Born to Fly Read online

  It was late afternoon before I felt like eating much of anything. Now I understood why Widow Gorman got so skinny after her son died. When I walked into our kitchen, I found Margaret trying to get Alvin to eat some potato salad while Mom slowly mounted a stepladder to replace the faded blue star in our window with a shiny new gold one.

  The sight of that gold star was too much. It sent me bursting out the back door into the rain.

  I furiously hauled myself up to the roof of our barn and planted myself there. There was a P-40 squadron flying formation in the distance. It didn’t matter. Without Dad, I knew I would never fly a P-40 Warhawk. Maybe I would just stay up there on the roof forever.

  A few minutes later the ladder creaked and Mom carefully climbed onto the roof. I didn’t think she’d ever been up there before. She didn’t say anything, just sat on the wet shingles next to me, watching the P-40s. After a little while, the planes flew off, disappearing into the clouds, and the only sound left was the rain pat-pat-patting on the roof.

  “When I was your age, my father took me into Providence to buy a black dress.” She tried to smile. But I couldn’t bring myself to smile back. “And want to know something funny?” she asked.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I was just like you, Bird. I didn’t like to wear dresses, either. But this was for the funeral of my favorite aunt, Belinda, so I put one on. She was a spinster. That means she never married, and when she died, they said she died alone. My father said it was because the world had no place for a woman on her own. It was probably true, but I didn’t like the sound of it. All the same, it was always in the back of my mind, anytime I got the urge to do something girls weren’t supposed to do.” Mom turned to look at me. “But your daddy wasn’t like mine. He let you do all the things that I’d wanted to do when I was a girl. Some times, I think maybe I was jealous of that.”

  “I can’t do it, Mom. I can’t fly without him.”

  “Maybe you don’t have to. Maybe you can take him with you. Here.” She touched my heart. “Inside.”

  “Hmmph. You don’t believe stuff like that… do you?”

  Mom looked up at the gray sky. “I’d like to,” she said.

  I didn’t tell her, but part of me would have liked to believe it, too.

  Then Mom surprised me. “You know, I believe you really did see a submarine, or something in the bay,” she said.

  “You do?” I said.

  “Um-hmm.” She wrapped her arm around my shoulder. Tight. “I think we’re gonna need to believe in a lot of things to get through this.”

  “But it hurts, Mom,” I said, and I started to cry again.

  “I know.” She pulled me close. “It hurts me, too.”

  Later that night, we were all huddled under the covers on Mom and Dad’s big, warm bed while the rain pelted the window outside. My head was cradled on one of Mom’s strong arms. Alvin and Margaret were embraced by the other.

  “Will you tell us something?” I asked quietly. “About Dad.”

  Mom thought for a moment. Then she started to laugh. “Well, when he was younger, your father wanted to be … a famous tap dancer.”

  “Dad?” I hadn’t even thought my dad could dance.

  “When we met, I was an aspiring showgirl and your dad promised me we were going to take Broadway by storm.”

  Just the way she said it, Mom seemed years younger.

  “I never knew that,” Margaret said, looking kind of impressed.

  “You know,” Mom said, “we had a lot of dreams, your dad and I.”

  “But not anymore,” I added.

  “Oh no, Bird. I still have dreams. And you all must have them, too.” She looked at us and tried to keep from crying. “He’d want that, you know.”

  It sounded weird, the way she was talking about him, like she knew he was gone but he was still sort of there, with us. But at the same time it felt totally right. Maybe that was what made it so hard to believe he was really dead, because nothing felt changed in my heart. I could still talk to him, and when I closed my eyes, I still felt him watching me, like a copilot sitting next to me, flying right seat.

  “Promise me?” she said. “Promise us both that you’ll still have dreams.”

  “I promise, Mom,” said Margaret.

  Little Alvin followed. “Cross my heart.”

