Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (Illusions 1)

"Will if you want, won't if you don't."

"And you want the dear Lord's fortune, I suppose."

"Three dollars cash, sir, for nine, ten minutes in the air. That is thirty-three and one-third cents per minute. And worth it, most people tell me."

It was an odd bystander-feeling, to sit there idle and listen to the way this fellow worked his trade. I liked what he said, all low key. I had grown so used to my own way of selling rides ("Guaranteed ten degrees cooler upstairs, folks! Come on up where only birds and angels fly! All of this for three dollars only, a dozen quarters from your purse or pocket . . ."), I had forgotten there might be another.

There's a tension, flying and selling rides alone. I was used to it, but still it was there: if I don't fly passengers, I don't eat. Now when I could sit back, not depending for my dinner on the outcome, I relaxed for once and watched.

The girl stood back and watched, too. Blonde, brown-eyed, solemn-faced, she was here because her grampa was. She did not want to fly.

Most often its the other way around, eager kids and cautious elders, but one gets a sense for these things when it's one's livelihood, and I knew that girl wouldn't fly with us if we waited all summer.

"Which one of you gentlemen . . . ?" the man said.

Shimoda poured himself a cup of water. "Richard will fly you. I'm still on my lunch hour. Unless you want to wait."

"No, sir, I'm ready to go. Can we fly over my farm ?"

"Sure," I said. "Just point the way you want to go, sir." I dumped my bedroll and toolbag and cook pots from the front cockpit of the Fleet, helped the man into the passenger seat and buckled him in. Then I slid down into the rear cockpit and fastened my own seat belt.

"Give me a prop, will you, Done"

"Yep." He brought his water cup with him and stood by the propeller. "What do you want?"

"Hot and brakes. Pull it slow. The impulse will take it right out of your hand."

Always when somebody pulls the Fleet propeller, they pull it too fast, and for complicated reasons the engine won't start. But this man pulled it around ever so slowly, as though he had done it for ever. The impulse spring snapped, sparks fired in the cylinders and the old engine was running, that easy. He walked back to his airplane, sat down and began talking to the girl.

In a great burst of raw horsepower and flying straw the Fleet was in the air, climbing through a hundred feet (if the engine quits now, we land in the corn), five hundred feet (now, and we can turn back and land in the hay. . . now, and it's the cow pasture west), eight hundred feet and level, following the man's finger pointing through the wind southwest.

Three minutes airborne and we circle a farmstead, barns the color of glowing coals, house of ivory in a sea of mint. A garden in the back for food sweet-corn and lettuce and tomatoes growing.

The man in the front cockpit looked down through the air as we circled the farmhouse framed between the wings and through the flying wires of the Fleet.

A woman appeared on the porch below, white apron over blue dress, waving. The man waved back. They would talk later of how they could see each other so well across the sky.

He looked back at me finally with a nod to say that was enough, thanks, and we could head back now.

I flew a wide circle around Ferris, to let the people know there was flying going on, and spiraled down over the hayfield to show them just where it was happening. As I slipped down to land, banked steeply over the corn, the Travel Air swept off the ground and turned at once toward the farm we had just left.

I flew once with a five-ship circus, and for a moment it was that kind of busy feeling . . . one plane lifting off with passengers while another lands. We touched ground with a gentle rumbling crash

rolled to the far end of the hay, by road.

The engine stopped, the man unsnapped his safety belt and I helped him out. He took a wallet from his overalls and counted the dollar bills, shaking his head.

"That's quite a ride, son."

"We think so. It's a good product we're selling."

"It's your friend, that's selling!"

"Oh ?"

"I'll say. Your friend could sell ashes to the devil, I'll wager, can't he now?"

"How come you say that ?"