Evening star. [volume], May 31, 1936, Page 9, Image 77

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
courageous souls; they aren’t locked up some
where but they can go about, looking down
on loved ones who need them. We’ll never
recognize that they want to help, though, if
we refuse to believe or accept that help."
Jean questioned, "Where did you learn that,
Brant?”
His weather-lined face lighted up. "In the
war, Jean. My kid brother, Jim, cracked up.
Afterward, he helped me through. You see,
the enemy had attacked him and he went West.
He came back to guide me safely back to our
own lines. I had become confused and lost over
enemy lines. The shells couldn't hit me that
night. Another time, Jim kept my plane in the
air when I had been stunned by a bursting
shell. Some people say such ideas are silly, but
a lot of other fellows had experiences like mine.
We know.”
“Surely, Brant!" breathed Jean. “You ought
to know." And after a moment, she said,
strangely comforted, ‘‘Brant, we had better
approve the plans for the new causeway, so
they can get busy when the thaw comes."
seemed to have entered her spirit. Drearily she
went about her task, preparing for a hot dinner
when Jack should bring his passengers in. She
wondered that she could endure it to stay here
forever — watching the planes come in. And
Harry never coming in!
About five, Jean went outside. The fog
swirled about her, isolating her in a great
loneliness. She began to worry about Jack.
At six o’clock there was still no sound
of his motor. Listening, she heard a strange
bumping and thumping near the boat-landing
on the west shore. When she investigated, she
was appalled to find logs churning against a
boat landing already half tom from the shore.
Puzzled, frightened, Jean ran around to the
south jetty. Here was the cause! A trailer log
boom had broken away from the leader, the
high water had carried the runaway boom onto
the sharp, rocky south jetty. This had split the
boom, scattering the logs, piling them along
the shoreline. What of the new causeway?
Jean stumbled in her haste to the east shore.
Illustrations by
Stanley Parichouie
into the workshop beyond the pilots' quarters.
She saw him climb to the driver’s seat of the
supply truck and speed away. She knew a plane
was due in from the north within an hour. He
had to take it south. Jean's mind was diverted
to the responsibilities and routine of the air
port.
Presently 1 farry came down, triumphant and
happy. “We'll fly over to Valley Grove,” he
said, "and get some autumn foliage for your
rooms.”
“Great,” she enthused.
“You take the pilot’s seat, Jean. I’ll sit at
your side and be co-pilot. Don't ask me any
questions," he warned.
She laughed. She boasted brazenly that she
could handle the Blue Bird as well as he could.
But she made plenty of errors! And she felt
that if Harry weren’t there at her side, she
would forget what to do. Be lost. Her set
down was jerky.
While they were standing on the hilltop
ibove Valley Grove, Jean swaying like a young
jirch in the scented breeze, testing him, she
aid: “The truth is Harry, I never could take
ler up alone. It’s only you at my side that
ives me confidence, dear.” Then she laughed
oftly and added.: “ I goess that’s because I
im so much a part of you and you of me that
'rr» sxnltr Kalf ftutro olnno M
Harry grinned. "Just the same, honey, you're
oing to learn to fly the old girl all by your
mesome, so I’ll be prepared for the day when
ou can’t resist the urge to take her up — just
a see the sun streak the first snow on Lauret
'eak or a particularly gorgeous sunset hanging
bove the heights.” He paused, looked around
he hilltop, then musingly told her: "Jean Girl,
ifhen I’m old and feeble, and pass out, I want
o be planted on the side of this hill, in the
un and wind. It’s sort of home to me.” Then
e grabbed her hand and they ran down the
ath to the little plane.
For Jean, the grilling went on. Harry set a
ay for her solo flight.
"Of course, Jean Girl, if you were afraid, it
ould be different. Wouldn’t be any fun, might
>e risky, though the ones who are scared often
lave the best luck. I saw fellows at the train
ng camp turn green with fear when they had
o go it alone, and they often came in with
lying colors, crazy about soloing. It gives you
sort of power that you don't realize you have
ntil you try it."
Jean, in her great love for Harry, smiled
nd agreed.
Harry chose Saturday for her solo flight —
wo days away. Of course, the weather would
lave to be good, Harry said. Jean fervently
)rayed for an early fall storm.
But Jean Brooks did not fly her solo on
Saturday; for Saturday, by noon, Jean was a
widow, stunned and dazed with grief. No tears
ame as she looked upon Harry’s beloved fea
tures, so still, a half-smile on his lips. ‘‘His
home-coming smile, Brant,” Jean said.
“It wasn’t his fault, Jean. I’m glad that it
wasn’t, aren’t you?” Brant’s voice soothed her.
“That it was all the fault of the student dis
obeying orders?"
"Yes, Brant, of course I am.”
They buried Harry on the sunny hillside.
Piteously Jean questioned Fate. Was Harry
chained in that hillside plot? Harry's vagabond
spirit that loved to ride the wind, to go gypsy
ing? She could see the shining joy in his eyes
as he gazed into a colorful sunset, the happy
lift of his body as he followed a flock of geese.
