The Widdershin

Afterwards, if he thought of himself at all, he thought Widdershin, for that was the last time he’d had flesh and blood and bones, when he was whirling counterclockwise from clouds to earth.

He was “bright beyond his years.” He had a “memory like a sponge.” He must have learned the word widdershins from his grandma, who did the daily crossword in The Chicago Tribune.

His stomach had tickled whenever he’d heard his parents praise his intellect and memory to family and friends.

But his parents were long gone. His grandma was long gone. He no longer had a stomach.

1927

The first thing Ferdy saw when he opened his eyes was a dark, lumpy cloud. It filled the sky over his hammock. It spilled rain, a light sprinkle that tickled Ferdy’s face and made his shirt and shorts stick to his skin.

He closed his eyes, still sleepy from his unexpected nap. He was almost five-and-a-half  years old, way too old for a nap after lunch. But the rain felt good. It was hot for October. He rocked his body so the hammock swung, making his stomach laugh. He didn’t want to go back inside. Grandma’s house was stuffy. So maybe he’d just lie outside in the hammock until his parents returned from the talking picture.

He frowned even as the rain tickled his skin and made him giggle. He’d wanted to see it too, the talkie. He’d never seen one. He’d wanted to ride with them in the Model T Roadster to the Oriental Theater in downtown Chicago. He wanted to hear Al Jolson sing in The Jazz Singer. His dad’s boss, the bank president, was letting his parents use the bank’s car for their wedding anniversary. His parents were going to have lunch in The Walnut Room at Marshall Field’s and then go see—and hear!—The Jazz Singer.

Without him.

Mad! He was still mad. He scrunched his eyes shut even tighter, feeling again his shock when he’d realized his parents were leaving him at Grandma’s. He’d run after them as they headed from the house to the car. He kicked the car, and his dad had yelled, and then he kicked his mom’s leg, and she yelled, and then he yelled that he hated them, but then his grandma yelled that she had a surprise for him and—

His eyes snapped open. He tipped out of the hammock and raced to his grandma’s back door. The World Series! Babe Ruth might hit another home run! Grandma’s surprise was that they were going to listen to The World Series on her new radio! The game at Yankee Stadium in New York would start at 1:15 Chicago time. The Yankees were sure to win again today, game four against the Pirates, and then they’d be World Series Champs! Maybe Lou Gehrig would hit a home run, too. Gehrig and Ruth were Ferdy’s heroes, almost as heroic to him as Charles Lindbergh.

Nobody, not even Gehrig and Ruth, could ever be greater than Charles Lindbergh. Even Ferdy’s parents thought so. They’d laughed and clapped and danced a cha-cha in the parlor on the day “Lucky Lindy” made history, flying his Spirit of St. Louis monoplane all the way from New York to Paris. May 21, 1927, also happened to be the day Ferdy turned five. To celebrate, Ferdy’s dad had let him sip wine that no one was supposed to know they had. Ferdy didn’t like how the wine tasted, but he liked the three of them sitting side by side on the sofa, sipping wine together.

“I’m going to fly planes, too,” Ferdy said to his parents. “Just like Charles Lindbergh.”

Ferdy looked at the pile of birthday gifts waiting on the floor for him to unwrap. He wondered whether one of the packages held a model plane he and his dad could put together. But he was now five years old! Maybe he could assemble it all by himself!

His mom hugged him. “That would be wonderful, Ferdy.” Her breath smelled of wine. “We’d be so proud of you. Our son! A pilot!”

His dad tousled his hair. “Being a pro baseball player would be okay, too, my main man.”

“James!” his mom scolded. “Ferdy is too bright for baseball!”

“I’m bright beyond my years!” Ferdy exclaimed, his stomach suddenly tickling the way it always did whenever he heard his parents praise him like that to family and friends.

His parents laughed. “The boy has a memory like a sponge!” his dad exclaimed.

His dad’s breath also smelled of wine. Ferdy forced another sip of wine and swished it in his mouth. He wanted his breath to smell like his parents’ breath.

Ferdy barreled through his grandma’s back door and raced to the parlor where the radio was. If the game had already started, he’d be so mad!

He heard a man’s voice coming from the parlor. The voice did not crackle like a radio voice. He pushed open the parlor door.

His grandma sat in her rocker, twisting a handkerchief in her hands. Her face was wet like Ferdy’s, as though she’d been out in the rain, too.

A policeman sat in the special occasion Queen Anne chair no one ever used. He looked at Ferdy. “Son,” he murmured.

“I’m not your son,” Ferdy said.

What shocked him was the bottle of wine that sat on the side table next to his grandma. What shocked him even more was the glass of wine that she suddenly lifted to her mouth and drank. Right in front of the copper! Was the policeman here to arrest his grandma for illegal booze? Ferdy knew about illegal booze and that “the damn politicians were out of their damn minds passing Prohibition.” Ferdy knew Prohibition was a “damn shame.”

