Stu caught on to a nice bit of passenger psychology, and took to saying, “How’d you like it?” when the flyers deplaned. Their clear fun and wild enthusiasm convinced the doubtful waiting to go ahead and invest in flight.
A few passengers came back near my cockpit after their flight and asked where they might learn to fly, and how much it might cost. Al and Lauren had been right, thinking we could do something for Rio aviation. One more airplane hangared at the airstrip would increase the flying by 25 percent, three more airplanes would double it. But the nature of the barnstormer is to come and be gone again all in a day, and we never heard what happened at Rio after we flew away.
The sun dropped down around us. Paul and I went up for one last formation flight for fun and watched the lights slowly sparkle on, down in the dark streets. When we landed, we could hardly see to taxi, and we felt as if we had been working much longer than one afternoon.
We covered the airplanes, paid the gas bill and just as we were all cocooned in our sleeping bags, and as Stu had uncocooned at the request of his seniors to turn out the light, I saw a pair of beady black eyes watching me from under the toolkit, near the door.
“Hey, you guys,” I said. “We got a mouse in here.”
“Where do you see a mouse?” Paul said.
“Tool-kit. Underneath it.”
“Kill him. Get him with your boot, Stu.”
“PAUL, YOU BLOODTHIRSTY MURDERER!” I shouted. “There will be no killing in this house! Pick up that boot and you got that mouse and me both to face, Stu.”
“Well, sweep him out, then,” Paul said, “if you’re going to be that way.”
“No!” I said. “The little guy deserves a roof over his head. How would you like somebody to sweep you out in the cold?”
“It’s not cold outside,” Paul said peevishly.
“Well, the principle of the thing. He was here before we came. This is his place more than ours.”
“All right, all right,” he said. “Leave the mouse there! Let the mouse walk all over us. But if he steps on me, I’m gonna pound him!”
Stu obediently snapped out the lights and groped back to his couch-pillows on the floor.
We talked in the dark for a while about how kind our hosts had been, and the whole town, for that matter.
“But you notice we carried no women here, or almost none?” Paul said. “There was hardly one female passenger. We had all kinds of them at Prairie.”
“We made all kinds of money, and we didn’t quite do that here,” I said.
“How’d we do in all, by the way, Stu?”
He reeled off statistics, “Seventeen passengers. Fifty-one dollars. “’Course we spent nineteen for gas. That’s what…” he paused for figuring, “… ten bucks each, today, about.”
“Not bad,” Paul said. “Ten bucks for three hours’ work. On a weekday. That works out to fifty dollars a week with all expenses paid except food, and not counting Saturday and Sunday. Hey! A guy can make a living at this!”
I wanted very much to believe him.
CHAPTER FIVE
FIRST THING NEXT MORNING, Paul Hansen was on fire. He was all crushed up in his sleeping bag, and from the end of it, from just by his hatbrim, a veil of smoke curled up.
“PAUL! YOU’RE ON FIRE!”
He didn’t move. After a short aggravated pause, he said, “I am smoking a cigarette.”
“First thing in the morning? Before you even get up? Man, I thought you were on fire!”
“Look,” he said. “Don’t bug me about my cigarettes.”
“Sorry.”
I surveyed the room, and from my low position it looked more like some neglected trash-bin than ever. In the center of the room was a cast-iron wood-burning stove. It said Warm Morning on it, in raised iron, and its draft holes looked at me with slitted eyes. The stove did not make me feel very welcome.
Lapping all around its iron feet were our supplies and equipment. On the one table were several old aviation magazines, a tool-company calendar with some very old Peter Gow-land girl-shots, Stu’s reserve parachute, with its altimeter and stopwatch strapped on. Directly beneath was my red plastic clothes bag, zippered shut, with a hole chewed about the size of a quarter in the side … THERE WAS A HOLE IN MY CLOTHES BAG! From one crisis to another.
I sprang out of bed, grabbed the bag and zipped it open. There beneath shaving kit and Levi’s and a packet of bamboo pens were my emergency rations: a box of bittersweet chocolate and several packs of cheese and crackers. One square of chocolate had been half eaten and one cheese section of a cheese-and-crackers box had been consumed. The crackers were untouched.
The mouse. That mouse from last night, under the tool-kit. My little buddy, the one whose life I saved from Hansen’s savagery. That mouse had eaten my emergency rations!
“You little devil!” I said fiercely, through gritted teeth.
“What’s the matter?” Hansen smoked his cigarette, and didn’t turn over.
“Nothing. Mouse ate my cheese.”
There was a great burst of smoke from the far couch. “THE MOUSE? That mouse from last night that I said we’d better throw outside? And you felt sorry for him? That mouse ate your food?”
“Some cheese, and a little chocolate, yeah.”
