Illusions
his black eyebrows. "Oh? Tell me."
                I was delighted. Someone wanted to hear my theory! "People couldn't fly for a long time, I don't think, because they didn't think it was possible, so of course they didn't learn the first little principle of aerodynamics. I want to believe that there's another principle somewhere: we don't need airplanes to fly, or move through walls, or get to planets. We can learn how to do that without machines anywhere. If we want to."
                He half-smiled, seriously, and nodded his head one time. "And you think that you will learn what you wish to learn by hopping three-dollar rides out of hayfields. "
                "The only learning that's mattered is what I got on my own, doing what I want to do. There isn't, but if there were a soul on earth who could teach me more of what I want to know than my airplane can, and the sky, I'd be off right now to find him. Or her."
                The dark eyes looked at me level. "Don't you believe you're guided, if you really want to learn this thing?"
                "I'm guided, yes. Isn't everyone ?   I've always felt something kind of watching over me, sort of. "
                "And you think you'll be led to a teacher who can help you. "
                "If the teacher doesn't happen to be me, yes."
                "Maybe that's the way it happens," he said.
     
                A modern new pickup truck hushed down the road toward us, raising a thin brown fog of dust, and it stopped by the field. The door opened, an old man got out, and a girl of ten or so. The dust stayed in the air, it was that still.
                "Selling rides, are you?" said the man.
                The field was Donald Shimoda's discovery; I stayed quiet.
                              "Will if you want, won't if you don't."
                              "And you want the dear Lord's fortune, I suppose."
                              "Three dollars cash, sir, for nine, ten minutes in the air. That is thirty-three and one-third cents per minute. And worth it, most people tell me."
                It was an odd bystander-feeling, to sit there idle and listen to the way this fellow worked his trade. I liked what he said, all low key. I had grown so used to my own way of selling rides ("Guaranteed ten degrees cooler upstairs, folks! Come on up where only birds and angels fly! All of this for three dollars only, a dozen quarters from your purse or pocket . . ."), I had forgotten there might be another.
                There's a tension, flying and selling rides alone. I was used to it, but still it was there: if I don't fly passengers, I don't eat. Now when I could sit back, not depending for my dinner on the outcome, I relaxed for once and watched.
                The girl stood back and watched, too. Blonde, brown-eyed, solemn-faced, she was here because her grampa was. She did not want to fly.
                Most often its the other way around, eager kids and cautious elders, but one gets a sense for these things when it's one's livelihood, and I knew that girl wouldn't fly with us if we waited all summer.
                "Which one of you gentlemen . . . ?" the man said.
                Shimoda poured himself a cup of water. "Richard will fly you. I'm still on my lunch hour. Unless you want to wait."
                "No, sir, I'm ready to go. Can we fly over my farm ?"
                "Sure," I said. "Just point the way you want to go, sir." I dumped my bedroll and toolbag and cook pots from the front cockpit of the Fleet, helped the man into the passenger seat and buckled him in. Then I slid down into the rear cockpit and fastened my own seat belt.
                 "Give me a prop, will you, Done"
                 "Yep." He brought his water

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