  In my pocket, my hand reached down and felt the crumpled note from the man in black. Dad had been right. A friend had found me. Kenji. Just like Dad had said. Only I’d let him down. Betrayed him. All because I was scared. Of what? Something bad happening? It already had. Fear was always getting in the way, always stopping you from doing the really great stuff, the real important stuff. I was sick of it. What was it Dad had told me? The only one I needed to believe in me was me. For the first time since before Dad left, I knew exactly what I needed to do.

  “I promise,” I said.

  The next morning, before the sun came up and before anyone else was awake, I quietly slipped downstairs and out our front door.

  I reached Deputy Steyer’s house in the predawn darkness and checked to see if anyone was watching before I knocked, softly.

  “Deputy Steyer?” I knocked again. “Deputy Steyer?”

  I was walking around the side of his house, looking for his bedroom window, when I spotted a light on in the basement. I remember wondering what he was doing up that early. I knelt down and peered through the muddy window.

  At a lighted bench, Deputy Steyer was working, hunched over something, some kind of box, while the radio played loudly in the background. Then I realized what it was he was working on. It was Kenji’s phonograph. He must have been fixing it up before Kenji’s train ride to Manzanar. I thought that was kind of nice.

  The radio announcer was reporting something about “our boys” being “on heightened alert” after the sinking of some supply boat off North Carolina, and about how President Roosevelt planned to cut short his whistle-stop tour, or something like that.

  That was when Deputy Steyer stopped all of a sudden and turned up the volume. Then I heard:

  “President Roosevelt will be making his final stop in Providence, Rhode Island, later this morning.”

  I tapped on the window and the deputy jumped about a foot and spun around with a hunting knife in his hand. Then he saw that it was just me.

  “Bird! What are you doing here?” He shoved the knife under some papers on the workbench.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” I hollered. “Can I come in?”

  He quickly closed up Kenji’s phonograph and motioned to me to meet him at the front door.

  I walked back around to the front, but he only opened the door a crack. “Look,” he said, “I’m sorry about having to send your friend away, but—”

  “I know who killed Mr. Peck,” I blurted out.

  The deputy looked around, sort of worried-like, and said, “Maybe you’d better come inside.”

  Deputy Steyer led me into his house. I had never been in there before. It was darker than I had expected. And the walls were missing something, but at first I wasn’t exactly sure what. Then I realized what it was. The deputy didn’t have any pictures of his family or friends anywhere.

  He took me into the kitchen, where a pot of coffee was percolating.

  “Now, what’s this all about, Bird?” he asked.

  I dug into my pocket and handed him the crumpled note. “The killer sent me that before I testified.”

  He read it silently. His eyes narrowed. Then he set it down.

  “He knows I can identify him,” I said.

  Deputy Steyer turned away from me to grab his pot of coffee. “Who knows?”

  “The spy,” I told him.

  The deputy jerked back toward me so fast, he accidentally splashed hot coffee on his arm and uttered some word under his breath. I thought I must have been really tired, because it sounded like the same word the killer had said, Scheisse.

  “Oh my gosh! Are you okay?” I asked him.


  “It’s all right,” he said, calm again. His arm had to hurt pretty bad, because it was already turning red and swelling a little where the coffee had scalded him, but he seemed to completely ignore it somehow.

  “Boy, you’re a lot tougher than I am.” I grabbed the nearby butter dish. “Here, let me put some of this on it. My mother always said—” But as I pulled back his sleeve to rub the butter on his burn, I saw it and froze.

  It was a small bite mark, right there on his forearm. It was about the size of my mouth.

  He quickly yanked down his sleeve to cover the mark. Slowly, I began to back away from him.

  “What’s the matter, Bird?” he asked calmly.

  “N-n-nothing. I just remembered. I was supposed to call m-m-my mother,” I stuttered like Farley.

  He carefully latched the kitchen door behind his back.

  “I don’t think that’s going to be possible, Liebchen.” Suddenly his eyes got this crazy gloss, like Wendy’s dog Sparky looked when he got rabies. He lunged for me, but I grabbed his coffee cup and splashed the scalding liquid right in his face.

  “Ahhh!” he shrieked in pain.

