Those were the first minutes I was off the ground, actually flying, and I knew right away that I loved it. My first hops were like my first minutes on a bicycle, that same startled reaction to every wobble and gust of wind, overcorrecting but then quieting, balancing easily and almost unconsciously as my body got used to the machine. And when Adrien turned me loose with the regular propeller, I was calm—almost calm—as I rose and kept on rising, soared the length of the field and out over the beach and the base of the lake, and then returned.

Each flight I went up higher, stayed up longer. Leaning into the turns happened naturally, it really was like riding a bike, and if I let my shoulders move as they wanted to move, then the turn came out perfectly. I made ellipses above the field, stretched them until I was far out over the lake, widened them to include the edge of the village. At last I saw what Link must have seen. No crowds, only a handful of friends—but the ground still sheeted away and the horizon dropped when I nosed up. I was passing a gull, I was next to a cloud. I was casting a shadow on the train and then over a patch of woods where the next Samuel hung upside down on a leaf, awaiting Aunt Henrietta.

Soon everything would turn upside down, as if the whole world had looped the loop. Flying schools would be training military pilots instead of sportsmen; Adrien would not be at the Zuyder Zee but at the naval aviation school at Pensacola; for a while I’d give flying lessons in San Antonio. Everything about flying would be different by the end of the war that, as I made my first flights, hadn’t yet begun—but still, those first flights are what I dream about.

Open House

OPEN HOUSE

IN DECEMBER OF 1919, DAPHNE INVITED HENRIETTA TO join her on a visit to the Everglades, where she planned to study the natural history of the mangroves. Henrietta, who for years had longed to visit there, wasted an afternoon imagining how they’d tromp through the slick mud, investigating the sponges and bryozoans and barnacles growing on the roots—and then she pushed that vision firmly underwater. The Volstead Act had caused such upheaval around Crooked Lake that she didn’t feel able to leave, especially not with Hester and Ambrose quarreling again. Ambrose had been sleeping above his shoe store since early summer, and Hester was more than usually despondent. Although Elaine, Agnes, and Alice were old enough now to look after themselves, they needed Henrietta in other ways, and she tried to spend time alone with each niece and to arrange pleasant outings. During the week between Christmas and New Year’s, when the Durands held their open house, she brought Alice with her.