“Ferdy.” His grandma held out her arms.

“I’m not his son,” Ferdy said.

“Your Mama and Daddy are in heaven, Ferdy.” His grandma trembled. The floor under her rocking chair groaned.

“They’re waving to us from the top of the clouds,” she said. “They’ll watch over us from now on. With the angels.”

Ferdy frowned. “When will they be back? Did they see the talking picture?”

“Son,” the policeman said. “There’s been an automobile accident.”

Ferdy rushed at the policeman and kicked him in the shin. “I’m not your son!” he yelled.

Afterwards, Ferdy became obsessed with clouds. His grandma bought him notebooks, and he filled them with drawings of clouds. He drew his parents standing on clouds. He drew halos on their heads and angels floating around them. He drew big smiles on their faces. He stretched their arms in welcoming waves.

In his drawings, his parents weren’t mad that he’d kicked the car. They weren’t mad that he’d kicked his mama’s leg. They weren’t mad that he’d said he’d hated them.

At school, he never minded recess on cloudy days, especially when the clouds were big puffy cauliflowers filling the sky over the blacktopped playground. During recess, while he waited to be picked for a team, he’d lose himself in the clouds. He was usually one of the last ones picked, but when the sky was ripe with clouds, it didn’t matter. He’d look up and imagine buzzing a plane inside the biggest cloud, where he would breathe and smell and eat the cloud, then burst out strong and fierce, a superman, the savior of damsels in distress, the punisher of evildoers everywhere. And always the first one picked for a team.

Eventually, he accepted that clouds were just masses of water droplets or bits of ice. Eventually, he accepted that angels and dead parents would not be found on the tops of cumulus clouds.

1940 thru 1942

After high school, Ferdy won a scholarship to study business at The University of Chicago. His scholarship covered only tuition, so he got a part-time job as a cook at Hakleaners Restaurant on 63^rd Street. Dara Duggins was a waitress there. They lived only five blocks from each other on Chicago’s South Side, but Dara had attended the Catholic schools while Ferdy, a Lutheran, had attended the public schools. So great was the divide between “the publics” and the Catholics that they’d never met until Hakleaners. By the time the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, they’d been on six dates, and it still seemed miraculous to Ferdy that she’d picked him over Brayden Hakleaner.

Brayden was the restaurant owner’s son. He was tall and lean, ten years older than Ferdy, and afflicted with a heart murmur, an affliction he didn’t keep hidden. “It’s why,” he told Ferdy while interviewing him for the cook job, “I can’t share my chef skills. I love to cook, but my heart murmur can’t take the heat and fast pace of our kitchen.” 

Instead, Brayden did the payroll, charmed customers, and mostly supervised from a corner booth, drinking coffee and writing poems. His eyes were blue as summer sky and his teeth were white as stones. All the waitresses, including Dara, straightened their postures and flashed their smiles when he’d come in and sit in a corner booth, his curly black hair glistening in the overhead light as he bowed his head and chewed on his pencil, writing poems about his heart murmur.

But Dara had asked him, Ferdy, to take her to the movies, their first date.

Now, on a cold Saturday in January, they were sitting in Gerties Ice Cream parlor after seeing Casablanca at The Colony. They’d both cried at the end, and when Dara saw his tears, she’d grabbed his hand and didn’t release it until they’d slid into the booth at Gerties.

The waitress brought them their hot fudge banana splits.

“I’ve enlisted,” Ferdy said to Dara.

Her eyes widened.

“In eight weeks, I’ll become U.S. Naval Cadet Ferdy Ganns. I’ll report to the primary flight training naval base in Olathe, Kansas. I’m going to learn to fly.”

“Oh, Ferdy.” Dara looked down at her hot fudge banana split.

She scooped ice cream and dipped it in the little metal tub of hot fudge. Her tongue lapped the spoon like a kitten. He waited. His heart pounded.

She wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Ferdy.” Her voice trembled. His heart quivered. “In high school, I was voted the first one who’d walk down the aisle. It says that right in my yearbook! But now two of my girlfriends think they’ll be engaged before Easter! They’ve asked me to be their maid of honor! Ferdy . . . I thought . . . I thought . . . you and me . . . but, you’re leaving? You’re leaving me? Oh, Ferdy!”

Something loosened. His words poured out. He couldn’t stop them. He knew he was talking too fast, too loud. Dara was shaking her head. The spoon was clenched in her fist. Her knuckles bloomed white.

“When the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor last month and Roosevelt declared war, I knew I had to enlist. And Dara, I want to fly. I need to. I want to zoom to the clouds. There’s something magical and mysterious about clouds for me, Dara. Something transformative. Like you can go through clouds and come out different. Better. Immortal. Powerful. I mean, I know what clouds are made of. But it’s like believing in Santa Claus or an afterlife. So, I’ll be fighting for our country, and I’ll finally get up to those clouds.”

He laughed and scowled and stabbed his spoon into ice cream. “Who knows, maybe I’ll even see my parents up there, plucking harp strings with the angels.”

