Whispers of a New Dawn by Murray Pura Page A

“So now I am ready to do anything. I could fly without the plane.”
    “Let’s not try that this time.” She kissed him quickly on the cheek. “Jump in. And make sure your straps are tight.”
    Henry Parker took care that Moses was safely secured in the forward cockpit. His brown eyes were warm. “Sometimes we risk all for the lady’s hand.”
    Moses shrugged. “My grandfather flew before the planes were banned. I want to see what he saw. And I want her to be the one taking me up.”
    The older man patted Moses on the shoulder. “I’d do the same. She’s a honey.” He leaned in close to Moses. “Now you look out to the far end of my fields once you’re aloft, young man. Just past all the corn. You look to the dirt road there. All right?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Moses watched in amazement as Mr. Parker spun the propeller and the engine howled and the plane started to move forward. Becky turned it into the breeze that was coming in from the west, and Moses felt his hair blow backward. They went faster and faster, faster than any horse he had galloped or any team he had driven, until the field on either side of them was a green streak. There was a lurch and they were in the air, the motor roaring, the Jenny rising higher and higher, roads becoming pencil lines, farmhouses little boxes, Henry Parker turning into a stick man. Moses felt a rush of fear and a rush of excitement colliding inside him.
    Becky flew straight and level a few minutes, dove, then rolled the plane so Moses was hanging upside down. He could not help himself and began to laugh. He was still laughing when she came right side up and he twisted back to look at her. Becky saw his laughter and grinned, shaking her head. She shouted over the noise of the wind and the engine: “I—tried—to scare you—and all you do—is laugh?”
    “I—can’t—help it!” he shouted back.
    “You are—one crazy Amish boy!”
    She banked and Moses noticed the cornfield. He remembered what Henry Parker had told him and he stared down through his gogglesat the earth far below. At first the road beyond the rows of cornstalks seemed empty. Then he saw a black buggy. Beside it was a tall figure, taller than Henry Parker, taller than anyone he knew except for his grandfather, Bishop Zook. A hand waved up at him and Moses leaned out of the cockpit in excitement.
    “Grandpa!” he yelled, waving both arms wildly. “Grandpa! It’s beautiful! Es ist Gottes Schönheit! ”
    “What?” shouted Becky from behind him.
    “It’s my grandfather!” Moses pointed downward.
    Becky looked down. “What are you calling to him?”
    “ Es ist Gottes Schönheit! It’s God’s beauty!”
    “Moses—he can’t hear you! I can barely hear you!”
    “I don’t care! I am going to shout it anyway! God will hear if no one else does!”
    Again Becky grinned and shook her head.
    Moses twisted around in his seat as far as he could to look at her. “No one in the world could look as good as you do in such goggles! Everything you wear looks attractive once you put it on!”
    “Oh, stop it! You are too much!” She threw the plane into a steep dive. “There! That will shut you up!” But even above the scream of the air and the shriek of the motor she could hear his laughter.
    They stayed up for half an hour, circling over Bishop Zook again and again, sometimes heading east into the sun, other times heading north and south and west over lush hay fields and stands of trees as well as long rows of ripening oats and barley and tobacco. At one point a flock of white pelicans flew beside them. Moses kept slapping the flat of his hand against the outside of his cockpit and Becky was sure she heard him whistling. Sudden dives and barrel rolls and death spins only made him laugh with so much abandon she thought he wouldn’t be able to stop to get his breath. When it came time to land she deliberately dove through a cluster of clouds white and cool as pearl and touched down on the far side of