From the Improvement Era, June 1953 –

Little Gus

By Ora Pate Stewart

Janice Potter raised her sleeping baby and pressed her face against his fat little neck. He smelled so sweet with powder rubbed into the top half of him and oil smoothed over the lower half. She usually didn’t bathe him at night; but lately she had taken to putting him in the big tub last thing and letting him soak and splash and get a last workout, then rocking him to sleep. Most of the girls she knew just put their babies to bed at night and shut the door; but she had found that he slept better after this ritual; and it was something to do. There was plenty to do, but this was something you could do with somebody. The evenings weren’t so lonely this way – not until eight o’clock anyway!

Janice laid the infant tenderly in his crib and drew the sheet and one blanket up over him. It was spring now. One blanket would be enough.

“Sleep tight, Little Gus,” she whispered. Little Gus was not his name, but it was all he had ever been called since the first time Bruce Bennett had laid eyes on him. Bruce was Dixon Potter’s best friend. They had gone to high school together. They had flown the Mastodon in Burma during those adventurous but unglorified days after the war. Then there was the university on the G.I. bill.

Janice looked at herself in the mirror of the baby’s dresser. There was a hair or two out of place. You can’t wrestle with babies and always look like a model. It was lonely to be a widow at twenty-four. It wasn’t that Dixon Potter was really dead. It was just that he was always gone or busy. Like now, when he and Bruce were in the basement, in the laundry room to be exact, of the apartment house. Oh, he always told her where he was or where he was going. She wasn’t like some wives, who didn’t know where their husbands were. Tonight they were working on their model airplane. Last night they were studying math at the library, and tomorrow night they would probably go to Bruce’s house to delve into the deeper mysteries of engineering and wind up, both of them, on Bruce’s big bed telling stories and experiences from Burma. Often he would grab a bite to eat with Bruce – his mother was a marvelous cook.

It was all Bruce’s fault. He had never been able to give Dixon over to marriage. Maybe Bruce’s mother should come in for some of the blame. When a fledgling gets big enough to try his wings, his mother pushes him out of the nest and makes him fly on his own. Bruce’s mother had never done this. Bruce was still very secure in his mother’s nest. Well, perhaps Mildred Midgley should take her share, too. Mildred and Bruce had double dated with Janice and Dixon all the time they were going together. Mildred was a good girl, but too pretty and too talented. She wanted to be a movie star or an opera singer. And marriage and babies could wait for her until she and her voice had carved their niche in the hall of fame.

Janice looked down at Little Gus. No, she wouldn’t slice the blame thin enough to give him a piece. An eight-months-old baby could carry no blame. She looked back at herself in the mirror. We always look at ourselves last. She was not as pretty as Mildred. But Mildred had no man to hold. Mildred’s struggle was between herself and her public. As soon as that was solved, she could choose her own man – if she made the choice soon enough. Janice had had no such struggle to make. She had always known that what she wanted was a husband and babies.

Well, he was gone; and she had let a man beat her time. Not a man, really. Bruce was still just a boy; and that was actually all she had against him. A twenty-five-year-old boy! How she wished he would grow up and put away his childish things – like toy airplanes! There was an airplane meet a couple of weeks away. The prize was fifty dollars.

The baby stirred, and Janice switched off the light and closed the door softly. It was not fair to hang onto a sleeping baby just because the hours were lonely. She would get her knitting and finish those booties she was making for Mildred. Funny thing. Mildred may not need booties for years to come, and yet, every new pair that Janice started, if Mildred saw them she wanted them – maybe to give to friends. Janice never asked. After the first couple of pairs Mildred had insisted on paying her, for the yarn, she put it, a sum as handsome as the booties. Janice was a genius with her hands, Mildred pointed out, a field where she herself was quite useless. So the little bead box in Janice’s dresser was swelled form time to time with bootie money. “Bootie,” she called it, instead of “sock.”

