“Not this airport,” I clarified. “Other airports. I move a lot. The last one was at the Air Force base, and I got closer than I’d ever been to an airplane. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
This he understood, nodding slowly.
“When I moved here, I got the job at the office. Now I’m not just hearing the airplanes and seeing a flash of them above me through the trees. I watch them take off and land. They look like they shouldn’t be able to fly.”
He laughed. Though he cut himself off quickly, pressing his lips together, I could tell he was trying not to grin. “Let me tell you something, Leah. Years ago, this place was crawling with kids wanting to be pilots. There were four folks doing your job, two in the office and two on the tarmac. That rabbit warren of empty rooms you’re in charge of was full of business. But since 9/11 and the bad publicity about airports and a couple of recessions, not as many people want to take flying lessons.”
I nodded. The office with all its nice furniture and no people did smack of more exciting days gone by.
“We old guys, not just here but across the country, talk about getting young people excited about flying again. What we say is this: Most people hear an airplane in the sky and think, ‘There’s an airplane,’ and go back to what they were doing. A few folks look around for the airplane, try to figure out what kind of plane it is, and watch it from the time they spot it to the time it disappears on the horizon, maybe after that. Those kids are the ones who will be pilots.” He pointed at me. “I knew that about you. I’ve just been waiting for you to show up.” He reached for my form.
He was telling me I was some kind of Chosen One. Yet he expressed this opinion with a self-satisfied, know-it-all air that ticked me off. I suddenly understood why, when he’d yelled at Grayson for handling the banners wrong last month, Grayson had yelled back.
Mr. Hall eyed me over the top of the paper, then looked at the form again. I forgot my annoyance. Panic took over as I realized he was examining the forgery.
He set the form almost all the way down on the desk. It drifted the rest of the distance to lie on piles of other paperwork. He said, “I’ll give you a lesson on one condition.”
That I go back and get the form signed by my mother for real this time? This would be better than having me arrested for forgery, yet neither was the answer I wanted. My stomach turned over as I waited for him to finish.
“Quit smoking,” he said.
I sucked in a breath, surprised that he would care whether I smoked, and that he would even know—though I probably reeked of it. My mother certainly did after she’d lit up.
Then I was relieved that he hadn’t mentioned my mother’s signature. Then annoyed that he was getting in my business. “I am paying you,” I pointed out. “You can’t make me quit smoking.”
“You can’t make me take you flying.” He grinned at me, rubbing it in.
Then he leaned forward like he was letting me in on a secret. “I’m doing you a favor. It took me thirty years to quit. Okay?”
I nodded. I didn’t have any choice.
“Then let’s go.” He jumped up from his chair like a kid. Maybe he really had been waiting for me to come in.
I followed him as he wound between and under the planes packed into the hangar like puzzle pieces. Finally we reached a white plane, larger than the others, a four-seater. We circled it as he pointed out things that could go wrong with it and that I should be looking for before I flew. He sent me up on a stepladder to stick a glass rod into the wing to check the fuel level.
“This seems awfully low-tech,” I said, resistant to these chores if they were busywork, like everything in my definitely-not-college-track classes at school. “Don’t airplanes have a gas gauge in the cockpit?”
“They do,” he said. “I’ve just showed you a bunch of things on this aircraft that can break. Don’t you think a gas gauge can break?”
“I guess.”
“‘I guess’ will get you killed.”
I recognized the tone he used to reprimand Grayson. He didn’t have to use it on me. I turned around on the stepladder and looked down at him.
Seeming to realize he’d mistakenly snapped at me like someone he loved, he held up both hands, explaining himself. “If the gas gauge were broken on your car and you unexpectedly ran out of fuel, what would you do?”
“Pull over.” I didn’t know, really. I could get my learner’s permit when I turned fifteen in a month and a half. But with my mom gone all the time, I doubted I would ever learn to drive.
“That’s right,” he said. “And if the gas gauge were broken on your plane and you unexpectedly ran out of fuel, what would you do?”
“Crash?”
I had meant this as a sarcastic joke, but when he folded his arms, I realized that’s exactly what would happen.
From then on, I did what he told me without complaining and tried to remember everything he said. There was too much information, especially now that I realized my life would be riding on it, lots of other lives too, if I actually became a pilot. My little fantasy of nodding to passengers as they boarded my airliner seemed naive now. I would hide my misgivings from Mr. Hall, get through this lesson, and never come back.
He showed me how to pull the enormous front doors of the hangar open to the afternoon breeze. Then he told me to help him push the plane out of the hangar. I thought he was kidding this time—the two of us pushing this heavy airplane around. But come to think of it, I’d seen men pushing small planes on the tarmac. They must be lighter than they looked. I shoved from behind, he tugged on a contraption made to steer the front wheel, and the plane was rolling by itself onto the tarmac. We climbed into the plane, which wasn’t as luxurious as I’d pictured, with thin upholstery like a cheap car. We plugged bulky headsets into the dashboard so we could hear each other when we spoke into the microphones.
“Clear!” he yelled, his voice like gravel. He pressed a button. The propeller spun so fast it disappeared. The powerful vibration shook my seat. He drove the plane down the tarmac, past the hangars, and turned around. The trailer park was directly behind us. The other end of the runway was far off. My heart raced.
“Now we check the controls,” he said, his voice tinny in my headphones. “Don’t just look at these dials. Your brain can stay asleep that way. Touch each one and make sure it’s working.” He made me touch all the black circles in the high dashboard that curved in front of us. Then he showed me how to use the steering wheel—when he moved his, mine moved the same way—and the foot pedals. We looked out the windows to make sure the parts of the airplane were doing what the controls told them. I felt sick, and then my headphones filled with static. Something had gone horribly wrong.
Mr. Hall reached over. With calloused fingers, he bent my microphone a few millimeters farther from my lips. The static had been my own hysterical breathing.
“Ever read The Right Stuff?” he asked. “Heard of Chuck Yeager?”
“No.” I tried to utter the syllable casually, but I sounded like I was strangling.
“Chuck Yeager was an Air Force test pilot. First man to break the sound barrier, back in 1947. Other pilots were amazed at what he was willing to risk his life to do, and even more amazed at how calm he stayed while he did it—at least, that’s how he sounded. Airline pilots all use the Yeager voice when they come over the intercom and speak to the passengers, right?”
“Right.” I had no clue.
“And we use the Yeager voice on the radio too, no matter what kind of trouble we get into. Cracking up where the public can hear would be bad for business. Use the Yeager voice and say this.”
I repeated his words, information about the airport and our plane so other pilots in the area wouldn’t crash into us when we took off. In my own headphones I sounded like I was six years old. Any second, pilots and mechanics would come streaming out of the hangars like ants to pull the rogue toddler out of the cockpit.