The Philosopher's Flight Read online

  “You’ve been given a gift,” he said. “I pray every night for your soul—and the souls of your sisters. You must intercede with them.”

  “Okay, listen—” I broke in.

  But he wasn’t interested in me. He continued addressing Dar, who had shrunk even farther under her umbrella.

  “Babies smothered in the womb. Their mothers hear their screams as they die, unbaptized and unsaved.”

  “Stop it,” I said. “Just stop—”

  “And yet every month they draw the Devil’s sign on their bellies again. Trapped in an endless cycle of sin and lust. Help them break free. Take this—”

  He reached into his pocket and lurched toward her.

  Danielle whipped her hand into her purse and seized something. The man froze.

  “Robert!” Dar screamed.

  I was right between them.

  “Don’t touch her!” I shouted. I shoved the man in the chest and found him to be quite solid. My shoes slid on the wet pavement and he caught my arm to prevent me from falling.

  He pressed a cheap wooden rosary into my hand.

  “Tell her the souls of—”

  “Robert!” Danielle screamed again. She had me by the belt of my raincoat, yanking me toward her.

  She pulled me close with her left hand; with her right she popped a tube of aluminum and drew.

  And we were back in her apartment.

  Danielle was shaking with anger. “What did you do that for?” she demanded. “Don’t ever do that!”

  “Do what?”

  “You have no idea what he might be carrying! Just walk away. Or run!”

  I was amazed by her reaction. Before I’d come out East I’d been warned against every kind of lunatic, confidence man, leper, grifter, drifter, pimp, and stickup artist. But he’d seemed a harmless blowhard.

  “Did you think he had a gun?” I asked.

  “Yes! Or God knows what.”

  “He wasn’t going to hurt you,” I said, trying to calm her, “he was just—”

  “Don’t you dare tell me that.”

  She seized an expandable accordion folder off her desk and all but threw it at me.

  “You think I’m paranoid? I’m crazy? Just a hysterical female?”

  I recognized Ms. Addams’s precise, angular script: Hardin. File #5. September 4–October 10, 1917.

  It was filled with newspaper clippings and letters, meticulously organized and dated. The clipping on top was a political cartoon, featuring three women, all of them dead. One was a thin old lady with prominent ears who had been hung from a noose made of smoke; one was wearing hip waders and frowning severely, folded backward over a chair, her body limp as a rag; and the last was a heavy, dark-skinned young woman with wavy black hair, who’d been sliced neatly in half and was lying in a puddle of her own blood. I recognized the first two: Lucretia Cadwallader and Gen. Yeates (who’d led the police action in the Philippines). And with my heartbeat echoing loudly in my skull, I realized the third looked a little like Dar. A fitting end for war criminals, read the caption. Penciled at the top was Trencher Times, Sept 4, 1917.

  Beneath that was a letter, signed by four Radcliffe professors who had resigned in protest when Dar had been allowed to reenroll:

  She represents the worst sort of militant feminism, atheism, and anti-Americanism; her influence would pollute the moral fabric of her classmates and pervert the dignity of this institution. Indeed, her very presence will inspire disharmony and outright violence.

  Then letters from the general public, hundreds, with threats more or less explicit:

  You ever come to Wichita, I’ve got an axe I’ll use to break every bone in your body, then shove it up your arse and gut you from the inside out.

  And typewritten:

  Do you remember how Comfort Tyndale died? We’ll do you the same way.

  Another, in a more tremulous hand:

  Already we see fire and hail mingled with blood cast upon the earth, the seas turned to blood, smoke rising as if from a great furnace, and the sun and the air darkened. You are the herald of end times, the original whore of Babylon, with your murders, sorceries, fornications, thefts, and heresies. You are beyond repentance.

  Maxwell Gannet

  I looked up at Dar.

  “You think I’m crazy?” she asked.

  It had taken me perhaps two minutes to read that much. I would have needed hours to read them all.

  “This one,” I said. “The one from—”

  “Don’t say another word! I know all of Gannet’s by heart. I don’t even get to open my own mail. Addams keeps the worst ones from me.”