Freedom to roam at will was what he had
loved above all else. Surely Harry could not be
Dounar
The winter days passed, in agonized remem
bering ; in Jean’s conscious need of Harry and
his fortitude, his courageous acceptance of Irfe.
Time and time again his words came to hei
his reasoning that once one went up alone one
would lose all fear, and she would leave her
task and run out to the hangars, where they
were rebuilding the Blue Bird — doing as they
knew Harry would wish.
She gazed at the reassembled plane, the new
wings being put into place, and tried to visual
ize the whole with Harry’s eager eyes.
Proudly Brant said: ‘‘Some motor! Grand as
the heart of an eagle — ” But Jean could know
only the absence of a loved, sure hand on the
stick; the broken, crumpled wings of the Blue
Bird's tragic flop. They were the broken pinions
of her lonely heart.
Jack Gale, one of the young men who had
learned to fly under Brant’s tutelage, tested the
shining blue and silver plane. He came down
boyishly eager and exuberant over its “sweet”
engine. He thought that Jean was glad to have
Harry’s plane right again, that she might fly
it, finding comfort in piloting it. She smiled
bravely at his questioning, and said gently,
“Not vet. Jack.”
Early one morning she went out to the Blue
Bird, tried to climb into it with a confident
manner. But when she put her hands on the
controls, an agonizing repugnance gripped her.
She jumped down and fled into the house.
Flinging herself upon the bed, she gave way
to the agony of grief she had bottled so long.
“Oh, Harry, how will I ever find you again?
I can't go up alone! And cowards can’t come
where you are, Harry.”
In the days that followed, a hopelessness
settled upon her like a heavy fog. Jack and
Brant worried about her. Whenever Brant
brought his mail plane in, he tried to cheer her.
Probing with a surgeon’s hope, he said one
day: “Something else troubling you, Jean?”
“It’s just that I’ve lost Harry forever, be
cause I am a coward. 1 can never dimb into a
plane and go up into the clouds for the sheer
joy of it. I’ll never meet him up there!” she
went on. "He wouldn’t want me —afraid!”
Brant took her by the shoulders, shook her
gently.
“Listen, you little idiot. Harry knows now
wherever he is! Don't you realize that he loves
you more than ever? He knows now about the
courageous display you put on. That you were
scared stiff all the time. It doesn’t take courage
to do the thing you love to do, as he did! And
Harry loved courage," Cal reminded her.
Silently, Jean considered this. It might be
true. “Oh, Brant, I want to believe you!" He
gripped her hands, and she went on, "Another
thing, Brant, if I should go to live on Harry's
hillside, build a little house there, wouldn't I
feel nearer to Harry?”
"Harry’s not there! There is a heaven for
A warm Chinook opened the spring and
melted the mountain snows. The streams rose.
The loggers sent great booms down the river
to the opening mills. The new causeway frame
work lifted, a skeleton to be filled in and sub
stantiated when the spring flood waters would
subside. Small steamers and motor boats guided
the huge booms past the rocky south jetty and
into the broad west channel.
Brant said one day, “I’ll give up my air
route and bring mother to live on the island.
She's been wanting an excuse to come for a
long while.” He smiled his rare smile. "She
says she is looked on as a freak at home be
cause she’s so crazy about flying. There’s a lot
of work to be done, Jean, and I've a notion I
can accomplish more here than on the route.”
Brant left in a gathering fog one early after
noon for a lower-valley town to get his mother.
"The shop men will be in town until to
morrow,” he told Jean. “Jack should be in
about five. I won’t come back 'til morning if
the fog holds.”
Jean watched him, his homely face showing
a grave concern. All pilots dreaded the fog.
The heaviness of the enveloping gray mist
uevasiauon greeted ner. rne pontoon onage
had been swept away. Against the causeway
supports, logs gathered and crashed in plung
ing fury. Even as she looked, she saw the frame
work of the causeway crumple at the center,
then crash down onto that angry churning of
water and logs. Jean raced back to the hangars.
The hum of a motor far above penetrated
the fog. Her heart beat fearfully as she looSfed
out at the sickly gleam that the flood lights
threw into that misty, yellow pall.
At her dinner task, a stabbing uneasiness
possessed her. She suddenly thought of the
siren; she hurried to the shop where Brant had
been experimenting. She started the motor and,
clicking the switches, was rewarded with a clear
siren call. It wasn’t loud, but a piercing note
that should reach an anxious ear above a
motor’s drone.
The motor in the air above became silent.
Jack was circling high, to the north. The whine
of descending wires reached her. She heard a
light impact, the roar of the motor.
What had happened? Had he grazed the rail
road bridge? Oh, here he came—diving through
a hole in the fog bank, like a great gray b«rd.
He flew through the beacon’s path of light
(CmNmmd or pogm 12)
SICK WITH FEAR, SHE WATCHED THE PLANE ZOOM UP FROM A SCREAMING DESCENT