Dara didn’t laugh. She didn’t smile. Her nostrils flared and a tear rolled down her cheek. Her eyes looked like rain-washed emeralds.

“It’s poetry, Ferd, pure poetry, what you just said.” She pushed away her half-eaten ice cream and sobbed.

Ferdy heard himself proposing to her.

They agreed to postpone the wedding until he came back from the war.

The next afternoon they went to Marshall Fields to select Dara’s engagement ring. Under the spotlights, all the rings sparkled on their black velvet cushions.

Ferdy’s grandma was thrilled. She invited Dara’s parents over the next day for champagne and cookies.

The parlor soon became stuffy with cigarette smoke, but neither Ferdy nor his grandma complained. Smoke curled from the Lucky Strikes twitching between the fingers and lips of Dara’s parents.

Dara, seated in the rocker, chattered about bridesmaid dresses, flowers, church music. She tossed her frothy yellow hair and stretched and twisted her arm to catch the best light for the sturdy diamond glittering on her finger. Her parents, perched on the edge of the sofa—the shiny plastic-encased cushions thoroughly dusted by Ferdy that morning—were smiling, though it seemed to Ferdy that their smiles didn’t reach their eyes.

Dara’s mother inhaled her cigarette, sighed a cloud of smoke, then reached for her champagne glass. 

“You know,” she murmured, “you kids are so young. And Ferdinand will be gone for so long.”

“Maybe longer than any of us could know,” Mr. Duggins said.

His wife shot him a frown. Dara gasped. “Daddy! I would just die if I became a widow!”

Ferdy’s grandma gripped her cane and struggled up from the faded Queen Anne chair.

She limped to Ferdy who had been too nervous to sit. Her milky blue eyes misted. She hugged him tight, the top of her head just touching his chin. Her scent of mothballs and cod liver oil calmed him, as it had nearly all his life, for it had been just the two of them since he was five-and-a-half years old.

“You come back in one piece,” she whispered. “You come back and marry your girl and raise your very own family in this home. Because I’m giving it to you.”

“What?” Ferdy asked, not understanding. After they married, he and Dara had been planning to live in the attic apartment of her parents’ house, a prospect he dreaded, not because the apartment wasn’t clean and bright—it was—but because he didn’t relish facing Mr. and Mrs. Duggins’ chilly eyes every day.

His grandma limped over to Dara. Dara sat back in the rocker. Ferdy could tell she was holding her breath. His grandma’s scent did not comfort her, he knew. She looked up at his grandma, smiled, and pressed a manicured finger under her nose.

His grandma reached into the pocket of her housedress and removed one of her house keys. Ferdy could see that the key had been polished. A green silk ribbon was now looped through the hole in the top of the key.

Ferdy’s grandma slipped the ribboned key over Dara’s head. “The key to my house,” she said to Dara. “And don’t worry.” She smiled at Dara’s parents. “When Ferdy and Dara get married, I’m leaving this house. I got me a nice little room in the Lutheran Retirement Home. I put the deposit down yesterday.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Duggins exclaimed.

“That’s so sweet!” Dara cried. She bounced from the rocker and flung her arms around Ferdy’s neck. “My very own house,” she murmured. “And I know just what curtains belong on those bay windows!”

Three weeks before Ferdy was to report for primary flight training in Kansas, his grandma died. She’d been hobbling down their wooden basement stairs. Her cane caught on something, and down she plunged, breaking her neck.

The Lutheran Retirement Home returned the deposit, and Ferdy signed it over to Dara to put in their wedding account. The cousin of one of Ferdy’s professors at U of C agreed to rent the house, and the monthly rent would also go into the wedding account.

Ferdy thought he would have died himself without his grandma, except now he had Dara. He had a future with a loving wife and bouncing children. He had a future with a real family. He resolved to be careful, to take no risks, to come back in one piece just as his grandma had asked.

They’d have lots of kids. Their boys would go to the public school, like Ferdy. The girls would go to the Catholic school, like Dara. Girls need extra protection, they both agreed.

Dara promised that their first daughter would be named Ruby, after his grandma.

“Win the war for me,” she whispered in his ear just before he boarded the train at Union Station for Kansas. Her emerald eyes sparkled with tears. Her mother pecked his cheek. Her father patted his shoulder. Neither managed to look him in the eye. Behind them hovered Brayden Hakleaner. He’d driven Ferdy and Dara to Union Station. “It’s the least I can do,” he’d said, “for my best cook and my prettiest waitress.”

 Now Brayden shook Ferdy’s hand, then draped his arm over Dara’s shoulders. “I’ll take good care of her for you,” he promised, though Ferdy thought it sounded more like a threat. But he smiled and thanked Brayden.

Brayden sighed and spoke to Dara’s parents. “I wish I could be joining Ferdy, but it’s my heart murmur that’s keeping me out of the war.”

“Oh Brayden,” Mrs. Duggins said. “How sad for you.”

