"The girl, of course. An airplane ride to my granddaughter, Sarah!" As he spoke he watched the Travel Air, a distant silver mote in the air, circling the farmhouse. He spoke as a calm man speaks, noting the dead twig in the yard has just sprouted blossoms and ripe apples.
"Since she's born, that girl's been wild to death about high places. Screams. Just terrified. Sarah'd no more climb a tree than she'd stir hornets barehand. Won't climb the ladder to the loft, won't go up there if the Flood was rising in the yard. The girl's a wonder with machines, not too bad around animals, but heights, they are a caution to her! And there she is up in the air."
He talked on about this and other special times; he remembered when the barnstormers used to come through Galesburg, years ago. and Monmouth, flying two wingers the same as we flew, but doing all kinds of crazy stunts with them.
I watched the distant Travel Air get bigger, spiral down over the field in a bank steeper than I'd ever fly with a girl afraid of heights, slip over the corn and the fence and touch the hay in a threepoint landing that was dazzling to watch. Donald Shimoda must have been flying for a good long while, to land a Travel Air that way.
The airplane rolled to a stop beside us, no extra power required and the propeller clanked softly to stop. I looked closely. There were no bugs on the propeller. Not so much as a single fly killed on that eight-foot blade.
I sprang to help, unshackled the girl's safety belt, opened the little front-cockpit door for her and showed her where to step so her foot wouldn't go through the wing fabric.
"How'd you like that?" I said.
She didn't know I spoke.
"Grampa, I'm not afraid! I wasn't scared, honest! The house looked like a little toy and Mom waved at me and Don said I was scared just because I fell and died once and I don't have to be afraid anymore! I'm going to be a pilot, Grampa. I'm gonna have an airplane and work on the engine myself and fly everywhere and give rides! Can I do that?"
Shimoda smiled at the man and shrugged his shoulders.
"He told you you were going to be a pilot, did he, Sarah ?"
"No, but I am. I'm already good with engines, you know that!"
"Well, you can talk about that with your mother. Time for us to be getting home. "
The two thanked us and one walked, one ran to the pickup truck, both changed by what had happened in the field and in the sky.
Two automobiles arrived, then another, and we had a noon rush of people who wanted to see Ferris from the air. We flew twelve or thirteen flights as fast as we could get them off, and after that I made a run to the station in town to get car gas for the Fleet. Then a few passengers, a few more, and it was evening and we flew solid back-to-back flights till sunset.
A sign somewhere said Population 200, and by dark I was thinking we had flown them all, and some out-of-towners as well.
I forgot in the rush of flying to ask about Sarah and what Don had told her, whether he had made up the story or if he thought it was true, about dying. And every once in a while I watched his plane closely while passengers changed seats. Not a mark on it, no oil-drop anywhere, and he apparently flew to dodge the bugs that I had to wipe from my windshield every hour or two.
There was just a little light in the sky when we quit. By the time I laid dry cornstalks in my tin stove, set them over with charcoal bricks and lit the fire, it was full dark, the firelight throwing colors back from the airplanes parked close, and from the golden straw about us.
I peered into the grocery box. "It's soup or stew or Spaghetti-O's," I said. "Or pears or peaches. Want some hot peaches?"
"No difference," he said mildly. "Anything or nothing."
"Man, aren't you hungry? This has been a busy day!"
"You haven't given me much to be hungry for, unless that's good stew."
I opened the stew can with my Swiss Air Officer's Escape and Evasion Knife, did a similar, job on the Spaghetti-0's, and popped both cans over the fire.
My pockets were tight with cash . . . this was one of the pleasanter times of day for me. I pulled the bills out and counted, not bothering much to fold them flat. It came to $147, and I figured in my head, which is not easy for me.
"That's . . . that's . . . let's see . . . four and carry the two . . . forty-nine flights today! Broke a hundred-dollar day, Don, just me and the Fleet! You must have broke two hundred easy . . . you fly mostly two at a time?"
"Mostly," he said.
"About this teacher you're looking for. . ."he said.
"I ain't looking for no teacher," I said "I am counting money! I can go a week on this, I can be rained out cold for one solid week!"
He looked at me and smiled. "When you are done swimming in your money," he said, "would you mind passing my stew?""
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