Nothing by Chance

  Then in that second there was a great snapping explosion, the world went black and the engine wailed up in a shriek of metal running wild.

  The prop is hitting the ground I am crashing what happened the wheels must have torn off I have no wheels and now the propeller is hitting the ground hitting dirt we’re going over on our back way too fast dirt flying pull up pull up full power flying again but nothing I’m getting nothing out of the engine prop’s gone where land wires trees field wind… All at once that concussion of thought burst across me. And behind it, the dead knowing that I had crashed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I FELT THE TREMENDOUS POWER of the airplane smashing into the ground, clenched down tight in the cockpit, jammed full throttle and jerked the machine back into the air. The only thing I got from the throttle was a loud noise forward. There was no power at all. The biplane staggered back up on sheer momentum.

  We were not going to make it over the telephone wires ahead. It was strange. They had been close, at 110 mph, but now they were not close. We turned into the wind by reflex, and at full throttle, engine screaming a hundred feet in the air, everything slowed down. I felt the airplane trembling on a stall and I was keen and aware of it, knowing that to slow any more would be to pitch nose-down into the ground. But I knew the biplane, and I knew that we would just hang there and come down slowly slowly into the wind. I wondered if the people on the ground were frightened, since it must all look pretty bad; a big burst of dirt and wheels flying off and the strange howling of the engine and the shuddering high in the air before it falls. Yet the only fear I felt was their fear, of how this all must look from the ground.

  We came down in slow motion, facing the wind, into the tall grass. Not a single obstacle to clear. The earth came leisurely up to meet us and at last it brushed us lightly with its green. In that moment the engine was of no further use, and I flicked the magneto switch off. We slid slowly through the weeds, less than 20 miles per hour, and with nothing else to do, I moved the mixture lever to Idle-Cutoff and the fuel selector to Off. There was no shock of touchdown, no lurching forward in the seat. All in very slow motion.

  I was impatient to get out and see what had happened, and had my safety belt off and was standing up in the cockpit before we had slid to a stop.

  The biplane tilted wildly down, right wing low, grass and dust settling through the air. My beautiful darn airplane.

  It did not look good. The right lower wing was a mass of wrinkles, which could only mean a broken spar beneath the fabric. How sad, I thought, standing there in the cockpit, to end this barnstorming all so quickly after it had started.

  I watched myself very carefully, to see when I would begin to be afraid. After this sort of thing happens, one is supposed to be afraid. The fear was taking its time, though, and more than anything, I was disappointed. There would be work ahead, and I would much rather fly than work.

  I stepped out of the airplane, all alone in the field before the crowd arrived, pushed my goggles up and looked at the machine. It was not easy to be optimistic.

  Besides the spar, the propeller was bent. Both blades, bent hard back from the tips. The right landing gear had broken loose, but not off, and had smashed back into the wing when we landed. That was the extent of the damage. It was not nearly so bad as it had felt.

  Off across the field, the men walking, the boys running, the crowd came to see what was left of the old airplane. Well, I thought, I guess it had to be, guess I’d want to come over and look, if I were in their place. But what had happened was now old news to me, and the thought of saying it over and over again was not one that I relished. Since my fear still hadn’t arrived, I would spend the time thinking of some good understatements to fit the occasion.

  A big official truck rolled out across the grass. GO NAVY, it said in big white letters, and on top of it was mounted a pair of loudspeakers to reinforce the words. At this point going Navy was a much sounder bet than going Air Force.

  Paul Hansen had been first to arrive, cameras around his neck, out of breath.

  “Man … I thought … you … had bought it …”

  “What do you mean?” I said. “We just touched down a little hard there. Felt like we ran into something.”

  “You don’t … know. You hit the ground, and then … went way over … on your nose. I thought you … going to nose over for sure … on your back. It was a bad … scene. I really thought… you had it.”

  He should have had his breath back by now. Was the sight of the crash so bad that it could affect him so? If anybody had a right to be concerned, it was me, because it was my airplane all bent up there in the grass.

