He would leave the Schuler name and its shadow of disaster behind him once and for all.

  He reached his fist out of the cockpit and into the buffeting air. He opened his fingers one by one, releasing his disaster-shadowed name on the wind. When he brought his unclenched hand back in, he was, and would always be, Henry Jefferson.

  A smoking curl of shame rose inside his chest.

  Oh, Pa, I am not the man you and Peter were. I am weak. I am afraid. I am lost.

  Please forgive me.

  Henry’s pa had died one month to the day after Armistice—and not of the influenza like everybody else in 1918. Poverty and grief had slowly rolled him into his grave. With the rest of his family already collected by disaster, Henry alone sat vigil beside his pa’s pine box. He turned the oil lamp low, to conserve the last of the fuel. In the long, cold night hours, frost bloomed on the inside of the window glass as Henry thought about what he’d do next.

  The Schulers didn’t have friends, not after the war broke out, and few before. People had never understood Pa’s quiet, stern ways. Ma had been sociable enough. Lucky for her she was dead before the war started; it’d have broken her heart to suffer the scorn of the ladies she’d sewed quilts with and helped tend their sick children. Henry’s parents’ people were still in Germany, if they were still alive. Ma had had a brother, an aunt, and two cousins that Henry knew of. Pa never talked about the life he’d left behind. There hadn’t been any letters from overseas—even before the war.

  Pa had been convinced that once Peter went to war, everyone would finally understand that the Schulers were as American as any other family in Indiana. If only Pa hadn’t put so much faith into that sacrifice, Henry would still have someone.

  He would not go to the County Home. He would be spurned for his German-ness even among the outcasts and throwaways that lived there. He decided he would run away.

  He only had the little bit of money left in the coffee can. Most likely he’d have starved on the road. But Anders Dahlgren came with his offer of a new home, a new family. He arrived as Henry stood in the cemetery next to the four crooked crosses that were all that was left of his family. Peter wasn’t even buried beneath his. Henry had just planted the one he’d made from fence pickets on his pa’s grave; a cross he’d carved with carefully chosen words: GEORG SCHULER, DEAD AMERICAN.

  It had been snowing when Anders Dahlgren turned his wagon into the lane of his large farm. When Henry set sight on the big, two-story house with smoke curling from its chimneys, he’d been stunned by his good fortune. Hunger, cold, and loneliness—in truth, he’d felt alone since the day Peter had left for the Marines—would soon be distant memories. A man with a passel of daughters, Mr. Dahlgren had told Henry he wanted a boy to help him with the farm—a son he’d said. Henry hadn’t been sure how he felt about becoming another man’s son.

  To meet the family, Henry put on a face that made people like him, that of a nice, fun-loving boy. He knew what that face felt like because he’d worn it before the war.

  The daughters stood behind their mother, blond stair steps, with big bows in their hair and polished shoes. Mrs. Dahlgren was dressed fancier than Henry had ever seen a farmer’s wife—even for church. The instant she set eyes on Henry, her welcoming smile disappeared.

  “Girls! Get back!” Her lack of accent told Henry she hadn’t come from Sweden alongside her husband. “To your rooms!”

  The eldest girl picked up the youngest and they all disappeared like yellow leaves on the wind.

  Mrs. Dahlgren snatched up a nearby broom. “Anders! Get that urchin out of here!” She took a couple of pokes in Henry’s direction, making him step back into the doorway. “No one is allowed inside this house that doesn’t live here. The epidemic! How can you risk our daughters?” She jabbed the broom Henry’s way, backing him down the first step.

  She had reason to worry, he reckoned. Two kids at his school had died from the influenza before the health board had closed all the schools and churches. Maybe more had died since.

  Mr. Dahlgren put a hand on the broom handle. “He is well. No fever. And he lives here now.”

  “What are you talking about?” She pulled the broom free from his grasp and raised it again, her squinty eyes hard on Henry.

