His focus, his entire focus, was on Mattie’s yellow-tipped plane as she dipped perilously close to the dusty earth, a ladder trailing from her wheels. Over and over, he told himself that they’d practiced this move.
But Vera wasn’t a melon on a stick any longer.
She crouched in the passenger seat of her Duesenberg, the hot western sun catching the sequins of her cherry-red leotard. She looked like a red diamond, but neither she, Mattie, nor the male driver were as durable as those gemstones. One miscalculation, one wrong move... and they all could be lost.
Now that Leo had truly found Mattie.
But John was right. Leo couldn’t stop her from flying, but hecouldhelp Mattie do it as safely as possible.
“Is that true, Mr.Ward?” Benji Pringle spoke sharply to him.
Just then Mattie whizzed over Vera. With impressive skill, Mattie kept the speeding airplane perfectly steady and perilously low. Vera grabbed for the rope ladder, snagged it with her hand, but didn’t have a good enough grip to pull herself up. Mattie pointed the nose of her plane skyward. When she’d gained enough altitude, she dipped her left wing and banked hard to turn the plane around. Clearly, she intended another pass.
“What Miss Wilcox said was correct.” Leo tried his best not to speak absently. He didn’t need to hear Carrie’s words to know whatever she’d described was right. For weeks now, he’d been listening to her give explanations when Mattie took to the skies and he was on the ground. It had been Vera’s idea for the nonperforming pilots to explain the maneuvers to the press. Since the mostly male reporters had a tendency to quote Leo more than the women, Leo let Carrie and Mattie do the talking.
It suited him just fine. He’d never liked the glare of flash powder. But it meant he often found himself muttering “What she said” whenever a journalist inevitably asked him to confirm Mattie’s or Carrie’s perfectly sufficient explanations. Carrie—who faced dual prejudice due to her race and sex—experienced the worst of the dismissiveness despite her patently obvious competence. Often Leo wanted to shake the dunderheaded reporters who failed to notice either her or Mattie’s brilliance, but he admired Carrie’s resilience as she continued to fight to be heard as a Black woman.
Never, though, had Leo been more grateful for her presence. He felt as tightly stretched as a loaded slingshot. Words sounded like distant buzzes as he watched Mattie dip the nose of the JN-4 toward the scrub once again. As she plunged, he tried not to let images of her brother’s last flight cloud his vision. Alfred had shredded his wings in a sharpdescent like this, a tragedy due not entirely to enemy fire but to the failings of his own Nieuport. More than one American aviator had crashed after the canvas had disintegrated during a race toward the ground. For Alfred, it had left him helpless against the enemies’ bullets, which had pierced his fuselage and caused his plane to erupt in flames.
“It is true, then? That when flying low, a pilot has to maintain a fast speed to make it easier to pull up?” Pringle spoke almost directly in Leo’s face now. Leo craned his body to the side so that he could see around the man’s wide fedora.
“Uh-huh.” This time Leo didn’t care if he sounded distracted.
Mattie controlled her craft brilliantly as she skimmed near the ground. The wind stirred up by her plane blew off the dogged reporter’s hat. The ladder in perfect position, she passed over Vera. In a streak of brilliant scarlet, the flapper snagged the rung and sprang from her perch on the seat of the Duesenberg.
Despite the sudden, almost violent addition of weight, Mattie’s Jenny didn’t even bob. Flawlessly she adjusted the elevators and increased the power as Vera clung to the bouncing ladder.
With incredible strength and even more tenacity, Vera maintained her grip. As Mattie steadily ascended, Vera began her own climb. Except for the roar of Mattie’s Curtiss, the sunbaked field was utterly devoid of sound. Vera safely reached the support structure of the biplane’s wings, and the audience erupted into a mighty shout.
“What happened?” Pringle asked, his gray eyes wide as he swiveled his head back and forth like a turnstile at the state fair.
Several of his fellow reporters laughed. “Only the biggest stunt of the day.”
“You mean Miss Jones actually jumped from a speeding Duesenberg onto a moving plane, and I missed it!” Benji bent to pick up his hat and beat it in disgust against his leg.
“I did say she’d be moving fast.” Carrie did a remarkable job of keeping her expression and voice pleasant, but the reporter caught herunderlying message. Huffing out an annoyed breath, he smacked his fedora again, this time releasing a cloud of dust.
Ignoring Carrie once more, Pringle glared at Leo, as if he were to blame for the man’s lack of attention. “Can you explain to me what just happened? I traveled from Chicago to see this event.”
Benji’s gripe was only met with more snickers from the rest of the press. Leo barely noticed. He was too intent on watching Vera enter the front seat of the trainer. Mattie executed a perfect stall turn, engaging full rudder at the perfect moment. Her airplane hung in the atmosphere for a second before it dipped toward the ground. Mattie righted the craft and pulled back on the throttle. Another cheer rose up.
“Gosh dang it. Now what did I miss!” Pringle ground out.
Leo stepped around the journalist as Mattie headed into a landing as planned. He couldn’t wait to greet her, to congratulate her. She’d just pulled off something he’d never even tried, let alone her brothers. And he was going to do something equally bold, at least bold for him. He was going to allow himself to celebrate with her.
The newsman grabbed Leo’s arm, tugging on it. “Hey. Don’t walk away. I need my story.”
Leo easily pulled his elbow from Pringle’s grip. “Ask Miss Wilcox.”
“But—”
“You want details on what you missed?” Leo asked as he finally brushed past the burr of a man. “Talk to Miss Wilcox.”
Leo strode across the open field, the sun so hot it seemed to burn straight through him. But even the dry heat of the West couldn’t compare with the inferno raging inside him. Mattie’s gaze lit upon his, the golden flecks in her irises making her eyes that wonderful molten color.
He wanted to run toward her and pick her up in his arms. Every instinct ordered him to whirl her in an arc befitting her aerial skills. He yearned to press his lips against hers, to capture some of her wonderful, wild joy.
But he didn’t.
