Thirty hours later, the biplane had been repaired, tested and was flying passengers again.
It is kind of a miracle, I thought, and I wondered at it.
When we left Prairie du Chien, Rio was the Unknown. And now, with Rio become Known, we felt the tug of security, and were uneasy.
The wind came up that afternoon and it changed Stu MacPherson at once from parachute jumper to a groundling ticket-seller.
“It’s about fifteen miles an hour now,” he said, worried. “That’s a bit too much for me to feel good about jumping.”
“Aw, c’mon,” I said, wondering how powerful a wind could be on the big silken dome. “Fifteen crummy miles an hour? That can’t hurt you.” It would be fun to know, too, whether Stu could be bullied out of his better judgment.
“That’s getting pretty windy. I’d rather not jump.”
“We got all these people coming out to see you. Crowd’s gonna be unhappy. Somebody said yesterday that your jump was the first ever made on this field. Now everybody’s all set to see the second. You better jump.” If he gave in, I had a lecture all prepared on how only weaklings give in to what they know isn’t right.
“Fifteen miles is a lot of wind, Dick,” Paul said from the hangar. “Tell you what. We have to test the canopy out, make sure that the inversion’s gone. Why don’t you strap on the harness for us and we’ll throw the canopy up into the wind and see that it opens out all right.”
“I’ll strap on your parachute,” I said. “I’m not afraid of your parachute.”
Paul brought the harness over and helped me strap into it, and as he did, I remembered the stories I had heard in the Air Force of pilots dragged about helplessly by parachutes in the wind. I began, in short, to have second thoughts.
But by that time I was strapped in, my back to the wind, which seemed to be blowing much harder now, and Paul and Stu were down by the canopy laid on the grass, ready to throw it up into the quick-moving air.
“Ready to go?” Paul shouted.
“Just a minute!” I didn’t like his word about “going,” for I meant to stay right where I was. I dug my heels into the ground, unsnapped the safety catch on the quick release that would spill the canopy if anything went wrong.
“Don’t punch the Capewell,” Paul said. “It will get the canopy all tangled up again. If you want to spill the chute, pull on the bottom risers. You ready?”
Directly downwind was a low fence of timbers and steel cables. If I dragged, I’d drag right into it. But then again I’m 200 pounds all dug in here, and no little breeze cou
ld drag that much all the way to the fence. “Ready!”
I braced against the wind and Paul and Stu tossed the skirt of the canopy into the air, with what seemed like altogether too much enthusiasm. The wind caught the chute at once, it popped out like a racingboat spinnaker, and every ounce of that force snapped down the risers and into my shoulders. It was like a tractor lurching into gear, and all hooked to me.
“HEY!” I flew out of my special braced place, and out of the second place I dug my boots into, and out of the third. I thought of losing my balance behind this big thing, and being whipped across that fence. The monster jellyfish pulled me in jerks, wham-wham-wham across the ground while Paul and Stu just stood and laughed. It was the first time I had heard Stu laugh.
“Hold on there, boy!”
“This is just a little breeze! This is nothing! Hey, hang on!”
I got the idea about wind and parachutes and grabbed for the lower risers to collapse the thing while I skidded for the fence. I pulled, but nothing happened. If anything, I skidded faster, and nearly lost my balance.
At that point I ceased to care about the delicacy of Stu’s canopy, and pulled hard on all the bottom lines I could get hold of. Very suddenly the chute collapsed and I was standing in the mild wind of afternoon.
“What’s the matter?” Paul called. “Couldn’t you hold the thing?”
“Well, I thought I’d just as soon not cut your lines all up on the fence, there. Save you some repair work.”
I unsnapped the harness, quickly. “Stu, I don’t think you’d better jump today. This wind’s up a little too high. Of course you want to jump anyway, but it’s wiser for you just to stay down this afternoon. I think it’s a lot wiser.”
We rounded up the giant canopy and bundled it into the calm of the hangar.
“You really ought to jump sometime, Richard,” Paul said. “There’s nothing like it. That’s real flying. Man, you get up there, no engine or nothing. Just … you. Dig? You really ought to do it.”
I have never had any intention of jumping out of an airplane and Paul’s pitch did not make me eager to start now.
“Sometime,” I said. “I’ll give it a whirl, when the wings fall off my airplane. I want to start right out with a free-fall, and not go through all those static-line things they make you do in the jump schools. At the moment, let us say that I’m not quite ready to begin my jumping career.”