“That’s some wind,” Jake shouted. I’d known Grayson was in trouble when I saw the Halls running. But if I’d had any lingering doubts, this sealed the deal: the fighter pilot home on leave after a year flying dangerous missions in Afghanistan, worried about the wind.
“He could land at another airport,” Alec called to his dad.
“I looked up the storm on radar,” I told Mr. Hall. “It’s a monster. Grayson won’t be able to fly past it. To do him any good, the runway would need a different heading.” That way, he could land into the wind, rather than the wind blowing across the airplane and tossing it off course. Community airports flashed through my mind, airfields up and down the coast where I’d practiced touch-and-go’s, landing and taking off repeatedly.
“Florence,” Mr. Hall and I said at the same time. He brought the radio to his mouth again. “Florence has a couple of strips with different headings. Why don’t you fly on over there? We’ll come pick you up, and tomorrow we’ll go back and get the plane.”
“Florence is seventy miles away,” came Grayson’s voice. “I don’t have enough gas to make it.”
“Roger,” Mr. Hall told the radio. He glanced at the wind sock again.
Alec and Jake had wrestled the unwieldy banner into a big, sloppy roll and plopped it on the porch, behind a rocking chair and against the wall, where it wouldn’t blow away. We all walked out to stand on the tarmac again and watch the plane fly parallel to the runway, then turn. Grayson would go through the same motions as on his first pass, but this time he would land.
Or try.
It wasn’t right that he fought through this alone. He and I had no bond, but I would have been the one in the plane instead of him if I hadn’t taken my turn first. Raising my voice over the wind, I told Mr. Hall, “Seems like there’s some advice you could give him.”
Mr. Hall shook his head. “I’ve taught all of you correctly. Whether you learned it correctly or not, I don’t know. That kid never had the sense God gave a goat. He probably thinks this is fun.”
True, Grayson was the live wire in the family, the adrenaline junkie who would do anything on a dare, who’d gotten in trouble in the past year for smoking, drinking, weed, speeding, skipping school—Mr. Hall had spilled it all to me while we were flying. Mr. Hall worried constantly that his ex-wife couldn’t handle raising Grayson on her own. Alec got in trouble only for refusing to rat Grayson out. But I doubted even Grayson enjoyed trying to land the plane in this windstorm.
Worried as I was, what Alec was going through must have been ten times worse. Grayson and he looked nothing alike, and they’d never seemed close. Alec was closer with Jake, glomming onto Jake really, and Grayson was off by himself, getting into trouble. But Grayson and Alec were still brothers, and twins. I wasn’t surprised when Alec crossed one arm on his chest, propped his other elbow on that arm, and put his hand over his mouth.
What did surprise me was that Jake put his arm around Alec’s shoulders.
Over the loudspeaker, Grayson calmly announced his approach. The red plane dropped out of the sky, skimming twenty feet above the runway, then ten.
I squinted and struggled to stand against a cold blast of wind. On that gust, the sound of the tiny engine drifted across the field to us. The motor suddenly roared in a higher pitch as the plane jerked to the left. Grayson was using the stick and the rudder pedals to fight the wind. I was fighting it too, sympathetically, my hands balled into fists, arms tense, toes curling in my shoes. And holding my breath.
The plane made several more agonizing darts this way and that, wings jerking up and leveling off. Finally he was one foot off the runway, inches, then none. The plane landed as straight and level as if the wind were calm.
Mr. Hall said, “Perfect.”
The plane was still rolling fast when the wind swept under it and tipped one wing up to the sky, the other down to scrape the asphalt.
“Damn it,” Mr. Hall barked. I made a noise too, something between a yelp and a scream, and Jake pressed one hand against Alec’s chest to keep him from running across the field. There was nothing we could do for Grayson, and nothing he could do either. Helpless, while someone chanted “No no no no no,” we watched the wing tilt as far up as it could go without the plane turning upside down. The plane seemed to be sinking then, the wind tiring.
That’s when a gust caught the tail instead and spun the still-rolling plane all the way around backward in a ground loop, exactly what we’d all been afraid of and exactly why most people didn’t fly these old-fashioned planes anymore. The wind spun the plane all the way forward again, then lobbed it at the trees.
Now we were running. Jake and Alec shot past me. I hoped they knew how to help Grayson when they reached him. All I could see was the bright red plane propped at an odd angle against the dark tree line. I concentrated on the tarmac under my feet, then the uneven ground where the grass hadn’t been cut since October, then the runway, with my usual bottle of water sloshing hard in my jacket pocket the whole way. As I got close, I remembered I had the phone in my other pocket. I pulled it out to dial 911.
But all three of the boys emerged from underneath the wing: Jake first, then Alec, then Grayson. They were laughing.
I stopped on the asphalt. My lungs burned so painfully that I almost bent over and braced my hands on my knees, but I didn’t want to do that where the boys could see me.
I turned to yell back to Mr. Hall that Grayson was okay. He saw the boys too and slowed from a jog to a walk. He put his hand over his heart.
As I walked down the short, grassy slope to where the airplane was lodged and the boys stood, Jake said, “I wish the Admiral had seen it. He would have recommended you for an aircraft carrier.” Jake worshipped the Admiral for his combat record.
Grayson knew how special this compliment was. It showed in his grin. “Oh, pshaw, it was nothing.” Even his eyes laughed, which looked strange to me. I rarely saw Grayson without his aviator shades and his straw cowboy hat. They must be lost in the cockpit.
“I wish we’d filmed it,” Alec said. “I wish you could have seen it yourself, Grayson. It seriously looked like you were about to lose it, what, three, four times?”
“Six or seven times,” Jake said.
“I don’t have to see it,” Grayson said. “But if we can get the tractor to haul the plane back onto the runway and it checks out, I’ll go again.”