The Grounding Line

Jodie watched the truck pull out of the lot at half past six on a Tuesday evening. Tonya was in the passenger seat. Some woman Jodie had never seen before was driving, and she was leaning over to say something that made Tonya laugh. Jodie stood by the fuel pump with the nozzle still in her hand and her jaw tight enough to ache.

Eight months. Eight months since the breakup, and here she was, forty-one years old, staring at a dusty pickup like it had personally insulted her.

The truck turned onto the county road and was gone. Jodie put the nozzle back, wiped her hands on a rag she'd already wiped them on twice, and walked toward the hangar.

The late light was doing that thing it does in eastern Oregon in late summer, all orange and long, stretching the shadows of the fence posts clear across the lot. Jodie didn't notice. She had a list in her head of things she should be doing. Invoice the Henderson farm. Order twine. Call the fuel guy about Thursday. None of those things happened.

Instead she stopped in front of the old Stearman.

It sat just inside the open hangar door where it had sat, mostly, for three years. A 1942 biplane, yellow wings gone chalky, fabric patched twice on the left lower wing. It had been Tonya's favorite of everything on the field, back when. Jodie hadn't flown it since the breakup.

"You've been standing there a while."

Jodie turned. Candice was coming across the apron with a torque wrench in one hand and grease on her forearm up to the elbow. Twenty-seven years old, hired six weeks back, licensed pilot and former aerobatics competitor, and apparently the only person on the airfield who paid attention to where Jodie stood and for how long.

"Just thinking," Jodie said.

"About the airplane?"

"About invoices."

"Uh huh." Candice leaned against the hangar doorframe. "Because people stare at invoices the way you're staring at that airplane."

"It's a good airplane."

"It is. Why aren't you flying it?"

Jodie opened her mouth to say something about engine hours, about the annual coming due, about a dozen things that were true and none of which were the truth. What came out instead, and she would blame the evening light later, was this:

"I could still wing-walk it."

Candice raised one eyebrow. "I'm sorry, what?"

"The full length. Top wing, hand over hand, during a slow taxi. Root to tip and back." Jodie heard herself say it and did not stop. "I used to do it in front of paying crowds. You know that."

"I've seen the photos on your wall, yes."

"Two hundred feet of taxi, maybe thirty seconds of work. I could do it tonight."

Candice set the torque wrench down on the workbench, slowly, the way you set something down when you want both hands free for the conversation. "Okay. Two questions. One, why are you telling me this? Two, are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"You watched Tonya's truck leave the lot about ten minutes ago and you haven't said six words since. I can count, Jodie. I fix engines."

"Was I that obvious?"

"Only to me. Everyone else thinks you're just quiet." Candice crossed her arms, and there was grease on her sleeve and she didn't seem to care. "So. Why are you telling me this?"

And that was the question, wasn't it? Because here's what Jodie had figured out, standing there in the orange light: she wanted to impress this woman. This young mechanic who read manuals for fun and flew aerobatics before Jodie had even heard her name. She wanted Candice to look at her the way the crowds used to look at her, back when she was thirty-five and fearless and met Tonya in flight school and thought life had dealt her aces.

She wasn't going to say any of that out loud. Obviously.

"Because you're the only one here who'd know whether I was kidding," Jodie said. "And I want you to hold me to it."

"Hold you to a wing-walk?"

"Hold me to something. Anything. I've spent eight months being careful and it's made me boring."

Candice was quiet for a second. Then she smiled, and it was the kind of smile that made Jodie's stomach do something unprofessional. "You're not boring. You're just sad. Those look similar from the outside but they're different animals."

"When did you get wise?"

"Took a break from competition two years ago. You learn things when you stop." Candice picked the wrench back up, spun it once. "Okay. Here's my counteroffer. You want to do the walk, fine. But not tonight, and not on a dare made out of spite. Saturday morning. Wind'll be calm. I'll prep the plane myself, and I ride in the front cockpit while you do it, because somebody with a license should be at the controls."

"You're sitting my airplane?"

"I'm keeping your airplane alive. Big difference." Candice headed for the workbench. "Saturday. Seven a.m. And Jodie?"

"What?"

"Bring your own goggles. I'm not sharing mine with a woman who lies about invoices."

"That was one time and the invoice was fine!"

"Saturday!" Candice called over her shoulder, already elbow-deep in something that looked expensive.

Jodie stood there a minute longer, looking at the Stearman. The top wing caught the last of the light and held it, yellow and gold, like it was waiting for her.

Saturday. Fine. Saturday.

She just had to survive four more days of being the kind of person who watched trucks leave.

Saturday came up clear and cold for late summer. Jodie was at the airfield by quarter to seven, goggles in her jacket pocket, thermos of coffee in one hand, and she had to admit (to herself, only to herself) that she'd slept about four hours.

