“Now, Bill, that’s why I’m letting you do the flying this weekend,” Miss Coleman answered cheerfully. “This morning we’re just going to take a look over the racetrack to make sure it’s safe for my parachute display tomorrow. And I expect you to treat my new baby gently, ’cause I’m going to leave my safety straps off so I can see over the side of the cockpit. I want to get the big picture.”
“Well, the Jenny’s got dual controls,” Wills said. “We can take turns. You can give her a test run.”
Bessie Coleman turned back to Tony. “If you’re staying to watch, you can come out on the field with Mr. Betsch while we take off. Maybe I can take you for a flight myself later this weekend!”
“I’ll go check out the Jenny,” Wills said, and headed around the office building out to the landing field. Miss Coleman turned to the eager little crowd on the other side of the road and gave them a beaming smile and a sweeping wave, then followed Wills.
A couple of boys tried to edge closer to Betsch’s car. The unpleasant policeman herded them back, truncheon in his hand, eyeing everyone menacingly.
“Come on, Tony,” Betsch said.
Tony realized that the distracted William Wills had left his flour-sack satchel sitting on the ground by the car. She had an excuse as well as an invitation now. She picked up the sack, slung it over her shoulder, and headed after Betsch to the airfield. Once again she felt triumphant, but she didn’t dare look back to see if the policeman noticed.
Tony couldn’t make out the pilots’ faces as the little Jenny aircraft began to rattle across the grass field — their heads were covered by helmets and goggles, and the taxiing plane kicked up a cloud of dust. The morning haze hung still in the sky, and the sun was higher now. Suddenly the flying machine soared, lifting over the roof of the office and creating a wind that rattled the airfield fence.
Tony’s heart soared too. Understanding the principles of flight didn’t make it any less amazing to watch. It seemed a perfect miracle that the flimsy machine could be lifting two human beings into the air — people Tony had spoken to, even touched, half an hour ago, and now they were flying. Tony watched the little Jenny turn, heading out over the racetrack in a steady, noisy ascent. It circled the track and Tony imagined the aviatrix giving directions to the pilot seated ahead of her: Go higher. I want to get the big picture.
The flying machine climbed.
Now it was nothing but a speck in the sky, three-quarters of a mile up, and Tony couldn’t make out any details. She strained to see, worried that if she took her eyes from the aircraft she’d lose sight of it and not be able to find it again.
Then the aerobatics started.
The machine plunged so fast that Tony imagined she could faintly hear the wires between the wings screaming with the speed of the descent.
You can give her a test run, the mechanic William Wills had said. Tony wondered which of them was flying right now. Bessie must feel it was safe, since she’d said she wasn’t going to wear her straps.
Tony had seen this trick before — over this very track she’d seen other pilots throw a machine into a dive, spin, then pull out and up at the last second and soar back into the sky. A dive like that was exactly what the little Jenny biplane did now, tearing a thousand feet down the sky and then suddenly dropping into a spin, corkscrewing around and around its own tail as it descended, like a winged sycamore seed. As it spiraled downward, lower and lower, Tony wondered with excitement if Miss Coleman had seen the question about the Jenny’s spin characteristics — if maybe she’d mentioned it to the pilot and now they were trying out the daring display.
Tony held her breath, waiting with her heart in her mouth for the moment when the Jenny would stop spiraling and the wings would swoop steadily skyward.
It never came.
Five hundred feet above the ground, the spinning plane flipped over backward. A small, dark silhouette suddenly detached from the rest of the machine. The figure dropped like a tumbling stone through the sky. One moment it was part of the plummeting plane, and the next it was the living body of a brave and desperate pilot, and then it was gone.
In the first seconds after a catastrophe, you can’t believe it really happened.
Part of Tony’s brain insisted that both pilots were still in the aircraft she was watching, both still alive and fighting to stay in the sky. She stood rooted to the spot, straining to see the plane as it screamed back toward the airfield. She found her lips moving in a silent plea to the pilot: Straighten up, please straighten up — and then it became a prayer. Please, God, let them straighten up.
And she didn’t even know who she was praying for.
The pilot straightened up, but not in time. The Jenny was too low now — trees loomed ahead of it at the edge of the farm field across from the racetrack. For one more vain second, Tony hoped the plane would miss the treetops. But the landing gear hanging down from its belly got caught in the top of one of the tall slash pines, and the aircraft took the tree’s highest branches with it as the plane flailed and flipped itself over and hit the ground.