Falling in Love

  They slowly continued through other rows. The rain began coming down harder again when they happened upon a man crouching under the wing of a Kitfox.

  "Hey," Jim called out to him. "You dry?"

  "The guy said, "I will be when this lets up."

  "Do you need a poncho?" Lourdes asked.

  "No. I'm fine, the man replied.

  "It's okay. Here," Lourdes said, fishing in her purse. She drew out a light, yellow, plastic poncho still in its original package and handed it to him.

  "I couldn't!" the man said.

  "It was given to me. And I don't want it. I kind of like scooching under his umbrella," Lourdes said with a smile.

  The man gave in. "Thanks," he said, taking the poncho.

  "No problem," Jim said. "What a beautiful morning?"

  "You bet it is," said the man.

  The man put his new poncho on while Lourdes and Jim continued on their way.

  The rain had diminished to a drizzle, for the time being.

  "We're getting to your plane via everywhere else," Lourdes asked.

  "Yeah, but who wants to interrupt this beautiful morning?"

  "The Warbird area is sooooo cozy in this weather," she asked.

  Jim took his arm back from Lourdes and wrapped it around her waist. She put hers around his waist, too, as they walked.

  "So tell me more about Connie? You haven't gone into it much."

  "I didn't-figure you'd want to hear about my wife, and not her dying, either."

  "I might not have, but I think I'm ready now."

  Jim moseyed over to some wet bleachers in front of a small ramp, in the warbirds area, with some Liaison planes around, and sat down.

  They held hands while they sat.

  "Well," Jim said. "In my mind, Connie's all part of living, everything about my life. It's so precious, life is. I knew her in high school and I was very into her. Never saw anything so pretty. I got into her, and I couldn't forget her. She-made the world tick for me."

  Lourdes listened attentively.

  "That was in Wichita, back then. But she wasn't into me that way, so I left and joined the Army."

  "What did you do in there?"

  "Gave out parking tickets."

  "You were police?"

  "Nothing fancy," he said. "But after my hitch, I got out. Went to work at various jobs, took some college courses, and also got my pilot's license. Then Uncle Tim passed on and I inherited his farm. Now, during all this, when I got my pilot's license, I went through my second adolesence, and looked Connie up to take her flying, and one thing lead to another pretty quickly, and we stayed together. Marrying. No kids.

  "My mom and I moved to the farm in Greenhills-"

  "You're living with your mother?"

  Jim laughed at her.

  "On a farm, it's tradition."

  He looked at Lourdes' face. "Kidding! No, actually, she did go over there with me, but she stayed when she met her boyfriend and she lives with him, not me. So she's in town, too. She's pretty young for her age. So I was living with Connie on the farm. And we were happy for a long time. Knew Millie for years, and her then husband. Her kids. Met Mike maybe eight years ago. Life develops. Connie was great around the house. I'd work the farm now and then-"

  He looked at Lourdes.

  "I have to admit I don't work all that hard at it. The guy who owns the place next to mine? Benny? He owns some of the equipment, and I own some others. So we kinda work together. The fields are the same, basically. If they're both ready for plowing, for example, or some service, then if one of us has the equipment out, we just do both because it's easier. The fuel works out overall, and there's less set-up and tear-down. There's no fence in between them.

  "But I'd tend to do most of the farmy things, and Connie- When she wasn't out shopping or doing things with friends, she'd play farm-wife also, or maybe even work on the house some. Go to Home Depot for things."

  The rain started to fall a little heavier, but they didn't care and barely noticed. They continued snuggling under Lourdes' umbrella on the wet bleachers in front of the Liaison planes.

  The ceiling got lower, and the visibility dropped to about one mile.

  He smiled. "She had this beautiful patch of roses out in the front yard. It was a talent of hers. She didn't tend to them that much, but what she did, she seemed to do well."

  "Did you ever fight?" Lourdes asked, to be realistic.

  "Some, yeah. But not much, and they were superficial, if you will. Mostly just working stuff out. It was a good marriage. And when she got ill- The doctor told us she had breast cancer about five years ago and it hit us like a sledge hammer. She was braver than I was. We went to specialists, but in the end, she didn't make it."

