Storming

Twenty-Five

WALTER’S STOMACH TWISTED in pain. He was that scared.

Now Mama Nan really would be sorry she’d let him stay.

He clenched both fists over his middle. He should be praying—like Mama Nan was praying, out loud. But his mind couldn’t seem to find any words. All he could do was stare and try not to huddle on the ground with his hands over his head as if he was a little baby like Evvy and Annie.

After she’d yelled at Hitch, they’d walked almost all the way back to the automobile before she looked at Walter with a sad face and sighed. “All right, Walter. We’ll stay and watch, but only for a little while, hear?”

He gave her the hardest hug he could manage, then ran back to stand next to the Berringer brothers in the shade of the grandstand, where he could watch Hitch’s red plane. And then, during the race, that thing smashed one of the planes out of the sky and stopped everybody cold.

It could kill them. It could kill them all right here and now. Inside his ears, his blood pounded.

Out of the corner of his vision, a red plane streaked from behind the grandstand.

Hitch’s plane! It had to be. The knot in his stomach convulsed. That hurt too, but it was a better kind of pain. He pressed his fists together.

Of course Hitch would do something. He was brave. He was the only one here brave enough to do something. Even Sheriff Campbell might be giving in to the pirates up there. But Hitch—he was like the pilots in the storybooks.

The plane darted around the field, like a red wasp, and circled to join the oncoming swarm of racers. Hitch shot over the other pilots’ heads and took the lead. He swooped so low over the white balloon that his landing wheel seemed like it might have skimmed the surface of the monster’s skin.

That’d teach those pirates! Walter jumped and shook a fist. A whoop stuck hard in his throat, and that kind of hurt too. Death to pirates! They didn’t stand even a little chance.

The air exploded. The balloon quavered, and near Hitch’s tail, a black blast of smoke puffed.

Walter froze.

Everybody started screaming and ducking all over again.

Another blast pounded, and another, one after the other. Puffs of smoke chased behind Hitch’s tail, like huge smoke rings from one of Mr. J.W.’s cigars. The red plane ducked and dived. It rolled all the way over, as it screamed down and then back up again.

Next to Walter, Mr. J.W. clenched his fists at his sides. “Durn furriners! They’re shooting at him!”

Nan gripped Walter’s shoulders with both hands and stared upwards. “Hitch, you crazy fool. You always did have more backbone than brains.”

The crowd swarmed all around. Half the people ran to their automobiles to try to get away. The other half stayed, hunching over and wailing, probably scared too much to move. Deputy Griff and Col. Livingstone were shouting and trying to direct everybody. Nobody listened.

Clouds swirled out of the clear sky, and thunder blasted over their heads. Far behind, the twin propellers began blatting against the air.

From behind, Jael and Earl shoved through the throng. They’d know what to do.

Walter caught at Jael’s hand.

She glanced down long enough to see him and stop. Her eyes sparked, afraid one minute, just plain angry the next. “Hitch cannot fly away from cannon and lightning forever!”

“He’s doing a pretty good job so far,” Mr. Matthew said.

Earl stopped in front of the Berringers and hollered to be heard, “He’s going to see if he can force it a little lower. We have to find a way to mark that undercarriage, so we can find it again if it gets away.”

“Mark it how?” Mr. J.W. asked. “Paint?”

Mr. Matthew shook his head. “Take too long to put enough paint on that to make it visible from far away.”

Jael stared up, her whole body fidgeting. “If we could maybe be tying something to it…”

“Have to be something awful big,” Earl said. “But not too heavy for us to lift.”

Walter swung his head around to look. About twenty yards off, just shy of the grandstand, the scattered remains of the first lightning-struck plane still smoldered. One of its wings, almost as red as Hitch’s Jenny, flashed in the fading sunlight.

His heart skipped and his stomach went all hollow for a second. He yanked on Jael’s arm.

She turned her head—slowly, slowly, like the drip of sap in the crook of a tree—and finally looked at him.

Still hanging onto her, he pointed.

She followed his gaze, and then her face lit up. “Wing. He is right. If it is not burned, it is good color and not too heavy.” She started running, but she was slow again, wincing with every step.

Earl and the Berringers took off after her.

Overhead, the plane engines howled. More explosions slapped the sky, each one like a punch in the chest.

The noise thrummed all through Walter’s body. His palms tingled, and he clenched them. He should go with Jael and the Berringers. It was his idea. He should help them. But he couldn’t make his feet move. Just like everybody else was screaming and carrying on from the outside, he was screaming on the inside.

Schturming_’s shadow shifted, and the sun poured its heat down on Walter through the only big crack left in the clouds. Sweat dripped off the ends of his hair and plopped against his face. He sucked in one deep breath and then another. If he didn’t move right now, if he didn’t _do something, then he was nothing but a scared chicken.

One of the planes winked out of the glare of blue sky in front of Schturming. It snarled through the air, the sound of its engine louder and deeper than the others. Hitch’s plane.

Walter couldn’t suck in enough air through his nose, so he opened his mouth and gulped.

The plane flew in from high above Schturming. Then, like the fall of an ax, it dropped its nose and dove straight at the open doors where Zlo and his men stood. Everybody inside, even Sheriff Campbell, scrambled. Zlo waved his arms. His bird got scared and flapped away from his shoulder. Schturming moved again, dropping low and shifting sideways, trying both to avoid Hitch and to swing the cannon around to face him.

Far away across the field, Jael and the others ran, dragging the wing directly underneath the airship’s huge shadow. Schturming hovered only twelve feet off the ground. Hitch had forced it down. It was low enough now.

