Free The Wings of Morning by Murray Pura Page B

think you are so easily forgotten?”
    She shrugged. “I suppose you don’t have much choice. My parents won’t permit us to see one another. So what are you waiting around for? Go put Emma Zook in your buggy and court her. She’s dying to be courted.”
    “And you? Do you wish to be courted?” Jude asked. He reached out to touch her face, but she shook her head and stepped back.
    “It doesn’t matter what I wish. You’re not the one who can court me. So you should move on to the next in line.”
    “The next in line? Are you and Emma my customers then? Am I to make each of you a set of horseshoes for your feet? A bit for each of your mouths?”
    Lyyndaya laughed and pushed on his chest. “Stop it. I shouldn’t be laughing. I shouldn’t be enjoying your company.”
    “Why not?”
    “My mother and father—we have no future—”
    “Is that really what you think?”
    “Yes…but…I…” She stopped and looked helplessly at him.
    “Is this what God tells you?”
    “I don’t know what God tells me.”
    “You don’t? Are you sure?”
    She felt heat in her face and looked toward the people picnicking in the meadow. “My parents will notice us.”
    “Very well. Then I am telling you about the fuel. What the British pilot would call petrol.”
    Lyyndaya stared at him, confused, her eyebrows coming together. “What?”
    “You see the wagon by the side of the fence? The fuel drums on it? My two mechanics eating the sandwiches and drinking the lemonade Mrs. Kauffman brought them?”
    “Yes.”
    “They came on the train with the fuel, and Bishop Zook’s son Hosea brought the men and the drums to the field with his wagon. I am going to go over to them now and ask them to top up the British officer’s tank. And mine. After all, the King’s boy has to have his moment in the sky, doesn’t he? And little John Zook, the reader of entire libraries.”
    Lyyndaya smiled. “Shall I call it—‘petrol’?”
    “Yes. Why not? And if your parents ask, we were talking about aeroplanes and fuel drums—and horseshoes—among other things.”
    She inclined her head. “So we were.”
    Jude began to walk toward the mechanics. “The truth is, I miss you, Lyyndy,” he said.
     
    Later in the afternoon, with Lt. Cook gone and Jude taking Peter King up to five thousand feet and down again, Lyyndaya wondered if Jude had really meant that, or whether he’d said it just to make her feel good. After all, hadn’t he confessed that he was confused about both Emma and herself? How did he really know what he felt about either of them? If she could see him every day, talk with him, listen to his words, watch his actions, then she might see the truth and, if he honestly felt something for her, she might become convinced of it. Since that was not possible, she would always be in doubt and never have a sense of security about their relationship, whatever that relationship might be. She prayed, but prayer didn’t make anything clearer in her mind about the two of them. Lyyndaya only knew she must obey her parents and could only hope that something might happen one day to change their minds about Jude.
     
    But at breakfast the next morning Lyyndaya’s father began to grumble about what had happened with the planes the day before.
    “Flying with those planes over the heads of our children and livestock, diving, rolling, so dangerous, he does not even think about what he is doing—”
    Lyyndaya couldn’t stop herself from bursting out, “Papa, that’s not true. As soon as those planes came after him he flew as fast as he could away from us because he didn’t want anyone to be endangered.”
    Her father shook his head and put a fork and knife to his eggs. “All part of the act, Daughter.”
    “No, Papa, it was not. He didn’t know those planes were coming. He didn’t even know who they were. He was as surprised as anyone else.”
    Her father kept shaking his head. “This is what you want to believe because you still