Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (latest books to read txt) 📗

plane he’d used to set his speed records. She needed it. The H-1, made of wood and aluminum and built for speed and maneuvering, bore no resemblance to the heavy steel planes, some with armor plating, she’d flown in Europe. “Take all the time you need,” Hughes told her condescendingly. “I don’t want any excuses afterward.” He knew she would lose, but wanted a good showing by both planes, which could lead to more contracts for Hughes Aircraft, especially the D-2, the interceptor he was trying to sell to the army air force.

They brought Jack Smith down from the Times to act as official starter and flip the coin to see who flew which plane. Looking for idiosyncrasies, Maggie had flown both during her practice runs, finding nothing to separate them. They weighed the same, maneuvered the same and both speeds topped out near 350 mph, far faster than anything she’d ever flown. She’d been over the course four times, twice in each plane. With the planes equal, the pilot would determine victory, like the better jockey on horses of equal speed, the one who knows the animal, knows the track, knows the turns, knows the opposition, and, in the case of planes, knows the winds. Hughes had the advantage in knowing the planes, but as far as she knew had never flown the course—the attitude of someone who didn’t need to practice.

They’d picked mid-July when school was out and children could be brought to the field by moms whose husbands were away at war. Flags flew, hawkers hawked, spectators crammed the ropes around the bumpy grass runway, the press kept cameras snapping and rolling and microphones stuck in the face of anyone with an opinion on female pilots. Dressed in soft helmets, dark flight suits and boots, the fliers resembled each other except for their heights.

Maggie looked closely for Movietone News, which made the newsreels shown between features of movie houses across the nation. For two months she’d lost no opportunity to remind people that this was a race to show that women could fly planes as well as any man, including the great Howard Hughes.

“How can you beat the man who holds all the speed records?” a reporter asked her.

“It’s one thing to race against a clock, another to face an opponent.”

“Even when the opponent is a woman?” said the reporter.

She stifled a rude reply. Hughes claimed women were too emotional to make good pilots. She wanted these reporters on her side. As they prepared to climb aboard, she noticed the windsock pointing southeast, hard off the ocean, a headwind of thirty knots, stronger than during any of her trials. It would be slow going out but coming back they would shoot through the sky like missiles.

They took off in tandem, dead into the wind, flying low, moving up for less resistance. Altitude was important but they’d agreed to stay under two thousand feet so spectators on land and water could follow the race. They flew side by side to the coast, veering southwest toward the island, wings never more than fifty yards apart, Hughes waving and smiling from his cockpit, Maggie ignoring him. Below, the seas were choppy with winds filling the sails of yachts put out to follow the race. The course was set for Seal Rocks on the southern tip of Catalina, where they would clear the first race marker, and Land’s End in the north and the second marker. After that, it would be the race of the swift back to the mainland. The final marker was at Turtle Rock southeast of Santa Ana, where they would turn back into the wind for landing.

Five miles out, Hughes took his plane to two thousand feet and pulled ahead. She moved up with him, and he came down, luring her into his wake. Higher altitude meant less resistance, but also meant using more time to climb and descend. It was a matter of geometry and wind resistance, but also of intuition. She tried to put his plane out of her consciousness and fly by what she remembered and felt in her hands, but he was always there in her peripheral vision, like an annoying wasp that would not leave her alone.

Catalina was in view from the beginning, a large aircraft carrier of an island, getting bigger each minute, its distinctive marks—Avalon Bay with the casino, the sands of strange Isthmus Cove, rocky Mount Orizaba at two thousand feet and Silver Peak in the north—slowly coming into focus. Turning northwest at Seal Rocks she lost him briefly, hoping he was behind, suspecting he’d gone higher, not sure where he was. At Land’s End, turning dead east, he was suddenly on her tail like an enemy fighter, higher, faster, coming straight at her and with machine guns would have had her, but she shot up into lighter air and suddenly was ahead.

Not for long. As they made the turn around the island and caught the tailwinds that would carry them back to the mainland, he’d gone higher again and had a half mile on her. She had no idea what he’d done, somehow found the air currents. They were two-thirds of the way and flying like the wind and though he was higher and had to come down farther, she knew at that moment that she would not catch him.

Keep it close, keep it close, she told herself, pushing the plane to 360 with the tailwinds and feeling a thrill of flying like she’d never felt before.

When they passed the final marker at Turtle Rock and began to turn back into the wind she’d closed to a quarter mile. She’d outflown him on the return! They both landed under thirty minutes for the run with spectators cheering and cameras rolling as they climbed from the cockpits and shook hands. He pulled her into an embrace. Never had she felt such exhilaration! At that moment she was in love.

She had won by losing.

The following week she