  “Oh, no, Paul. Not a chance of going over. Did it really look that way?”

  “Yeah. I thought … my God … Dick’s bought it!”

  I didn’t believe him. It couldn’t have been that bad. But thinking back, I remembered that the first impact had been very hard, though, and the sound of that explosion. And we did nose forward then, too. But nothing like we were going over.

  “Well,” I said, after a minute, “You got to admit that’s a pretty hard act to follow.” I felt springs loosening inside me, springs that had been tight in the air, to let me feel every tiny motion of the airplane. Now they were loosening, and I felt relaxed, except that I didn’t know how long it would take to fix the airplane. That was the only tense thought. I wanted to fix the plane as soon as possible.

  Thirty hours later, the biplane had been repaired, tested and was flying passengers again.

  It is kind of a miracle, I thought, and I wondered at it.

  When we left Prairie du Chien, Rio was the Unknown. And now, with Rio become Known, we felt the tug of security, and were uneasy.

  The wind came up that afternoon and it changed Stu MacPherson at once from parachute jumper to a groundling ticket-seller.

  “It’s about fifteen miles an hour now,” he said, worried. “That’s a bit too much for me to feel good about jumping.”

  “Aw, c’mon,” I said, wondering how powerful a wind could be on the big silken dome. “Fifteen crummy miles an hour? That can’t hurt you.” It would be fun to know, too, whether Stu could be bullied out of his better judgment.

  “That’s getting pretty windy. I’d rather not jump.”

  “We got all these people coming out to see you. Crowd’s gonna be unhappy. Somebody said yesterday that your jump was the first ever made on this field. Now everybody’s all set to see the second. You better jump.” If he gave in, I had a lecture all prepared on how only weaklings give in to what they know isn’t right.

  “Fifteen miles is a lot of wind, Dick,” Paul said from the hangar. “Tell you what. We have to test the canopy out, make sure that the inversion’s gone. Why don’t you strap on the harness for us and we’ll throw the canopy up into the wind and see that it opens out all right.”

  “I’ll strap on your parachute,” I said. “I’m not afraid of your parachute.”

  Paul brought the harness over and helped me strap into it, and as he did, I remembered the stories I had heard in the Air Force of pilots dragged about helplessly by parachutes in the wind. I began, in short, to have second thoughts.

  But by that time I was strapped in, my back to the wind, which seemed to be blowing much harder now, and Paul and Stu were down by the canopy laid on the grass, ready to throw it up into the quick-moving air.

  “Ready to go?” Paul shouted.

  “Just a minute!” I didn’t like his word about “going,” for I meant to stay right where I was. I dug my heels into the ground, unsnapped the safety catch on the quick release that would spill the canopy if anything went wrong.

  “Don’t punch the Capewell,” Paul said. “It will get the canopy all tangled up again. If you want to spill the chute, pull on the bottom risers. You ready?”

  Directly downwind was a low fence of timbers and steel cables. If I dragged, I’d drag right into it. But then again I’m 200 pounds all dug in here, and no little breeze cou
ld drag that much all the way to the fence. “Ready!”

  I braced against the wind and Paul and Stu tossed the skirt of the canopy into the air, with what seemed like altogether too much enthusiasm. The wind caught the chute at once, it popped out like a racingboat spinnaker, and every ounce of that force snapped down the risers and into my shoulders. It was like a tractor lurching into gear, and all hooked to me.

  “HEY!” I flew out of my special braced place, and out of the second place I dug my boots into, and out of the third. I thought of losing my balance behind this big thing, and being whipped across that fence. The monster jellyfish pulled me in jerks, wham-wham-wham across the ground while Paul and Stu just stood and laughed. It was the first time I had heard Stu laugh.

  “Hold on there, boy!”

  “This is just a little breeze! This is nothing! Hey, hang on!”

  I got the idea about wind and parachutes and grabbed for the lower risers to collapse the thing while I skidded for the fence. I pulled, but nothing happened. If anything, I skidded faster, and nearly lost my balance.

