“Then I’ll see him,” she said tranquilly. “I brought enough money along. Even if I have to buy a ticket and ride somewhere in his plane, I’ll see him.”
The flying field was as big as the whole farm laid smooth. She had never seen so wide and smooth a place. She had never seen a plane before, except as it flew, a bird among birds, in the sky. But then it was impossible, gazing at that far shape as she stood alone upon a hillside, impossible to believe that it contained in its body human beings. Only its purposefulness seemed guided and human. Birds fluttered and swerved, dipped and soared and drifted in dreaming circles. But a plane went straight to its desire.
They were walking across the level field.
“Here’s his plane,” said Francis.
She forgot to look at Francis — she did not hear the eagerness of his voice. She was staring at the great plane. It was enormous, more huge than her imagination of it. She gazed at it, forgetting everything else, herself, her life. All her wonder was held in this shining shape of silvery metal, seeming to touch the earth so delicately, seeming to spurn it, its wings forever outspread ready for instant flight, its never-folding wings.
But out of the wonder someone was speaking to her. “What do you see?” She looked up at a man taller even than she was — it was strange to look higher than herself — she was always taller than everybody. He looked down at her, a man in a khaki shirt and breeches, a visored cap on his head. Under the cap his face was lean and hewn, the cheeks flat, the eyes bold and blue.
“It’s the plane,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful before. It’s — it’s concentration — the clean shape — it’s the very shape of flight — it’s motion put into shape.”
She turned her head. She stared at the plane dreamily in ecstasy. She was thinking. I’m glad I saw this before my baby is born. I’m glad I have this to go into his last making.
She was recalled again by the man’s voice. “Are you a passenger? Are you going?”
“Oh, no,” she said quickly. “I couldn’t — I have to go home — I came here with my brother. He wants to fly.” She looked around for Francis and saw him standing a little way off, twisting his hat in his hands. “There he is! Wait — perhaps you could tell us where to find Roger Bair. He’s the pilot.”
Francis came up to her and caught her words.
“But, Joan,” he whispered.
The man smiled. “I’m Roger Bair!”
“Are you?” she cried, and laughed aloud. When she looked at his face now she saw very clearly the straight brow and nose, the deep lines from mouth to chin, the brown weathered skin. It was impossible to tell how old he was from his face, and the cap hid his hair. But his eyes were blue, a clear imperial blue. Looking up in the morning light she seemed to be looking through his face to the sky, his eyes were so blue.
A young man in overalls came up panting. “All right, sir — she’s ready.”
“All right — I’m ready. Look here”—his eyes came back to Joan’s face—“what’s this about your brother?”
“I’ve always wanted to fly, sir!” Francis said quickly.
“I seem to remember your face,” the man said, looking at him.
“I worked here a little while.”
“Ground crew?”
“No, sir. I never got that far. I was just a sort of extra. Then they cut down their men. It was after an accident, I guess, and they took off some planes.”
Roger Bair looked from one to the other of them. They were both beseeching him. “Look here,” he said hurriedly to Francis, “I’m not a potentate. I don’t know what I can do about jobs. But — you feel about this plane like she does?” He looked at Francis and nodded toward Joan.
“Yes, sir,” said Francis. He wet his dry lips and looked steadfastly back at this god who could deliver him.
“All right. Show up here two days from now at this same time and I’ll see what I can do. Now I must go—” He turned to Joan and his face wrinkled deeply into the warmest smile she had ever seen. “Some day you’ll fly with me.”
“Shall I?” She smiled back at him. It was impossible, seeing him, not to let her smile respond to his, and not to believe him.
“Yes!” he shouted confidently. He was already running. Now he was in the plane, and she could not see him.
The steps were drawn away, the door closed, and the great roaring creature moved to mount into the air with the heavy lightness of an eagle. She stood, not knowing that any soul was near, watching him fly higher and higher to disappear into the far mists of the morning. He was gone. Without a word she followed Francis and he put her on the train.
“You’ll be all right now,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll be all right.”
She was going back, alone again. But she had those words, like a token, like a flower left in her hands. “Some day you’ll fly with me.” Anything was possible, as long as life lasted. Her heart flew dancing out of her breast and gamboled among the shining clouds, following him merrily. I believe I shall, she thought. She held the corners of her mouth into a smile, because she could have laughed in sheer exaltation and delight. Beauty! The world was full of it. Her face lit and sparkled, but she said nothing at all. She let her pure pleasure flow through fields and villages. She thought of him in purest pleasure, remembering him, shaping the memory, holding fast in her mind the movement of his body, the lines of his face, the color of his eyes. And there was, for life in the image, the memory of his smile.
The house was dark and close. To come back to this house, its closed windows, its empty rooms, the small huddled dining room, the kitchen where the men washed, where the food was prepared, where they sat more and more about the iron range now that winter was closing in, was to burrow into the earth. She could never forget, so long as she lived, that wide smooth field, the light of the rising sun, the shining silvery lifted plane. And Roger Bair was a part of it, the embodiment of that morning, just as Bart was the embodiment of these backbreaking fields, this earthy life filled with nothing but the work for food to eat, food forced from the earth, washed, cooked, eaten.
For here they spent their days in getting and eating the food. They went to bed early, exhausted, and slept like beasts, soddenly, heavily. They rose at dawn to get their food again. And they thanked God for this. It was the life of moles, burrowing through the sullen earth. They never lifted their eyes from earth to sky. The seasons were for the fruitation of their crops for food. Snow might fall but there was no beauty in it. It was a cause for anger if it fell too long; if it fell too lightly, the wheat suffered. Spring was measured not by bloodroot in the woods and arbutus under the brown leaves around the roots of an old oak, but by the frost upon the fruit trees, and summer was cursed by insects on the potatoes and the beans, by storms too harsh for corn and ripening grain, and autumn was gloomy with a harvest too scanty. They were bound into the earth, mind and body, and their souls were never lifted. When the old man prayed, he pulled God down to earth.
But sometimes she heard a far rushing sound and then she ran out, though the wind were bitter from the north, and looked up into the clouds to search in that distance for the diving shining shape. Sometimes she found it, glittering like a daytime shooting star. Sometimes it was lost in cloud and she would only hear it passing. But she could always imagine it was the plane beside which she had stood, into which he had climbed. She could imagine it, and so make it a light in her darkness, and he was there, a companion in her loneliness. And, she argued to excuse her dreaming, if she thought about him the baby might grow a little like him perhaps. Surely dreams were not wrong, not if there was nothing else, especially not if her hands went on doing their duty day after day.