  “I told you I was looking for a boy.”

  “You said that months ago—”

  “Ja. And here he is. He is orphaned.” Mr. Dahlgren reached back and put a hand on the top of Henry’s head. “And smart. He will stay.”

  “You don’t know what filthy diseases that boy is carrying! Get rid of him, then wash up and change your clothes in the barn.” The broom jabbed again. “I will not have my daughters living under the same roof with some ragamuffin orphan.” She had them backed up far enough to slam the door.

  For a moment, they stood on the steps staring at the closed door with the snow falling quietly around them. Then Mr. Dahlgren turned and put his arm around Henry’s shoulders. “Do not worry about her,” he said as they headed toward the barn. “The disease will pass. She will come around.”

  “I don’t think so, sir.” The disease might pass, but Mrs. Dahlgren’s opinion of him would not. He’d seen it before. Only he’d never thought being poor and an orphan could provoke as much hate as being German—Mrs. Dahlgren hadn’t even learned that part about him yet.

  Mr. Dahlgren set Henry up in a small bunk room tucked into the back corner of the barn. He lit the coal stove before he returned to the house and brought out supper, both his and Henry’s.

  “Aren’t you eating with your family?” Henry asked.

  “Too many high voices.” Mr. Dahlgren tucked a napkin in his collar. “And you are now family.” He’d nodded. “Eat.”

  That meal was the best Henry had eaten since his ma passed, with a big serving of meat—good meat, not the kind that was tough like leather or so stringy it gagged you when you tried to swallow it. He was warm and his belly was full for the first time in a long time. But after Mrs. Dahlgren’s reaction to his arrival, he knew he couldn’t stay.

  Mr. Dahlgren left Henry with a good night. As soon as the man had gone, Henry looked around for something to write a note, but didn’t find anything. Thank you for trying, that’s what his note would have said. Instead, he took his harmonica out of his canvas bag and left it on the pillow, a fair trade for a good meal he figured. He didn’t reckon it was enough to cover the trouble with Mr. Dahlgren’s wife, but it was the best he could do.

  He waited a bit to get good and warm and let everyone in the house go to bed, then he put on his jacket with the too-short sleeves, snuffed the oil lamp, and left the barn.

  When he stepped outside, the cold slapped his face like an angry hand. The sky had cleared and hardened like flint, making the snow look blue under the white sliver of moon. He’d always liked the quiet of a country night wrapped in snow and wondered if it would soften the sounds of the city, too. He had to get to Chicago, where he wouldn’t stand out, where he could live on the streets and make up a story about where he lived and no one would know any different. City children worked in factories, just as they worked on farms in the country. But Henry could probably get a man’s job with a man’s pay, he was big for thi
rteen.

  The frigid snow squeaked under his shoes. As he passed the house, he stopped and sniffed. Matches and tobacco.

  “You made me a promise, young Henry.” Mr. Dahlgren’s quiet voice came from the porch, deep in the shadowy corner of the ell of the house.

  The man stepped to the edge where Henry could see him. Smoke curled pale gray from the bowl of his pipe in the thin moonlight.

  “Yes, sir. I did. But that was before . . . Well, I just figured it’d be easier for both of us if I moved on.”

  “I did not ask for easier. I asked for you to give me time.”

  “But Mrs. Dahlgren—”

  “Bah!” He waved a hand to swat Henry’s words away. “She is an excitable woman. She will get used to you.” Mr. Dahlgren shrugged, and Henry realized the man was coatless in the cold. “She got used to me.”

  That seemed an odd thing to say about your wife, but Henry didn’t understand much about married folks, so he didn’t question. “I don’t want to make trouble for you.”

  “I am not a young man, Henry. And I have waited a long time for you. I do not mind a little trouble, as long as it stays inside the house. I know the barn is not what I promised, but if you can stand it for a while—”

  “Oh, no, sir! It isn’t the barn. That room’s better’n our house.”