  At that point I ceased to care about the delicacy of Stu’s canopy, and pulled hard on all the bottom lines I could get hold of. Very suddenly the chute collapsed and I was standing in the mild wind of afternoon.

  “What’s the matter?” Paul called. “Couldn’t you hold the thing?”

  “Well, I thought I’d just as soon not cut your lines all up on the fence, there. Save you some repair work.”

  I unsnapped the harness, quickly. “Stu, I don’t think you’d better jump today. This wind’s up a little too high. Of course you want to jump anyway, but it’s wiser for you just to stay down this afternoon. I think it’s a lot wiser.”

  We rounded up the giant canopy and bundled it into the calm of the hangar.

  “You really ought to jump sometime, Richard,” Paul said. “There’s nothing like it. That’s real flying. Man, you get up there, no engine or nothing. Just … you. Dig? You really ought to do it.”

  I have never had any intention of jumping out of an airplane and Paul’s pitch did not make me eager to start now.

  “Sometime,” I said. “I’ll give it a whirl, when the wings fall off my airplane. I want to start right out with a free-fall, and not go through all those static-line things they make you do in the jump schools. At the moment, let us say that I’m not quite ready to begin my jumping career.”

  Al’s Sinclair pickup truck arrived, and with him in the cab was a tall distinguished fellow we met as Lauren Gilbert, who owned the airport. Lauren couldn’t do enough to make us welcome. He had learned to fly when he was fifty years old, was completely caught up in the fun of flying, and had just yesterday passed the tests to earn his instrument-flight license.

  Our policy insisted that he have a free ride, since he owned the field, and the biplane was airborne ten minutes later on its first flight of the afternoon. This was our advertising flight; the first one up, to tell the town that we were in business and already flying happy passengers and why weren’t they up in the sky with us, looking down at the city?

  We had to work a flight pattern over each town, and the pattern over Rio was takeoff west, climb south and east in a shallow left turn, level at 1,000 feet, turn back and circle the town in a right turn all the way to the airstrip, steep turns north, slip down over the telephone wires, land. This came to a twelve-minute ride, gave our passengers a view of their home, the feeling of the freedom of flying, and an adventure to talk about and paste into scrapbooks.

  “That’s pretty nice,” Lauren said as Stu opened the door for him. “You know that’s the first time I’ve ever been up in an open-cockpit airplane? That’s really flying. That’s wonderful. The wind, you know, and that big old engine up there…”

  A pair of boys appeared, Holly and Blackie by name, wheeling their bicycles, and we all walked together to the office after Lauren’s ride.

  “Boys, you want to go for a ride?” he asked down at them.

  “We don’t have any money,” Holly said. He was perhaps thirteen years old, of bright and inquisitive eye.

  “Tell you what. You come out here and wash down my Cessna, polish it all up, and I’ll pay for your rides. How’s that sound?”

  There was an uncomfortable silence from the boys.

  “Ah … no thanks, Mister Gilbert.”

  “What do you mean? Boys, this is probably the last of these old biplanes you’ll ever see! You’ll be able to say that you’ve flown in a biplane! And there’s not many people left, even grown-ups, anymore, that can say that they’ve flown in a real biplane.”

  Silence again, and I was surprised. I would have worked on that Cessna for a year, when I was thirteen, to get a ride in an airplane. Any airplane.

  “Blackie, how about you? You help get my airplane all clean and there’s a ride for you in the old biplane.”

  “No … thanks …”

  Lauren was selling them hard. I was astonished at their fears. But the boys looked down at the floor and said nothing.

  At last, very reluctantly, Holly agreed to the deal, and all of Lauren’s firepower turned on Blackie.

  “Blackie, why don’t you go on up with Holly, you boys can fly together.”

  “I don’t think so …”

  “What? Why, if little Holly here flies and you don’t, you’re a sissy!”

  “Yeah,” Blackie said quietly. “But it doesn’t matter, ’cause I’m bigger than him.”

