Such a Rush

“Now,” Mr. Hall said. “You were telling me that you like to watch airplanes, and they look like they shouldn’t be able to fly.”

“Yeah. And that was even before I knew what I know now.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him shift, turning his shoulders toward me. I faced him too, for the first time since we’d been packed close in the cockpit. He tilted his head to one side, considering me, his weathered face impossible to read. But his voice was kind as he said, “There are lots of mistakes you can make. Pilots make them, and pilots die. Obstacles will kill you. The weather will kill you. But, as I’m about to show you, the airplane is your friend. The plane wants to fly.”

“If it has gas,” I said dryly.

“The gas is going to get the engine up to fifty-five knots—sixty-three miles an hour—but that’s all we need. Once we have air moving that fast over and under the wing, the shape of the wing creates lift. The airplane is an amazing invention. Watch.”

He faced forward. The engine moaned. We were racing down the runway before I realized it was too late to bail out.

“I’m not doing anything,” he said. Sure enough, his hands were off the steering wheel, fingers splayed, as we drew even with the Simon Air Agriculture hangar and rose into the air. “Lift. It’s all in the way this fantastic machine is constructed.”

We shot over the trees at the end of the runway and kept rising. I hadn’t realized how vast the forest was, unbroken in that direction as far as I could see. The plane slowly banked, and we circled back over the airport. I’d never realized how long my walk was from the airport office to the trailer park. I had thought it was fairly short because there were no trees or buildings marking my place beyond the last hangar, but the flat grass was deceiving. It was a long way.

Then we buzzed the trailer park. The directions of the roads and the narrow spaces between the trailers seemed different as I looked down on them. But this eagle’s-eye view was the true view, I realized. The view I’d had my whole life, at trailer level—that was the disorienting perspective. I was able to pick out my own trailer because of the position of the long metal roof in relation to the dark palm tree next to my bedroom window, which was taller than the trees around it. And the next second, when the plane had gained more altitude, I could see the ocean.

“Oh my God!” My own voice was loud enough in my headphones to hurt my ears. I had forgotten about the Chuck Yeager person who always spoke calmly. I thought Mr. Hall might reprimand me, but he just chuckled as I stared out the window.

Heaven Beach was, after all, a beach town. Other residents went to the ocean every day. I had known the ocean was there. I just didn’t get to see it very often. It might as well have been a million miles away from the trailer instead of two. And now, there it was, rising to meet the sky, dark blue crossed with white waves. I could see whole waves, crawling in slow motion toward the shore.

“Now you take the yoke,” Mr. Hall said.

Yoke. Not steering wheel. Lifting my head from the window, I put my hands on the grips and squeezed. My fingers trembled.

“You won’t kill us,” he assured me. “My controls double yours, remember? If you make a mistake, I’ll pull us out. Just do what I say, and you’ll be flying. First, for safety, we have to make sure only one of us is trying to fly this thing at a time. I’m transferring control to you. I say, ‘Your airplane.’ You say, ‘My airplane.’”

“My airplane,” I whispered.

“Press your right foot pedal—gently first, to get the feel of it. That will turn us.”

I did what he said. The plane veered away from the beach. I was flying. I was seeing everything for the first time and maybe the last. All of it at once was overwhelming. I stole a look back over my shoulder at the ocean, fascinated by this beautiful piece of the Earth that everyone else enjoyed and that was so close to where I lived, yet completely out of my reach.

We flew—I flew—over the high school, and the discount store out on the highway. They looked exactly alike, just a flat black roof, a huge rectangle with smaller squares hanging off here and there for the gym or the garden department, and silver cubes of industrial air conditioners on top. I wouldn’t have been able to tell the school and the store apart if it hadn’t been for their huge signs out front, which from the air were tiny.

Since Mr. Hall had told me to head back inland, I’d been afraid the flight was about to end. But now he instructed me to point the plane back east toward the ocean, then north. We flew up the coast to little beach towns where I’d never been. Civilization petered out and nature preserves took over, with wide rivers snaking through swamps to the sea. We flew all the way to Cape Fear in North Carolina—my first time out of South Carolina, ever. The buildings of downtown Wilmington were visible on the horizon when Mr. Hall said, “We could land and see my boys, but I don’t think they’d appreciate that. We’d better go back. I can fly in the dark, but you can’t. That’s a lesson way down the road.”

I followed his instructions and turned the airplane around, probably the widest turn possible for this small plane. When I was flying straight back down the coast again and relaxing my death grip on the yoke, I asked him, “Why don’t you see your sons more?”

“I was just kidding about that,” he grumbled. “Alec and Grayson live with their mother, and Jake is in college.”

The roar of the engine filled the cabin while I thought about what I was really trying to ask him. Finally I said, “It seems like they would be in Heaven Beach every chance they got, wanting to fly with you.”

“That’s my fault,” Mr. Hall said shortly. “I made a mistake.”

I shouldn’t have asked, and now our conversation had gone awkward. I racked my brain for something to say, some question to ask about flying or the airport or anything except his sons.

“A very, very bad mistake,” he said. “I’ve been trying to make up for it, but some things you can’t make up for.” He shifted in his seat and stretched his arms above him, which for him might have meant he was trying to escape whatever bad memories haunted him, but for me meant he was nowhere near saving us if I moved the yoke the wrong way, and I had better keep the airplane steady.

“Man,” he exclaimed, “what a pretty day to fly.”

I flew us all the way back to Heaven Beach. Then he made me say, “Your airplane,” and he took over. But he talked me through the landing, telling me every move he made and why. The plane touched down so smoothly that I knew we were on the ground only because I heard a new noise, the wheels on the runway. He let me drive the plane to Hall Aviation—taxi it, rather—and showed me how to power it down. We pushed it back into its place in the hangar.

As I was hauling the big metal door closed, I heard him say, “Well, hey there.” A middle-aged lady slipped through the side door. She was dressed in a trim jacket and wore a carefully teased hairdo, heavy makeup, and flowery perfume, like she’d just gotten off work. He kissed her on the cheek and led her by the hand over to me.

“This is Sofie,” he told me. “Sofie, meet my new student, Leah.”

“Hello, Leah.” Sofie held out her hand with glossy red nails.

I wasn’t sure what to do. My only experience with polite adults was working for them in the office for the past month, and they hadn’t held their hands out to me. I guessed I was supposed to shake her hand, which I did.

She let me go and gri

“Yes, ma’am.” Fu

“Same time next week?” Mr. Hall asked me.