He shrugged. “It’s also the reason I dropped out of the seminary. It wouldn’t be fair to my future flock.”

 Ferdy saw how Mrs. Duggins looked Brayden right in the eye, her hard-angled face softening, her eyes dewing, two pink spots coloring her cheeks.

“You are a noble young man,” she said to Brayden.

Brayden shrugged. “Oh, no. Not me. It’s Ferd who’s the noble fellow. I’m just being practical. A flock deserves a healthy man of God. I believe the Lord has blessed me with this murmur because He has other plans for me.”

“The world needs good Catholics more than ever,” Mrs. Duggins said.

“Mother!” Dara exclaimed. “The world needs good soldiers more than ever!”

“Oh, yes! Ferdy, I’m sorry. Of course.” Mrs. Duggins hugged him. “Godspeed, young man.”

Ferdy boarded the train. He looked out the window as the train slowly pulled away. 

Brayden, standing on the platform between Dara’s parents, waved and shot Ferdy a thumbs up. A stab of worry hit Ferdy’s heart. 

But Dara was blowing kisses at Ferdy, tears streaming down her face, and her soft pink lips forming the magic words “I Love You.”

 Ferdy smiled and settled into his seat.

Ferdy wrote to Dara every day. He believed she would save his letters, and one day show them to their future children, so he thought of his sons and daughters as he wrote, and he filled his letters with as much detail and optimism as possible.

Such a good little plane, he wrote the day he flew his plane for the first time. It’s an open cockpit, two-seat Stearman biplane. We’ve got to learn to fly the Stearman over the Kansas plains before graduating into the fighters and bombers that will help the U.S. win this war. It hardly matters what we novice pilots do. She’s simple, sturdy, capable, docile, obedient, a clever and loyal creature of welded steel tubing, wood, and sunny yellow fabric. I hope you meet her someday.

But after a few weeks of training, Ferdy did not manage to move much beyond the basic airmanship of taking off and landing without doing harm to himself or his pretty yellow bird. Every morning he waited for Lieutenant Rowe, his instructor, to tell him he’d washed out. The other cadets in Ferdy’s training squad had long ago abandoned the ordinary loops and rolls that still terrified Ferdy. They were impressing their instructors with upside down spins, snap rolls, and inverted loops. They were flying at each other head on, breaking at the last second before impact. They were diving straight down, nearly kissing the ground before pulling out.

Ferdy did not go into these details in his letters to Dara. Instead he wrote, Don’t worry, darling. I know I’ll be coming home to you in one piece. I won’t let myself get hurt. I’m keeping myself safe for you and our future beautiful children. I’ve got my best man picked out, too. Mike Franke. He’s from Chicago, too, but the north side. He’s the best cadet pilot in the squad, and he’s engaged, too. We’re going to be each other’s best man. 

Ferdy didn’t include in the letter that Mike Franke was Jewish. He looked Jewish, with full strong lips and a nose prominent as a hawk’s beak. Mike was the only Jew in the base but the best pilot trainee. Ferdy was the worst, but Christian. Somehow, that evened things out. And they’d both been raised by grandmas and were engaged to be married to pretty girls after the war. So when the other cadets were snickering over girlie magazines or losing money at cards, Ferdy and Mike would not join in. They were saving their money and their hearts for their girls waiting back home.

Ferdy did not put any of that in his letters to Dara.

One morning, when Ferdy had been at the naval flight training base for eight weeks, training was canceled. Thunderstorms were predicted. Lieutenant Rowe notified Ferdy to report to his office before breakfast.

Ferdy found Mike. “I’m gonna miss mail call. If there’s anything for me, would you get it?”

“Only if you share the cookies inside.” They both laughed. Every week, Dara sent cookies.

Ferdy hurried to his instructor’s office. He suspected what was coming. His heart quivered.

He sat in a chair in front of the lieutenant’s desk. President Roosevelt smiled kindly at him from the wall behind the instructor.

“Son,” Lieutenant Rowe said, “you just don’t have what it takes to be a fighter pilot. You aren’t bad with regular flight, but you are too timid for what our country needs right now. We’ll be transferring you to air crew training, maybe radio operator.”

I’m not your son, Ferdy thought, but he nodded, thanked his instructor, and shook his hand. “I appreciate your honesty, sir,” Ferdy said, keeping his face solemn. It would not be right to smile, though he wanted to. Washing out didn’t matter when your future was bright with a wife and children.

He hurried to the mess hall, anxious to share the news with Mike. Mike was the only one who knew that Ferdy wanted a safer post. Mike, Ferdy knew, would be happy for him.

Mike had saved a place at the table for Ferdy. Ferdy loaded a plate with buttered sourdough toast, scrambled eggs, and bacon, and sat down. Mike was in the middle of a long joke about a rabbi, a priest, and a witch doctor. Ferdy laughed at the punch line, not because the joke was particularly funny, but because he was happy.

