Betty Cavanna Page 9

  She felt, as she accepted the prize with an almost inaudible “Thank you,” that she was incapable of finesse. So overwhelmed that she couldn’t even manage a convincing smile, she took the envelope and fled back to her seat under the cover of repeated applause.

  On the way, for one vivid second, she saw Jeff Chandler’s face. He was clapping with enthusiasm, and smiling his congratulations in the most sportsmanlike manner, but in his eyes Rette detected disappointment that was naked and unashamed.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Rette had never before walked in glory.

  Her progress from the auditorium back to her home room was like a triumphal march. Everybody had to congratulate her, the boys tongue-in-the-cheek because they were surprised and rather shocked that a girl had won, but the girls with superior pride.

  Rette scarcely knew what she said in reply to the deluge of felicitations. She was almost glad when Miss Kennedy, Mr. Martin’s secretary, rescued her by coming to her home room to stay that Mr. Irish would like to speak with her in the office before he left the school.

  She trotted along in Miss Kennedy’s wake with her heart still beating like a trip hammer, feeling proud and humble at the same time, emotionally all mixed up.

  The principal of the school and the flyer were standing just within the door of Mr. Martin’s private office. They turned when Rette entered, and Stephen Irish grinned at her apparent confusion.

  “Kind of surprised you, eh?” Mr. Martin said.

  “Surprised!”

  “We tried to let you know just before assembly, so that you could be prepared. Didn’t you get a note?”

  Rette’s eyes widened, remembering. “I thought it was an April-fool stunt,” she gasped.

  Mr. Irish really laughed now. He sat on the corner of the principal’s desk and slapped his knee while he exchanged a glance with Mr. Martin. Then he said to Loretta, “When do you want to start?”

  “Start—flying?” Rette couldn’t believe that all this luck was real.

  “Sure.”

  “Why, I don’t know. I hadn’t thought—”

  “What about tomorrow morning—if Saturday’s a good day for you? Otherwise we can schedule your lessons for weekdays, after school. Be sure you have your parents’ permission first, too.”

  “Tomorrow morning’s fine,” Rette gathered her wits to say, and they made an appointment for eleven o’clock. “And I do want to thank you,” she added, remembering her manners. “I’m still sort of—knocked for a loop.”

  Then, beating a hasty retreat, she wondered why she couldn’t have expressed herself in a manner less slangy. “Tomboy, tomboy, tomboy,” she muttered to herself between her teeth.

  Loretta lived through the rest of the day in a daze. She was glad it was Friday, because even the teachers seemed to relax on the last day of the school week. The faculty members in whose classes she sat smiled at her with understanding, and few of them asked her to recite.

  At noon Rette wanted to call her mother to tell her the marvelous news, but the phone was so public, right in the anteroom of Mr. Martin’s office, that she decided to resist the impulse and wait until she could see her face to face.

  Of all the girls, Elise seemed to be the most impressed. “I should think you’d be so thrilled!” she cried with excitement. “I’m positively green with envy. When do you start?”

  “Tomorrow morning,” Rette told her, feeling almost embarrassed by such huge good fortune.

  “Oh, pooh!” Elise said, pushing her pretty lower lip forward in a pout. “I’d come watch you take off, but I’ve got to be at the gym, decorating, on account of the Ball.”

  Rette had completely forgotten that the next day was the Saturday of the Senior Ball. For nearly a whole day she had forgotten, and to be reminded of it now took just a bit of the edge from her unexpected success.

  Then she rallied and replied: “Oh, but I doubt if I’ll actually get a chance to go up, my first lesson! I don’t think there will be anything to see.”

  But Rette was wrong. The next morning, when she timidly presented herself to Mr. Irish at the airport office, he told her that both an instructor and a plane were ready.

  “I’m letting you have a Cessna,” he said as though this were quite a privilege. “In a Cessna instructor and pupil sit side by side, where in a Piper Cub you’d have to sort of crane your neck to see the instrument panel.”

