By Air Mail Ch.03

He nodded, "Tad to my friends. But you won't get on that list if you even snicker. You won't even get on the plane out of here if you laugh right now."

Emmy-Lyn sat looking out of the window and doing her level best not to laugh her head off – just because he'd said it that way.

"What the hell kind of ten-dollar last name is that you've got?" she asked.

"Gaelic, or partway there," he smiled. After seeing her expression, he said, "A kind of Scottish with some Irish thrown in."

"I'll bet," she said, "Is it s'posed to mean something?"

He nodded, "As a literal translation, it means 'beautiful baby'.

"Do tell," she said, trying to keep her face at a slightly bemused expression.

"Can I call you Quinton?" she asked with her smile covered by her hand as she pretended to look out of the window some more.

"I think you'd better," he sighed as he drove, "It 'll probably save you from having to walk in the rain."

"What are you doing in this dump?" she asked after almost a minute.

"Business," he said enigmatically.

Emmy-Lyn forgot about his name for a moment, "Business? What the hell kind of business?

Look, you offered me a lift. I ain't never been up in an airplane before. I've never been to the airfield, either. All's I know is what I can see from the main road and that's nothing but high grass.

And you're wearing a gun, you know.

You won't tell me what you're doing here, but for what you call 'business', and I need to know a bit more before I go with you, ok? How do I know what you'll do to me once you get me out of sight of the road?"

He frowned then and looked out of the window for a moment before he turned. "I understand your uh, concern, Emily. But it's raining fit to beat the band.

You think what you said is at the top of my list in the cold, pouring rain? You think I got it that hard just to get laid?"

He shook his head, "I'm pretty sure that I can do better than hurting a girl in the rain. And just so you know, I don't DO that with anyone who isn't at least willing."

Or getting paid for it, he admitted to himself silently in his thoughts. Where he'd been the past few years, there hadn't exactly been many chances for romance. The best that he'd done was a little fucking with a few nurses and those times hadn't exactly happened more than once in a blue moon, either. Other than that, he'd had whores twice.

You just had to close your eyes and imagine that they were nurses.

He began to slow down, looking for a place to pull over next to the road and still be a little clear of the ditch so that she wouldn't fall into it as she got out.

"Here's your stop if you want to get out."

"Drive," Emmy-Lyn said flatly, "Please.

I was just asking. If I gotta fly out of this hole, then I guess I'll just have to learn to keep my big mouth shut. I've got twenty-seven bucks and change. It's all that I've ever been able to save in my life so far. Will that be good enough to take me to Pueblo?"

He downshifted and began to accelerate once more. He shook his head, "You don't have to pay me a thing. I'm going there anyway. And I'm sorry."

Emmy was looking out of the window at the tall green wall of grass going by through the rain-streaked glass, "I'm sorry too, Quinton."

She looked over, "Thank you for what you did for me.

You helped me back there and I'm pretty sure that not even the cops would have, so I'm sorry for saying what I did and I'm sorry that I didn't say thank you sooner. I'm a little upset."

"I can see that," he said.

"Look, let's just forget it. I'll take you with me at least as far as Pueblo for nothing. We'll have some time to talk and I'll tell you whatever you want to know then. Would that be alright?"

Emmy-Lyn smiled in a careful way and she nodded, "It's a deal then."

"I just need to know one thing," he said, looking very uncomfortable, "and I'm real sorry that I even have to ask, but ... well, how old are you, Emily?

I have to know, because if you're underage, then taking you anywhere could be thought of as kidnapping by the same cops who you said wouldn't help you. Between here and Pueblo there's a state line. Kidnapping a minor and taking them across a state line is a federal offense, so ..."

There was silence for a moment as Emmy-Lyn looked out of the window again. Quinton heard something, but she'd mumbled it.

"Pardon me, Emily," he said, "but –"

She turned her head, "I said twenty-one, though I haven't exactly got any papers or nuthin' to prove it. You're not gonna leave me here, are you?"

He shook his head, "No, that'll be good enough, I reckon."

He sighed to himself, "It'll have to be. Now that I've been thinking about it, I don't think that I could just leave you here anyway. You haven't told me why exactly, but I can see that you're a little hell-bent to leave.

