Nothing by Chance

“Stu, that’s a Travelair! That’s Spencer Nelson! He made it!”

It was a bomb set off in our midst. I leaped into the cockpit and tossed the starting crank to Stu.

“You don’t mind waiting a minute, folks, do you?” I said to the man and his sons. “This other airplane is all the way from California. I’ll go up and welcome him in, and then we’ll fly.”

They didn’t have a chance to protest. The engine, screaming from the inertia starter, burst into life and we were taxiing at once, gathering speed, lifting off the ground, turning toward the newcomer. He was swinging into the landing pattern when we caught him, and closed into formation alongside.

The pilot waved.

“HEY, SPENCE!” I shouted, knowing he couldn’t hear a word over the wind.

His airplane was beautiful. It was just out of the shop, finished by this airline captain who couldn’t get enough of flying. The machine shined and sparkled and flashed in the sunlight. There wasn’t a single patch, not one oil-streak or spot of grease down its whole length, and I blinked at its perfection. The big air-balanced rudder touched over and we turned for a low pass along the grass runway.

Travelair Aircraft Co., went the smooth professional letters on the tail, Wichita, Kansas. The airplane was a sleek eager dolphin in the sky, a much larger machine than the Parks, and much more elegant. We felt like a seamy tarstained little tugboat nosing the United States into harbor. I wondered if Spence knew what he was getting into, if his glossy blue airplane was going to look as pretty going home as it looked this minute.

We whistled once more through the pattern and landed, that queen of a biplane leading the way, taxiing to the passengers, shutting down into a stately silence.

I had never met the pilot, and knew him only through letters and telephone calls as he had struggled to get his airplane ready for the summer. When he took off his helmet and climbed down from the high cockpit, I saw that Spencer Nelson was a short quick man with the hawkish look of an old-time pilot: firm angled face, intense blue eyes.

“Mister Nelson!” I said.

“Mister Bach, I presume?”

“Spence, you nutty guy. You made it! Where you in from this morning?”

“In from Kearny, Nebraska. Five hours’ flying. I called your house, Bette said you had called from here.” He stretched, glad to be out of the cockpit. “That old parachute gets kind of hard to sit on after a while, don’t it?”

“Well, from here on out, you are in the land of happy barnstorming, Spence. But you come out here to stand ’round and talk, or you wanta do some work? We got passengers waitin’.”

“Let’s go,” he said.

He piled a mass of equipment from the front cockpit onto the ground, and Stu led two of the passengers to the big airplane. I helped the other one into the Parks, which was looking rattier every moment she stood alongside the Travelair.

“I’ll follow you,” Spence called, as Stu cranked his engine into blue smoke and roar.

We took off and fell into the Monmouth Barnstorming Pattern, one long turn around the city, a circle over a little lake west with sunsparkles on the water, and gliding turns to landing … ten minutes exactly. The Travelair was much faster than the Parks, and zoomed by her in the first turn after takeoff. Spence took far too long, making double turns and side excursions all over the place.

He landed five minutes after the Parks.

“Hey, what are you tryin’ to do?” I said. “The people are not paying to ride along while you break the biplane endurance record, you know. They’re paying to get a taste of the wind in the wires, and to see how it all looks from the air. I’d hate to have you for competition.”

“Was that too long? I’ll watch that. Just breakin’ in here, you know.”

We walked to the restaurant and heard his story of trials and frustration with officials and paperwork while he had put the finishing touches on the Travelair and raced across the country to catch us.

“I’ve only got five days left on my vacation, with all that delay at first. I’ll have to be gettin’ on home here in a couple days.”

“Spence! You come all the heck way out here for two days’ barnstorming? That is bad news! You are some kind of a nut, I hope to tell ya!”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Never been barnstorming before.”

“Well, we sure got to get out of here, give you something a little more typical, and make you some money to get home on, anyway.”

“How about Kahoka?” Stu said. “Remember they said they had drag races or some big thing coming up. Lots of people. Close to town.”

“That’s an airstrip, though. We want a good hayfield.”

We thought it over for a while, and at last Stu prevailed. With just two days left for our new pilot, we couldn’t afford to wander aimlessly.