“How’d he get at it?”
“He ate a hole through my clothes bag.”
Hansen didn’t stop laughing until quite a while later.
I drew on heavy wool socks and my boots with the survival knife sewn to the side. “Next time I see that mouse around my clothes bag,” I said, “he gets six inches of cold steel, I guarantee ya, no questions asked. Last time I stick up for any mouse. You think at least he’d eat your crazy hat, Hansen, or Stu’s toothpaste or somethin’, but my cheese! Man! Next time, baby, cold steel!”
At breakfast, we dined on Mary Lou’s French toahst for the last time.
“We’re on our way today, Mary Lou,” Paul said, “and you didn’t come out and fly with us. You sure missed a good chance. It’s pretty up there, and now you’ll never know what the sky is like, first hand.”
She smiled a dazzling smile. “It’s pretty up there,” she said, “but it’s a silly bunch that lives in it.” So that is what our enchantress thought of us. I was, in a way, hurt.
We paid our bill and said goodbye to Mary Lou and rode out to the airport in Al’s pickup.
“Think you guys could get back around this way July six-teen-seventeen?” he asked. “Firemen’s Picnic, then. Be lots of people here love to have an airplane ride. Sure like to have you back up here.”
We began packing our mountain of gear back into the airplanes. The wings of the Luscombe rocked as Paul tied his camera boxes firmly to the framework of the cabin.
“Never can tell, Al. We got no idea where we’re gonna be, then. If we’re anywhere around here, though, we’ll sure be back.”
“Glad to have you, anytime.”
It was Wednesday morning, then, when we lifted off, circling one last time over Al’s place and the Café. Al waved and we rocked our wings farewell, but Mary Lou was busy, or had no time for the silly bunch that lived in the sky. I was still sad about that.
And Rio was gone.
And spring changed to summer.
CHAPTER SIX
IT CAME TO US as all Midwest towns did, a clump of green trees way out in the middle of the countryside. At first it seemed trees only, and then the church steeples came in sight, and then the fringe-houses and then at last it was clear that under those trees were solid houses and potential airplane passengers.
The town lapped around two lakes and a huge grass runway. I was tempted to fly right on over it, because there were at least fifteen small hangars down there, and lights along the sides of the strip. This was getting pretty far away from the traditional hayfield of the true barnstormer.
But The Great American Flying Circus was low on funds, the strip was less than a block from town, and the cool lakes lay there and sparkled clear in
the sun, inviting us. So we dropped down in, touching one-two on the grass.
The place was deserted. We taxied to the gas pit, which was a set of steel trapdoors in the grass, and shut the engines down into silence.
“What do you think?” I called to Paul as he slid out of his airplane.
“Looks good.”
“Think it’s a bit too big to work?”
“Looks fine.”
There was a small square office near the gas pit, but it was locked. “This is not my idea of a barnstormer’s hayfield.”
“Might as well be, for all the people around here.”
“They’ll be comin’ out about suppertime, like always.”
An old Buick sedan rolled out toward us from town, lurching heavily over the grass driveway to the office. It stopped, and a spare, lined man eased out, smiling.
“You want some gas, I guess.”
“Could use some, yeah.”
He stepped up on the wooden porch and unlocked the office.
“Nice field, you got here,” I said.
“Not bad, for bein’ sod.”
Bad news, I thought. When the owner doesn’t like sod, he’s looking for a concrete runway, and when he’s looking for a concrete runway, he’s looking to make money on business planes, not barnstormers.
“What were you boys doin’, tryin’ to see how close you could come without hitting?” He touched a switch that set the gas pump to humming.
I looked at Paul and thought I-told-you-so; we don’t want to have anything to do with this place.
“Just a bit of loose formation flying,” Paul said. “We do it every day.”
“Every day? What are you boys doing? You part of an air show?”
“Sort of. We’re just barnstormin’ around,” I said. “Thought we might stay here a few days, hop a few passengers, get people out to look at the airport.”
He thought about this for a while, considering implications.
“This is not my field, of course,” he said while we gassed the airplanes and added some quarts of oil to the engines. “Owned by the city and run by the club. I couldn’t make the decision by myself. I’d have to call a meeting of the directors. Could do that tonight and maybe you could come on down and talk to them.”
I couldn’t remember anything about barnstormers meeting with directors to decide whether or not to work a town. “It’s nothin’ that big,” I said. “Just us two airplanes. We do formation and a few aerobatics, and then Stu here does a little parachute jumpin’. That’s about it, and carrying passengers.”
“Still have to have the meeting, I’d think. How much do you charge?”
“Charge nothin’. It’s all free,” I said, reeling the gas hose into the pit. “All we’re tryin’ to do is make gas and oil and hamburgers on the passenger rides, three dollars a throw.”
