A Story: When I was nine—in 1919

 

 

            I heard it before I saw it.

            The humming came from beyond the woods. The sound was lower than the whine of the 13-year cicadas that came out last year. It wasn’t the train––that came from the opposite direction. The noise was coming closer and closer, and I was out here alone.

            My forehead throbbed where Lotus had kicked me five summers ago. From my perch on a low chinaberry limb, I rubbed the scar and wondered what I’d do if I had to escape.

            Should I stay put and hope for the best or run across the yard to the cellar? Trouble was, a big piece of lava rock from Mama’s lily garden anchored the sloping, tin-covered door. Even if I pushed the stone off, could I lift the bulky hatch? 

            Spiders and rats and snakes might waylay me. And bats. We’d had bats scootch under the inside door and fly around in the house.

            Could my legs carry me to the far end of the front porch? What if I tripped over the sandbox? Or stepped on a piece of glass?

            Would anything be scary enough to make me climb over the well curb and hang inside by my hands? I shuddered at the thought of falling in. Frogs had, and they’d died. We could taste them in the drinking water like we tasted bitterweeds in Bossy’s milk.

            No, I’d climb higher into the leafy branches. Maybe I could hide myself into safety. But what if I got so scared my arms turned to jelly?

            The roar grew deafening. Whatever it was rattled and clunked worse than the old Number Nine climbing the grade to Black Mountain. Birdie stood beneath the chinaberry and barked. I shook like the lacy leaves sheltering me. Birdie’s bark became a howl. The earth vibrated. I squinched my eyes tight and hung on, digging my throbbing head into the rough bark. “Dear Lord,” I prayed.

            If I lived to tell about this, I’d better see what hit me. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes a mite. Looking up through a gap in the branches, I saw bright red letters on the gray belly of an airplane not far from my head. SANK WEAVER’S JOY RIDES, it read. The plane touched ground nearby in Daddy’s hayfield.

            Breathing a sigh, I relaxed my hold. My heart pounded like it did after I’d chased Birdie to the lower forty and back. Uncle Sank and his practical jokes. Daddy’s kid brother’d learned to fly planes in the First War. When he came home, he traveled to Fort Smith and gave thrill rides to folks willing to risk the latest invention of air travel.

            Birdie and I lit out to the hayfield. We’d give him to know he scared us out of three year’s growth.

            And for that, he’d have to take us up in his airplane.