  Rette drew herself up to her full five feet four, because it seemed to her that Mr. Irish had implied that she was short. “You mean,” she asked, trying not to sound too excited, “I’m to go up—today?”

  “Sure. You’ve won the prize—you’ve got your Dad’s OK. The only way to learn to ride a horse is to get on it.” Stephen Irish grinned.

  “For you, Mr. Irish,” a girl holding a telephone receiver in her hand called from an inner office, and while Rette stood waiting for her sponsor to return she realized that her hands had turned clammy with agitation. It seemed to her that everything was happening too fast.

  It wasn’t that she’d lost her nerve or anything like that. It was just that she felt like such a greenhorn. Why, she didn’t even have the foggiest notion of how an airplane worked, what kept it up—anything! She hoped she’d draw an instructor who wouldn’t expect too much.

  Because Mr. Irish was by now familiar to her, she wished he were teaching her—she’d have confidence in him; but he had told her that he was so busy with managing operations that he no longer had much time to instruct. With blue April skies after a rainy, blowy March, business at the new airport had increased by leaps and bounds. From mechanics to executives, everybody about the place looked busy and intent.

  Mr. Irish banged the telephone into its cradle and called to Rette, “Be right back,” as he strode from the room. In a few minutes he returned, talking to a slender girl in slacks who walked confidently along by his side.

  The girl was about Tony’s age, Rette could see as they came toward her. She had shoulder-length brown hair which curled at the ends, and her brown eyes had golden flecks in them. Her mouth was rather large, with a merry quirk to the corners. She looked pleasant and assured.

  “Loretta Larkin—Pat Creatore.” Mr. Irish introduced them, using their first names.

  Pat held out her hand. “Glad to know you. Congratulations on winning that prize.”

  Rette murmured, “Thanks,” astonished that the news had spread. She wondered why Mr. Irish had brought the girl over, and was just ready to ask, “Are you taking flying lessons too?” when he told her.

  “Pat’s going to be your instructor.” He winked at Rette solemnly. “And you can take my word for it, she really is good!”

  “But tough,” Pat added with a purely feminine inflection. She had gathered her long hair into her hands and was securing it at the back of her neck with a big tortoiseshell barrette.

  Rette couldn’t keep astonishment out of her eyes. It had never occurred to her that she might have a girl for an instructor, yet when she stopped to consider it—why not?

  Pat, sensing her reaction, looked at Mr. Irish and laughed. For Rette’s further enlightenment the airport manager added: “Pat taught the father of one of your classmates to fly, couple of years ago. Carter Wynn.”

  “Elise’s father?”

  “Not here,” Pat said. “Over at Wyndham, before this airport was built.” She glanced at her watch, turned to the desk that flanked the front office, and asked Rette to sign her name to a charge slip that looked not unlike a department store sales slip. It bore the date, a ship number, the instructor’s name, and Rette’s address, as well as the take-off time.

  “All right. Let’s get going,” she said.

  Rette followed Pat down the steps of the converted farmhouse and across a stretch of grass just tinged with spring chartreuse. Three small planes were lined up in a row, and Pat went to the middle one and inspected the wooden chocks under the wheels.

  “Ever flown before?” she asked Rette.

  “Just once,
in an air liner,” Rette said. She was looking at the little plane with curiosity. ‘This seems so small!”

  Pat nodded. “Small planes are a lot more fun!”

  She opened the door of the cockpit and took out a couple of seat cushions, tossing them on the ground. “Let’s sit down for a few minutes before we climb in.”

  Obediently, Rette sat down.

  Pat gathered her knees in her arms and asked casually, “D’you understand what makes an airplane fly?”

  “I think,” said Rette, “that it stays up because the wings push the air down.”

  “Not bad,” said Pat, and she started to talk about the theory of flying. “Get rid of the idea that a plane is only an air-going sort of automobile,” she told Rette. “It isn’t. Nor is flying easy to learn, as you’ve probably been told. Flying is done largely with the imagination. Your acts are going to be based on a mental image of the airplane, its controls and maneuvers, and it’s important that you get that image straight.”

