Nothing by Chance

“Well, just a minute …” the man said.

“Do you want to go out at three thousand, or four? Whatever you say is OK with us. Stu’s been using the windsock for a target, but if you want to come in a little closer to the wires …”

“Hey, friend, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that I …”

“No, that’s fine. We’re really glad to find you. We wouldn’t have had the jump at all today without you. We sure appreciate your coming up and making it for us …”

Paul caught the idea and hurried our way, carrying Stu’s parachute and helmet.

“I don’t thi

nk I better. I understand about the wind,” the man said, and waved and walked quickly to his car. The whole scene could have been from a screenplay, it worked so well, and I put the method down on my list to use again with unhappy jump-expecters.

“What would you have done if he didn’t back out?” Stu said. “What if he said he wanted to jump?”

“I woulda said fine, and popped him into that chute like nothin’ flat. I was darn ready to take him up and throw him over the side.”

For a while the people sat in their cars and watched, and wouldn’t budge when Stu walked to their windows.

“Come on up and fly!” he said at one window. “Rio from the air!”

The figure inside shook its head. “I like to see it from the ground.”

If this was typical modern barnstorming, I thought, we were dead; the good old days were truly gone.

At last, about 5:30 in the afternoon, a fearless old farmer drove in. “I got a place about two miles down the road. Fly me over and see it?”

“Sure thing,” I said.

“What’ll it cost me?”

“Three dollars cash, American money.”

“Well, what are we waitin’ for, young fella?”

He couldn’t have been less than seventy, but he lived the flight. Snowy hair streaming back in the wind, he pointed the way to fly, and then down to his house and barn. It was as neat and pretty as a Wisconsin travel poster; bright green grass, bright white house, bright red barn, bright yellow hay in the loft. We circled twice, to bring a woman out on the grass, waving. He waved back wildly to her and kept waving as we flew away.

“A good ride, young fella,” he said when Stu guided him down from the cockpit. “Best three dollars I ever spent. First time I been up in one of these machines. Now you made me sorry I didn’t do it a long time ago.”

That ride started our day, and from then till sunset I stayed in the cockpit, waiting only long enough on the ground for new riders to step aboard.

Stu caught on to a nice bit of passenger psychology, and took to saying, “How’d you like it?” when the flyers deplaned. Their clear fun and wild enthusiasm convinced the doubtful waiting to go ahead and invest in flight.

A few passengers came back near my cockpit after their flight and asked where they might learn to fly, and how much it might cost. Al and Lauren had been right, thinking we could do something for Rio aviation. One more airplane hangared at the airstrip would increase the flying by 25 percent, three more airplanes would double it. But the nature of the barnstormer is to come and be gone again all in a day, and we never heard what happened at Rio after we flew away.

The sun dropped down around us. Paul and I went up for one last formation flight for fun and watched the lights slowly sparkle on, down in the dark streets. When we landed, we could hardly see to taxi, and we felt as if we had been working much longer than one afternoon.

We covered the airplanes, paid the gas bill and just as we were all cocooned in our sleeping bags, and as Stu had uncocooned at the request of his seniors to turn out the light, I saw a pair of beady black eyes watching me from under the toolkit, near the door.

“Hey, you guys,” I said. “We got a mouse in here.”

“Where do you see a mouse?” Paul said.

“Tool-kit. Underneath it.”

“Kill him. Get him with your boot, Stu.”

“PAUL, YOU BLOODTHIRSTY MURDERER!” I shouted. “There will be no killing in this house! Pick up that boot and you got that mouse and me both to face, Stu.”