Blue.
There was a jitney bus that ran from the middle of Dallas out to Love Field, but Tony didn’t realize that until three of them had passed her on the five-mile walk. When she set out from the train station, she was so rumpled and frazzled and exhausted she didn’t actually know what time it was. She didn’t notice the city around her until it was almost gone, and the last quarter of a mile was so rural that she started passing cotton fields again. Gray people bent over their monotonous hoes, and no one looked up at Tony as she passed, bedraggled and gray with travel dust herself. No one waved. A strange dreamlike daze began to creep over her, and she began to feel she no longer even knew what year it was. Surely this was what these fields looked like when her grandma had worked them under the overseer’s lash. There was no overseer in sight. That was the only difference.
Then an engine began to clamor and rattle not too far away.
The spell was broken. It was like a kiss in a fairy tale. Suddenly Tony was wide awake.
People looked up for a moment, stretched, and grinned. Someone waved at Tony at last. An aircraft appeared, flying low over a stubborn row of scrawny young live oaks along the edge of the field, and climbed steadily overhead.
“Looks like they got another of those old Jennies back in the sky,” someone said knowledgeably.
“Go along with me to Love Field and take a look before dark?” said his friend in the next row.
Tony adjusted her hat against the sun that dazzled her stinging, tired eyes. Now she noticed how far down the sky the sun was, and she realized she was going to arrive at her destination just before sunset. And there she’d be, in the dark, five miles out of town, with no place to stay and nothing to eat.
Least she wasn’t dead. Least it was 1926 and not 1826.
She was nearly there. There wasn’t any point in turning back.
Love Field was so big, and there were so many aircraft sheds and so many actual aircraft standing in front of them and on the field, that for a moment Tony was overcome with a feeling of unreality. This wasn’t 1826. But it couldn’t be 1926, could it? This must be what 2026 was going to be like.
She had a moment of terrible panic when she saw the two white men in greasy caps and overalls standing on the porch of the office with a newspaper spread over the rails, shaking their heads. This was going to be the Paxon Field office disaster all over again. Texas had the worst Jim Crow segregation laws in the country — what in the world had made Tony think she’d be better off revealing her accidental theft here than at home, even if these people had tolerated Bessie enough to sell her a plane?
Both men watched Tony as she straggled to the foot of the porch steps, and she wished desperately she could spruce herself up a little before she had to face them. What could she possibly say? Calling her names was the least they might do to her. Putting her in jail wasn’t even close to the worst. She’d been crazy to come. Sarah was right.
Tony stood at the bottom of the porch steps, feeling fully ready, for the first time since watching that terrible plunge from the sky five days ago, to burst into baby tears.
One of the men had a pipe clenched in the corner of his mouth. He took it out and gave her a pleasant smile. “Any chance you’re the next Bessie Coleman?” he said.
Tony’s mouth dropped open.
“Aw, look at her. Don’t tease her,” said the second man. He touched his cap with two fingers, a sketch of a salute. “You need help, kid? There’s a telephone in the office.” He called over his shoulder. “Hey, Louis! Got a sec?”
A young, slow-moving, mild-mannered black man stepped out of the office and onto the porch. “What’s going on?”
The man who’d greeted her waved his pipe at Tony. “Don’t think she wants to buy a plane like the last gal,” he said. “But it looks like she’s come a long ways to get here.”
“Welcome to Love Field,” the black man said to her. “I’m Louis Manning. Mechanic, parking-lot attendant, receptionist, publicity specialist, parachutist, pilot!”
“He’s kind of a jack-of-all-trades,” said the man who’d saluted.
“You can call me Louis,” said the jack-of-all-trades.
Still astonished by their friendliness, Tony was able to pull herself together a little. “I came by train from Jacksonville.” She saw the sober shift in their expressions — all three of them stood listening and alert, side by side on the porch with their attention fixed. They knew exactly what “Jacksonville” meant this week.
“I saw it happen,” she said huskily.
Now it was their turn to look astonished.
“Come on inside, honey, and sit down,” said Louis. “You got a place to stay here in Dallas?”