It makes me want to know why – not out of being nosy, but it's two hundred and fifty miles between here and Pueblo, Colorado. At the speed that my plane flies, that'll take us a little less than two hours at an easy cruise.

If you tell me your story while we're on the way, well, I'll tell you about anything that you'd ever want to know about me and my 'business'."

Emmy-Lyn didn't answer right away. They'd come around a big left bend in the main road and were off on a thin rut in between solid walls of grass then as he turned off.

"Ok," she nodded, "but you gotta stop calling me Emily, if you wouldn't mind too much. I think I'd prefer just Emmy ".

He nodded smiling, "Done. Then you can call me Tad, if you like."

"So ..." she began with a smile, "I made the list?"

He nodded and for some reason, Emmy liked how it felt.

But she still decided to call him Quinton.

Then the walls of grass parted and even through the streaked windshield, she stared. The rain stopped as abruptly as it had begun.

Emmy was staring at the airplanes.

There weren't all that many, maybe only a dozen or less. But if you've never really seen one sitting on the ground before...

He drove along the flightline – which was a little easy, since there were no aircraft there which were running at the time.

"What's in the back?" she asked and when he looked over, she hooked her thumb back over her shoulder.

He shrugged, "Clothes – some anyway, blankets, sleeping bags, some food, something to drink, a medical kit, some flashlights with a box of batteries and right there under your feet are some flares in a waterproof package – I hope. A lot of it is army surplus and it's in good shape. You never know when you might need stuff like that in my business."

She threw up her hands, "There you go with your business again. "

She peered at him for a moment, "You ain't a spy are you?

'Cause if you are, you gotta be the dumbest one in the world to want to find out anything here. It's all assholes and cowshit for as far as you can see.

Anyway, all that stuff's probably pretty well ruined now, in this rain," she guessed, but he shook his head, still chuckling over what she'd said and the way that it had come out of her, "Most of it is in two footlockers, I packed them myself and I tied the tarp pretty good too. I think it'll be alright."

He pulled up at a rather large plane – to Emmy's way of thinking, where he got out and stepped over to pull out a pair of pins which allowed him to open the single door twice as wide.

"Get in, Emmy," he smiled as he picked up her suitcase, "Your chariot awaits and I need you to take what I hand you and set it inside in at least a little order. We'll set it right later, but first, I want to get everything out of the rain before it starts again."

She nodded and got out to step up with his help. The tail of the plane was lower than the front, so the floor tilted at a strange angle to her and it took some getting used to. She was amazed to be actually standing inside of an aircraft. Most of the ones that she'd ever seen, you sat in them looking out over the top.

The interior of the thing was a sight in itself. Everywhere that she could see, it was covered by a kind of darkish-green quilted cloth, like it was a little padded or something. She set her grip aside and began to help him.

He handed her a knapsack, "Be really careful with this, alright? Don't drop it or bang it, whatever you do."

Emmy reached out and took the weight of it carefully, "What's in it? Is it a bomb or something?"

He stopped and stared at her for a moment.

"Sandwiches and two thermos bottles of black coffee."

She apologized for the remark and it only took a minute or two for the rest, though she had to jump out and help him with the large ones since they were heavy and then he closed the wide part of the door and replaced the pins.

"I'll leave this open for now," he said, "but if it starts to pour again, close it until I get back."

She nodded and he was back in the truck and gone.

The wait for him to return seemed to take about a half-hour, but Emmy knew that it had been only about seven minutes before she saw him come trotting back through the rain which had started again. It was near to teeming down and she held the door almost closed as he'd asked. Even so, she wondered about him. The sky just peed down and still he came on, doing little to prevent getting more wet than just holding the brim of his Stetson. Emmy's jaw almost opened of it's own accord.

A crummy day turned worse, and he somehow managed to look more at ease and comfortable as he came on ... He wasn't even grimacing. Not that he was exactly smiling, she told herself before she told the more female part of her mind to just park and wait before she developed an interest or something stupid like that.

"What took you so long?" she asked.

He shrugged," I had to file a flight plan of some sort and I wanted to see what I could find out about the weather, the way that we're gonna be headed."