  I rushed past him and fought to unlock the kitchen door with my shaking hands. But there was a strange double bolt, and I couldn’t figure out how to unlatch it.

  “Help! Help!” I screamed, pounding and rattling the door.

  The deputy recovered and snatched my ankle. I fell to the floor, bumping my head, and in a flash it was like I was trapped in a tunnel with my only focus reaching the light at the other end. My mind was all blurry shapes and sounds, with a million voices telling every muscle and nerve in my body to escape somehow, now! I managed to kick my leg free and I ran for the other doorway, which led down to the basement.

  But Deputy Steyer was right behind me. With all my might, I slammed the basement door behind me, right on his fingers.

  “Ow!” he cried out.

  I tried to shut the door all the way, but he was too strong. He threw it open, knocking me off balance and sending me tumbling, backwards, down the hard wooden stairs.

  I rolled to a stop somewhere on the basement floor. I tried to get up, but my head was ringing and my vision was blurred. My ribs ached and it hurt like heck to breathe. I looked up and saw the deputy’s shadowy form at the top of the stairs. The deputy wiped the coffee off his face, took a moment to fix his mussed-up hair, then methodically marched down the stairs toward me. All the while, I could see a twisted smile growing across his face.

  “I was right,” I said. “About the sub, and the spies. Everything.”

  “Yes, Bird. I’m the only one who’s believed you all along,” he said, laughing. “Too bad I’m the only one who ever will.”

  I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t move a muscle. It felt like I had been turned into stone. I realized then I wasn’t going to be able to run away. There was no way out. This was the end.

  That was when I started to think about dying. I wondered how Mr. Peck must have felt. Did Dad have time to think about dying? I was too terrified to even scream. Probably nobody could hear me anyway. But my mind was still thinking a million thoughts at once. I wish I had never seen the Genny in the bay…. I should have spoken up in second grade and said it was me, not Farley, who stuck the gum on Minnie’s chair…. I wish I could tell Mom how much I love her…. I wonder if I’ll see Dad and Grandpa McGill…. Are there airplanes in Heaven? I hope Kenji knows I’m sorry….

  The deputy took off his belt and wrapped it around his fists like he was getting ready to strangle someone. Then he knelt down over me.

  I closed my eyes and made a wish that this was all somehow just a bad dream.

  BAM, BAM, BAM.

  I opened my eyes. Someone or something was pounding on Deputy Steyer’s front door. In my hazy state of mind, I heard a familiar voice call from outside:

  “Deputy Steyer? It’s Agent Barson. I’m dropping off the boy.”

  The deputy stood. He carefully unwrapped the belt from his fists.

  “Just a minute,” he answered, so calm and cool you would’ve never guessed that he’d just been trying to kill an eleven-year-old girl. He stuffed an oily rag in my mouth, knotted it around my head, and tied my hands behind my back with some rope.

  Agent Barson called out, “Sorry I’m so early, but my boss needs to use this car to be in Providence for President Roosevelt’s arrival.”

  Deputy Steyer stepped over me and walked to his workbench. He carefully carried Kenji’s phonograph upstairs. I heard a clank as he bolted the basement door. Then the front door was opened, and through the basement window I caught bits of the conversation outside.

  “Good morning,” Deputy Steyer said.

  “What happened?” asked Agent Barson.

  There was a pause. The deputy didn’t answer.

  “Spill some coffee?”

  “Oh, that. Yes,” the deputy said, laughing.

  I was finally able to work myself up to my feet. I couldn’t free my hands. I tried to climb the stairs, but with my hands tied and my head still spinning from my earlier fall, I lost my balance and wound up tumbling back to the basement floor.

  Then everything went black.

  By the time I came to, it was too late. I bellied onto Deputy Steyer’s workbench under the basement window and stood up on my feet, but I was still too short to reach the window. All I could do was listen as Agent Barson’s car and then the deputy’s car pulled away.