“Did you hear the good news, Ferdy?” Mike asked.

“You’ve got good news, too?” Ferdy asked.

“Too?” Mike smiled. “You mean you got good news during your pow wow with our esteemed Loot?”

“You first,” Ferdy said.

“After breakfast, we won’t have to run laps. We’re seeing a movie instead. Adventures of the Flying Cadets. It’s about a group of flying cadets trying to clear themselves of a murder charge while trying to stop a traitorous scientist from selling secrets to the Nazis.”

“I’ll buy you popcorn,” Ferdy said.

“So.” Mike leaned close and whispered. “What happened? You still flying?”

Ferdy smiled. “Nope.”

Mike froze. A sigh whistled out. He punched Ferdy’s arm. “I’m gonna miss you, cadet.” His eyes misted. Then he smiled. “Say, I forgot!” He lifted his napkin off the table. Underneath was a small brown box tied with twine. “I got this for you at mail call.”

Ferdy grabbed the package. He recognized Dara’s spidery handwriting on the address label. He stroked the box, thinking how Dara’s soft dimpled hands had fluttered over it.

“Probably her oatmeal raisin cookies,” he said to Mike, even though the box was too small to hold more than a handful of cookies.

Mike clapped his hands. “Open up, Ferd-man, and share with your best buddy.”

Ferdy shook the box. It did not sound like cookies. What rattled inside were things small and hard.

Ferdy opened the box.

Into his scrambled eggs tumbled the ring and the key. The key was still tied with green ribbon.

Ferdy could move nothing but his eyes. He watched Mike pluck the ring and key from the scrambled eggs. He watched Mike pull a folded sheet of paper from the box. He watched Mike unfold the paper.

Ferdy grabbed the letter from Mike’s hands. Pink roses bordered the paper. The roses trembled. Blue ink spilled into his eyes. His lips moved as he struggled to read Dara’s handwriting. He pushed his plate of food away, set the letter down on the table, and pressed his fingers into the spidery blue ink.

The mess hall vanished. He could no longer hear the voices of the other cadets seated at long wooden tables, or the clink of silverware against thick china, or the whir of paddle fans suspended from the ceiling. All he could hear was the blood boiling through his head. All he could see were Dara’s blue-inked words.

Over and over he scrubbed the ink with his short, strong nails. The paper tore, but still the words stayed.

I’ve come to love Brayden Hakleaner. We’re getting married next month at Holy Name Cathedral and moving to New York. Manhattan! Brayden is going to be the display window manager at Macy’s. Macy’s! I can hardly believe it myself, Ferd. Mama’s throwing me a bridal shower today, and she’s calling me now to tie ribbons around the party favors. Ferdy, I wish you all the best. You deserve better than me. Even Mama says so. Don’t worry. I’m not touching the money in our wedding account. It will all be there for you when you come back. You are a sweet fellow, Ferd, and I know that after the war you’ll find a great girl, probably Lutheran, just like you, worthy of your good heart. Give my best to Mike. Sincerely, Dara.

The sky far to the north boiled with the predicted thunderstorms. Cumulonimbus clouds billowed upward in the shape of a mountain. The sky over the base was still blue, and the sun bright.

It was dark in the gym. When the movie started, Mike and Ferdy rose from their folding chairs in the last row and left. No one called after them. No one seemed to notice them leave.

Mike cranked the flywheel for Ferdy. The big radial engine coughed out a gray cloud of oil, then caught with a throaty rumble as the propeller spun into a blur. Mike patted the biplane’s bright yellow skin. Ferdy shot him a thumbs up and taxied down the grass runway.

“I’ll be back before anyone knows the plane is missing!” Ferdy shouted, though he knew Mike couldn’t hear him.

Which, Ferdy thought, canceled out the lie. It wasn’t a lie if no one heard it.

Maybe he would be back. He didn’t know. All he knew was that leaving earth was the only medicine that could help him now.

He roared high, hitting the sky at 3,000 feet before leveling out.

Far ahead loomed a darkening cloud, big and forbidding as a mountain. Ferdy wrestled his stick and aimed for it.

What a dope he was. “Dope, dope, dope,” he muttered. He felt his voice, but could not hear it over the engine’s raging throb.

The cloud swelled as he thundered towards it. He gunned the engine. The needle shot to 95 mph. Wind whipped under his helmet and goggles and bit the cotton pads right out of his ears.

Without the cotton pads, the engine’s throb attacked and blasted holes into his sorry thoughts.

Sun blazed, steaming the biplane’s yellow skin, dazzling his eyes, and, despite everything, thrilling his heart, so that, finally, it no longer mattered that Dara Duggins had broken it. It no longer mattered, roaring 3,000 feet over Kansas farmland, that the diamond engagement ring he’d slipped on her finger just four months ago was now inside the pocket of his brown leather jacket. The house key was there too, still tied with the green silk ribbon. His grandma had picked the ribbon, she said, because it matched Dara’s green eyes.