  “Dar, I never thought—”

  “Well, now you know. And either you run out of here as fast as you can or you stay and you don’t say a word.”

  I stayed.

  Dar threw her coat on the floor and went about fixing a pot of mint tea. Her apartment was a tiny studio, the bed against one wall, a couch against the other, with a minuscule galley kitchen containing a single gas burner.

  I picked up her coat and hung it to dry.

  “Do you know, ten minutes before all that happened, what I was thinking?” Dar asked. “I was hoping you’d kiss me goodnight.”

  The roof of my mouth went dry to hear her say it.

  “I’ll tell you what I want,” she said. “I want you to stay and drink tea and not say anything. I don’t want to talk and I don’t want to be alone. And later, when you leave, I want you to kiss me.”

  I nodded. I sat.

  She poured boiling water over a strainer of dried mint leaves.

  “God, I’m glad you were there,” Danielle said, concentrating on the teapot. “The other times, I’ve been alone. It’s terrifying.”

  What followed was the longest cup of tea of my life. Dar wouldn’t look at me but did sit across from me and take my hand. I watched her as she studied her mug—she was so serious, the wrinkles that would deepen into crow’s feet already creasing the corners of her eyes. Yet when she did look up at me, her eyes were filled with heat.

  I leaned forward and pressed my lips against hers.

  Her tongue was scalding hot from the tea. I didn’t have much idea what I was doing, but our mouths negotiated. Our kiss became deeper, less tentative. I wondered if it was too much, but there was the palm of Dar’s hand against my jaw, holding me fast.

  After some minutes, we disengaged. I was amazed and terrified to look at her. Frightened of the “Please don’t take this the wrong way . . .” or the “We mustn’t ever . . .” that was sure to follow.

  “Stay,” Dar whispered. “Stay a little longer.”

  21

  Brock, Janet Simone (University of Detroit, 1889). Only competitor to ever sweep the gold medals in the short course, efficiency flight, team pull, and long course in a single year. Coached Radcliffe’s Cup team 1910–24, including notable fliers Pilar Desoto, Gloxinia Jacobi, Michael Nakamura, S. E. Stewart, and Robert Canderelli Weekes. Her development of novel flight glyphs with Jenny Yu, as well as construction of all-metal flight enclosures, axial thrust couplers, and pressurized powder tanks ushered in the modern age of blended philosophico-mechanical aviation. With her brother, Steven, a founding partner of Brock-Sudeste Aerospace.

  Who’s Who in the General’s Cup, 1939

  THE FOLLOWING WEEK BROUGHT with it further miracles and wonders.

  Brock reopened the aerodrome and unveiled our new hovering instructors: ten Corps veterans who’d been pensioned off due to age. All the Radcliffe women who were still interested in flying assembled on the landing field to be divided up among the old crones. One after the next, the instructors stepped forward to call out the names of their trainees and lead them into the aerodrome.

  But my name wasn’t on any of the lists. I would have thought I was being singled out again, but Essie was left unassigned, too. We stood alone on the field, looking for some indication of what we were supposed to do.

  “Bookkeeping error?” I suggested. Essie
chewed at her lip.

  An ancient lady, leaning heavily on a cane, hobbled out of the aerodrome. She wore thick spectacles and had a pair of field glasses on a leather strap around her neck. She hadn’t been introduced with the other instructors.

  She stopped in front of us and straightened painfully.

  “Well, this is a sorry state of affairs,” she drawled. “Out of this entire aerodrome, only two hoverers have dared mewl the phrase ‘Rescue and Evacuation’ in connection with their own names. One has fewer flight hours than any of my great-grandchildren and the other has a phallus.”

  Essie blushed to hear such coarse language.

  The old woman pointed at her. “You’re Sarah Stewart?”

  “Ma’am, I go by Essie, if—”

  “That’s a weak name. A child’s name. Stop using it. Now, get kitted out and scout me three different landing approaches to Harvard Square.”

