Nothing by Chance

“Well, I’ll find a place in town and get it all welded up. Just as soon get it out of the way now, huh?”

He took the shaft loose and set off for town. If this was to be his only maintenance problem in two days, he would be doing well indeed as a gypsy pilot.

A man drove up and looked at the airplanes. “You fly those?”

“Sure do,” I said, walking over to the window of the Chevrolet. “You lookin’ to ride today?”

“I don’t know,” he said, thoughtfully. Sitting next to him in the car was a completely beautiful young woman, with long black hair and very wide dark eyes.

“Town’s awful pretty in the morning … air’s nice and still and smooth,” I said. “Cooler up there, too.”

The man was interested, teetering on the brink of adventure, but the girl looked at me as a frightened doe would, and didn’t make a sound.

“Think I should go up?” the man asked her.

There was no reply, not a single word. She shook her head the tiniest bit no.

“Never had a passenger who didn’t think the ride was great—your money back if you don’t like it.” I surprised myself with that. I really didn’t care if the man flew or not; there would be plenty of passengers later on. The money-back guarantee was a good stunt, but I hadn’t even considered it until that second. It was a clash of my world against the world of that girl, and the man was our battleground.

“I think I’ll go. Take long?”

“Ten minutes.” I had won, that quickly.

“Be right back,” he said to the girl. She looked at him with her deep dark eyes, afraid, but still she didn’t say a word.

We flew ten minutes, and because I was curious, I kept looking back and down, as we flew, at the Chevrolet. The car door did not open, there was no face looking up through the window. Something strange about that woman, and the bright summer day went eerie and uncomfortable.

The landing was normal, every bit normal, like every landing we made those days. We were down and rolling along the grass, moving perhaps 40 miles per hour. Suddenly a voice spoke within me: “Move it over to the right, swing out to the right.” There was no reason to do it, but I did, wondering that I would.

In that instant, as the biplane moved right, an airplane flashed past on our left, landing in the opposite direction on the grass, moving perhaps 50 miles per hour.

For a second I was stunned, a sheet of cold went through me. I hadn’t seen the other plane, he clearly hadn’t seen me. If we hadn’t moved to the right, the biplane’s barnstorming days would have come to a very quick, spectacular end. The other plane turned, lifted again into the air, and disappeared. I thanked that voice, that angel-thought, and since the incident was all over I would best be very casual about it, or better, not speak of it at all.

The man handed Stu three dollar bills and got back into his car. The girl had not moved, she had not spoken.

“Thanks a lot,” my passenger said, happy, and with his strange strange person, drove away. We didn’t see them again.

Spence came back with a welded starter shaft of solid iron, strong enough to hang his whole airplane from.

“This ought to do the job,” he said. “Let’s try her again.”

The engine fired at once and he was off for a test flight. When he returned ten minutes later, there was still a faint spray of oil from the crankcase breather.

“Well, gee,” he said. “I’d sure like to get rid of that oil.”

“Spence, that’s the breather! That is oil mist, you’re talking about. I don’t know too many barnstormers who worry about oil mist on their airplanes. All we care about here is that the wings are on good and tight, you know?”

“OK. But still, I don’t like it on my pretty new Travelair.”

Spence got the next two passengers, a man and his boy. When they were strapped aboard, he lowered his goggles, pushed the throttle forward and started his takeoff across the grass. I turned to Stu. “Sure is nice to have somebody else to do the work, so we …” I stopped in mid-sentence, stricken. The Travelair engine had quit on takeoff.

“Oh, no.” This, I thought, in a tenth of a second, is not our day.

The big airplane glided down again to the grass, rolling soundlessly toward the far end of the strip; the engine had stopped soon enough to allow a quick safe landing.

In a second it cut in again, purring smoothly, but Spence didn’t try another takeoff. He taxied straight back toward us.

“Wonder what the passengers think of that,” Stu said, with a faint smile.