  Rette tried her best to follow this pretty girl sitting opposite her as she described the parts of an airplane, the way in which it flies. Some of what Pat said she could comprehend, but not all of it. The vocabulary of flying was strange and therefore rather alarming. She was relieved when Pat said, “I don’t want to overwhelm you,” and jumped up. “Let’s get in.”

  She put a foot on the metal step and climbed into the cabin from the right side while Rette got in from the left. Pat showed her new pupil how to fasten her seat belt, then explained the ground check of the instrument panel and controls necessary before every take-off. Rette listened carefully with her hand on the little wheel that Pat called the “stick.”

  “The controls are very simple,” the instructor explained. “For straight and level flight the rudder pedals and control stick are neutral. When you move the stick forward, the elevators on the tail go down. This raises the tail and causes the plane to nose down. When you pull the stick back toward you, the elevators go up, and the plane climbs.”

  Rette tried to fix it in her mind. Back on the stick to climb, forward to nose down. It seemed that there was a good deal to remember.

  But that wasn’t all. The action of the ailerons on the wings had to be explained, and the use of the rudder pedals.

  “All right, let’s go,” Pat said finally, and showed Rette how to start the engine.

  The plane had a self-starter, and in no time they were taxiing in S-turns toward the runway. “We always take off and land into the wind,” Pat said as they zigzagged along. “Keep your hand on the stick lightly—rest your feet lightly on the pedals—and follow me through on the controls.”

  Rette tried to do as she was told. Under Pat’s expert guidance the plane was turning into position for the take-off and the engine was beginning to roar with increased power as the throttle was advanced.

  “Now just relax,” Pat said, turning to the younger girl with a smile. “Relax, I said! You’ve got a death grip on that stick!”

  Rette hadn’t realized that she was holding on to the wheel for dear life. The palm of her hand was damp with sweat, and as she tried to loosen up and settle back in her seat she realized that her back was so tense that it ached.

  “That’s better,” Pat grinned, turning to meet Rette’s eyes. “All right, here we go. Just follow through on the controls until you get used to being in the air.”

  Pat peered to the right and left and into the air ahead of the ship, then made her clearing turn preparatory to take off. “All clear,” she murmured as, with her left hand, she eased the throttle ahead. The plane started rolling down the runway, over the rather rough terrain that had grown the Tisdale’s corn only last year or the year before.

  Faster...faster...faster! Rette realized that they were in the air only because there were no more bumps. She glanced out of the cockpit window and saw the airport buildings drifting away below them. As the hangar receded into the distance, Rette’s qualms receded too. She wriggled back in her seat happily, really relaxed now, and looked down at the beautiful pattern of green and brown fields. Then she turned to Pat.

  “This is such fun!” she cried.

  But Pat Creatore didn’t give Rette long simply to enjoy the view. “You take over the controls now,” she called above the steady drone of the engine. “Just keep the plane flying along straight and level, as it is now.”

  It was astonishing, Rette found, what a light movement of stick or rudder was needed to control the plane. Compared with steering a bicycle, this required a featherweight touch.

  Finally the instructor said: “I’ll take it now. We’ll climb a bit. Then you can try some simple turns.”

  Rette sat back and looked down at the earth beneath the plane. Strangely enough, she experienced no sensation of height at all. Houses and fields and ribbon-like highways seemed smaller, to be sure. But looking at them from the cabin of the plane seemed not unlike looking at the countryside from the window of a moving car. It was just a different view, Rette thought, and was reminded of looking down on a Christmas-tree village, with the cows and people like figures from Lilliput, too tiny to be real.

  Now the cars moving on highways were beetles, and the altimeter needle was moving up past the nine-hundred-foot mark. At one thousand feet Pat leveled off and said, “Follow me through on a left turn now.”

  Rette held the stick with one hand and let her feet rest on the rudder pedals very lightly, so that she could feel the delicacy with which Pat turned the wheel and pushed on the left rudder.

