SUMMARY: THE STORY SO FAR…
Josiah, a young slave 12 years of age, lives in a cabin in the slave quarters of a Virginia tobacco plantation with Auntie Bee, Mose, the plantation handyman, two young children, Randall and Emily. He notices Mose leaving the cabin in the middle of the night and follows him to his secret workshop in the woods where Mose is building some sort of strange contraption. Mose tells him it is a machine that will fly him to freedom. Now that he knows Mose’s secret, he stays to help build the flier. After mishaps, false starts and setbacks—the flier tumbles down the mountain and is seriously damaged—they are attacked by snakes—mountain lions lurk all around them—they realize someone has been spying on them and they think their escape plan has been discovered. Finally, their time has come. Now they are in the air, riding on the wings of the wind.
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SOMEWHERE OVER VIRGINIA, 1857 -- Soon we had a visitor. A shiny silk-white bird slowly lowered himself until he was sitting on the edge of the flier. He remained there, his head bobbing, eyes peeking in every direction as if he was interested in what he was seeing. He certainly wasn’t scared of us. Why should he be? We would never harm him. If he felt the slightest bit threatened he could just fly away.
Randall studied the bird seriously and crawled toward him. When he got close he started talking to the bird. I swear, it looked for all the world like the two of them were having a civilized conversation.
Randall asked the bird if he was tired. “If I was you I’d be worn out from all that flying,” he said. “Well, you can just set right there. We won’t do nothin. I promise.”
“He don’t understand you,” I told him. “Birds can’t talk.”
Randall was offended by my statement of fact.
“We making friends,” he explained. “See? He likes us.”
The bird was sitting comfortably on the wood frame, his head jerking this way and that like he was sizing up the situation, taking it all in. But he made no move to leave.
Emily was sitting perfectly still, just watching. Her big eyes followed her brother and the bird, her face beaming with delight.
“You hungry?” Randall asked the bird. “I bet you ain’t had nothing to eat for a good long while.” He reached into his pocket and pulled something out. Whatever it was he was holding, he kept it protected in a closed fist. Then he offered it to the bird.
When he opened his hand, a frog popped out. Immediately, the adventurous frog took several quick hops across the flier.
“Hey!” I jumped back, startled. I think I went about a foot in the air. Luckily, I managed to keep my balance.
The surprise appearance of the little frog was too much for Emily. She began squealing and laughing, expressing her feeling of pure joy.
“What are you crazy?” I hollered at the boy.
“The bird hungry,” Randall said.
“Birds don’t eat frogs,” I told him.
I guess the frog wasn’t taking any chances on that point. He tried to escape, making desperate hops across the bed of the flier. With one last mighty leap he went flying over the edge. We watched him fall, following his long downward journey until he disappeared into the wild brush below. We never saw him hit the ground.
The bird didn’t seem to notice that one of his fellow creatures just met his maker. He continued to sit contentedly on the edge of the flier, cleaning himself, bobbing his head and watching us.
“Birdie, you hungry?” Randall asked again. He reached into Auntie Bee’s basket and broke off a piece of cornbread.
“Hey,” I said. “That’s our food.”
“Just a little,” Randall pleaded.
The chunk of bread in his hand had already turned to crumbs. It was useless to us now.
I nodded. “Alright. Give him what you got.”
Randall proceeded to throw the crumbs at the bird. His arm motion stirred the wind and bird flew away as the bread crumbs scattered in the air. Then the bird came swooping down, catching the crumbs as they fell with several quick swipes from his beak. Then the bird rose, zooming over our heads. He circled us, flapping his wings excitedly as if to say “Thank you!” Then the bird flew off into the distance and disappeared.
He wasn’t gone long. Soon he returned with two friends. Now we had three shiny white birds flying in circles above us. One landed on the back frame near the boiler. A second bird came down and sat beside him. The first one flew off but soon the third one came down to ride with us.
They seemed happy taking turns sitting on our flier, having a rest, then flying off, fluttering over our heads for a while before settling down again.
I reached into Auntie Bee’s basket and broke off a piece of cornbread. I wondered—can they catch the cornbread crumbs in midair? Which bird would get there first? Who would get the most? Would they fight each other for the crumbs?
I reared back and tossed a handful of bread crumbs into the air.
We watched in amazement as all three birds, plunged straight down, homing in on the falling bread crumbs. Their razor sharp beaks snapped up every last piece. It was easy pickings, like pulling berries off a vine.
What a show! We clapped. We whistled. We hooted. Little Emily giggled and cooed.
The birds stayed with us, floating eagerly above our heads like they were waiting for more. I broke off pieces of bread and gave them to Randall and Emily. We threw them at once. Then we watched in fascination as the birds came swooping down to gather their tasty morsels.
We threw more bread and watched them play. We cheered them on, calling them with our own homemade bird sounds. We held races to see
which bird would get the bread first. We named each bird. One was George Washington. Another we called Andy Jackson. The third bird was a sly one. He always waited while the other two fought each other over falling crumbs. Then he would sneak in between them and gather up what they missed. This one knew how to get what he wanted. We called him Ol’ Mose.
George Washington, Andy Jackson and Mose flew alongside us for a good long time. Then the birds veered off. We were happy because our friends seemed satisfied. We knew they had plenty to eat. We watched them heading south until they were tiny dots in the distance. We followed them until they disappeared.
Surely on their way south they would pass the cliff where we started this journey with Auntie Bee and Mose. Our new friends, George Washington, Andy Jackson and Mose the bird, might just fly over the plantation. Maybe they could look down and see the slave quarters and our old cabin. For a moment, I imagined one of the birds looking down from the sky at the only home I ever knew. He could fly above the Big House. I
wondered if Auntie Bee was inside. When she comes out to do the laundry, she might just look up and see the bird.
Thinking about Auntie Bee made me homesick. I was like the boy singing, “No place like my old cabin home.” If you ever see a boy homesick worse than I was, then you are seeing a bad one.
When I was little, like Randall and Emily, every night I would lie beside Auntie Bee in our cabin. That was my place in the world. It was warm and comfortable. It was where I belonged. Oh, how I wanted to go back there. I thought, “If only I could get home and get into my mother’s bed…”
The funny part of it was she never had a bed in her life. It was nothing but a wooden board with straw thrown over it. And she wasn’t my real mother. I never knew my own mother but it didn’t matter to me. I knew that I was a child and that I was somebody’s child. I felt grander with Auntie Bee than a king on his throne.
That was when I looked up at our spinning propeller and our gurgling steam engine now flying a hundred feet in the air and decided that I had to figure a way to turn this thing around.
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I would love for everybody to read the book and let me know what you think. If you are interested, go to
www.synergebooks.com or
www.wingsfirstflight.com
Posted By: Richard Kigel
Sunday, February 26th 2012 at 8:58PM
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