As I flew toward the nicer end of town, the folks on the sand thinned out. The bright high-rise hotels shrank into smaller brick hotels farther apart, then thinned further into complexes of condos with shared pools, then individual mansions where each family had a pool all their own. This section of the beach went on for the longest. There was probably one person vacationing here for every hundred on the flophouse end. I could pick out these individual people. They walked along the beach at great distances from each other. Or they took their children out very early so they wouldn’t get sunburned in the heat of the day, and watched them closely so nothing bad happened to them. Unlike at the flophouse end, these children did not have to take care of themselves.
All the while, I looked out for other planes. The Army base sometimes sent Chinook helicopters skimming across the water and frightening the tourists. The Air Force base sent out F-16s. Occasionally a Coast Guard plane or helicopter would scoot past, on its way to save someone, or just cruising the beach like I was.
And then there were Alec and Grayson, flying in the same pattern as me. I heard Alec announcing over the radio that he was dropping his banner, circling around, and picking up a correctly spelled one. Then Mark took off to go on his crop-dusting run. I was surprised he announced himself according to protocol, considering what Grayson had told me about Mark using his plane as a weapon. Then Grayson took off and circled back for his banner.
Grayson, Alec, and I knew the sequence by heart because Mr. Hall had drilled it into us. We flew out to the ocean and made a slow turn at a safe distance from the shore, always keeping other people in mind. We headed from the flophouse end of the beach to the ritzy end. Where the population thinned to the point that there were a lot more birds than beachgoers and hardly anybody would see the banners, we made a slow, wide, careful turn, always aware of the heavy banner that the plane was not built to drag behind it.
We flew back down the beach the way we’d come, even farther from the shore now to avoid a collision with each other. It seemed impossible, but we had no radar, nothing to tell us another plane was coming except our own eyes, and planes weren’t as visible head-on as they were from the side. Where the commercial section of the beach ended in a nature preserve and the crowds disappeared, we made another slow turn for the ritzy end again. That was the job, until we headed back to the airport for a break or lunch or a different banner.
Each time I passed Alec’s plane, I thought about ways I could talk to him when we took a break around ten, excuses I could use to get into a conversation with him. I didn’t really believe that I could land a date with him like Grayson wanted. But as long as I looked like I was making an effort, I figured Grayson would have no cause to complain, and he would stay off my case until the business folded and he went away.
Every time I passed Grayson’s plane, I thought something completely different. Anger at him first. Then sympathy for the swirl of emotions he was obviously suffering through, all of them negative. In my experience, Grayson was wrong most of the time. But he felt very deeply, and I supposed that was why I’d always watched him. He said and did what I wanted to say and do but couldn’t because I knew my place or I knew better. My sympathy for him didn’t disappear just because he was using me.
Mostly their planes were too far away for me to see except as pinpoints in the sky. I concentrated on flying. I watched the few instruments for trouble. I listened to the engine, because a change in the pitch of its hum would be my first clue something had gone wrong with the plane or the banner. I relaxed into the rush of flight, my fingers and toes tingling with adrenaline at the knowledge that nothing but lift held me a thousand feet in the sky, and nothing below me could break my fall.
The truth was, this plane was not mine. It was tethered to the airport as surely as the pit bull was anchored to its trailer. But if I ever wanted to, just for a little while, braving dire consequences such as prison, I could head out over the Atlantic. Down to Florida. Up to New York. Wherever I wanted. I wasn’t going to do it, but the thought that I could made me smile.
Around ten, Alec announced over the radio that he was dropping his banner at the airport, then landing his plane. I gave him a few minutes so I wouldn’t crowd him, then headed in after him. Landing was a lot harder than taking off. The plane wanted to fly. It didn’t want to land. The asphalt rushing to meet the plane was potentially a more violent situation than the asphalt falling away underneath it. My eyes never stopped moving: over the instruments, all around me in the sky, on the ground, making sure Zeke was off the grassy strip before I roared across it to drop the banner. He couldn’t spell worth shit and he might not have the sense to get out of my way, either.
The runway was clear. I lost altitude exactly like I was landing but without decreasing my airspeed. It was important that I get as close to the ground as possible before dropping the banner so it didn’t float away on the wind and wrap itself around an expensive piece of equipment or knock somebody in the head with the heavy pole like it had knocked the glass door of the airport office last December. I didn’t need help with this. I had done it a hundred times in practice and I operated by feel. Still, I heard Mr. Hall yelling in my head, Drop drop drop.
I dropped the banner and pulled the plane into a safe climb, unlike the dangerous half-stalling climb of a banner pickup. I would leisurely circle around the airport and land. The wind was calm, the weather clear. There was no reason to feel shaken. Mr. Hall’s ghost was not in the cockpit in the seat behind me. I hadn’t heard his voice in my head, only the memory of his voice. Yet my hands trembled on the controls.
I’d expected to have a reaction like this if I ever flew in the Cessna again, since Mr. Hall had so often ridden beside me, teaching me. I hadn’t thought I’d react this way in one of the Pipers. Though he could have instructed me from the backseat, that would have added too much weight to tow a banner. He’d coached me on this kind of flying from the ground, over the radio. Especially dropping a banner.
And especially landing the lightweight Piper with its tendency to spin in a ground loop. As I announced my final approach over the radio in my babyish voice, he would be standing on the tarmac with his radio—
And there he was.
No, that was Zeke, the banner guy who couldn’t spell. He stood on the tarmac, watching my landing. I willed away the new, unwanted rush of adrenaline. No matter how ideal the conditions, flying was never safe, and I had to concentrate on landing this plane. I pushed Mr. Hall and the alarming sight of Zeke out of my mind as I lowered the plane to the asphalt and felt the gentle meeting of runway and rubber tires through the foot pedals.