The Game of Love and Death(24)

The first line was secured. The ship bounced on it, and the ground crew raced for the second line. The air shivered, and overhead, the cloud-bruised sky continued to darken. Then, on the upper edge of the great ship, the chemical-soaked cotton cloth that had been stretched over the zeppelin’s aluminum frame fluttered. The movement was small enough that it might have been some trick of the failing light.

It was anything but. And in the helter-skelter thirty seconds that followed, the ship was gone, swallowed by a mouth of fire that ate its skin and turned its metal skeleton into a pile of twisted, glimmering red bones. Lashed to the ground, the wounded ship writhed. The screaming from all quarters was intense. Death watched the ravenous flame, another for Love to get sentimental over, no doubt.

Death plucked the rising souls like flowers, decorating her mind with the residue of human experience while the fire lit and warmed her face. Hungry, she searched for the captain through the smoke and flame. His life’s essence would be infinitely satisfying at a time when she needed all the strength and comfort she could get.

She walked the length of the scene looking for him, worrying he’d been consumed too quickly to be noticed. As she turned to leave, disappointed, she sensed something behind her. She stopped walking and peered over her shoulder, which was dusted with still-warm ash. And there he was, the burnt skin on his face smoking in the glow of the fire. He was trying to go back on board so that he might save a few more hopeless souls.

It would taste splendid to kiss that face directly, to feel the heat and ash on her lips, to inhale the heartbroken entirety of him. She was about to set upon him when his first officer lurched forward and pulled the captain away from the wreckage. He struggled and then collapsed on the ground. Alive! He would be scarred inside and out. But he could live, so she let him.

She would catch up to the captain later; she preferred to, in fact, when he would be seasoned in the bittersweet brine of survival.

Meanwhile, she had a train to catch.





FLORA was cooking breakfast when her grandmother held up the morning paper.

“My merciful heavens,” Nana said. “Did you see this?”

Flora glanced at the headline. HINDENBURG BURNS: 35 PERISH.

“May I?” Reading over Nana’s shoulder as sausage sizzled in the pan, Flora read about the accident that had occurred two days earlier. No one was certain what caused it, although several commenters were happy to suggest it was God objecting to human incursions into the heavens. She doubted that. Sometimes, bad things happened for no reason. The deaths of her parents, for example.

A photo of the zeppelin the moment after it caught fire sickened her, though. It was no stretch for Flora to imagine the terror people must have felt with flames racing toward them as they hung some fifty feet in the air, suspended by an explosive gas.

“I worry about you in the sky like that.” Nana accepted the plate Flora offered. It was Saturday morning and she was still in her housecoat, as was her tradition. So was their breakfast of cinnamon French toast and fried sausage.

“I’m not flying a zeppelin,” Flora said. She bit into a sausage. “I stick to the airplanes.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Nana said. “Airplanes, blimps. All the same thing, taking over God’s blue sky.”

Flora swallowed. “If God felt that way about the sky, we wouldn’t have all those birds.”

“God put birds in the sky,” Nana said. “He did not put man there. Or girls. What if this article is right? What if God doesn’t want you to do what you’re doing?”

“If God didn’t want me to fly,” Flora said, reaching for her coffee, “why on earth would God have made me want to fly so much?” She took a sip of coffee and it felt fantastic on her throat, soothing and invigorating at the same time. She was so glad Nana had finally given her permission to drink it. “I’m not going to die in a plane, Nana. I promise.”

Nana pushed herself away from the table, tipping her nose up the way she did when she was feeling ignored. “Those are not the kinds of promises a girl can rightly make, Flora. You keep your humility about you or it will kill me from worry.”

“I’m sorry, Nana,” Flora said. She held out her hand and Nana took it, giving her three squeezes. I love you. Flora returned four squeezes. I love you more. “I’ll wash the dishes, Nana. You sit down. Put your feet up.”

She couldn’t help but worry; her grandmother was getting shorter of breath every day, it seemed. And she was forever rubbing her swollen ankles. She never complained, but Flora could tell they gave her pain.

“We’ll wash up together,” Nana said. “Many hands make light work.”

“Sit, Nana. Please,” Flora said. “I can’t eat if you’re not resting.”

“Just a minute.” Nana opened a cabinet and pulled out a canister marked SUGAR. She reached inside and pulled out a wad of bills, mostly small denominations that had obviously been saved over a long span of time.

“Do you really want to fly?” she said.

“More than anything.”

“Then here. Let me help you. I know it’s not all you need, but I do believe a girl needs to follow her heart.”

Flora interrupted. “No, no. That’s your money, Nana. You might need it.”

Nana sat and Flora could hear the wheeze in her lungs. “It’s for your dreams. Those are what I live for.” She set the money on the table. “That is all I have to say about it.”