Gladys, Briefly

Based on the true story of Gladys Roy, barnstorming wing-walker of the 1920s.

The bi-plane made its final turn toward the Hollywood Hills, which meant it was time for Ivan and Gladys to hop out of the rear seats and take their places. They clambered carefully on to the top wings, specially surfaced with tar paper to help them keep balance as the pilot held her steady and low. They were each in canvas jumpsuits with aviator helmets and goggles. Gladys had hers specially cut to wrap her curly bobbed hair without matting it down too much for the landing photos. She normally had a ‘chute strapped on but this pass would be too low. The photography plane was holding position above the aft wing. Across from her, she saw Ivan settling into a stable squat with his tennis racket held in front of him like a two-handed sword. She briefly toyed with the idea of going up on one leg to simulate a serve with her own tennis racket, but there had been some gusts on the flight up. The wind was steady now. The pay was good enough: $350, and that was before additional publicity fees. No need to overdo things.

“Ayup!” the pilot bellowed a loudly as he could to be heard above the whipping wind. This was his signal that the crowd was in sight. They were flying low enough that the people could be distinguished from the buildings — the way you can distinguish ants from pebbles while standing — but high enough to be flirting with cloud cover. It was the photography plane’s rear passenger who had insisted on this elevation, believing the hassle of potential cloud occlusion to be worth it if he could capture their wisps to add to the drama of the stunt. Gladys got into her own tennis squat, then carefully drew back an awkward forehand. She was no tennis player, but this was Ivan’s idea. A small narrow net was strung across the center of the wing, and crude disproportionate court lines had been white washed into place to complete the picture.

Gladys held her pose as long as she dared, felt a gust that forced her into an acrobat’s tightrope pose of loose but open arms, then recovered and shifted her weight for a backhand simulation. Ivan had imagined the photographer would scratch a ball in flight into the negative, but it would later turn out that this particular artiste was concerned with allegations of fakery and refused to do anything to the film other than carefully develop it.

“Ayup, ayup!” the pilot called again, signaling the need to turn in five minutes. Despite the daring photograph and the no-doubt gasping pleasures of the crowd with their opera glasses and binoculars below, this part, the walk back into the cockpit, was the most dangerous and death-defying part of the stunt. During the walk out, the pilot had been able to pick the timing and find a pocket of calm air. The walk back was at the mercy of whatever might happen, and the approaching ocean gave a deadline with its wily tendency to stir up air currents.

Gladys went to all fours and crawled over to the net, easing herself gently into the rear-most seat. Ivan had the more difficult job of slightly swinging himself forward to sit directly under the wing, and as a consequence had let his racket go. Gladys kept hers. She didn’t want the bad publicity of a tennis racket braining an orphan or something. In the end, Ivan’s had fallen harmlessly onto a street, where it smashed to bits across a trolley line, causing a slight delay for some commuters a few minutes later.

Safely seated, the pilot made his turn back to the airfield, a strip in an orchard out in Orange County. Ivan sat sedately. Gladys allowed herself a “whoop” to dissipate her adrenaline. Another day, another bag of dollars.

**

Two years later, the promotional fees are down to sawbucks. Gladys could still do anything on a wing, and often did it blindfolded, but the public had seen the shows and seen the reruns and no longer turned its lonely eyes to her up, up on the wing. It was scandal and motion picture they wanted now. Gladys tried her hand at the movies, but hurt herself in a horse stunt and lost months of income in the process, which soured her. She still wanted the daredevil career, but was running out of tricks. She decided a trip to Rome, to see what was afoot on the Continental side, might recharge her batteries and her repertoire.

As always, her management arranged a photoshoot prior to the takeoff for her Atlantic flight, which would be accomplished with a co-pilot named Lt. Delmar Snyder, who was trying to crack into the stunt piloting racket and also wanted the research in Italy. Snyder was lantern-jawed and bushy of brow, a classic beauty of vertical proportions to match Glady’s soft, round visage. They were often mistaken for lovers.

Gladys had just landed in the New York airfield from Cleveland, where she’d been visiting Lt. Snyder’s mother, Margaret.

They’d had an herbal tea Mrs. Snyder had harvested from her garden, a habit from the old country. “I’m sorry I don’t have sugar. Is honey okay?”