If he could just stay in the sky, cocooned inside his noisy yellow bird, the promise of the big cloud always just ahead, he’d be fine. The stings and insults 3,000 feet below would not hurt him.

“Yee hah!” Ferdy screamed into the wind. “C’mon, girl!” He pushed the stick forward and right. The sturdy little biplane obediently accelerated and climbed higher, so that it was now dead center of the big cloud. The cloud filled the sky ahead, a mountain of smoke.

Such a good little plane she was, his open cockpit, two-seat Stearman biplane.

There was one maneuver the hot-dogging cadets had never done.

Today, Ferdy would do it.

The Stearmans had no radio or electric systems. They had no turn and bank indicators. They were not fitted for night flight or instrument training.

In the Stearmans, Ferdy had written to Dara and their future children, we are birds. Our eyes, ears, and brains are our only navigation aids. So we have to stay out of the big clouds. Isn’t that a pip, Dara? When I was a kid, I wanted to get into clouds. Now I’m flying, but we’re supposed to stay out of clouds because anything that obscures the ground or horizon deprives you of your sense of when your plane is level.

Ferdy gripped the stick. “Well, fuck all that!” he shouted into the wind. “Today, my girl, we’re eating a cloud!”

He was nearly there. He stuck out his arms. The prop blast tore at his hands and clothes. He opened his mouth and inhaled the power of the air holding him aloft.

He screamed, triumph and joy, fear and exhilaration, blasting every thought and breath from his body. An ocean of soft smoke swallowed him. The world vanished.

Ferdy saw nothing but gray. He felt nothing but wet cold. He heard nothing but his yellow girl’s throbbing engine and the wind plucking the struts and rigging like a harp. He smelled nothing but oil, wind, and his own sweat.

His hands jerked the stick, twisted it, turned it, wrestled it. The engine stumbled, hiccupped. He forced himself to hold the stick motionless, rudder frozen, until eternity ended, and he could escape the belly of the cloud.

It was not the way he’d imagined it would be.

Blood thrummed his head. A gap opened in the cloud. He looked down, but instead of brown and yellow plains, he saw sky. He was looking down at blue sky! Panic whacked him, right in the gut. Scrambled eggs and bacon, sour with stomach acid, lurched up his throat.

The harness pressed viciously into his shoulders and around his fluttering belly, choking him. He fumbled at it, trying to escape its choking squeeze. When the harness suddenly snapped apart, flapping away from him, Ferdy experienced a blissful moment of relief.

Then gravity yanked him from the open cockpit. His body slapped into the wings. He grabbed at the slender struts bracing the plane’s upper and lower wings. His gloved hands caught a strut and squeezed. He thought of Dara’s slender neck. His hands squeezed harder, held fast, despite the wind tearing and pulling his body.

Down they twirled, counterclockwise, the plane and Ferdy, down, down, down, whirling, Widdershin, back to earth.

1950

Hidden in a field of corn, the Widdershin watched his biplane buzz overhead. Fluid sprayed from her wings as she crawled only five feet over the tops of corn.

Not much higher than a friggin’ pigeon, the Widdershin thought.

He’d been delighted when she’d been put back together. It seemed like they’d stayed a long time in a dark, drafty warehouse, the mangled pieces of the biplane and the Widdershin. Then men in coveralls came. They put her back together, gave her a new, tougher Lycoming engine, added high-lift wings, squeezed a hopper into the forward cockpit.

Thinking of that now, the Widdershin wrinkled with disgust. All that work, and for what? His plane wasn’t training brave men to fight evil. She wasn’t soaring where angels sing. She wasn’t bucking and writhing through vicious turbulence.

No.

The sun was setting. It stroked gold from the plane’s yellow body, making her grimy skin sparkle against the purpling sky.

In the setting sun, the biplane once again looked noble and proud.

But the Widdershin was not comforted.

It’s the same way, he thought, that the right lighting can soften a vixen’s quarrelsome wrinkles, and spot-lit engagement rings can look desirable against dark velvet in a department store glass case.

The Widdershin remembered spot-lit rings in department stores and traitorous vixens disguised as loyal, pretty girls.

The Widdershin was hungry, insatiable his appetite had become, for what he didn’t know. Not food. He had no stomach. But ever since the farmer had started dusting fields with pesticide, the Widdershin felt agitated, agitated and empty and ravenous.

The plane lumbered closer to where the Widdershin crouched, its engine cleaving air with a raging snore.

The Widdershin opened himself as the biplane sprayed overhead. The spray roiled the eddies of wind raging inside the Widdershin .

The plane buzzed away over the fields. The Widdershin followed, twirling counterclockwise. He gusted over the plane. He saw the pilot. Acne on the pilot’s cheeks. A shaving cut on the young man’s chin. A gold cross around his neck. A faded blue jacket over drooping shoulders. A bored, defeated dullness in his eyes.

The Widdershin smacked into the belly of the plane. He spun her up, up, up, until she was soaring higher than even the eagles.