She tried not to stare, "But I'da thought that we'd be staying somewhere here for the night. You can't fly in this, can you, Quinton?"

He grinned and nodded, "I can and I will. They're not reporting anything too bad up ahead of us, but we gotta leave within a half an hour – minus about three minutes of me running back. I've flown in some shitstorms, I can tell you, though not in this aircraft, though this'll handle it. This here is nothing and there's no worse in the reports up ahead. We can do this standing on our heads."

Emmy looked down and lifted a handful of her wet dress a little, "Yeah well, I'd like it if you could avoid us having to do that if you please, Quinton."

"Of course, Emmy," He smiled, "It's only a figure of speech."They got to work with the rest. They only needed about five minutes to square everything away before Emmy started looking around. "Is there a washroom in here?"

"What do you need to do?" he asked, "Just pee, or ..."

He rolled his eyes at that point, "There's a reason why I'm asking. This isn't an airliner.

If you just gotta pee, you can run around to the other side of the plane and do it under the wing – or I can take you to the washroom in the tower if that's not it. While we're on the ground, you can't even pee inside, though there is a way once we're airborne."

Emmy was a little stuck, but then she made her admission and he closed up after them and led her to the single tallest building in sight. She was somewhat embarrassed.

"Don't worry about it, he said, "That's how I got here earlier today. I only came from over Witchita way."

She looked at him, "But ... that's not that far for a plane is it? Its' only about a hundred –"

He nodded, "I know, about an hour, but when you gotta go ...

There's no way to do that if I'm alone while I'm flying and like you, I uh ... I had to make a deposit."

Emmy wrinkled her nose, but she felt a little better if she could do what she needed now and not have to worry about asking him to ...

"Glad it's now," he smiled, "Once we're up, we keep flying until we get there."

Emmy's eyes widened but she said nothing.

When she stepped out of the washroom, she found him just coming back. "I got a fresher weather report while you were busy and re-filed our plan."

Back inside the plane, he took off his Stetson as well as his long coat and hung them up. Emmy looked around. There were five single leather-covered seats spread out over the length of the interior.

"Where do you want me to sit?" She was having a little trouble trying not to look at him.

Quinton was – to Emmy and probably most women who possessed a living heart and the will to listen to it at least a little bit – he was strikingly attractive, she thought.

He motioned her forward, "Over here. Are your clothes still really wet?"

Emmy checked with her palm, "Kinda damp, mostly. Why?"

She was still having trouble not staring at him. Tall, fairly rugged-looking, blonde ...

And drop-dead gorgeous.

Damp, she thought.

Sure.

She'd been forced to her knees at the end of her struggle with her tormenters, but before that, she'd fallen twice and gotten back up quickly in the rain but the thick, wet grass had soaked her right through and the pouring rain had gotten through her thin cloth coat. She was still soaked through and trying to force herself not to shiver.

He grabbed a large blanket and laid it over the seat that he'd pointed to, "Because I've just had most of these seats re-covered. This one is covered with canvas, so I'd rather that it didn't get too wet." He looked away in thought for a moment.

She looked away too in the other direction, just to trying to give her head something of a figurative shake. This was stupid, she thought as she forced her first impressions down. There were all kinds of things coming up in her. Her treatment at the hands of others very recently for one thing, and the way that she'd been treated by many others over all of her life to this point, for another.

The hurt that she still felt over what Janey had said and the downright cruel things that she'd been called ...

No male, man nor boy, had ever given her the time of day out of kindness other than her father.

"Look Emmy," he began, unknowingly tearing her attention out of her thoughts, "It's a little clear to me that you don't have much going for you right now. What are you gonna do when you get far enough away from Dodge City? Have you thought about that yet?"

She nodded with a bit of a shrug, "That's when the hard part starts," she said, "I'd need to find a job and a place to live, and before the last of my money runs out, if I'm really lucky." She looked down, "That part, where I run out of money ought to take about at least eighteen minutes, I reckon."

"What are you good at?" he asked.

"I can cook and do pretty much any kind of work," she said.

"I ain't afraid of work, Quinton. I was scared to death of the kind of work that my mother does when she's sober enough for it. She's a cook in a lousy place to be that. I didn't want to work there for anything."

