Suddenly the field was full of people. He’d hoped to keep this private, but he hadn’t flown in months and word that he’d gone up spread quickly. More people were leaving their houses and shops and crossing the streets, three motorboats were trailing him in the water below, everyone was charging toward the cluster of hangars on the shoreline, crowding the field so densely he could hardly find a place to land. What did they think he was going to do? Thin white clouds hung high above, while smaller tufts started moving below: wind. The machine felt heavy, but still better than last year’s tractor model. Was it his fault so many men had died trying to imitate the tricks he’d invented? His vertical glide, which the newspapers liked to call the Dip of Death. His Dutch Roll, his Figure Eight: easy for him, disastrous for inexperienced men flying machines they hardly knew. The wives wrote terrible letters to him; the newspapers pounded at him. In March he’d announced his retirement. Then (this was in the papers, too) he’d learned that a French aviator had flown a loop, which so many thought impossible. How infuriating! That was his trick, surely; who was better equipped? Within weeks he’d ordered a new machine from the factory. This one should fly upside down no matter what—but it did feel heavy, dipping in the rising wind, and he turned over the water again and headed back toward land.

Annoying to have so many people in the field. And to see, on the ridgepole of the largest tent, still more observers: Elly and Palmer, who often watched from there, with two figures he didn’t recognize. Palmer flourished his cap and reached for a girl in a light dress. Then all four figures waved. He was fifty feet above the water when he turned to line his nose up with the clear patch of field, and then he was close enough to the tent to see a girl point a camera at him. And then—