  “Left rudder, left stick,” she was saying as the tip of the left wing dropped below the horizon, showing blue sky under the right wing as the plane banked. “Neutralize.”

  Rette felt the controls return to neutral, yet the plane kept on turning. It was a little confusing. “To roll out of a turn,” Pat said, “apply opposite stick and rudder.” She suited her actions to words, and the plane began to fly straight and level once more.

  “Now you try it,” Pat said. “Left turn.”

  Rette tried to copy her instructor’s handling of the left stick and left rudder, and the left wing dropped suddenly down—’way down! Looking out of the cabin window at the earth, a thousand feet below, Rette had the sensation of lying on her side and floating over the fields and woods.

  “Gently!” Pat shouted. “Gently! You act like a boy, yanking the controls around like that. Easy does it.”

  Rette felt the stick and rudder move as Pat took over and quite effortlessly resumed level flight.

  “Now try it again.”

  This time Rette, embarrassed by the rebuke, was too gentle, but on the third turn she did better, except that the nose of the plane exhibited a persistent tendency to pull up. Then, at Pat’s command, she tried some right turns, with variable results. She could feel herself growing weary from the effort of remembering so many things at once, but Pat seemed unaware of it.

  “Another right turn now,” she called.

  This time Rette succeeded in keeping the nose down, but her rudder pressure was so light that the plane slipped into its turn. She looked at Pat questioningly. Even with her lack of experience she knew that the turn didn’t feel right.

  Pat explained. “There’s an expression called ‘flying by the seat of your pants,’” she said. “Know what I mean?”

  Rette nodded. “The way you bank with a bicycle when you’re going around a curve?”

  Pat smiled. “That’s right.” Then, suddenly, she said: “That’s enough for today. Look down and tell me where the airport is.”

  Rette peered down on the tidy world so far below, but could see nothing in the least familiar.

  “I haven’t the slightest idea where we are!” she cried. Pat smiled, and pointed out some landmarks, explaining how to get a sense of location from the air. She turned the plane toward home, and Rette could feel a gradual loss of altitude as they came in to circle the field in a glide.

  To Rette, as they approached the runway, the plane seemed to be going very fa
st. Then she could feel Pat move the stick back, more and more, until the wheels touched the field in a three-point landing. They were back on the ground again.

  Rette knew, for the first time in her life, what it was like to be weak with excitement. When she unfastened her safety belt and climbed out of the plane, her knees felt wobbly and she had the sensation of stepping too high, as though she had just climbed down off a horse.

  Her mouth was dry and she was perspiring, her dungarees clinging to the backs of her legs. But she was filled with pent-up exhilaration. She had made her first flight—she had actually handled the controls of a plane—and it was even more fun than she had dreamed!

  For just a second she glanced back at the trainer, lined up neatly between two other ships. My plane, she thought possessively. It looked very bright and trim.

  At Pat’s behest, before she left the airport, Loretta bought a flight log, a little oblong book in which a record of her time in the air would be kept.

  Pat entered the time of the first flight—thirty-five minutes—and signed it. Rette looked at the entry proudly. Her first thirty-five minutes of dual instruction! It seemed incredible to conceive that by the time her ten hours of lessons were finished, she might be able to take the plane up in the air alone!

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It seemed anticlimactic to ride a bike away from a flying lesson, but Rette was feeling so buoyant that it tickled her sense of humor. From sheer high spirits she sang the refrain of a Hit Parade song as she rode back toward town.

  The country road was empty along the margin of the airport’s new wire fence. Rette kept glancing back at the hangar as she pedaled along, and when she reached a small copse of trees that blotted it out for a moment she stood up and raced with the wind until the building came into view again. The knowledge that she’d be coming back here time after time was sweet and fresh. She felt as though she’d been given the key to a wonderful city. As though she belonged.

  It was a feeling Rette had always craved, and had never quite achieved in high school. In athletics sometimes, working with a team, but never socially, had Rette felt quite at home. Out here at Wings, Rette was sure she could fit in. Out here the standards were adult and therefore less inflexible than the pattern to which she was expected to conform at school.