  “Ma’am, we’re not permitted to hover between—”

  “The Cambridge Police Department has no way to catch you. I want you to land and then record on paper three approaches with compass headings and lists of potential obstructions for each. Give it to me in one hour. Get a bag and get up!”

  If Essie was torn about committing a technically illegal act, she overcame her doubts quickly. She trotted toward the aerodrome.

  “Run!” the woman bellowed.

  Essie accelerated to a sprint.

  “And you,” the old lady said. “Let me see if I have this right. Conducted a solo search and rescue mission over rough country in Montana and lifted out three souls. Dove into the river to save a drowning hoverer. Ran a mass-casualty evacuation on zero minute’s notice and flew a goddamn forty-foot stringer. I would say that just about makes you the best male flier in the world, doesn’t it?”

  “No, ma’am,” I said.

  “Mother Mary, but he doesn’t understand! Child, I was in the Corps fifty-five years—that’s since before modern hovering was invented, to save you the math. Back in ’11 they said to me, ‘Gertrude, you’re too old to fly.’ So, I instructed at Fort McConnell. Then this year they said, ‘Gertrude, you’re too mean to teach. We’ve got a war on and we don’t want every third girl quitting.’ So they retired me. Janet Brock, with all her gold medals and monographs and professor of such and such, said she had a man worth training. A man for the Corps. For R&E. What better revenge for invaliding me out than to dump on them a man who’s too good to refuse. So—do you think a woman of my prodigious experience would waste her golden years on anything less than the finest male flier on earth?”

  “Uh, no ma’am,” I said.

  “Good! I want you to believe it. I want you to train like it. And if you choose to not boast about it, then that’s your business.”

  As if I would dare say such a thing aloud in the aerodrome!

  “Show me your hands,” Gertrude said.

  I extended my hands for her. Dirt under my nails and my calluses all rough and yellowed. But she wasn’t checking for cleanliness. She produced a tape measure from the workbag at her hip and measured my thumb and index finger, then across my palm in several different dimensions.

  “You have lovely long, girlish fingers,” she said, nodding her approval. “Do you know how to fly a lever regulator?”

  “Grew up with them,” I answered.

  “Then no more of the dial reg trash they favor here. You’ll fly a Chesapeake Mark-20 lever regulator with a two-inch conical tip, three-twist burr, bored to eighty mil.”

  “I don’t think we have—”

  “Janet found a used one. She ground the tips herself. Now, kneel or I won’t be able to reach.”

  I knelt and she made further measurements across my neck, chest, hips, thighs, belly, and shoulders, recording each with a stub of a pencil in a little book.

  “Beg your pardon,” she murmured. She put the field glasses to her eyes in time to see Essie dash out of the aerodrome in full harness.

  “Run, run, RUN!” the woman bellowed.

  Essie flung herself into the air. The old lady checked her wrist chronometer. “Six minutes forty seconds to kit out and then a three-step launch. Christ in a fish barrel! And she flies pretty! Goddamn it.”

  She turned back to me.

  “Brown or black?” she asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re riding a Springfield harness with a lot of homemade improvements?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Not anymore. We’re bringing you into the twentieth century. Janet should have had you in custom tackle from the day you came in.”

  “I can’t afford—”

  “You’re not paying for it. Brown leather or black?”

  “Brown.”

  She noted that, too, and put her book away. “What do you weigh, first thing in the morning, naked, after you’ve voided?”

  She didn’t mean anything untoward by it and I didn’t take it that way. “I’m not sure,” I said. “I don’t have a—”

  “Then buy a scale later today. Give me an estimate.”

  “Two eleven.”

  She winced. “You stand seventy-two and a half inches high. I don’t want to fly you above a hundred eighty-six pounds. You going to faint on me at that weight?”

  “Probably not,” I said.

  “Then you’re on a diet starting this morning, unless you care to dabble in transporting to improve your figure. I don’t judge. Powder flow for your current weight will be 8.9 ounces per minute.”

  I was aghast—at the powder expenditure, not her comment regarding weight loss, which was simple physics.

  “A little more cornmeal than you used back home?” she asked.

  “Four times more,” I said. I would be burning through powder like mad.

