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She didn’t speak. Could have been my imagination. I sensed a half-language from her…Who are you? Where am I? Leave me alone!
Puff, it’s me! We’re alive again, both of us!
No response, not even half-language. She’s an airplane now, a machine with no recollection of her spirit, not a dream yet of what we’d lived through. Did she have a false recollection, as I had? Did she forget what she had done, to save my life?
My body had been a machine too, not remembering: What is this room? Who are you? Where am I? Can we leave now?
Her spirit had told me: “Take it slowly, Richard, till I remember,
till I know who you are.”
It took me a while, too. She’d be the same. Time, I can give her.
After a long saying of hello again, maybe my imaginations, it was time to leave. My friend Dan was silent.
“Time to go,” I said.
He nodded, slipped into Jenn’s cockpit.
For the first time, in a year, I pressed the master switch ON, the boost pump ON, the choke lever ON, and turned the magneto switch to BOTH. How did that feel for Puff?
Like nothing. She remembered being an airplane, not a spirit. Her propeller spun at once, the engine fired, settled down, the engine instruments swinging up, oil pressure, oil temperature, tachometer humming at 2000 RPM. All of this happening, but Puff was not awake as she had been before. Seemed she was an airplane.
Her instruments were calling good news. Everything’s ready.
I said goodbye to Jim, no way to tell him what he had done in our lives, how much of my spirit he had fixed with his Valkyries, while bringing Puff into sudden perfect condition. He knew. He knew.
We taxied the long taxiways to the end of the main runway. Dan lined up to the left of the centerline, Puff and me behind on the right.
Engines good, flaps down, boost pump on.
He signaled Ready to go?
I nodded.
He looked ahead, his engine coming up to full power, his airplane moving.
I did the same for Puff: full throttle, brakes off, Here we go, Puff!
Not a word from her, not from Shimoda, Lucky, Bethany Ferret. She surged ahead submerged us under the sound of her engine. I held a hundred feet behind Dan, in case Puff’s engine quit. It didn’t. She felt like a powerful new machine, everything working just as Jim had said it would.
If Puff wasn’t awake, I sure was. First flights, you expect anything to happen, that’s when you can expect something to fail. Nothing did. When Dan leveled at less than a thousand feet, I pulled the throttle back to cruise. The engine slowed into a soft quiet hum, barely a sound to be heard for the fields and rivers beneath us.
The wetlands of Florida stretched out ahead of us. There is so much more of wetlands in the state, than people-land here! Gradually I relaxed, everything I worried about was the opposite, just what I hoped to see.
Dan dropped down over a lake, “Wheels up,” he said. He was going to splash now, I’ve got five minutes flying time and he suggested that we’d land on the water.
“Wheels up,” I echoed, worried again. Slowed down, not thinking whether Puff would say a word, flaps down, double-check the wheels up, while the world rose up to meet us. The water was kind, in front of us, no birds, no alligators, just the water and us. Leveled inches from the water, eased the airplane slowly down. Hope nothing breaks apart, I thought, her first touch of the water.
Next sound, hull touching water, a little skip, and touched again. A storm of spray as we slowed and stopped, floating there. Dan and Jenn had landed first, watched us land.
Nothing fell off, thank you Jim. She taxied slowly, a boat on the lake. Then we were off again, two jungle birds launched into the sky.
I breathed. Everything was working as it should. She was a young Puff again, flying perfectly! Over and over, I thought of it. Puff’s alive! Me, too, by the way! We’re flying!
My worries wondered why Puff wasn’t talking. Not to worry. She said to give her time while she gets used to consciousness again. Airplanes don’t need to talk. This one used to chat with me, she would again. Patience.
An hour later we saw our home, a blue sheet of water, the wind quieter than it had been.