But knitting wasn’t fun too many nights of the week; so Janice rolled up the yarn, fixed her hair, and went down the three flights to the basement. it was not her night to wash, so she had no excuse but to see how the boys were coming. She knew they were making only one model between them. Dixon would never use his super skill to compete against Bruce. It would be like a mother running against her own daughter in a pie-baking contest. Besides, the materials and the tool kits were all Bruce’s – bought with the Bennett money. The Dixon Potter money had to go for diapers and rent.

“How you coming?” Janice asked.

Neither of them looked up. Bruce was reading from a large assembling chart: “Dotted lines indicate right center panel ribs. Make one of each. Slant end ribs for polyhedral.”

Dixon was rubbing on a piece of wood with the edge of a piece of glass. Bruce went on: “Steady all torque tube bearings with scrap balsa. … After the basic fuselage is assembled, add the stringers, gear, cowl planking, dowels, and radio or paa-load details as desired.”

“We’re not interested in the radio control,” Dix reminded him. “You have to have a special license for that. Stick to the paa-load.”

“And you’d better stick to your knitting,” Janice said to herself. “This is no place for a bootie maker.”

“Don’t go,” Dixon called to her. But she was already halfway up one flight.

The next morning she was wondering what Bruce Bennett had that she didn’t – money. but that was his mother’s and not his own earning. And Dixon would never, never leach onto anyone because of money. Oh, if Bruce would only get married! Mildred, the minx, was not hoarding those booties for nothing – not in entire hopelessness – there was a soft streak in her somewhere. She could be won. Was Bruce afraid? Was the nest too soft at home? Janice had gone over it all before, but it never came out right.

Today was her wash day, so after Dix had got off to school, she put Little Gus under one arm and the laundry under the other and went to the basement. She secured the baby in the swinging canvas chair, and sorted the whites and put them in the automatic and inserted the quarter. There would be nothing to do for twenty minutes; but it was not worth climbing the three flights. The knitting was in her clothespin apron pocket. But she left it there.

The skeleton of the airplane model there on the work bench looked like the bony cadaver of some unfortunate fish. The boys had worked late, and the fuselage looked finished all but the wings and wrapping. Of course, Janice didn’t know anything about the stringers, the gear, cowl planking, dowels, and paa-load, whatever they were. But it looked like a pretty good fuselage.

The landlady stepped to the head of the basement stairs and called that Janice’s phone was ringing. So Janice untangled Little Gus and ran up the three flights.

“Hi, Honey,” it was Dix, “where you been?” Janice explained that it was wash day. “Do you mind running down to the basement and getting the tool kit – be sure to put everything back in – and taking it over to Bruce’s house for us? The light is better in his basement.”

“The airplane, too?”

“No, we made a mistake in it. It doesn’t balance right. Bruce is going to buy another, and we’re going to start over. Be a good girl and bring the stuff.”

Janice wrapped Little Gus in the carriage robe and laid him on the bed while she removed the clothespin apron and changed her dress. Then she took the baby to the downstairs porch where she kept the baby buggy.

“Be good, Little Gus,” she smiled as she strapped him in place in the buggy and went to get the airplane gear. There was no use waiting for the batch to finish, as she had left the quarter for the next batch upstairs in the apron pocket. She would gather up the assortment of tools and get on with her errand and hurry back.

Little Gus enjoyed the ride. She should take him out more often. Summer was the time to ride and walk. But it was also the time for love and companionship. And this brought back the heaviness.

Back at home in the basement, with Little Gus upstairs in his crib for his morning nap, Janice sat down on the high stool to watch the second batch through the glass swirling around. This was better than the washboard of her grandmother’s time or the old push-pull machine of her mother’s day. But it left time for the women to brood and feel sorry for themselves. Some women had hobbies. Some played bridge. Janice had her baby and her knitting.