“It’s lovely as is,” Gladys said, finishing her first sip and setting the cup in its rough-hewn saucer. What means the Snyders had were provided by Delmar’s Army salary. His father had died in a factory accident. His mother survived on a meager widower’s pension and the generosity of her son, whose five sisters had all married poorly, according to Margaret.

“I know Del thinks the world of you,” Mrs. Snyder began, winding directly into the business that brought them together. “He tells me you have quite a spark. I believe he may be taken with you, but strange-like. Are you two courting?”

Gladys laughed. “I am best admired from afar, and Del knows it. No, Mrs. Snyder, we are colleagues and friends, no more.”

“Well,” said the older lady, picking up her own tea cup and holding it in front of her mouth protectively, “perhaps that’s enough for you to influence him to stop.”

“To stop?”

“This nonsense with daredevilry.” Having put the word out, she now took a long and silent sip.

Gladys looked out the window to her right, watching children on the street play some crude game with sticks. They appeared to be sword-fighting each other’s feet. “I can’t take out of his head what I didn’t put in it,” Gladys said, trying to tamp down the sassy persona she put on for reporters but weirdly failing. She wanted to be honest with this old Dutch woman, but it was difficult, given the awkwardness of the meeting. She should have taken her manager’s advice and simply written a letter. “Del’s his own man, and he figures the Army won’t have anything for him, given nobody’s got appetite for war anymore. He’s looking out for his future. And yours. He reckons.” One boy, the smallest one, scored a tremendous hit an a scrawny one’s instep, and the latter was howling like a tomcat as he hopped on one foot.

“But he’s bewitched!”

“So you claimed in your letter. I assure you he isn’t.”

“Bewitched by the thrills, and it’s your thrills in particular,” Mrs. Snyder continued, ignoring the interjection. “If he had nobody gamboling about on the wings, he wouldn’t stoop to such nonsense.”

“Mrs. Snyder,” Gladys said, making eye contact once again, “I assure you, if it weren’t me, it’d be someone else. Someone less experienced. Someone more prone to making a mistake. And Del would be the pilot who let someone die. With me, that won’t happen. So if anything, I’m taking care of him.”

Despite herself, Gladys felt her eyes well with tears. She hoped Mrs. Snyder would interpret this as caring instead of what it was: the regret of a bald-faced lie. Gladys knew she was losing novelty, which meant she taking greater and greater risks for herself and her pilots, not the ingenues who could coast on fresh looks with stale tricks for lower pay. If anything, Mrs. Snyder was right, Del needed to get away, before something terrible happened. Gladys didn’t care for herself. Not anymore. Not since Ivan hollowed her out body and soul. But Del. Oh, Del, that handsome brick. He deserved to be taken better care of. Gee, maybe she was sweet on him, deep in there somewhere.

The conversation ended poorly but not disastrously. Gladys reassured Mrs. Snyder that nothing risky would be happening on this Italian jaunt, and that she was funding the entire endeavor, and that they’d speak again, with Del present, upon their return. This yielded a gruff handshake and goodbye.

While the conversation itself was no high drama for Gladys, the mixture of emotions it left in her gut was distracting her work in New York. She was posing on the plane with some local bathing beauty who had just won a contest, smiling instinctively while she chewed the cud of her confused feelings. Was she really knocking loose from the fatalism that had defined her whole year after Ivan? Was Mrs. Snyder right, and did Del deserve better than her wild trajectory? She climbed into the cockpit on the command of the photographer and stepped on the pedal to fire up the propellers at idle speed, something they always wanted for the pictures, the blur of blades adding yet more interest to the photo of young womanly faces and young womanly curves: Gladys in her hip-hugging jumpsuit, this comely lass in her black bathing outfit.

“Thank you! Lovely!” the shutterbug yelled after his last snaps, and just then Gladys spotted Del over his shoulder, chatting with a mechanic as he strapped on his aviator’s helmet.

“Del!” she called, hopping down from the cockpit and stepping awkwardly around the bathing beauty to stride toward her partner … stepping to the inside, the plane side, then stepping not quite far enough back out. Gladys’s face was instantly eaten by the whirling propeller, splashing the young model with a wave of blood.

Gladys Roy was not yet 30.