Fields Of Gold Read Online Free Page B

I’ll be fine.” And I was. Ruby left reluctantly, but I felt fine and free sitting alone on the hill, a part of the late summer sky, at once warm and cool as a light afternoon wind blew across my face and the folds of my cotton dress while the heat of earth seeped into my body. The silky dance of the plane was even more beautiful silhouetted against a twilight sky, a poem not yet written, at least not by me. When the last rider climbed out of the cockpit, shook hands with Slim, and drove back toward town, it seemed like an instant had passed instead of an afternoon.
    I rose to leave too, but Slim came bounding up the hill toward me. “Hey, there! Eva, isn’t it? I was hoping you’d come out today.”
    â€œYou were?” I asked without a hint of flirtation in my voice. I couldn’t quite believe he’d actually remembered my name, let alone been looking for me.
    â€œYeah. I was wondering if you’d like to go for a ride. I wanted to ask you the other night, but your dad was so interested in talking about flying that I hardly got to say a word to you. And I thought”—he ducked his head and cleared his throat awkwardly, I could tell he was as unaccustomed to talking with girls as I was to talking with boys—“Well, I thought maybe you’d like to come for a ride with me. For free, I mean. My treat.” He cleared his throat again and nervously reached up to push the normally disobedient curl off his forehead, forgetting it was tucked securely inside his aviator’s cap.
    My mind was so full that nothing came out of my mouth. Slim searched my face, and his smile faded a little, “Unless you’re afraid. It really is safe, but some people are just scared of the idea. You don’t—”
    â€œNo, it’s not that,” I rushed to explain. “Of course it’s safe. Anybody can see that. I guess I was so surprised I didn’t know what to say. I’d love to go.”
    We walked toward the plane without saying a word. My heart was beating so furiously in my chest I was certain the sound of it would drown out any conversation. He reached toward me tentatively, thinking, I suppose, that he’d have to lift me and my crippled leg into the plane, but I stopped him. “Just give me a boost like you did everyone else. I can do it. I like doing things for myself.”
    He looked at me seriously as he made his hands into a stair step. “I know what you mean.”
    Â 
    Watching from the ground, I somehow never thought about being afraid, but now, as the propellor coughs and roars and the body of the plane shimmies, I am afraid, awfully afraid. Feeling my heart pound and almost hearing the blood coursing through my body, I realize that fear, some kinds of fear, are good. It makes me know I am alive in a way nothing else ever has. The plane is light and flimsy, made of wood and wire and cloth, nothing more. Somehow I thought it would be stronger, thicker, like a protecting cocoon. If anything goes wrong and we hit the ground, there is nothing to prevent injury or even death. I still want to go. I know somehow that there is something in the sky I’m meant to find. Maybe you have to risk death to find your life, your true life. I know if I stay on the ground I’ll definitely stay alive and things will go on like they always have, but I know too that if I stay on the ground, my future will miss me.
    It seems so long, so long that we run, weighted and clumsy, along the ground. It is as though gravity refuses to loosen her grip on us, and then, miraculously, speed and our defiant will, our refusal to stay pinned and helpless to the earth, breaks us free, and we rise on the fuel of our own thoughts, away from the heat of earth, up and over the fences and fields into the fresh and darkling sky.
    Suddenly my heart isn’t pounding anymore and I can breathe. For the first time in my life I can draw a full, greedy lungful of air into my