Candice was already there. Of course she was. The Stearman was out on the taxiway with the cowling off, and Candice was lying half inside the engine with a flashlight in her teeth.

"You're early!" Jodie called.

"You're surprised?" Candice slid out, wiped her hands on a rag that had given up years ago. "Coffee first, then we go through the airplane. Then I check the wind, then you sign your life away on a napkin, then we do this thing."

"There's no napkin."

"There will be. I'll find one."

They went through it together, panel by panel, and Candice did not treat her like an owner or a boss. She treated her like a crew. Wires checked. Struts checked. Wing bolts torqued yesterday and re-checked this morning, which Jodie knew because she'd watched her do it through the hangar window at six like some kind of maniac. Tires, brakes, tail skid. Candice bounced each lower wing twice with her palm and listened to it like a doctor listening to a chest.

"Fuel?"

"Twenty-two gallons. More than enough for a slow taxi and a walk."

"Radio?"

"Broken, still. Nobody to talk to out here anyway."

"Right." Candice looked at her over the cowling. "Last chance to be sensible. You want to be sensible?"

"I want to be anything but."

"Good answer." Candice dropped the cowling and latched it. "Okay. Rules. One, I taxi, you don't touch the controls. Two, if I cut the throttle and yell 'down,' you go flat on the wing and stay there. Three, if you so much as sneeze out at the tip I will stop this thing in a heartbeat and you will never hear the end of it. Four..."

"There's a four?"

"Four, have fun. That's an order."

"Since when do mechanics give orders?"

"Since one of us has a current medical and the other one has revenge feelings."

"I don't have revenge feelings."

"You absolutely do, and we'll deal with that later. Climb in."

The Stearman's front cockpit had a second set of controls and a lousy view, so that was Candice's. Jodie climbed into the back, settled into the harness, and pulled the goggles down. The wind sock at the far end of the field hung dead straight down. Not a breath. Eastern Oregon giving her one perfect morning out of pure spite, or maybe pity.

"Clear," Candice called, and the engine coughed, caught, and settled into that old radial rumble Jodie had known for twenty years. Her hands wanted the stick and Candice had told her not to touch it, so she put them in her lap with a student pilot's obedience.

The airplane rolled forward onto the taxiway. Slow. Slower. Candice brought it down to a walking pace and held it there, and her voice came up over her shoulder, steady and warm and way too calm for someone steering a 1942 biplane with her knees basically.

"Plane's stable. Your move, boss."

Jodie stood up in the cockpit, unhitched her harness, and put one boot on the lower wing. And here's where her body staged its little protest. Her heart was going, her palms went damp inside her gloves, and every sensible year since the last time said no. She gripped the front strut and breathed.

"Talk to me," she said.

"I've got you," Candice called back. "Plane's at eight miles an hour. Wing's got no vibration worth the name. Left hand, forward strut, then right. Go whenever you're ready."

"It's been a while, Candice."

"I know. That's why I'm watching you like a hawk and talking like a golf announcer. Go."

Jodie went. Left hand, then right, out onto the lower wing with her boots on the walkway strip and the whole airfield tilting and settling under her. Eight miles an hour. The wind was nothing, a warm push at her back. She got her knees under her, found the handhold under the center section, and hauled herself up to the gap between the wings.

"Good," Candice called. "You're halfway to the cabane struts. Take your time."

"You're not supposed to encourage slowness."

"I'm encouraging alive. Speed later."

She reached up for the cabane strut, and the old joke came back to her, the one the crowds never understood, which is that wing-walking is mostly climbing with style. The flying part is the airplane's job. Yours is to not fall off, and to make not falling off look like the easiest thing in the world. She got a boot on the cockpit rim, then the fuselage deck, then she was up between the struts with the top wing's root right in front of her.

"Hand over hand now," Candice called. "Root to tip. I'll hold her steady."

Jodie reached up and gripped the leading edge. Then the trailing edge. Then forward again, and she was out on the top wing of a Stearman at eight miles an hour on a taxiway in eastern Oregon with nothing between her and the ground but courage and the good sense she'd been ignoring for eight months.

And it came back. That's the thing. Her feet knew where to be. Her hands knew the rhythm, slide and grip, slide and grip, hips low, weight over the spar. The wind off the prop wash thumped at her chest and then thinned out and it was just her and the yellow fabric under her boots and the whole field sliding by slow below.

"Candice," she called into the wind. "Am I dreaming this?"

"Nope. You're twenty feet from the tip. Keep coming."

Slide and grip. Slide and grip. The tip came up under her and she swung out onto the very last panel, weight over the outboard bay, and the whole wing flexed once under her, gentle, alive, and she stood up.

All the way up. Arms out. Wind in her face, sun coming up over the ridgeline and laying gold across the fields, the Stearman purring along under her like it remembered her. Like it had been waiting. Eight months parked and it still carried