She looked down with a slightly angry expression, "Only I couldn't find much work in Dodge City. People there take one look at me and decide that I'm not what they want. People decide they know all about me with just one look a lot of the time."

He looked at her a little searchingly, "Can you read? Can you do fairly simple sums in your head?"

Emmy looked at him like he was nuts, "Yeah I can read, and ... I guess so, why?"

"My business," he said, "I'm going to need help – and you need a job. You can start working for me right on the next flight when we leave to head north. "I'll pay you ..."

He stood thinking about it and working things out in his head for a moment, "I'll pay you seven-fifty a day to start because I'm just starting out myself. You have from now until I leave Pueblo to decide. You'll have to be able to fly along with me and I can already see that you can probably do the work. I'll teach you about everything that you'd need to know."

Emmy stared at him, just trying to digest what he was saying. "What do I have to do?"

He chuckled a little, "A little bit of everything, just like me. And I won't ask you to cook, either."

She looked at him a little carefully, "You mean work for you – in here?"

He shook his head, "Only a little and only sometimes at first. Mostly, the work is when we're on the ground helping me. Same thing happens at the other end. You'll help me load and unload. In the air, mostly, you'll just be here for the ride."

"But what about ... I've heard from some people that you can get airsick in the sky," she said, "I knew a girl whose little sister went up for a sightseeing ride at the fair one time. She was sick all over her dress, herself, the inside of the plane and everything."

He shrugged, "That's the job. I'd say that it's about like any job, you can get used to it if you try hard. It might not happen to you at all. Don't decide yet. Get a bit of air time under your belt first on this trip."

Emmy grinned at him, "For seven dollars and fifty cents a day, Quinton. I accept right now."

He looked at her a little hard, "Are you sure? We haven't even taken off yet."

She raised her hand, "I won't do nothing that's against the law and nothing ... dirty between you and me, right?"

He looked a little sad then. "You wound me, Miss Emmy."

She shook her head. "I'm not saying that I'd think that you'd try anything," she said a little apologetically, "I don't mean to insult you or anything like that, Quinton. I just wanted to get it said."

She looked at him a little curiously, hoping that she hadn't said the wrong thing out of wanting to get it straight and ...

He was smiling just a little bit.

DAMN him, she thought.

"I know," he said, the little smile turning into a grin, "I'm sorry, I just couldn't help it. You're a little .. I dunno, sweet-looking when you're so serious and laying down the law and like that."

"You can go sit on a cowpie," she said.

AND it made him laugh. GOD damn him.

He let it hang there and he didn't have long to wait before she began to frown.

He just laughed at her expression, "Never mind. I'm sure that when you get settled, you'll have loads of men hanging around you, Emmy. I was just pulling your leg there."

She suddenly looked to him to be having a bit of a hard time standing up on the incline of the flooring right then, but she recovered quickly – and she was smiling. "Seven and a half a day," she said a little to herself, "You sure that you don't want me to start right now?"

"What I want," he said, "is that you see if you think you can handle it – and I'll do my best to explain it all as we go. But right now, I want to get out of here within the next ten minutes.

I'll tell you what. I'll pay you the seven-fifty for today if we can just get going before those idiots manage to point the cops here over my pistol – and you'll have to wear one too, later on – AND I'll tell you why once we're in the air."

He stepped past her and beckoned her to follow him with his hand.

He opened one of the footlockers, "If you really want to start right now Emmy, well ok.

But the very first thing that you're gonna do – and right quick so that we can leave – is to take off your wet clothes, hang them up over here on those hangers next to my coat, and put on this set of overalls so that you'll be warm and dry for the flight. I'll tell you when you can put your other stuff back on as we get near Pueblo. There's a warm air duct right there, so I'm sure that your clothes will be at least a little dry by then."

He reached into the footlocker again and tossed her a folded towel, "This is clean. I just bought it. Dry your hair, too. Bring the towel forward with you when you're ready. Now get moving, Miss Emmy. Hear?"

She stared at him, but he'd already passed her and was on his way back to the front of the plane, "When you're ready – and I mean hurry – come back up front and I'll get you strapped in for the trip."