  The pain was clear on his face.

  Lourdes said nothing at all. Just held his hand.

  "We buried her in the town cemetery. I don't go there often."

  Who was this man? Lourdes wondered. How could he live his life so well?

  "I guess I kinda shut down after that. I didn't think I did, but to listen to Mike and Millie- And I trust them. They say I was shut-down, so I guess I was. I still worked, but maybe not as much."

  He lowered his head.

  "How can people like that exist? In a universe of atoms from stars, that they could come together so beautifully?"

  Jim fished his phone out of his pocket and removed the plastic baggie from it. "Let me show you some pictures?"

  "Sure."

  Jim found the album and went through a few photos, showing Lourdes Connie and their home. The next one was a warewolf.

  Lourdes gasped.

  "That's Moff Tarkin," Jim explained with a grin of relief. "They were very close, too."

  "He looks just like you said."

  "Yeah. He's a character," Jim said. "Thank you for letting me share." He put his phone back in the baggie and then back in his pocket.

  "Do you wear bib overalls? Like the classic farmer guy?"

  "Ah. I'm more like Kevin Costner in 'Field of Dreams.' Without the 'baseball men.' It's because I don't hear voices! I don't understand it! I grow corn. I miss my father. I have room. I hang out with all the other real farmers at the feed store," he said in mock exasperation.

  "Where is your father?" Lourdes asked.

  "I don't know."

  "What was his name?"

  "Handsome Stranger."

  Lourdes laughed.

  Jim told her, "He left when I was very young. Just gone one day, I hear. I don't think I even realized it until I was older."

  "What about you on all this?" Jim asked her.

  Lourdes was caught off guard by the question.

  "Well," she said, indicating to him they stroll some more.

  They got up to wander around the Liaison planes. Cute, she thought, like they expected George C. Scott to appear in full military dress with a parade behind him.

  "You already know some of it. Mom, Dad. Siblings long gone. I don't think I jell with them. I'm welcome for holidays, but I don't feel comfortable-and I don't think it's all me. Maybe they want to pretend we're fine, but they don't want to admit they're still uncomfortable with me? I don't know. But I've really been feeling, painfully, that I'm on my own in life, more than I used to realize, and more than I can stand.

  "I had Raul, a hundred years ago, and we were married, I thought we were happy, but then his family pressured him, and he divorced me."

  "I'm sorry," Jim said.

  "It was a long time ago. I've adjusted."

  "Being alone a long time can make it harder, not easier," Jim said.

  That was so true.

  "When did you get your R.N.?"

  "After Raul left. But it's not really me, inside. It's just-something to pay rent. I don't know what I want to do. I think I started playing Star Wars out of loneliness. I've shut myself off from a lot of people because it hurts to be around them. But in-game, I'm as real as anybody else."

  "Me, too," Jim said. "In that I
started playing another MMO after Connie passed-on the farm alone. Mike got me into it. Then I switched to Star Wars. And now, it's become something else altogether. I just do it now and then, but now- Mike and I have it set up on laptops- How do you play yours?"

  "I had it on a laptop, but I left it behind, too. I caved, back there, really bad."

  Jim nodded. "So Sometimes Mike and I get on there at the same time with some kind of character, on our laptops, even if we're in the same room, and fight each other P.V.P., 'Person vs. Person.' It's like a science-fiction movie, only you're in there with it. The things we do! Mike is so crazy and smart: He never tries to win, and he always wins."

  "What?" Lourdes asked.

  "Uh," Jim thought. "He knows it's all just for fun, so he has fun. I know it's just a game, but, initially, it did help save me from loneliness. And it also became a vehicle for social interaction and fun- Mike has been very good for me. Helped me."

  "You're good friends," she noted.

  "Yeah," he nodded.

  The rain diminished again, but the sky remained drizzly, dark and cloudy.

  A few other people-more than earlier in the morning-were undeterred and walked to various places. The occasional Gator drove by or some other airport vehicle.

  Lourdes and Jim saw some BT-13 "Vibrator's" they turned to go see: low wing, warbird, trainer, taildragger from the forties, Pratt "Wasp Junior" radial engine on the front.

