"I'm a fool, to look for her out here."
I poked last week's cinnamon-roll on a stick, toasted it over shreds of fire.
This adventure, barnstorming through the 1970s with an old biplane, I thought. Once it was spiced with question-marks. Now it's so known and safe I might as well be living in a scrapbook. After the hundredth tailspin I can do them with my eyes closed. After searching the thousandth crowd, I'm beginning to doubt that soulmates appear in hayfields.
There's enough money, passenger-hopping, I'll never starve. But I'm learning nothing new, either, I'm hanging on.
My last real learning happened two summers before. I had seen a white-and-gold Travel Air biplane, another barnstormer in a field, had landed and met Donald Shimoda, retired Messiah, ex-Saviour-of-the-World. We became friends, and in those last months of his life he had passed along a few secrets of his strange calling.
The journal that I kept of that season had turned into a book sent oif to a publisher and printed not long ago. I practiced most of his lessons well, so new tests were rare indeed, but the soulmate problem I couldn't solve at all.
Near the tail of the Fleet, I heard a low crackling; stealthy footsteps crunching in the hay. They stopped when I turned to listen, then crept slowly forward, stalking me.
I peered into the dark. "Who's there?"
A panther? A leopard? Not in Iowa, there haven't been leopards in Iowa since . . .
Another slow step in the night hay. It's got to be ... A timber-wolf!
I dived for the tool-kit, grabbed for a knife, for a big wrench, but too late. In that instant around the wheel of the airplane popped a black-and-white bandit's mask, bright eyes studying me, furry whiskered nose sniffing inquisitively toward the grocery-box.
Not a timber-wolf.
"Why . . . why, hello there . . ."I said. I laughed at my heart, pounding so, and pretended I was putting the wrench away.
Baby raccoons, rescued and raised as pets in the Midwest, are set free when they're a year old, but pets they are ever after.
There's no wrong, is there, in crackling through the fields, in stopping by after dark to ask if a camper might have, oh, a little something sweet to nibble on, while a night slows by?
"That's OK . . . c'mon, c'mon little fella! Hungry?"
Any little sweet thing would be fine, a square of chocolate or ... marshmallows? I can tell you have marshmallows, The raccoon stood on its hind feet for a moment, nose twitching, testing the air food-ward, and looked to me. The rest of the marshmallows, if you won't be eating them yourself, they'd be fine.
I lifted the bag out, poured a pile of the soft powdery things on my bedroll. "Here y'go . . . come on. ..."
Settling noisily to dessert, the mini-bear stuffed marsh-mallows into its mouth, chomping them in happy appreciation.
It declined my homemade panbread after half a bite, finished the marshmallows, downed most of my honeyed puffed-wheat, lapped the pan of water I poured. Then it sat for a while, watching the fire, sniffed at last that it was time to be moving on.
"Thanks for stopping by," I said.
The black eyes looked solemnly into mine.
Thank you for the food. You're not a bad human. I'll see you tomorrow night. Your panbread is awful.
With that the fluffy creature trundled away, ring-striped tail disappeared into the shadows, steps crunching fainter and fainter through the hay, leaving me alone with my thoughts and the wish for my lady.
It always comes back to her.
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She is not impossible, I thought, she is not too much to hope for!
What would Donald Shimoda tell me, if he were sitting here under the wing tonight, if he knew I hadn't found her yet?
He'd say something obvious, is what he'd say. The strange thing about his secrets was that every one of them was simple.
What if I told him I'd failed, searching for her? He'd study his cinnamon-roll for inspiration, he'd run his fingers through his black hair and he'd say, "Flying with the wind, Richard, from town to town, has it occurred to you that's not a way to find her, that's a way to lose her?"