Nothing by Chance

“Are you going to let me go along? Are you sure I can go?”

“Get in or you make us late. We got passengers waiting!”

“Never let ’em wait,” he said, and stepped up into the front seat. We were airborne in less than a minute and it was good to see the man again in the sky he loved. He took off his hat, his gray hair blew in the wind, and he smiled hugely,

remembering.

The biplane gave him a gentle landing in the hay, and I left the engine running while Carl stepped down.

“You go ahead and fly your passengers,” he said. “Then we’ll cover the airplane up and you come on over to the house.”

We flew riders steadily till the sun was below the horizon, and all the time Carl Lind watched the biplane fly, waiting with his wife, and with Ev. It was the best weekday yet; twenty passengers by sundown.

“I don’t know if this is in the Barnstormer’s Code,” I said to Carl as we drove around the edge of Lake Geneva and wound among the estates there. “We’re supposed to get all dirty and always stay under the wing when we’re not flying.”

“Oh, no. They used to do this. Someone who liked airplanes would take you home for dinner.”

But not, I thought as we turned into his drive, in quite this manner. It was a scene clipped from a Fine House magazine, all in full color and with deep carpets and full-length glass facing the water.

“This is our little place …” Carl began, apologetically.

Stu and I laughed at the same time. “Just a little shack you keep out in the woods, Carl?”

“Well… you like to have a place you can come and relax, you know?”

We got a brief tour of the elegant house, and it was a strange feeling. We felt close to something civilized. Carl enjoyed his house immensely, and it was a glad place, because of this.

“You fellows can change in here. We’ll go down for a swim. You will. I’ll catch two fish in the first five casts. Betcha, I will.”

It was nearly full dark when we walked barefoot down the velvet sloping lawn to his dock. At one side of the white-painted wood was a boathouse, and an inboard speedboat hung there on winches.

“The battery’s probably dead. But if we get it started, we’ll go for a ride.”

He lowered the boat into the water on its electric winch and pressed the starter. There was only a hollow clank and silence.

“I’ve got to remember to keep that battery up,” he said, and hoisted the boat back into the air.

Carl had brought a little fishing pole with him and he began working for his Two Fish in the First Five Casts just at the moment that Stu and I hit the water in running dives off the dock. The lake was clear dark black, like pure oil that had been aged twenty years in ice. We swam furiously out to the light-float a hundred feet offshore and from there we watched the last sun fade from the sky. As it disappeared, so did every single sound in the Midwest, and a whisper from pur float carried easily to shore.

“Carl, you’ve got a pretty rugged life,” I said, from way out in the water.

“Two more years and then I’m going to retire. Quicker than that, if I get all this business done on my flying medical. Why, if I could fly alone, I’d retire this year! But if I can’t fly, and just had to stay around here, it would get pretty bad.” He caught a fish on his second cast, and let it fall back into the dark water.

We cast off from the buoy and swam slowly to the dock. The wooden ladder-rungs were smooth and soft in moss, and when we stood again on the white planks, the air was warm as summer night.

“I lose my bet,” Carl said. “All your splashing scared my fish away. Five casts and only one fish.”

By the time we had returned to the house and changed into our least-greasy clothes, Everett had gone and come again, setting a huge steaming bag on the table. “I got twelve hamburgers,” he said. “That ought to be enough, don’t you think? And a gallon of root beer.”

We sat that evening around a table by the fireplace in Carl’s glass-walled den, eating hamburgers.

“I had to sell the Bird, you know,” Carl said.

“What? Why? That was your airplane!”

“Yes, sir. But I couldn’t stand it. Going out there and washing her down and waxing her, and not-being able to fly by myself; this medical thing, you know. It wasn’t right for the airplane, it wasn’t right for me. So I sold her. Thelma still has her Cessna, and we go places now and then.” He finished his hamburger. “Hey, I have something I want you to see.” He left the table and went into the living room.

“I do hope that medical paper comes through,” Thelma Lind said. “It means a lot to Carl.”