  “Then you will stay.” Mr. Dahlgren turned around and disappeared back into the house and closed the door quietly behind him.

  The smell of his pipe hung in the air as Henry stood thinking. His pa had always said a man’s work was his worth and his word his most valuable possession. Mr. Dahlgren seemed like a man who thought the same. And on that wagon ride, Henry had given his word to try.

  He’d turned around and traced his steps back through the snow, to the little room in the barn.

  It hadn’t taken long to understand he would never have the family Mr. Dahlgren had promised. But it hadn’t mattered. In fact, it eased his mind some, not having to figure out if accepting a new family made him disloyal to his dead one. He’d been happy to live in his little room in the barn. He’d been warm and dry and had committed himself to being as invisible as possible to the females and useful to Mr. Dahlgren.

  All in all, Henry had figured mistreatment from the womenfolk was little enough to pay for his new hunger-free life. He’d modeled himself after his pa. He hadn’t argued with rumor and opinion. He’d never retaliated for slights and slurs. He’d not disrespected Mr. Dahlgren by complaining or discrediting his family in public. As his pa used to say, “Words are only words. A man’s deeds show what he is.”

  As it turned out, Henry’s deeds had been confined to the farm, hidden from the sight of those whose opinion of him had been formed by the belittling tongues of the Dahlgren women.

  He’d been mistaken to accept the opinion others had cultivated of him. Words might only be words, but they could be as powerful as bullets.

  As things were now, Henry bet Mr. Dahlgren wished with all of his heart that he’d never stopped Henry from leaving that night.

  Even if it had meant he’d have starved to death, Henry wished it, too.

  Henry’s worry that he’d leave a brown streak in his pants when Gil stunted over Noblesville to draw a crowd proved unnecessary. When the courthouse clock tower came into view, Gil started losing altitude. The sun reflected off the rails of the train track that led into town.

  How could Gil tell where he could land from up here? Everything looked the same. But Gil must have seen something Henry didn’t because he circled around and lost more altitude.

  There wasn’t any place that looked big enough to land. And Jenny didn’t have brakes.

  It sounded as if one cylinder wasn’t firing—when had that started?

  Henry sat as tall as he could, leaning right and left, trying to see where they were headed. The sound of the engine changed as Gil throttled back a bit.

  The left wing dipped and they swung sideways. Henry’s stomach jumped up and slid across the wings.

  Gil brought the wings back to level.

  All Henry could see were trees ahead. He slid low and braced himself.

  The nose of the plane lifted slightly. His seat dropped as if he’d gone over a hill.

  There was an impact, a rough jolt. Then the plane bounced along on its wheels. With a little jerk the tail skid hit the ground.

  Henry’s head popped up. They were in a pasture, the trees behind them . . . no cows in sight . . . unless they were directly in front of the plane where neither Henry nor Gil could see over the high nose.

  Henry slithered a little lower and kept his eyes squinted, just in case a propeller-ground cow splattered them.

  They stopped rolling. The engine cut off.

  No cow guts.

  A minute later he stood beside Gil on the ground, wiping the oil spatter off his face and wiggling his pinkie fingers in his ears trying to get them to clear. It seemed the roar of the engine and the rush of the wind continued inside his head after the propeller had stopped.

  “What’d you think?” Gil asked, looking like the owner of the blue-ribbon boar at the county fair.

  “Amazing! Just incredible!”

  “You’re shouting. It’s the ears.” Gil tossed his leather helmet and goggles up into the cockpit. “Time to earn your ride.” He started walking toward the dirt road on the far side of the pasture.

  Henry wiped the oil from his face and hurried to catch up. “You’ve got a cylinder not firing.”

  “I’ll clean the spark plugs before I take off again.”

  “You shouldn’t do it with people watching. You’ll scare them out of riding.”

  “Bullshit. They’ll be more confident knowing I take care of my ship.”