  "The rain is beautiful to see these things in," Lourdes said.

  In time, the rain stopped and the clouds began to clear. It began to get lighter, overall. Little light gray patches began to form overhead, followed by light blue then brilliant blue. Soggy fields, accustomed to a good rain now and then, turned into lush, green lawns.

  And people materialized out of nowhere, again, to fill the airfield with enthusiastic exploration. There was more to see and do at a major airshow than almost anywhere else on earth, and in the most beautiful setting.

  They found Jim's RV-6, still beading moisture from the rains, a million tiny dust particles clinging to it, each the former nucleus of a rain drop.

  They stopped and stared at his campsight: red, low-wing plane with racing insignias all over it, small single-person tent behind the left wing, tarp over the top.

  "I think I could use a shower," he said to Lourdes.

  "And a shave," Lourdes said in self defense.

  Jim rubbed his face. "Yeah." He smiled. "Because I was otherwise engaged this morning."

  He leaned in for a kiss, but she stopped him.

  "Shower? Shave? Brush your teeth?"

  Jim gave up in mock defeat and went to rummage through his tent for supplies. "Alright. Get cleaned up. Happens to me-every month, the same ol' thing-"

  "For what it's worth, I need to, too," Lourdes said, watching Jim dig through his tent, tossing things out, like Yoda digging through Luke's pack. "Do you have individual stalls in the showers? Curtains?"

  "Yeah," Jim said, turning to look at Lourdes. "But you can't come in with me." Turning back to dig through his tent, his butt hanging out the door flap, he said, "I don't know why, but they have rules about such things. It's their loss."

  He got all he needed and stood in front of her, towel and toiletries in hand. "Don't you need some things?"

  "I have it all in my purse," she said.

  "Towel?"

  "I'm camping. I have a change of underwear in a freezer bag. I go in, shut the shower curtain, strip, clean, dress wet in clean underwear and outer clothes, put the old underwear in the bag, then go brush my teeth. I'm basically dry by the time I leave. I change clothes in the morning when I dress. I've been known to wash a top in the shower, too."

  He raised his eyebrows. "Compact."

  "For camping, it's pretty good."

  "It is. But for me? I just bring my stuff back here to the tent when I'm done."

  Fresh and clean-and clean-shaven-Lourdes and Jim enjoyed lounging through the rest of the day, eating lunch in another tent caf?, snacking on things found through the afternoon, shopping whatever was around, and playing that popular pilot game of Would I like to have that plane? every time they saw one. Which was all the time-and every make and model imaginable. As aware as both of them were of the aviation community, even combined they did not know them all.

  After the cold front, the sky was a deep, clear blue, yet a little gusty, but that didn't stop local air traffic. The sky was always filled with airplane noise: people landing or taking off or buzzing overhead.

  No matter where they went, they found people from all over the globe. Once they found people speaking German while examining a plane made in Idaho. Another time, they found people speaking French while looking at a plane made in Italy. Yet, regardless of who they were or where they were from, they were all airplane or airshow people, so they were all on a similar page, somehow.

  Lourdes had to laugh at Jim talking airplanes with a Chinese couple, because they couldn't speak English well. And Jim's Mandarin was nonexistent.

  The Chinese man was standing in a grass field, in Antique Parking, near the Theatre in the Woods, in front of an antique monoplane-box girder fuselage, small fin, wood, metal bits, covered in light cloth where it was covered at all. The Chinese man was looking alternately between his woman and the plane, moving his hands large and wide with exaggerated vocalizations to match. "PPPPPPP-ppppppp," the man buzzed his lips with a Doppler effect.

  The woman looked at him irritated. She said something back to him that sounded like rude directions to a nut house.

  The man seemed to try to explain something again, with even better buzzing.

  The woman demonstrated different hand motions.

  Jim stepped in. "Good afternoon! May I help you?" he asked of them.

  The woman turned to him and said something in Mandarin.

  The man tried it also.

  "Hi. No. Sorry. Don't speak that language." Then to Lourdes. "Do you know what language this is?"