The pilot’s scream cut through the biplane’s roar. The Widdershin shot above the plane. Tears streamed from the pilot’s eyes. His cheeks bloomed pink. His posture snapped straight as he wrestled the stick.

The Widdershin caught the plane as it spiraled down into the field of young corn, flaring it perfectly, adjusting her from the nose-down attitude on final approach to the nose-high attitude at touchdown.

The pilot stumbled from the plane, fell to his knees, and kissed her grimy yellow skin.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” the pilot murmured.

The Widdershin settled into the corn field next to his plane. The winds inside him puffed gently as a grandma’s breath. When the pilot staggered away from the plane, the spot where he’d kissed her looked clean and shiny.

The Widdershin felt peace. Though he had no eyelids to close, he drifted into the plane’s belly and slept.

1993

Hidden in the blue stem prairie grass that surrounded the airfield, the Widdershin, with his powerful sight, watched a tall, thin man and shorter, slim woman approach the biplane.

Large black letters tattooed the biplane’s yellow body: 

BiPlane Fun Adventures

Brookeridge Airpark, Downers Grove, IL

The woman climbed into the front passenger cockpit. Instead of squeezing in with her, the man shook the pilot’s hand and climbed into the aft captain’s seat. The man and woman both wore brown leather jackets. The man’s hair coiled from his head in silver curls. The woman’s hair puffed white as a cloud.

Her eyes were a faded, cloudy green.

The pilot gave them dark goggles and blue cloth helmets, which they pressed over their hair, so that now they looked almost young.

The Widdershin had watched many people perch in the front cockpit and soar high in the pilot’s capable hands from the aft captain’s seat. Sometimes the more adventurous passengers screamed with delighted terror as the plane performed barrel rolls, hammerhead stalls, and loops.

The Widdershin wondered whether the white-haired couple would be adventurous. There was something disturbing about them. The Widdershin did not like their aura. Winds stirred deep within the Widdershin.

The Widdershin had waited inside the dusty barn with the retired biplane for a long time. Then men in coveralls came and hauled the plane to a hangar on this airfield. More men tinkered and removed things and added things and cleaned and painted. The biplane once again looked noble and proud.

Sometimes banners were towed by the plane. Happy Birthday Norman. Luelle Marry Me Frank. Sometimes marriage proposals happened during sunrise flights over sparkling lakes. Sometimes passengers would fill the Ralphie bag on flights that jounced and bounced in light chop, and then they’d want to do it again.

The Widdershin watched. Occasionally he spun underneath to catch the plane in a pleasing updraft, or twirled to counteract an annoying headwind.

The Widdershin thought the plane was leading a good life, arcing into the blue sky, making people happy. Making the Widdershin happy.

Until today.

There was something about this tall man with silver coils of hair and this slim woman with milky green eyes and a cloud-puff helmet of hair that disturbed the Widdershin. And now the silver-haired man was going to be piloting the Widdershin’s sweet yellow girl.

The plane soared high, the regular pilot standing in the airfield, waving, the Widdershin trembling from the tall prairie grass that bordered the airfield, the grass whipping wildly around him.

The Widdershin watched. A banner unfurled behind the biplane. The Widdershin suddenly understood. Over and over he absorbed the words on the banner.

Hakleaners Restaurant Congratulates Dara and Brayden – Married 50 Years!

The Widdershin sprung up, up, up into the blue sky. He zoomed toward the biplane. Inside him, winds raged, demanded release.

He smacked the plane’s belly hard. The engine stumbled, just a hiccup, a moment of dead sound. Then down the plane screamed, or perhaps the screams were ripping from the throats of the silver-haired man and the green-eyed woman.

The Widdershin spun into the man and woman. Harnesses unsnapped, flapping away. The man and woman fell from the plane. The Widdershin caught the empty plane as it spiraled down. He flared her perfectly, adjusting her from the nose-down attitude on final approach to the nose-high attitude at touchdown.

Together they rested in the field of tall blue stem prairie grass. The Widdershin felt peace. Though he had no eyelids to close, he drifted into the plane’s belly and slept.

1999

The man striding across the museum’s gray tile floor was old but with the posture of a young man. His gray hair, close-cropped as a general’s, reminded the Widdershin of a cloud just before it turns fierce, the same silver power. Over full lips, the man’s nose jutted like a hawk’s beak.

Every evening, when the museum emptied of people, the man walked alone until he stood underneath the biplane. Every evening, the man looked up and saluted the biplane.

There were no clouds inside the museum, and no windows inside the vast, high-ceilinged room. The Widdershin could no longer remember how many seasons he’d been trapped inside the coldly lit museum. He missed birds, sun, the currents of wind, snow, and rain, but he could no more leave his biplane than the shore can leave its sea.

The biplane hung from the museum’s ceiling, 46 feet over the floor. It was literally just a shell, incapable of flight, its guts sucked out, engineless, tankless, the propeller replaced with silver-painted plastic.