  “You’re not paying for that, either.”

  Then she laid herself down on the ground. “Prove you’re worth the effort. I’ll play the role of your casualty. As fast as you can, I want you to run into that building, kit out, and grab whatever style of harness you intend to fly me in. Then launch, take me two miles out to sea, turn, and land back here. And, oh shoot, you happen to be out of silver chloride this morning, so fly me awake. Clear?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Then run!” she bellowed.

  I grabbed my harness and sprinted for the aerodrome.

  “And if you can’t do this in half the time it took that little daddy’s girl, I’m sending you straight back to the farm!”

  I sprinted harder.

  There was a line of women snaking out the door, waiting to draw powder and equipment. One of the other old sigilwomen watched my approach.

  “Clear the way for a hot evac!” she yelled. The girls stepped aside to let me through.

  Professor Brock was behind the counter.

  “Twelve-pound general purpose bag,” I panted. “Chesapeake twenty-ounce regulator with a two-inch—”

  “Fine, fine,” Brock said, and handed over the items that she’d had waiting right beside her. I’d already slipped into my harness and was cinching down the leg straps.

  “I hope you’re enjoying yourself,” Brock said. “I had to message every—”

  “And a twenty-foot loop of one-inch cotton webbing.”

  Brock looked flummoxed.

  “Oh, come on!” I said. I attached my bag to my hip as Brock pulled out the aerodrome’s catalogue to see where we stocked such a piece of rigging.

  The old lady at the door laughed. She took a cloth bag from her belt and tossed it underhand to me.

  “Gertrude’s seventy-four years old,” the only slightly younger woman said. “Be gentle.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I answered, and ran back out.

  I shook the webbing out of its bag. It was nothing more than a single long strap with the ends sewn together, but it made the world’s quickest harness.

  I skidded to a stop next to Gertrude, who was lying flat on her back, and laid out the webbing in a circle around her.

 
“Oh, for the love of St. Jude, are you serious? A web harness?”

  “You said as fast as I could,” I gasped.

  “So do it.”

  I yanked a loop of webbing beneath her feet and up between her legs, then reached through it to pull the strap up from under her armpits. I hauled her to her feet and clipped her to my harness so that we were chest-to-chest—the old “lover’s clinch” position. Undignified but fast.

  “Go!” she barked.

  I launched, trying to make it gentle, then poured on speed as I rushed toward the Atlantic. I was unbalanced, my regulator was unfamiliar, and the powder flow rate was absurd. I struggled to keep us on the level. We reached the ocean in three minutes; I turned and reversed course.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Had worse,” she replied. “Mind me asking—ever land like this?”

  “Nope.”

  Over the field I descended briskly.

  “I have bad hips!” Gertrude warned. “Bad ankles. Bad knees.”

  I cut our vertical speed and splayed my feet wide so that she touched first. This had the unintended consequence of thrusting my pelvis right into her bosom. I brought my legs down, crumpling into a crouch to support her. I had to grab her rump to keep us from toppling over.

  Some bright young thing gave us a wolf whistle.

  “Quiet on the field!” Gertrude bellowed.

  I unclipped her and retrieved her cane. She polished her glasses and set them back on her nose.

  “Wonderful that at my age I should experience something new,” she proclaimed. “Are you married, Mr. Weekes?”

  I blushed crimson. “No, ma’am. I’m terribly sorry that I touched—”

  “Sorry, nothing! I’ve grabbed every last piece of wounded soldiers to get them up and down. No, Mr. Weekes, you misunderstand: Better for you if you were married. Go pick one of those pretty girls, make lots of babies—girl babies, if you please—and teach them to fly. Your daughters will be brilliant.”

  “Was I that bad?” I asked.

  “No, you dumbass! You’re adequate! A woman who flew like that could get a test at Fort Putnam tomorrow and she’d be in France by Christmas. If you were shorter, I’d suggest a wig and a set of bosom pads, but you’d never pass for a lady. So, for you, a man, to join R&E, you’re going to have to fly perfect. And that’s a miserable existence. I wouldn’t wish it on you. Go settle down instead.”