What Hitch had done… it could have killed him. He was so brave he didn’t even care about dying. He didn’t care he was in a tiny plane and the bad men were in a huge airship. He didn’t care they were shooting at him with a cannon or that they could light him on fire and knock him out of the sky with a bolt of lightning. Walter made himself unclench his fists.

But maybe he would care if he found out Walter was so scared he couldn’t help anybody, couldn’t even move.

Walter sucked in another breath through his open mouth. He lifted one foot off the ground. It came slow, and his other leg shook so hard he nearly fell over. He put his foot down in the dust, then lifted the other.

Mama Nan grabbed at him. “Walter!”

Now or never! He leaned forward, and he ran.

“Walter, get back here!”

She’d be mad at him again—and worried. But he’d make it up to her later. There were some things he just had to do.

He pumped his arms and pounded his feet against the ground. Jael and the others would need a rope if they were going to tie the wing onto Schturming. Papa Byron always kept one in the automobile. He ran back through the cars. People jostled and pushed him. Miss Ginny Lou Thatcher shrieked his name and tried to grab his overalls strap. He ducked free and kept running.

His hands shook as he hauled the rope out. But he could breathe steady now, and his heart pumped hard and firm. He turned and headed back. Across the line of the airship’s shadow, the sudden cool engulfed his sweaty skin. He ran to the back end of the ship, just under the propellers.

Jael and the others crouched over the wing. She glanced up at him. “Rope! Good boy.” She pointed up. “There is door in floor—we can tie rope to its handle.”

Earl finished ripping a hole through the fabric at the wing’s tip. He threaded the rope through and snugged the knot. Then he handed it to Mr. Matthew, who was the tallest of them. “Gonna have to get you something to stand on.” Earl whipped around to look at Mr. J.W. “Get your car!”

Jael stood and used both hands to shove her blowing hair out of her face. “Walter can do it. He can ride on Matthew’s shoulders!”

Mr. Matthew glanced at Walter. “How about it, son?”

Walter couldn’t breathe again. He managed a nod.

Earl grabbed him under the arms and swung him up to sit on Mr. Matthew’s shoulders. “You’ll have to stand up, kid! Can you do that?”

Walter’s head didn’t want to nod, so he just planted both hands on top of Mr. Matthew’s hat and pushed himself up. Jael grabbed one of his ankles and Mr. J.W. grabbed the other.

Earl handed up the end of the rope. “Loop it through that iron ring in that trapdoor. Pass the end back to me, and I’ll knot it off down here on the wing again. Got it?”

“Bite it in your teeth!” Jael said.

He bit the rope hard. If nothing else, maybe it would keep them all from hearing his teeth chattering. He pushed up from Mr. Matthew’s head, first one hand, then the other. Inch by inch, he straightened. Then he leaned his head back and looked up.

The endless bottom of the ship hung a couple feet above his head. Its wood was sun-bleached and weathered, the paint stripped off in long shreds. It smelled of dry wood, like the split-rail fences around the hayfield. The whole thing swayed, creaking. The taut skin of the balloon thrummed in the wind like a flat palm against a drumhead. All around, the plane engines shrieked. The cannon thundered rhythmically, joining the sharp scent of gunpowder with the gasoline fumes and the rain smell.

He reached up with both hands. Don’t move, don’t move, he wanted to tell Mr. Matthew. But it wouldn’t do any good. Plus everybody would probably fall over from surprise because he’d actually said something. Then the plan really wouldn’t work.

The tips of his fingers brushed the wood—smooth where it still had paint, rough where it didn’t. He took the rope from his teeth, carefully pushing the rough weave out with his tongue. Then he raised his hand again. The rope slid through the iron ring. He pushed it all the way through, then reached for the other end.

Beneath him, Mr. Matthew wobbled. Walter clenched at the two ends of the rope and managed to stay upright.

“All right.” Earl sounded like he couldn’t breathe either. “That’s okay. Good job. Now pass it on down. Easy.”

The cannon cracked again, bigger and louder. Beyond the edge of the ship’s hull, a blast of flame winked: a plane hurtled to the ground.

The tremor rattled all the way up through Mr. Matthew’s body, and Walter swayed.

Earl grabbed the rope’s end and hauled it the rest of the way down. “Get him off there! I can tie it now!”

“Wait!” Jael said. “Look up, Walter! Can you pull open door?”

He straightened back up long enough to wrap both hands around the large iron ring and pull on it. But it wouldn’t budge. A three-inch slot—like an odd keyhole—notched the wood beside the ring.

“Look for my pendant! Is there anything you see?”

Mr. Matthew was already reaching for him, a hand on either leg to help him down. Walter scanned the whole length of the ship. A haze of smoke from the explosions and the plane exhaust filled the air. If anything was there, it blended in against the wood and the shadows.

The ship started to move. Ponderously, the tail swung around toward the grandstand.

“Get him down!” Mr. J.W. yelled.

Mr. Matthew hauled Walter off his shoulders and practically dropped him to the ground.

The airship’s long shadow rotated, and the line of sunshine on the ground crept toward them.

Earl yanked the knot tight. “There!”

Walter stood up and turned to see.

The wing skidded through the dirt. Then, as the airship started to rise, the wing flipped up off the ground. The free end spun around, headed straight toward his head.

Earl leapt at him. “Watch it!”

The wing caught Earl’s outstretched arm with a loud crack. The arm flopped, and Earl sprawled, taking Walter down with him.