The first one landed only inches from the bucket. “Stupid rocks.”
“It’s not the rocks’ fault,” Gus said. “Lean over so you’re right over the bucket then drop it. Don’t twist your wrist.”
The next one landed perfectly in the bucket with a plop, and they all cheered.
After a few more, Dot jumped up. Something about the sound had caught her attention. “Do it again! A big one and a little one together.”
Taking careful aim, Dash dropped two at the same time.
Dot’s brow creased with concentration. “Again.”
Dash complied, and Dot grinned at Gus. “It doesn’t matter how big the rock is. They all go the same speed. Count fast, like this.” She’d tapped her finger on the back of her other hand, saying, “One-one-one-one.”
“I see,” Gus said, nodding with apparent interest.
Dash laughed, thinking how silly it was that her sister could find patterns in everything, including falling rocks. But she and Gus had gamely counted along with Dot and found, not surprisingly, that she was right. Then Dot took a furtive look around and whispered for Dash to climb even higher so she could hear if it made any difference. As Dash dropped more rocks from a precarious tree limb, Dot countedOne-one-one-one Two-two—and stopped at the sound of them hitting the bucket.
When their father came out, Dot told him about her discovery while Dash descended to a safer height. He nodded, explaining that that was to do with physics and something called gravity, which did not interest Dash in the least. If she ever got a chance to fly in real life, she’d just keep on flying. Gravity wouldn’t catch her. She’d never come down.
She had flown for the very first time on their tenth birthday, when Uncle Bob took her up in his crop duster biplane, which he called Jenny. While her parents, Dot, and Gus watched nervously from the ground, Dash buzzed happily over farmers’ fields as Uncle Bob sprinkled long clouds of tiny white crystals—lead arsenate, he told her—over the plants to rid them of pests.
“Go, Jenny, go!” she cried rapturously, extending her arms like wings, swooping and tilting with the plane. It was only years later that she learned the name of the plane wasn’t an affectionate label; the aircraft was the Curtiss JN-4, nicknamed “Jenny” by the manufacturers.
After they landed on solid ground, Dash was still walking on air.
“There you are, Margaret,” her mother said, leading her off the field. “Now you’ve flown and gotten it out of your system.”
As if Dash was done with it. “I’ve flown for thefirsttime, Mommy,” she laughed.
Uncle Bob took her up regularly after that. He even took both sisters and Gus to an Air Tour where Dash had fallen in love the rest of the way. Gus hugged Dot when she got scared of the planes and the noise, but Dash could see from his face that he was enjoying the show almost as much as she was. That beautiful summer day had beenitfor her. Some girls loved horses, Dot loved mysteries and puzzles; all Dash wanted was to fly.
Now Dash was eighteen, and her dream had just been handed to her on a piece of paper.
“I can’t believe it,” she said breathlessly, reading the letter again. “When can I start?”
Uncle Bob shrugged, as if he hadn’t really considered that. “Oh, I don’t know.” He turned to his wife. “What do you say, Lou? I think I’m available tomorrow morning.”
Dash sprang from her chair with a shriek and ran around the table to give him a hug. Then she hugged everyone else one by one, just because.
“You don’t need lessons,” Dot said, grinning over her sister’s shoulder. “You’re already soaring, and you haven’t even climbed into the cockpit!”
threeDOT— August 1942 —Oshawa, Ontario
Dot leaned against the wall, scowling at all six of her students as they slumped over the dining room table. It was this stinking summer heat, she assumed, as a drop of sweat trickled down the back of her neck. She could see from the trees through the window that there was a slight breeze outside, but she wasn’t about to move them all to the yard just for that. These lessons were not about comfort, they were about learning. She was being paid to teach, not to babysit, and she did not believe in coddling children. She made a point of working hard and was quite proud of her lesson plan: verb conjugation to start, conversational French after that, then a repeat of the earlier verb but with a different conjugation to finish.
This week’s verb waspouvoir, which ten-year-old Michael—Dot called himMichelduring class, of course—had a bit of a snit over.
“Why is itque j’eusse pu?” He pronounced it “poo” just to annoy Dot. “The verb isn’t about poo. And why is itje peux?” he continued, dropping a rebellious “x” at the end. “It’s not fair that they make it up like that. It makes it too hard.”
It was a waste of time trying to reason with the boy when he got like this.
“That’s the way it is,” Dot answered cheerfully.
She glanced at the clock. The past hour had moved so slowly it felt as if the class was twice as long. Pressing on, she pulled out a piece of paper on which she had written the next lesson.
“Now let’s move on to conditional verb conjugations. Sit up tall, children. Eyes up here, please. Let’s useparler, c’est ca?Do you remember what this means? Conditional means Iwouldtalk, rather than Iamtalking. First, the present tense:je parlerais.Everyone together,tous ensemble maintenant. Je parlerais, tu parlerais, il parlerait…”
Anna, the eldest and brightest of her students, propped her cheek on her hand as she recited, her eyelids heavy. Michael’s feet were bouncing under the table, and though he eventually delivered the words correctly, Dot wanted to scream at the three mechanical syllables he recited, “Je par. Le. Ray. To par. Le. Ray.” Finally, the clock struck five o’clock, and she sighed with relief along with the class. She held the door for the children, and they bolted into the sweltering heat outside.