Her eyes wandered back to the skeleton of the abandoned little airplane. “Poor little neglected thing,” she said; “I know just how you feel.” She looked from its nose to its rudder. “Where is it you don’t balance?” She lifted the rejected plane tenderly and laid it on the edge of her capable hand. She moved it forward and then back, as she had seen the boys do. Then she picked up the assembling chart: “This model should balance one-half inch behind the wing spar.” She put the wings temporarily into place and secured them with stout rubber bands. Then she tried to balance it again. It was rear-heavy. She dropped a few pieces of wood into the front end, one at a time. She experimented until she found just the right amount of weight. Now if she could carve a little pilot, weighing just exactly enough, and not a featherweight too much, she could cement him into the cockpit, and he could balance the little plane. but after many tries she discovered that she had not reckoned with the weight of the heavy rubber bands. When the wings were cemented in place and the bands removed, the pilot was too heavy.

“It will have to be a baby who steadies this plane,” she said to herself. “I know! I’ll carve Little Gus!”

Why is it easier to carve out a baby than to carve a man? Perhaps a woman knows her baby better.

When another tenant came down to use the washer, Janice removed her second batch; and when still another needed the space on top of the machine, Janice hung the clothes. But there was a burning inside of her to do justice by the Little Gus she was carving and to do balance to the little plane she was salvaging. In the instruction chart it said there was a manual that explained further details. Janice took up the original Little Gus, fed him strained liver, put him in his buggy and hurried to the hobby store a mile away to buy the manual and tools. Time was so precious now. Two weeks was a short time when you had a hobby. You had to hurry with so inconsequential chores as going and coming.

At the store the man told Janice about the contest. Yes, there was a sheet of contest rules, and filling it out and attaching two dollars would put her in the run. There was a space for the name of her entry. Little Gus, she printed, and dug deeper into the “bootie” for the fee. The motor cost extra. She was glad that Mildred had paid her so well for the booties. The man at the store promised to help her if she ran into any assembling snags. And Janice wheeled her purchases and her baby back home. She remembered that since Dix was at Bruce’s she didn’t need to expect him home for supper, and for once she did not remember it with a pang.

Janice worked late into the night. She worked late for many nights. Before she went up to bed, she always put the little plane in the coal room. No one ever went in there since the gas had been installed.

And the final morning, when the boys were out at the airport trying out their model for the last time before the big meet the next day, Janice painted the mascot on the side of the cockpit. The mascot was Little Gus, in nothing but a diaper and a pair of wings and a twinkle in his eye, leaning forward on a billowy cloud, all ready for the take-off. Janice was glad that she had taken two years of advertising art in high school.

That afternoon, in the back yard of the hobby store, Little Gus made its first flight. Janice was sure that she could never fly it. But the man at the store said that was part of the contest. So she did everything that she was told and swung the little plane in an arc to the right. Then she held her breath. The little plane spiraled around for ninety seconds, then slid smoothly into a glide and ended up under a car in the parking lot. Janice crawled after it. The propeller had jiggled loose, the pilot had fallen on his nose, and the mascot had skinned his wings where the paint had not dried.

“There’s time for those repairs,” the hobby man assured her. “And Little Gus will fly tomorrow. Don’t make it fly again in this cramped lot. He needs the wide open spaces. He can’t really open up his wings in here.”

On the morning of the contest, Bruce came early, holding the Dixon-Bruce creation high above his head. The plane was blue and silver. A decal of a mastodon head almost covered the side of the fuselage. Little Gus was red and black, because red and black were the colors to be found in the basement.

“Well, wish us luck, Honey,” Dixon said as he blew a kiss to Janice. And Bruce pivoted the plane around the small room once and they left.

Janice picked up her baby and hugged him tight. “They didn’t even ask us to go along,” she whispered. “But we didn’t want to go with them this time, did we, Gus?”

She stepped to the phone and dialed Mildred. “They’ve gone. It’s safe to come now. Yes, we’ll be ready as soon as you can get here.”

Mildred swung around in her convertible and took the baby while Janice went back after the little plane.

“Golly, you are sweet in your little red overalls!” Mildred cuddled him, and Little Gus smiled and showed his new tooth.

At the airport it was inevitable that Janice and Mildred should run into Dix and Bruce.

