Nothing by Chance

The sound of the biplane went silent, high overhead, and as I watched, she flew through a series of stalls while Paul taught himself how she handled at low speeds. I knew what he would be feeling. The aileron control went to nothing, the elevator was very poor, the control stick was loose and dead now in his hand. The rudder was the best control he had left, but when he would need it most, rolling over the ground after landing, it was useless. It took a good firm rudder pedal and power, rudder and a great blast of wind over it, to make the biplane respond, to keep her from tearing herself to pieces in a twisting smashing groundloop across the grass.

The engine roared back as he tested just how much wind he would need over that rudder. Good boy, I thought, take your time with her.

The last of my nervousness vanished when I realized that what mattered was that my friend met his own special challenge, and found courage and confidence within himself.

He swung around some wide soaring turns and came down low over the gra

ss at high speed. I filmed the pass with his movie camera and wished I could remind him that when he was ready to land, that big huge silver nose would be higher in front of him, so that he wouldn’t be able to see ahead. It was like trying to land blindfolded, and he had to do it right, first time out.

How would I feel, in his place? I couldn’t tell. Somewhere, a long time ago as I flew airplanes, something clicked in me and I had won a confidence with them. I knew within myself that I could fly any airplane ever built, from glider to jetliner. Whether it was true or not was something that only trying would prove, but the confidence was there, and I wouldn’t be afraid to try anything with wings. A good feeling, that confidence, and now Paul was working out there for that same little click within himself.

The biplane swept into the landing pattern, close enough to land on the strip no matter where the engine might fail. It turned toward the grass, slowing, settling gently, evenly, across the trees, across the highway, wires whistling softly with the engine throttled back, across the fence at the end of the strip, eased its glide, settled all smooth, under control. As long as he’s under control, he’s safe, I thought, and I watched him through the viewfinder, finger down on trigger, driving battery-power to turn the film sprockets.

The touchdown was smooth as summer ice melting, the wheels slid on the grass before they began to roll. The man made me jealous. He was doing a beautiful job with my airplane, handling it as though it was built of paper-thin eggshells.

They rolled smoothly along, the tail came down into the critical time of landing, when the passengers were wont to wave and turn and smile, and the plane tracked straight through the grass. He had made it. My sigh of satisfaction would no doubt show on the movie screen.

At that moment the bright machine, huge in the zoom lens, began to swerve.

The left wing dipped slightly, the airplane curved to the right. The rudder flashed as Paul slammed the left pedal down. “Power, boy, hit the power!” I said. Nothing. The wing dipped farther down, and in a second it touched the ground in a little shower of flying grass. The biplane was out of control.

I looked away from the viewfinder, knowing that the film would show only a rocking picture of some close blurred grass, but uncaring. Maybe he could still survive, maybe the biplane would come out of the ground-loop in one piece.

There was a very dull whump—the left wheel collapsing. The biplane slid sideways for a moment, bending first, then breaking. It pitched forward, and at last it stopped. The propeller swung through one last quick time and buried the tip of one blade in the dirt.

I pointed the camera, still clicking, back onto the scene. Oh, Paul. How long would it be now, to win your confidence? I tried to think of how I would feel, breaking Paul’s Luscombe, when he had trusted it to me. It was a horrible feeling, and I stopped imagining at once. I was glad I was me, and not Paul.

I walked slowly over to the airplane. It was worse than the crash at Prairie had been. The long trailing edge of the top wing rippled in wild anguished waves. The fabric of the lower left wing was deeply wrinkled again, the tip down in the dirt. Three struts were torn into angles of agony, screaming that a giant twisting force had grabbed and bent. The left wheel was gone, under the airplane.

Paul hopped out of the cockpit and threw the helmet and goggles down into the seat. I searched for some telling understatement but could come up with nothing that told how sorry for him I was, that he should have to hurt the biplane.

“Win a few, lose a few,” was all I could say.

“You don’t know,” Paul said, “you don’t know how sorry…”

“Forget it. Not worth worrying about. Airplane’s a tool for learning, Paul, and sometimes a tool gets a little bent.” I was proud to be able to say that in a calm voice. “All you do is straighten it out again and go back flying.”

“Yeah.”

“Nothing happens by chance, my friend.” I was trying to convince myself more than Paul. “No such thing as luck. A meaning behind every little thing, and a meaning behind this. Part for you, part for me. May not see it all real clear right now, but we will, before long.”

“Wish I could say that, Dick. All I can say now is I’m sorry.”

The biplane looked like a total wreck.

CHAPTER EIGHT

WE DRAGGED THE AIRPLANE, all limp-winged, into the lee of a corrugated tin hangar, and barnstorming came to a sudden halt. The Great American Flying Circus was out of business again.

Not counting the bent struts and broken landing gear fitting, two other gear fittings had begun to tear away, a brake arm had been ripped off, the top of the cowl was bent, the right shock absorbers were broken, the left aileron fittings were twisted so that the control stick was jammed hard.

But the hangar next to us was owned by one Stan Gerlach, and this was a very special kind of miracle. Stan Gerlach had been owning and flying airplanes since 1932, and he kept spare bits and pieces of every plane he’d owned since then.

“Look, you guys,” he said that afternoon, “I got three hangars here, and in this one I think I got some old struts off a Travelair I used to have. You’re free to take anything you find in here can get you flying again.”

He lifted a wide tin door. “Over here are the struts, and some wheels and junk …” He banged and screeched his way into a waist-high stack of metal, pulling out old welded airplane parts. “This might do for something … and this …”

Struts were our biggest problem, since it would take weeks to send out for streamlined steel tubing and make up new pieces for the biplane. And the blue-painted steel that he piled on the floor looked almost like what we were looking for. On impulse I took one and measured it against the good interplane strut at the right wing of the Parks. It was a sixteenth of an inch longer.