Calico Pennants by David A. Ross

think a great deal of you, but on a flight one hundred eighty pounds of gasoline might be more valuable.
    GP: You mean you prefer one hundred eighty pounds of gasoline to one hundred eighty pounds of husband?
    AE: I think you guessed right, GP.
    To her chagrin, such contrived farewell scenes were always conducted in public view, and she always delivered her lines on cue, without spontaneity or conviction, and feeling as though she’d been made to face too many lenses. Over time George Putnam’s publicity effort had managed to remake her into some sort of weird icon, but her unwavering self-confidence had given her determination, and not even GP’s unflagging attempts at control and manipulation could put a crack in that foundation.
    Her thoughts turned to her longtime friend and confidant, Eugene Vidal, a high-level administrator in Roosevelt’s Commerce Department.
    “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to just go off and live on a tropical island?” she had once fantasized to him. She had then described in intricate detail how one might meet the challenges created by such a self-imposed exile.
    Of course Vidal knew her well—perhaps even better than George Palmer Putnam—and he acknowledged that if any woman could survive the solitary, Spartan challenges of being marooned, surely it was she. Time and again he’d witnessed her singular focus and practical work ethic guide her over untried tides and currents, as famous aviatrix, a pacifist, and a feminist. What’s more, it had always seemed to her that Gene was intimately aware of the other side of her personality—the side that was whimsical and dreamy, and seldom expressed.
    “You see anything yet?” Noonan asked, breaking her connection with the past.
    “You kidding? In this fog it would be impossible to spot San Francisco, let alone Howland Island!”
    “Anything on the short wave?”
    “Nothing but static.”
    “We need to begin constructing a grid,” Freddy advised. “We must be in the vicinity, so it’s only a matter of dividing the area into sectors.”
    “It’s a big ocean, Freddy,” she said.
    “How much time?” he asked as she banked right to begin the methodical search.
    “Twenty minutes or so.”
    As her eyes moved over the endless water, her thoughts again turned to Vidal. The evening before the flight had commenced, they’d stood on the tarmac together, talking. “What with the false start in Honolulu, and all the subsequent preparation, I’m exhausted,” she’d confided to him. “Right from the beginning our financial backers have been putting on the pressure. I’ve decided that this is going to be my last record-breaking flight, my swan song. You know, Gene, sometimes people just get tired of their own legends.”
    “What would G.P. say if he heard you talking like that?” he’d asked.
    “Of course he’d say to me, ‘Always think with your stick forward, darling!’ But lately I’ve begun to feel as if I’m mortgaging the future.”
    “You’ll pull it off. You’ve got to do it,” he reassured. “And what are futures for, anyway?”
    “Gene, the truth is that you’re only worried about the prospects of the Ludington Line should I fail and be swallowed by the deep blue ocean.”
    Unable to take her sarcasm seriously, he feigned a laugh and put his arm around her shoulder as they walked slowly toward the Electra’s hangar. “When it comes to the future of commercial aviation, your influence is going to be crucial,” he told her. “But you’re more important than that to me. To all of us!”
    “Maybe to you, Gene. To George? I’m not so sure. I’ve never really been sure.”
    Flying north to south, then back again, she created the grid that her navigator had suggested. The delicate weave of her pattern attempted to leave no area uncovered. Clouds and fog gathered below, threatening to engulf the plane. Again the pilot leaned into the stick, this time taking the Electra all the way down to five hundred feet. “I