  Henry shook his head. “No, sir. Once they get the idea that a machine isn’t one hundred percent reliable, you won’t get them in the plane.”

  “How would you know?”

  “It’s the reason most farmers won’t get off mules and horses. Worry over a tractor breaking down. Only you want people to trust their lives to a machine racing along hundreds of feet off the ground. You can’t let them get even a hint that the thing could fall out of the sky. They need to see it as infallible.”

  “Never bothered anybody before.”

  “I’ll bet you scared plenty of them off. You just didn’t notice.” If not by working on the plane in front of them, then just by your general contrariness. “Of course, you might be a whole lot more persuasive and likable when you’re working an exhibition.”

  Gil shot him a narrow-eyed look that made Henry wish he’d just kept his mouth shut. He’d wanted to travel on with Gil before, just to get farther down the road, but after flying in that mechanical miracle, he didn’t ever want to leave it. And what better way to get lost in this world than to never stay put in one place, never let anyone really get to know you?

  They reached the road. A truck was coming toward them, kicking up a rolling plume of dust. It skidded to a stop and an angry man hopped out. “Hold on there, young fella! What gives you the right? Get on”—he waved his hand at Gil as if he were scaring off geese—“and get that contraption outta my field.”

  Gil kept walking. “Can’t. Needs gas.”

  “Well, that’s poor plannin’ on your part. You got no right just droppin’ down on my land like you own it. Scare the milk right outta my cows.”

  “Airplanes don’t bother cows.” Gil sounded so condescending that Henry cringed.

  “So you’re a dairy farmer,” the man said. “Know all about it.” Not questions.

  Gil huffed, “There aren’t even any cows in that pasture.”

  “Neither was I.” The man pointed to the sides of his red-faced head. “They got ears! I want you off my land.”

  Henry stepped between Gil and the farmer. “Sorry, mister. We came on your land witho
ut your say-so, and that’s not right, for sure. But, you see, there’s no way for us to ask from up there, so we gotta land first, then ask. Which is what we were just heading to do.” The man continued to frown. “Hope you’ll give us pardon.” Henry looked things over. The truck was old. The man’s barn needed paint. Farm prices were in the shitter. “And we’ll . . . we’ll pay for the privilege.” Gil groaned behind him. “And as soon as we get fueled up, we’ll be off to find another pasture nearby to hire out for our barnstorming act. So don’t worry about the crowds.”

  “Hire out?” The farmer stopped straining forward in rage.

  “Yes, sir. Captain Gilchrist here is a bona fide war hero. A flying ace.” The regard Henry saw bloom in the farmer’s eyes prompted him to take it another step. “Fought the Red Baron himself! Why, people line up just for a chance to pay for a ride with him.” Peter had been the best at convincing people to do things, clever about it, too. Henry had watched and learned. It’d been a long time since he’d put those skills to much use; the war had made everyone so mistrustful, the use of persuasion only made them more suspicious. He had coaxed the two littlest Dahlgren girls with some success—he hadn’t wasted his breath with the older ones or their mother.

  “I can see you wouldn’t want all those folks milling around in your pasture,” Henry went on. “The crowd sometimes stays all day just to watch—sometimes runs over into two. We usually try to find a place where a wife wants to make some pocket money selling food and drink. We’ll be gone as soon as we can. Promise. But we need to gas up first.”

  “Well, now, maybe you should tell me more about this barnstorming act.”

  Gil opened his mouth, but Henry cut him off before he ruined everything. “Captain Gilchrist here . . . once his plane is all fueled up . . . takes off and does a death-defying exhibition of flight, just like he’s dogfightin’ those dirty Huns over France again. People fall all over themselves getting to where they see his plane land. He charges a reasonable fee for a ride.” According to Gil, some folks thought five dollars was reasonable. “Then maybe he’ll do some more stunts in between, just to keep people entertained while they wait their turn. There’s nothing like flying over your own town and seeing it from the air. Nothing!”