Nothing by Chance

Again I urged Stu to get out of school until he decided what he wanted to do in the world, that he was just postponing living until he found that out, that it was doom to ever become a dentist if he was an adventurer at heart. He remained unconvinced.

We said goodbye to Skeeter, telling him that he was a good horse and we would remember him, and loaded the airplane. The engine warmed for the next adventure, beating back the tall grass in fifth-second impulses. It looked like a 1910 movie of a biplane running in tall grass, jerky and flickering.

By ten o’clock we were on a long run crosswind, dragging our shadow like a giant salmon fighting and thrashing at the end of a thousand-foot line. We didn’t settle down to our next sight of Midwest America until the wheels touched and rolled on the grass of Kahoka, Missouri.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THERE WERE TWO BOYS and a dog, waiting.

“You in trouble, mister?”

“Nope, no trouble,” I said.

“D’ja see me wavin’ at you?”

“Didn’t you see us wavin’ back? You don’t think we’d fly over and not wave, do you? Geemanee, what do you think we are, anyway?”

We unloaded our supply mountain and carried it across the deep green grass into the shade of a crumbling hangar. By the time we had the signs up and were open for business, there were eleven boys and seven bicycles scattered across the airplane and the grass.

It was an uncomfortable time. We didn’t want to scare them all away, but neither did we want them walking through the fabric of the wings.

“Sure you can sit in the front seat, fellas, just stay on the black part of the wing, there, don’t walk on the yellow. Careful, there.” I turned to one boy looking soberly on. “How many people live in Kahoka, my friend?”

“Two thousand one hundred and sixty.” He knew the exact figure.

There was a sharp explosion near the tail of the airplane and a little spray of grass jerked into the air. “Hey, fellas, let’s keep the firecrackers away from the airplane, OK?”

There was some giggling and laughing from one knot of boys, and another explosion burst beneath the wingtip. More than anything at that moment, I felt like a junior-high teacher with a problem in discipline.

“NEXT GUY THROWS A FIRECRACKER BY THIS AIRPLANE I’M GONNA PICK UP AND THROW ACROSS THAT ROAD! YOU WANTA PLAY WITH THAT STUFF, YOU GET IT OUTA HERE!”

Violence worked at once. There were no more explosions in a hundred yards of the biplane.

Boys surged around us like pilot fish around sharks. When we walked clear of the airplane, everybody walked clear. When we leaned on the wing, everybody leaned on the wing. They were busy daring each other to fly… a giant challenge.

“I’d fly, if I had the money. I just don’t have the money.”

“If I loaned you three dollars, Jimmy, would you fly?”

“Nope,” Jimmy said. “I wouldn’t pay you back.”

Their fear of the airplane was staggering. Every boy spoke of crashing; what do you do when the wings fall off … what if you jump and the chute doesn’t open? There was going to be great disappointment in Kahoka if we didn’t dive into the ground with at least one fatality.

“I thought you were all brave guys,” Stu said. “And here nobody’s got the courage to go up one time.”

They gathered together, found that they could raise three dollars, and sent a spokesman. “If we paid you three dollars, mister, would you do some stunts for us?”

“You mean nobody goin’ for a ride?” I said. “You all just watchin’ from the ground?”

“Yeah. We’ll pay you three dollars.”

It was human society at work. If individual daring is ruled out, we can band together as spectators.

The boys all massed at the end of the strip, sitting down in the grass by the road. I taxied to the far end of the strip, so that we’d be taking off over their heads and toward town, all good advertising.

They were just little dots when the biplane’s wheels lifted off the grass, but instead of climbing, we stayed low, skimming the grasstops, picking up speed and pointing straight into the young crowd.

If the engine quits here, I thought, we pull up, turn right and land in the bean field. But the boys didn’t know this. All they could see was the biplane growing into a huge thing, roaring right straight at them, not turning, not climbing, coming bigger and louder than a five-ton firecracker.