  "May be Mandarin. I think." Lourdes addressed the couple. "Ni hao ma?" she vocalized, for how are you.

  "Hao," they said in return, continuing in a string of similar phonetic sounds.

  "It's Mandarin. I think they're Chinese," Lourdes said.

  "You speak Chinese?" Jim asked.

  "No. Just that."

  Lourdes explained to them, shaking her head. "No. I'm sorry. I don't speak Mandarin."

  Jim tried to help also. "But you want to know about the plane?" Jim made exaggerated hand motions toward the plane.

  The man shook his head yes, yes, several times-eeking out the learned phrase "No English"-and went over to indicate the outboard wing then the woman, speaking excitedly in Mandarin.

  "This plane a Bleriot," Jim told them clearly, indicating the plane while he said it. "BLER-ee-oh."

  "BLAY OH?" The man replied.

  Jim shook his head yes. "BLER-ee-oh," he said. "BLER-ee-oh." Jim then waved his hands in large motions as if indicating way behind him. "Waaaaaay from the past. OLD airplane type." He moved his hands as if indicating far behind him. "Like near the Wright Brothers."

  The woman looked pissed off and seemed to indicate so, to the man.

  The man shook his head affirmatively, more words in Mandarin, and motioned heavily in the direction of its wing-then walked to the next antique in the row, a biplane and pointed at the aileron on the wing. His hands moved up and down while he spoke in Mandarin.

  Jim looked back at the Bleriot.

  "Oh!" He said to the Chinese man. Jim held his hands up by the aileron on the biplane. "The ailerons change angle. They make the plane turn- Oh," he said to Lourdes, then returning his attention to the Chinese man, Jim held his hands up by the aileron again on the biplane and rotated them in the motion of an aileron. "Up," he angled his hand up, "Down," he said, angling his hand down. Then he repeated: "Up," he angled, "Down," he angled.

  Jim motioned with his finger for the man to follow him back to the Bleriot, wiping his hands in the air
back and forth. "No." Jim held his hands wide to encompass the entire wing, and moved his hands together as if to bring the entire wing with it. "Up," he said, moving his hands up, and then "Down," as if to move the entire wing up and down.

  The Chinese man's eyebrows went up, and he started talking to the woman in excited Mandarin, moving his hands wide. Then he turned back to Jim with his Doppler effect: "PPPPPPPPP-ppppppp!" his right hand darting off as if into the distance.

  Lourdes laughed.

  "That's right," Jim said, "PPPPPPPPP-ppppppppp!"

  Full of smiles, the Chinese couple walked on to look at other planes, talking back and forth, hands moving.

  "It's a wing-warper," Jim said to Lourdes.

  Lourdes smiled and nodded. "He noticed there were no ailerons."

  At three-thirty, the daily, afternoon major airshow began, which changed little for most people enjoying the larger part of the airshow, the million things to see along the flight line and in countless, associated tents and exhibits-except that during the show, performing airplanes tended to trail smoke that corkscrewed along with the oscillating wow-wow-wow-wow sound of an aerobatic engine. The viewing crowd loved it, and there were no bad seats. The show was up in the air; you could see it from everywhere.

  Later in the evening, they went into town to have pizza with Mike and Millie and then about six-thirty, they made it to the Theatre in the Woods. The airshow was just ending.

  The Theatre in the Woods is a fixture at Wittman Regional, set in a grove of gigantic, old Oak trees. It's a large, rough-wood-plank stage faced east with a huge steel awning stretching over asphalt flooring to protect the audience from the occasional rain. The sides are always open to let the summer breeze drift through. Equipped with lighting and sound, it makes a comfortable place for people to relax after a day on their feet trying to see everything.

  People slowly filed in from all sides at will in the open, unstructured seating. No tickets were required. There were no doors nor even walls in the audience area. It was always wide open, like the concert on the ramp.

  The four of them sat together, maybe fifty feet from the stage, on ubiquitous, padded, wooden chairs.

  "Here's some mosquito repellent," Lourdes said, pulling a little bottle from her purse. "Anybody want some?"

  "I do. They love me," Mike said.

  Lourdes sprayed his arms and neck.

  "Jim?" Lourdes asked.