You all never do, sweetie, she said, glancing at the wall where photographs of dead pilots hung. The frames began behind the bar, marring the far wall with grinning men standing beside cockpits and airplanes knocking contrails into the sky. Whenever someone augered in, she’d nail their picture up and say, dumb bastard.
Pancho had broad shoulders, dark hair and a face that looked like it was stuck in a nine-g pullout. Her real name was Florence Leontine Lowe. She grew up in a thirty-room mansion in San Marino, waited on by servants. Her grandfather, Thaddeus Sobieski Constantine Lowe, was an entrepreneur, engineer and balloonist; a hero of the Civil War. Papa Lowe doted on his granddaughter. When she was eight, he took her to the world’s first aviation exhibition; a ten-day extravaganza in the hills above Long Beach. Florence watched Glenn Curtiss and Lincoln Beachey fly high and fast around the field in their biplanes for a three thousand dollar prize and was captivated. It wasn’t the machines, it was the men. When she was old enough, she stopped riding horses and started flying airplanes. Her mother disapproved of her new lifestyle and, as soon as she turned eighteen, arranged for her to marry the Reverend C. Rankin Barnes. She lasted fourteen months as a minister’s wife before disguising herself as a man and running away to South America as a crew member aboard a banana boat. She became a smuggler, running guns during the Mexican Revolution; later flying rumrunners into Ensenada and Tijuana. She spoke Spanish and Yaqui, slicked her black hair back with gardenia oil and lived like a peasant. She returned a year later with the nickname Pancho to news of her mother’s death. She kept the name, inherited her mother’s fortune and indulged her love of flying. She won races, broke Amelia Earhart’s airspeed record and became one of Hollywood’s first stunt pilots, throwing wild parties at her house in Laguna Beach. When the Depression ate its way into Southern California, it hit her hard. Broke, defaulting on loans, she sold up, headed out into the Mojave and bought Hannam’s farm, just west of Muroc Dry Lake.
It won’t give you no love, Hannam told her after the papers were signed. I used to get five, maybe six, cuttins a year; bale it, sell it on for a good price. Now, even with seventy or so acres planted up, man can’t live on it, not now. It’s all gone to hell.
Never did see myself as much of a rancher, she said.
That fall, she dragged out a private airstrip behind the hay barn with two English shire mares bought from the Washington State Fair then holed out a swimming pool. It wasn’t long before she got to know the men from the base. They enjoyed her company; she knew airplanes and they got a kick out of her salty language and dirty jokes. In the evenings, the men grew restless, so they’d head over to Pancho’s to take out her horses, have a drink, cool off in her pool. Pancho would curse and laugh and tell them stories and pour them drinks. Some nights she’d cook, a steak dinner; meat from her own cattle. She called up Bobby Holeston one morning and got him to turn the old cook’s shack into a proper bar. She hired an enormous woman called Minnie to work the kitchen and Pancho had herself a business.
Harrison finished his drink and Pancho refilled the glass.
Help stabilize the system, she said.
He knocked it back and made to leave.
Hey, Harrison, she called after him.
He looked down at a half-smoked pack of cigarettes on the bar.
You’re a peach, he said.
Get the hell out.
The screen door clattered shut, rattling the dead men hanging inside.
Pancho spent the morning running errands. Muroc was three miles north across flat dirt trails; a barren cluster of buildings founded on the Sante Fe railroad. The dull steel track stretched toward the horizon in both directions. Alongside the wooden station-house were three black sheds for the men who worked the rails. The main street was a dust strip. It had Charlie Anderson’s store, Ma Green’s café, and a Union Oil gas station, as well as a small post office and a one-man bank.
It was quiet. A slight wind caught a tangled cluster of loose telephone wires that grappled and rapped against each other. At the bank, Pancho settled three bills that she’d disputed the previous winter.
Anything else I can do for you, Pancho?
Nope, that’s it, thanks Fredo. Good to see you.
How’s things out in the boonies?
Can’t complain.
Billy Horner still working for you?
Was when I left.
Be seeing you, Pancho.
You know it.
Don’t be a stranger now.
We’ll see.
Outside, the sun hurt her eyes. She pulled down on her old cowboy hat, lit a cigar and dropped the match into the dirt. Damn weenies. She had no problem paying bills, so long as they were fair. The smoke lingered in her mouth. There’d be more money soon. She crossed the street to Charlie Anderson’s.
Well, Charlie, you ol bastard, how are you?
That Pasadena’s First Lady?
Depends who you ask.
How’s Rankin?
Wouldn’t know.
Still in New York?
Last I heard.
When you gonna do it?
When I gonna do what?
You know.
She chewed on the cigar still burning between her teeth.
Now why would I go do a stupid thing like that? she said.
Case you meet a handsome fella.