  I tried to wriggle my hands free, but the rope was too tight. On top of that, the oily gag in my mouth tasted horrible. I shook my head and twisted my neck to try and loosen it, but it was no use. I tried to squat down to climb off the workbench but lost my balance and fell right on my butt.

  “Ow!” I’d landed on something hard, under some papers. I reached my hand back to remove the lumpy object. I felt around under the papers and then, “Dang it!” I cut my hand.

  It was a knife! It must’ve been the one Deputy Steyer had shoved under the papers when he saw me looking through the window. I felt around and grabbed it again, carefully this time. I slid the blade between my wrists and began sawing at the rope.

  Once my hands were free I untied the dirty rag around my mouth. Yuk. I tried to spit out the oily taste. As I massaged the rope burns on my wrist, something about the knife caught my eye. The black wood-grained handle looked familiar. Two large letters, F and P, were crookedly carved into it. I had had that knife shoved in my face by Farley enough times to realize it was his. The same one he gave to his dad when we were spying on him that day in the woods. The deputy must have stolen it when he killed Farley’s dad. I grabbed the knife, climbed down off the workbench, ran up the stairs, and tried to jimmy the basement door lock open.

  It was no use. Deputy Steyer had dead-bolted the door. The only way out was to break the door down, and I wasn’t strong enough to do that. There had to be another way out. I looked across the room, at the window.

  I ran back down the stairs and climbed onto the workbench. But the window was still too high for me to reach. Maybe if I stood on the stool on top of the workbench? I climbed down and cleared the workbench. There were coils of wire, maps, newspaper clippings—all kinds of junk—on it. There was my P-40 manual! I stuffed it in my back pocket. There were also some strange jars of liquid that looked like the kind our science teacher would use, and a metal can of black powder with red writing on the side. I moved them off the bench top onto the floor, but I stopped as I was about to set down the powder can. I’d seen something like it before. It was at the trial, when Agent Barson was saying all that boring stuff about chemistry and ingredients to make explosives. This was the same kind of can as the one they’d found in Uncle Tomo’s apartment. The one Uncle Tomo said he’d never seen before. Deputy Steyer had put it there. He set off the bomb in the P-40 factory and then made it look like Uncle Tomo did it. And that got me thinking: What the heck was the deputy doing to Kenji’s phonograph?

  Of course! Deputy Steyer had been maki
ng another bomb. But why put a bomb in a kid’s record player? I had no idea, but I had to get out and warn Kenji. I wrapped the knife in some newspaper clippings so it wouldn’t cut me, and I put it in my other back pocket.

  I lifted the stool onto the workbench. It was metal, and heavier than I thought it was gonna be. The seat swiveled around, making it hard to stand on. I climbed up and knelt on top of it. Then I got up onto my feet. But one leg of the stool was shorter than the others, and the stool teetered. The seat spun around and I felt myself falling. I grabbed on to the ledge of the window and had to use my legs to balance the stool back upright. I reached back and got the knife out of my pocket. I covered my face with my arm, and CRASH! I smashed the basement window with the knife butt. I cleared out as much of the busted glass as I could, then pulled myself up. Crawling through the jagged window frame, I scraped my arms and tore my pants, but I didn’t care.

  Once I was out, I raced down the street to the nearest house and pounded on the door with my fists. “Hello! Is anyone home? Hello?”

  It seemed like forever, but at last the inside lights turned on and someone opened the door. It was Mrs. Simmons, still half asleep.

  “Mrs. Simmons? Call the deputy! No, wait, don’t call him. Call the FBI, or the Army or something. Deputy Steyer’s gonna blow up my friend Kenji!”

  “Uh-huh. Whatever you say, Bird.” She promptly slammed her door to go back to bed.

  “Mrs. Simmons. Mrs. Simmons!” But she wouldn’t come back.

  I ran for another house, across the street. This one was a dump. Out back there was a smelly chicken coop—and someone was inside.

  “Hey! You in the chicken coop!” I hollered.

  Two big feet, covered in putrid chicken crap, stepped out. It was Farley Peck.