He had fun back there, though, sitting sideways and waving his hands up in the slipstream of the open top. They drove past solid brick houses with wide lawns and a huge green park with a golf course. They came to a place called Executive Field, which turned out to be an airport, but Jose did not use the parking lot. He drove around to a gate that opened and stopped by some small airplanes that were parked side by side.
“Ready to cheat fate, Ken?” Mr. Garcia said.
“Are we flying in one of those?” Kenny pointed to the planes. They were not like the model airplanes he had at home, which were from the war—fighters and a B-17 bomber. These planes were small and had no machine guns, and they did not look like they could go very fast, even though some had two motors.
“The Comanche,” Mr. Garcia said. He was walking toward a white plane with a red stripe, one of the single-engine aircraft.
The doors opened on the plane just like a car, and Mr. Garcia left them ajar to cool off the inside. Kenny got to stand on the wing and look inside, at the gauges and the dials and the steering wheel and the foot pedals. There were two of everything—plus some odd switches and controls that all looked very scientific. Mr. Garcia walked around the plane a few times, then looked at some papers he had folded into sleeves on one of the doors.
Kenny’s mom came from the car with the pink suitcase. “I think you want to ride up front, don’t you?” she said to him. She folded down one of the seats and climbed into the back, setting the pink case beside her.
“I get to sit here?” Kenny meant behind the wheel, like the copilot.
“I need a copilot,” Mr. Garcia said. “Your mom’s shaky on the stick.” He laughed, then showed Kenny how to buckle his harness. Mr. Garcia had to pull the straps tight for him, though. Then he pulled a small pair of dark sunglasses out of his pocket and handed them to Kenny. “The sun is bright up there.”
The glasses were gold metal–framed like Mr. Garcia’s, but not nearly as expensive. They, too, had hooks that went around the ears. The sunglasses were oversize for Kenny’s almost-ten-year-old head, but he didn’t know that. He turned to show his mom how he looked. He gave her the thumbs-up and all of them laughed.
The starting of the engine was very loud, and not just because the Comanche’s doors were still open. The body of the plane shook and the propeller seemed to snap with each turn. Mr. Garcia worked switches and knobs and made the engine roar a few times. He put on a set of earphones and did something that got the plane moving even though the doors were still open. They passed other parked planes, then wide strips of grass where little signs with letters and numbers were planted. At one end of the long runway, the plane came to a stop. Mr. Garcia reached across Kenny and latched his door closed, then did the same to the door on his own side. The motor was still very loud, but the plane was not as wobbly.
“Ready?” Mr. Garcia shouted. Kenny nodded. His mother flashed another thumbs-up. She reached forward and rubbed her son’s head. If she said something, Kenny did not hear her, but he could see her large grin.
As the plane sped up and the noise got louder, a feeling came over Kenny that he had never, ever had before. They were moving faster and faster and then lifting up, making his stomach go down but the top of his head feel like it was rising. The ground quickly got smaller; soon the streets and houses and cars no longer looked real. Kenny turned to look out the side window. The wing of the plane blocked his view, so he leaned forward to see the earth and sky in front of the plane.
He saw the buildings downtown and recognized what had once been his world: the Tower Theatre and the grid of the streets, the Old Fort—Sutter’s Mill, it was called, where gold was discovered in pioneer days—and there was the Leamington Hotel. He could read the sign.
Kenny’s first flight in an airplane was the most amazing event of his life. His head seemed to fill up with air and his breath went short. The sun was brighter than it had ever been before, and Kenny was glad he had dark glasses. When Mr. Garcia turned the plane by dipping the wings to the left, the vast delta area of the river took up the view. There were islands down there, separated by twisted waterways and dikes. Right next to the town where Kenny was born lived farmers who needed a boat to get to town. Kenny had no idea!
“That’s what the Mekong looks like!” Mr. Garcia shouted. He was pointing out the window. Kenny nodded out of habit, not sure if he was expected to say something. “That’s the bargain you make with Uncle Sam! He teaches you to fly then sends you bird-dogging in Vietnam!”
Kenny knew about Vietnam because the war was on Channel 12 from Chico. What a Mekong was, he had no idea.
They flew southwest, ascending so high in the sky the cars and trucks on the highways looked like they were barely moving. The waters of the river grew wide and changed hue when they met the salt water of San Francisco Bay. Ships were down in the wide river, big ships that now looked like the toy models Kenny played with on the coffee table. When Mr. Garcia dipped the wings again, Kenny’s tummy went floppy, but just for a moment.
Now they were flying north. Mr. Garcia slid half of his headset off one of his ears. “I need you to fly for a few minutes, Kenny,” he said loudly.
“I don’t know how to fly a plane!” Kenny looked at Mr. Garcia as if he were a crazy person.
“Can you imagine driving a car?”
“Yes.”
“Take hold of the yoke,” Mr. Garcia said. The yoke was half steering wheel, half handlebars. Kenny had to sit up straight to reach the handles. “The plane will go where you point it. Pull back some and get the feel of the stick.”
Kenny used more muscle than he thought he had and, sure enough, the yoke came back toward him. As it did, the sky filled the front window and the engine slowed.
“See?” Mr. Garcia said. “Now level off just as easy.”
The grown man had his hand on his flight controls, but let Kenny do the work of pushing the nose of the plane back down. The earth below took up some of the window again.
“Can I turn?” Kenny yelled.
“You’re the pilot,” Mr. Garcia said.
Very, very carefully, Kenny turned the handlebar-yoke to the right, and the plane tipped ever so slightly. Kenny could feel the change in direction. He reversed his piloting motion and felt the plane ease back.
“If you were a little taller,” Mr. Garcia said, “I’d let you work the rudder, but you can’t reach the pedals. Maybe in a year. Next year.”
Kenny imagined himself, at age eleven, flying the Comanche all by himself with his mom in the backseat.
“What I need you to do now is, see Mount Shasta up ahead?” Shasta, the massive volcano that loomed over the valley up north, was forever covered with snow. On clear days in Iron Bend the mountain looked like an enormous painting off in the distance. From Kenny’s seat in the front of the airplane, Shasta was a triangle of white, poking up over the horizon. “Fly directly at it, okay?”
“Okay!” Kenny set his eyes on the mountain and tried to keep the nose of the plane smack on target while Mr. Garcia pulled some papers out of the side of his seat and a ballpoint pen from his pocket. He wrote some things down, then studied a map. Kenny wasn’t sure how much time went by as he flew the plane straight and true, it could have been a few minutes or most of the flight home, but he never let the plane stray. More of Mount Shasta was visible by the time Mr. Garcia folded up the map and clicked his pen closed.
“Atta boy, Kenny,” he said as he took over the yoke. “You have the makings of a pilot.”
“Good job, honey!” his mom called from the back of the plane. When Kenny looked over his shoulder, her smile was nearly as big as the one on his face.