Nothing by Chance

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

BY TEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING the oven Illinois was a kiln. The grass scorched beneath our feet. There was a very light hot breeze, a low oriental woodwind through the flying wires as we sat in the shade under the wing.

“OK, Stu-babe, here is a map. I shall take my knife and hurl it into the map. Wherever the knife hits, we go.”

I tossed the knife down end over end, and to my surprise, the blade struck hard and firm through the map. A good omen. We checked the slit eagerly.

“Great,” I said. “We are supposed to go land in the Mississippi River. Thanks a lot, knife.”

We tried again and again, and the only result was a map full of holes. There was a reason not to fly to any place the knife suggested.

A car stopped, and a man and two boys walked toward us.

“When they get out of the car, they are already sold,” Stu said. “Do we want to fly anybody today, or just get going?”

“Might as well fly ’em.”

Stu went to work. “Hi, folks.”

“You with the airplane?”

“Yes, sir!”

“We want to fly.”

“Glad to have you aboard. Why don’t you just step right over here…” He broke off in mid-sentence. “Hey, look, Dick. A biplane.”

It came small and quiet, whispering in from the west, easing down toward us through the sky.

“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.

By three o’clock we were airborne, heading south and east into Missouri. Stu rode the Travelair front seat, and I had a cockpit full of baggage and parachutes.

We had a problem at once. The Travelair was too fast; Spence had to keep his power way back to fly slow enough for me to stay with him. Every once in a while he would forget, and think about something else, and then turn around to find a tiny speck of a Parks trailing a mile behind. But by the time we crossed the Mississippi, we were working together and our shadows flicked over the brown water in good formation. It was a fine feeling, not to be alone, to have another biplane out there going the same way through the old sky. We felt happy, my airplane and I, and we did a little swooping and turning just for fun.

A barnstormer, I found, gets to know the country well. It wasn’t necessary to look once at the map. Head toward the sun till you hit the Mississippi. Fly down the river till you can see the Des Moines River coming in from the west. Cut north of Keokuk and angle a little south for ten minutes and there’s Kahoka.

The drag strip was overflowing with people. We flew one circle to let the world know that we had arrived, and turned to land.

“Hey, this looks nice,” Spence said as soon as we had landed. “Nice grass, town’s right here, this looks real nice.”

The passengers came at once and it was luxury to let the Travelair carry the first ones, just to sit on the ground and let Spence bring in the money.

We were big time now, with a Ship Number One and a Ship Number Two to work for us. Unfortunately I couldn’t enjoy the luxury long, for greasy old Ship Number One had customers walking toward her, ready to fly. I climbed into my familiar seat and we were on our way through the afternoon. There were just a few hours left till sundown, but we worked straight through, and carried twenty-three riders before the day was over.

I heard bits and pieces of passenger-talk, between takeoffs.

“I been twenty-five years trying to get my wife off the ground, and today she finally goes up in that blue plane.”

“This is real flying. The modern stuff is transportation, but this is real flying.”

“Sure glad you guys showed up—it’ll do a lot for this town.”

It was like coming home, Kahoka. The Orbit Inn was still there and going strong, with its juke-box music; and the young people sitting on the fenders of their cars in the warm night air.

“This is fun,” Spence said. “Not just the money, but talking to the people. You’re really doing something for ’em.”

Stu and I saw it all again for the first time, through the other pilot’s eyes as he talked. It was good to see Spencer Nelson there in night Kahoka, carried away with the fresh new joys of barnstorming.