  At last, however, all resistance fell to Lauren’s enthusiasm and the boys climbed aboard the biplane, expecting the worst. The engine burst into life, fanning their sober faces with exhaust wind; a moment later we were lifting up into the sky. A thousand feet higher, they were peering down over the leather edge of the front cockpit, pointing down once in a while and occasionally shouting to one another above the noise. By the end of the flight, they were veterans of the air, laughing through the steep turns, looking fearlessly straight down the wing to the ground.

  When they stepped down out of the cockpit, back safely on the earth, they maintained a dignified calm.

  “That was fine, Mr. Gilbert. It was fun. We’ll come work this Saturday, if you want.”

  It was hard to tell. Would they remember the flight? Would it ever be a meaningful thing to them? I’ll have to come back in twenty years, I thought, and ask if they remember.

  The first of the automobiles arrived, but they arrived to watch, not to fly.

  “When’s the parachute jump?” The man got out of his car to ask. “Pretty soon now?”

  “It’s too windy today,” Stu told him. “I don’t think we’re going to do the jump today.”

  “What do you mean? I came all the way out here to see the parachute jump and here I am and you say it’s too windy. Look, the wind isn’t hardly blowing at all! What’s the matter? You scared to jump, you going to chicken out?”

  His voice had just enough fire to burn.

  “Boy, I am glad you came out!” I turned on him in genuine heartiness, protecting young MacPherson. “Am I glad to see you! Gee, we were afraid that we’d have to scrub the jump today because the wind, but heck, here you are. Wonderful! You can make the jump for Stu, here. I always thought the boy was a little chicken anyway, aren’t you, Stu?” The more I talked, the more annoyed I got with the guy. “Hey, Paul! We got a jumper! Bring the chute over and we’ll get him all suited up!”

  “Well, just a minute …” the man said.

  “Do you want to go out at three thousand, or four? Whatever you say is OK with us. Stu’s been using the windsock for a target, but if you want to come in a little closer to the wires …”

  “Hey, friend, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that I …”

  “No, that’s fine. We’re really glad to find you. We wouldn’t have had the jump at all today without you. We sure appreciate your coming up and making it for us …”

  Paul caught the idea and hurried our way, carrying Stu’s parachute and helmet.

  “I don’t thi
nk I better. I understand about the wind,” the man said, and waved and walked quickly to his car. The whole scene could have been from a screenplay, it worked so well, and I put the method down on my list to use again with unhappy jump-expecters.

  “What would you have done if he didn’t back out?” Stu said. “What if he said he wanted to jump?”

  “I woulda said fine, and popped him into that chute like nothin’ flat. I was darn ready to take him up and throw him over the side.”

  For a while the people sat in their cars and watched, and wouldn’t budge when Stu walked to their windows.

  “Come on up and fly!” he said at one window. “Rio from the air!”

  The figure inside shook its head. “I like to see it from the ground.”

  If this was typical modern barnstorming, I thought, we were dead; the good old days were truly gone.

  At last, about 5:30 in the afternoon, a fearless old farmer drove in. “I got a place about two miles down the road. Fly me over and see it?”

  “Sure thing,” I said.

  “What’ll it cost me?”

  “Three dollars cash, American money.”

  “Well, what are we waitin’ for, young fella?”

  He couldn’t have been less than seventy, but he lived the flight. Snowy hair streaming back in the wind, he pointed the way to fly, and then down to his house and barn. It was as neat and pretty as a Wisconsin travel poster; bright green grass, bright white house, bright red barn, bright yellow hay in the loft. We circled twice, to bring a woman out on the grass, waving. He waved back wildly to her and kept waving as we flew away.

  “A good ride, young fella,” he said when Stu guided him down from the cockpit. “Best three dollars I ever spent. First time I been up in one of these machines. Now you made me sorry I didn’t do it a long time ago.”

  That ride started our day, and from then till sunset I stayed in the cockpit, waiting only long enough on the ground for new riders to step aboard.