“Are you quite done?”
“No, I’m having fun.”
“Well, that’s all that matters today, I suppose.”
We flew in silence for a while until she buzzed right past the bridge that marked our usual nav point to turn toward the farm. Instead she started climbing for altitude.
“Uh… where are we going now?”
“We’re down to half a tank. Thought maybe we’d go refuel.”
“Absolutely not!”
She started laughing.
“You mean you don’t want Bi-Plane Pete getting an eyeful?”
Bi-Plane Pete was the retiree who ran the refueling station at Front Royal-Warren County Municipal Airport, where we usually gassed up. He was harmless enough, but he also clearly liked to ogle me and Jill anytime we were there. I wasn’t about to let him leer at me in as little as I was wearing.
“No ma’am, I do not.”
She giggled again. “Fair enough. You boss me around plenty when you win a bet, but you’ve never made me do anything that’s made me uncomfortable. Or at least, made me uncomfortable in a manner I didn’t like.”
“Thank you,” I said, not just a little relieved.
“I would like to go practice a whirly-drop though, if you don’t mind.”
I thought about it. The wind had been out of the east all week, so I’d be on the side of the aircraft away from the hangers and fueling station. I looked at our fuel gauge and did some math in my head. We had enough gas for what she wanted to do, get home and still be able to come back tomorrow and fill up.
“Only if you call it the right thing.”
“I can call it whatever I want. Today is my day after all.”
“I guess I’ll let it slide this time.”
I always insisted Jill use the correct terminology for everything when flying, even though she liked to make up her own nicknames for things.
As we approached the airport, she circled around to line up with the runway, swiveling her head to look for traffic. There were no planes on the ground taxiing for takeoff and we didn’t see any in the pattern for landing.
“You mind doing the announcement for me, my love?”
“As you wish,”
But as I reached for the stick she said, “Don’t forget, I’m doing a whirly-drop. Make sure you call it that.”
I pulled my hand back. “Seriously?”
“It’s my day.”
“Fine.” I reached out and lightly rested my hand on the stick so as not to interfere with Jill’s flying, then pressed the transmit button.
“This is NZ4077Z, in the clear over Front Royal County Airfield. We are commencing a whirly-drop exercise, otherwise known as an auto-rotation, on runway one-zero.”
“Cheater,” Jill said, a smile in her voice. Then she twisted the throttle to cut power to the engine and we started dropping quickly.
I kept my eye on the gauges and Jill’s hands, but there was no need. She expertly used the air coming up through the blades as we fell to keep them spinning, fast enough to slow our descent but not so fast that the rotor would fly apart. The radio crackled in our headsets.
“4077, what was that you said you were doing?” I recognized one of the many pilots who frequented this airfield. It was a tight knit community, and I could hear the laughter in his voice.
“You heard me Miller,” I clicked back, “We’re doing a whirly-drop.”
There was a click, then raucous laughter in my headphones.
“Is Jill in command today?” He radioed back after he got ahold of himself. I could hear the buzz of his Piper Cub engine in the background.
“I sure am!” Jill said into her mic. I couldn’t help but grin.
“Alright Miss Smarty-pants, pay attention. Five hundred feet AGL, five hundred feet per minute rate of descent.”
Jill pulled her focus back on her descent, and soon enough we coasted over the landing apron of runway ten. She smoothly pulled up, trading speed for lift, until the landing skids scraped gently along the cement and we came to a stop.
“Nice. Couldn’t have done it better myself,” I said, pride in my voice.
“Liar.”
“Hey, you nailed it.”
“Thanks, babe.
“Alright,” I said looking around to see if there was anyone we knew around watching us, “Let’s dust off and get outta here. I’m feeling a little exposed.”
“Roger that, Chief, RTB.” She twisted the throttle and pulled up on the collective and we smoothly lifted off and she banked towards home.
I grinned. My wife loved her some flight jargon.
When we got back from our flight, the day became a little more like I’d expected. We sprayed off all the bugs that had played kamikaze against the Bell’s windshield and rolled her back into the garage, then Jill had me work on the weeds in our vegetable garden while she sat in a folding chair next to the raised beds under a giant sun hat, drawing in her sketchbook. I didn’t ask what she’d drawn. If she wanted me to see, she’d show me.
The tomatoes weren’t in yet, so there was no caprese salad for lunch, but there was spinach, and the strawberries were going gangbusters, so we made do.
In the afternoon we played music, but this time not in the barn.
Jill had a baby grand piano that had been my mom’s in the nook off the great room. Most of the nicer instruments in our collection were there, and I kept Little Wing on a fancy brass-plated guitar stand on top of the piano. She was the most beautiful guitar I’d ever held in my hands and I refused to keep her in the barn. I wanted to see her every day.
I perched on a stool next to the piano bench (me still wearing almost nothing) and we played for almost three hours, working on a new song. Most of a new song, anyway. We’d still need to jam it out with Suzanne once we had the piano and guitar down to our satisfaction.
“I love that lick you threw in there at the end,” Jill said.
“Thanks, Blue. That was a pretty nifty line you dropped in under me in the second section.”
“I think it would be better with the organ instead of piano.”
“We’ll play with it next week. What should we call it?”
“How about… I win, you lose?”
“Ha ha. If you wanna call it that, that’s fine. You’re still Princess for the day.”
“For the weekend. Eric won’t be back until tomorrow afternoon.”
“Yes ma’am. What do you desire next?”
“Cook me dinner, I’m famished.”
~~ Later that evening ~~
“Your refill, m’lady.” I handed Jill a fresh glass of white wine, then sat in the Adirondack chair next to her with my beer.
“Thanks. The salmon was really good tonight. You outdid yourself on your spice rub.”
“Thanks. Always room for improvement, but I thought it was pretty good myself.”
I poked the fire with the stick that I kept next to my chair for fire poking.
“Everything good inside?”
“Yup, dishes cleaned up, leftovers put away and turned out the lights.” I leaned back and took a sip out of my bottle.
“How is it?” Jill asked, nodding at my beer.
I’d picked up a six-pack of kolsch the night before, a new recipe from the brew-pub where we’d played. I took a longer pull, then contemplated the flavor, tipping my head to one side in thought.
“Not bad. Had better at Ramstein, but you know, apples and oranges.”
Jill frowned. I’d been through Ramstein air base in Germany a number of times in my military career, mostly on the way to and from Afghanistan. Jill had only been there once, after I’d been in a crash. She had flown over to Germany to be at my side when I’d been in a coma and they didn’t know if I’d ever wake up. Or, if I did, whether I’d be a vegetable or not. I tapped my artificial foot on the flagstones around the fire pit, remembering. Everything had turned out okay in the end. We’d been inseparable ever since.