“Gee, it was nice of you girls to come and watch our tryout,” Bruce said.

“Yes, we thought it would have been nice if you had asked us,” Mildred chided. Mildred was always more forward than Janice.

“To tell the truth, we never thought about it,” Dix confessed. And Janice knew that this was the truth.

“Some girls go to airplane meets regularly,” Mildred went on. “I understand some of them even enter the contests.”

“Four or five girl entrants in this one,” Bruce admitted. “Soon be no ground sacred to man but his burial plot.”

“Even in death the man is not without the woman,” Mildred said.

“Have you learned that, at last?” Bruce asked.

“Well, I read it in a book.”

Just then the first tryouts were called, and everyone moved forward. There were silver planes and yellow planes, orange ones, and white ones. And they all dd well. But when the Dixon-Bruce model launched into its spiral, men looked at their watches and counted the wide circles. One minute, two minutes, two and a half, three. This was the longest run, and it was still circling.

“We’ve taken the tournament by a good two minutes,” Bruce whispered.

“Don’t count the chips yet,” Dix cautioned. “There’s still another entry or two.”

“There’s nothing that can out-slug the Mastodon.”

“Don’t be too sure.” The plane was in its last glide now. “Remember, the mastodon is extinct.” The little plane glided to a smooth three-point landing and came to an even stop.

“Four minutes and twenty-two seconds!” the loud-speaker boomed, and there was a great stirring among the spectators.

A couple more planes dipped and dived, and one crashed into the announcer’s booth.

“The next entry is Little Gus,” the announcer said. “Little Gus is the creation of Janice Potter. Janice is new in these meets. This is her first entry.

Janice handed the baby to his father and made her way to the little plane.

“Fly, Little Gus,” she whispered, and swung it into its arc. It wasn’t a practised start, but Little Gus seemed to make up for her trembling hand. It flew free and graceful into a wide arc. Men took hurried glances to their watches and returned their eyes to Little Gus. This was a real plane. Two and a half minutes, three, three and a half. Its gas was gone now, and he would have to come in on his own wind.

“This plane has the best balance yet,” one of the judges said. “Notice how even the flight is. This is a game little plane!”

Three and three-quarters. Four. Four and a quarter. Twenty seconds. Twenty-five seconds. Thirty seconds. It was landing now. Janice thought she would faint. “Don’t fall on your nose, Little Gus.” And Little Gus rolled to a stop at her feet. She stooped to pick it up when a voice boomed from the loud speaker: “Don’t touch the model until it is examined for injury.” Janice stepped back, and a judge picked up the model and turned it in his hands. He nodded to the man in the booth. “It’s okay, Jim.”

The judges had a few words, and then the voice came over the loud speaker. “Little Gus is the winner for Janice Potter, with four minutes and thirty-seven seconds. This ends the twenty-second tournament for the Junior Aeronautics Meet. If Mrs. Janice Potter will come to the stand …”

Janice accepted the check and made a shaky speech. There was an additional trophy that the Junior Chamber of commerce had thrown in. It was a pedestal for Little Gus.

When Janice had shaken the extended judicial hands, most of the spectators had gone. The pedestal was too heavy to carry, and she felt the need of Dixon’s strong arm. She finally found him in Bruce’s car. He was alone with the baby. He had the child’s shoes off and was playing “This Little Piggy” with his toes.

“Where are Mildred and Bruce?” Janice asked.

“Oh, they went home in Mildred’s convertible. She said she wanted to console him. He went away mumbling something about the man not being without the woman in the grave.”

“Does he think he’s going to die?”

“I think it nearly killed him, losing the match to a girl.”

“And you?”

“Oh, I’ve had a wonderful time with this baby. Have you ever noticed how his toes curl up when you play with his feet?”

“Sure. Every night when I bathe him.”

“Where have I been all his life?” And as they returned to get the plane and the trophy, “Janice, how in the world did you effect the balance?”

“If you must know, Dixon, I did it with Little Gus.”