Nothing by Chance

“You forgot to turn on the switch. After I cranked myself to death on the crank, you forgot to turn on the switch. Fifty cents.”

Was that just this morning? It was, and I paid.

Joe Wright had stopped by to insist that we sleep in the office. There would be no oil-can count.

There were two couches, but we piled all our equipment inside the building, and our sleeping place again looked more like an airplane factory than an office bedroom.

“You know what?” Paul said, lying in the dark, smoking a cigarette.

“What?”

“You know, I wasn’t ever scared that I was going to get hurt? The only thing I was scared of was that I might hurt the airplane. I sort of knew the airplane wouldn’t let me get hurt. Isn’t that funny?”

The future of the Great American depended upon a pilot, jumper, mechanic, and friend, all of them named Johnny Colin, who had flown with us at Prairie du Chien and worked the miracle of repairing the biplane after its crash there.

That next afternoon at three, Paul fired up the Luscombe and took off west, toward Apple River, where Johnny had his own airstrip. If everything worked to plan, he would be back before dark.

Stu and I tinkered around the airplane, finishing everything we could before the welding had to be done, and at last there was nothing more to do. Everything turned on whether Paul would return with Johnny in the Luscombe.

Stan came out after a time and wheeled out his Piper Pacer for an afternoon flight. A tricycle-gear Cherokee landed, turned around, took off again. It was a quiet afternoon at a little airport.

A car stopped by the wingtip and some Palmyrans stepped out that we recognized from the day before.

“How’s it going?”

“Going OK. A little welding and she’ll be all ready to put back together again.”

“Looks kind of bent, to me, still.” The woman who spoke smiled wryly, to say that she meant no hurtful thing, but her friends didn’t notice.

“Don’t be so hard on ’em, Duke. They’ve been working out here all day long on this poor old airplane.”

“And they’ll be flying it again, too,” said Duke.

She was a strange woman, and my first impression was that she was a thousand miles away and that this part of her that was living in Palmyra, Wisconsin, was just about ready to speak some mystic word and disappear.

When Duke talked, everyone listened. There was an aura of faintest sadness about her, as though she was of some lost race, captured as a child and taught in our ways, but always remembering her home on another planet.

“This all you fellows do for a living, fly around and give airplane rides?” she said. She looked at me with a level gaze, wanting to know the truth.

“That’s pretty well it.”

“What do you think of the towns you see?”

“Every one’s different. Towns have personalities, like people.”

“What’s our personality?” she said.

“You’re kind of cautious, steady, sure. Kind of careful with strangers.”

“Wrong there. This town’s a Peyton Place,” she said.

Stan came flying down in a low pass over the field and we all watched him whisk by, engine purring.

By now Paul was an hour overdue and the sun was just a little way above the horizon. If he was going to make it, he’d have to be nearly here.

“Where’s your friend?” Duke said.

“He’s out getting a guy who’s a pretty good welder.”