Nothing by Chance Read Free Page A

mask firm in place, my own delight well down within myself and under tight control. There was so much more I wanted to say, to ask: Tell me how that all felt, first time … was the sky as blue, the air as golden for you as it is for me? Did you see that deep deep green of the meadow, like we were floating in emerald, there after takeoff? Thirty years, fifty years from now, will you remember? I honestly wanted to know.
    But I nodded my head and smiled and said, “glad to fly with you,” and that was the end of the story. They walked away arm in arm, still smiling, toward their car.
    “That’s it,” Stu said, approaching my cockpit. “Nobody else wants to fly.”
    I came back from my far thoughts. “Nobody to fly? Stu, there’s five cars out there! They can’t all be just lookin’.”
    “They’re going to fly tomorrow, they say.”
    If we had five airplanes, and more action going on, I thought, they’d be ready to fly today. With five airplanes, we’d look like a real circus. With two airplanes, maybe we’re just a curiosity.
    The old-timers, I thought, suddenly. How many of them ever survived, leading a gypsy-pilot’s life?

    CHAPTER TWO    
    IT WAS ALL SIMPLE AND free and a very good life. The barnstorming pilots, back in the twenties, just cranked their Jennies into the air and they flew to any little town and they landed. And then they took passengers up for joy-rides and they earned great bales of money. What free men, the barnstormers! What a pure life that must have been.
    These same sky gypsies, full of years, had closed their eyes and told me of a sun fresh and cool and yellow like I had never seen, with grass so green it sparkled under the wheels; a sky blue and pure like skies never come, anymore, and clouds whiter than Christmas in the air. A land there was, in the old days, where a man could go in freedom, flying where he wanted to fly, and when; answering to no authority but his own.
    I had asked questions and I had listened carefully to the old pilots, and way in the back of my mind I wondered if a man might be able to do the same thing today, out in the great calm Midwest America.
    “On our own, kid,” I heard. “Aw, it used to be great. Weekdays we’d sleep late, and work on the airplanes till supper-time, then we’d carry folks up to sunset and beyond.Special times, pshaw, a thousand-dollar day was nothin’. Weekends we’d start flyin’ at sunup and we wouldn’t stop till midnight. Lines of people waitin’ to fly, lines of ’em. Great life, kid. Used to get up in the morning… we’d sew a couple blankets together, sleep under the wing … get up and say, ‘Freddie, where we goin’ today?’ And Freddie … he’s dead now; a fine pilot, but he never came back from the war … and Freddie’d say, ‘Where’s the wind?’
    “‘Comin’ out of the west,’ I’d say. ‘Then we go east,’ Freddie’d say, and we’d crank up the old Hisso Standard and throw in all our junk and off we’d go, headin’ with the wind and savin’ gas.
    “‘Course the times got rough, after a while. There was the Crash in ’29, and the folks didn’t have much money to fly. We were down to fifty cents a ride where we had been five dollars and ten dollars. Couldn’t even buy gas. Sometimes, two fellas workin’, we’d drain gas out of one plane to keep the other flyin’. Then the Air-Mail came along and after that the airlines started up, needin’ pilots. But for a while there, while it lasted, it was a good life. Oh, ’21 to ’29 … it was pretty good. First thing out, when you’d land, you’d get two boys out, and a dog. First thing, before anybody …” Eyes were closed again, remembering.
    And I had wondered. Maybe those good old days aren’t gone. Maybe they’re still waiting now, out over the horizon. If I could find a few other pilots, a few other old planes. Maybe we could find those days, that clear clear air, that freedom. If I could prove that a man does have a