The Widdershin spent his day floating through the museum. Sometimes he whirred through the hair of blondes or spun dust into green eyes. Sometimes he slammed doors or blew papers off counters.

One day, bored, he surrounded the biplane. He made it rock and sway from its wires. People below looked up. Children squealed. Adults yanked them away and shouted for security.

Men in coveralls rose in cherry pickers to the biplane. They prepared to bring the plane down, dismantle it, store it in the dark bowels of the museum.

But the hawk-nosed man with storm-gray hair said no.

So the workers merely tightened the wires and left the plane alone.

The hawk-nosed man seemed to be the boss. Most days he sat in a huge office on the museum’s top floor. His desk faced windows overlooking Lake Michigan and the downtown Chicago skyline. He talked on the phone and clicked on his keyboard.

The Widdershin liked to be in the office with the man. The Widdershin always stayed very still in a corner, enjoying the view outside the window and the strangely comforting aura of the man.

One morning the man’s phone rang. “Hey, doc,” the man said. “No. I don’t want to come in. Just tell me. Just tell me now.”

The man listened. The Widdershin watched the man’s face collapse, his eyes mist. “Thanks, doc,” he said. He hung up the phone and sat a long time at his desk, staring out at the lake.

The man’s phone rang again. “Hi, Sweetheart,” the man said. “Everything’s good, the doc said. Just need to get the blood sugar down a bit, he said. Highish numbers can sometimes cause a bit of brain fog. No biggie. But no more of your cookies and pies for me for a while, I guess. No worries, sweetheart. Love you. See ya later, alligator.”

The man ended the call. Then he cried.

The Widdershin did not push the biplane anymore. He did not want it to be dismantled and buried in the museum’s dark basement. But he continued to blow through the museum. People started to say the museum was haunted. Attendance skyrocketed, but this did not make the man with storm-gray hair happy.

“People are looking for ghosts, not at our exhibits,” he said, and he refused to authorize any more overnight campouts in the museum for scout troops or church groups or even celebrities celebrating birthdays or anniversaries.

One night after the museum had closed, the man with storm-gray hair stood under the plane a long time without saluting it as he normally did.

“Ferdy,” he said.

The Widdershin had been coiled in the aft captain’s cockpit. He stretched and floated over the wings, looking down at the man. The Widdershin had not heard that name in a long time. The winds trapped inside him shook.

The man began to speak. “I want to let you know, Ferdy. I’ve been the one all these years making sure your plane didn’t get junked. I always felt it was my fault, you going out like that. Shouldn’t have happened that way, Ferdy. Shouldn’t have.”

He sighed and began walking circles under the plane.

“But the fact is, now I got dementia eating my brain. Early stages, the doc says. PET scan shows protein plaque building up in my brain. Mild cognitive impairment, the doc says, but I hid things from him, cognitive hiccups, hallucinations and such. So I know it ain’t so mild. And that’s not the way I wanna go. That’s not the way I want my sweetheart to know me. Almost 55 years we’ve been married. Five kids. Ten grands. And our first great-grand on the way. You should’ve had those blessings, too, Ferdy. My fault you didn’t. I let you get into that plane all those years ago when I knew, I knew, you were too upset and angry to be flying that bird. ‘Specially with that thunderstorm predicted. So I want to let you know. We’re going to display your plane outside, in the new flight pavilion. She’ll be tied down, but we’re gonna put in a seven-cylinder Lycoming, and a fuel tank, and we’re gonna give her real propellers.”

He froze, clenched his fists, and looked up at the plane. “And then you and me, Ferdy, we’re gonna take her home.”

The Widdershin trembled. The plane swayed. The man saluted the plane and slowly walked away.

2000

The sun was not yet rising over the horizon, spilling gold over Lake Michigan, when Mike Franke gunned the engine and zoomed up over the lake. Mike flew in circles over the lake until the tank ran dry, and the engine stumbled, burbled, and hiccupped.

The Widdershin caught the plane as it spiraled down, flaring it perfectly, adjusting her from the nose-down attitude on final approach to the nose-high attitude at touchdown.

For a moment, the plane rested on the calm lake as though the lake were solid as a runway. But then slowly, steadily, she sank, her bright yellow skin disappearing into the water like a setting sun.

The lake was quiet, smooth, brightening as the cloudless sky brightened.

Then a curl of smoke rose from the water where the plane had sunk. The smoke drifted up, slowly, gracefully, spinning counterclockwise, up, up, up into the sky, where they coiled, widdershins, into a small white cloud.

There they waited.

©2025 Marie Anderson

Marie Anderson is a Chicago area married mother of three millennials. Her stories have appeared in dozens of publications, most recently in The Bloomin’ Onion, Raven’s Muse, Epic Echoes, Third Wednesday, and The Mersey Review. Since 2009 she has been leading and learning from a writing critique group that meets two Wednesday evenings every month at a public library in La Grange, IL.