Nothing by Chance

“All this time I thought we had forgot about who was leader,” I said, “and you been thinking I was the honcho. I resign, I tell you, I resign!”

Airborne, flying again as barnstormers in formation, we searched to the north first, without results. The land close to the towns was everywhere too rough and too short for both airplanes. I looked down again at the broad grass strip at Lake Lawn and thought that we could be an interesting diversion for the golfers, and probably make much money. But golfers were urban people, living way out ahead of us in time, concerned about unreal things … profit margins and credit ratings and the life of giant cities. We were looking to fly with the people of the world to which our airplanes belonged.

We followed the road west and south, and again crossed down into the heat of summer Illinois. We circled eight or ten little towns, left the road for a river, and finally rolled our wheels in the grass of an airstrip by the river. It was a good long strip. There was plenty of room for the Luscombe to work fully loaded, and we were one mile from a town. A little far out, but worth trying.

The field was surrounded by oats and corn, set low in the wide long valley of the river. There was a farmhouse at the end of the strip, and a small hangar.

Two minutes after we landed, a light twin-engine airplane touched down and taxied near the hangar.

“Sure,” the owner said. “You boys can work out of here if you want. Be nice to get some folks out to the airport.”

We were working again. Our first acquaintance with Pecatonica, Illinois, was a friendly one.

In long sheds near the farmhouse were a great number of pigs, snarkling and gorkling as we found that pigs are wont to do. A man and his wife came from the house to wonder who we were, shyly followed by a little girl who peeked around her mother’s skirts. The girl was stricken silent in awe. She was convinced that we were Martians landing in some strange sort of saucers, and goggled at us, set to dash screaming into the house at the first monster-word we said. Stu walked down the lane to post our signs, and the girl kept an eye on him, lest he creep up behind and devour her in one toothy gnash.

There were two hundred pigs in the shed, we learned, and wandering around somewhere were nine cats and a horse. The horse, at the moment, was kept in a grassy lot, and trotted over to talk with us when we walked near his gate.

“This is Skeeter,” the woman said. “Raised him from a colt. Skeeter is a wonderful

horse … aren’t you, Skeeter?” She rubbed his velvet nose.

Skeeter made some comment, a low polite whinny, and nodded his head. He left us then, trotted once around the perimeter of his grass and came back to lift his head sociably over the gate. Skeeter had a very outgoing personality.

“Goin’ toward town … you boys want a lift?” the owner said. We did, and jumped into the back of a red pickup. As we turned down the lane and onto the highway, it was Paul who asked the question.

“How do you think it’s going to go?”

“Looks OK,” Stu said.

“Little far out, maybe,” I said, “but we’ll do all right.”

Pecatonica’s main street was high-curbed and lined with glass store fronts and wood facades. The center of town was one block long: hardware, cafés, the Wayne Feed Dealer, service station, dime store. We hopped down from the truck at the beginning of the block, called our thanks and walked to a café for lemonade.

It was full hot summer, with the round plastic advertising thermometers pointing 95 degrees. We ordered giant lemonades and looked at the ceiling and walls. It was the same long narrow room we had come to expect, with booths down one wall, and the counter and mirror and stacked glasses down the other, kitchen way at the back with a round order-wheel hanging from its pivot in the pass-through window. The ceiling was at least 15 feet high, tiled in green floral-stamped tin. It was all a clever electrical museum out of 1929, with animated people who could move and talk and blink their eyes.

Our waitress was a startlingly pretty girl who smiled as she brought our lemonade. She didn’t seem at all electrical.

“Are you going to come out and fly with us?” Paul asked.

“Oh! You’re the boys with the airplanes! I saw you fly over a little while ago. Two of you?”

“And a jumper,” I added.

It was beyond understanding. We had made only a half-circle of town, but surely half the people in Pecatonica knew about the two airplanes waiting at the airport.

We piled our lemonade money on the table.

“You’ll be out to fly with us?” Paul said.

“I don’t know. I might.”

“She won’t,” Paul said. “Why is it that waitresses never come out and fly with us?”

“Waitresses are the best judges of character in the world,” I told him. “They know never to fly with people who wear nutty green hats.”

Taking our lemonade with us, we set out for the airport. It was a fifteen-minute walk, and by the time we reached the strip we were thirsty again. In the shed next to the pigs’ home there were several tractors and some bales of hay for Skeeter. The children were out in the yard, and no sooner had Stu laid himself down on the hay than they ran over and began burying him in kittens. There was a mother cat with them, and while Paul and I chatted with Skeeter, Stu was flat on his back in the hay, being trampled by a child-directed stampede of kittens. He was enjoying it greatly, and I was surprised. Stu was stepping out of character; this was not the sort of thing I had come to expect from our thoughtful, taciturn jumper.

Paul and I soon had the airplanes fired up and we flew one brief dogfight over the edge of town. There were four cars waiting when we landed, and a few passengers. We went to work flying.