Somehow I got the idea that the town had been hurt in the past by a troupe of roving sky gypsies. It was a completely different meeting than the normal cheer we had come to expect at smaller towns.
“Joe Wright’s the name.”
We introduced ourselves around, and Joe got on the phone and called a few of the directors of the Palmyra Flying Club. When he was done, he said, “We’ll be getting together tonight; like to have you come on down and talk. Meanwhile, I guess you’d like to get something to eat. Place is just down the way. Give you a ride, if you want, or there’s a courtesy car.
I would rather have walked, but Joe insisted and we piled into his Buick and drove. He knew the town well, and gave us a pretty little tour of it on the way to the café. Palmyra was blessed with beautiful grass places; a millpond that was still as a lily-pad and green-reflecting quiet like millponds should be; dirt roads through the country, arched overhead by tall curving trees, and quiet back streets with timeless lapstrake and stained glass and oval strawberry-glass front doors.
Every day’s barnstorming made the fact a little clearer … the only place where time moves is in the cities.
By the time we arrived at the D&M Truck Stop Café, we were well appraised of the town, whose primary industry was a foundry sheltered back in the trees; and of Joe Wright, who was a kind-thinking volunteer airport-operator. He dropped us at the door and left to do some more calling and meeting-arranging.
“I don’t like it, Paul,” I said when we had ordered. “Why should we bother with a place if it’s gonna be no fun? We’re free agents, remember … go anywhere we want to. There’s eight thousand other places than here.”
“Don’t be so quick to judge,” he said. “What’s the matter with going to their little meeting? We just go there and act nice and they’ll say fine. Then we don’t have any problems and everybody knows we’re good guys.”
“But if we go to the meeting we hurt ourselves, don’t you see? We came out here to get away from committees and meetings, and to see if we could find real people, you know, in the little towns. Just being greasy old barnstormers, free in the air, goin’ where we please and when we please.”
“Now look,” Paul said. “This is a good place, right?”
“Wrong. Too many airplanes here.”
“It’s close in to town, it has lakes, it has people, OK?”
“Well …”
We left it at that, though I still wanted to leave and Paul still wanted to stay. Stu didn’t want to take sides, but I thought he leaned to the staying side.
When we walked back to the airplanes, we found a few cars parked, and a few Palmyrans looking into the cockpits. Stu unrolled the FLY $3 FLY signs and we went to work.
“PALMYRA FROM THE AIR, FOLKS! PRETTIEST LITTLE TOWN IN THE WORLD! WHO’S THE FIRST TO FLY?” I walked toward the parked cars when the cockpit-watchers said they were just browsing. “Are you ready for an airplane ride, sir?”
“Heh-heh-heh-heh.” That was the only answer I got, and it very clearly said you poor con man, do you really think I’m stupid enough to go up in that old crate?
The quality of that laugh stopped me cold, and I turned abruptly away.
What a crushing difference between this place and the other little places where we had been so welcome. If our search is for the real people and the true people of America, then we should get out of here now.
“Can you take me for a ride?” A man walking boldly from another car changed my attitude at once.
“Love to,” I said. “Stu! Passenger! Let’s go!”
Stu trotted over and helped the man into the front cockpit while I strapped into the rear one. I was very much at home in this little office, with the board of familiar dials and levers around me, and I was happy there. Stu began cranking the inertia-starter handcrank, the device recognized time and again by farm folk as a “cream separator.” Straining at the handle, turning it slowly at first, throwing heavy effort into the steel mass of the geared flywheel inside the cowl, Stu drained pure energy from his heart into the starter. At last, starter flywheel screaming, Stu fell away and called, “CLEAR!” I pulled the starter-engage handle and the propeller jerked around. But it turned for only ten seconds. The propeller slowed, and stopped. The engine didn’t fire one single time.
What’s wrong, I thought. This thing starts every time; it has never missed starting! Stu looked at me in a glazed sort of shock, that all his torture on the crank had gone for nothing.
I was just shaking my head, to tell him I couldn’t understand why the engine didn’t fire, when I found the trouble. I hadn’t turned the switch on. I was so familiar with the cockpit that I had expected the switches and levers to work by themselves.
“Stu … ah … hate to say this … but… I forgot to turn the switch on sorry that sure was a silly thing to do let’s crank her one more time OK?”
He closed his eyes, imploring heaven to destroy me, and when that didn’t work, he made to throw the crank at my head. But he caught himself in time and with the air of a church martyr, inserted the handcrank once again and began to wind it.
“Gee, I’m sorry, Stu,” I said, sitti
ng back in my comfortable cockpit. “I owe you fifty cents for forgetting.”
He didn’t answer, as he had not the strength to talk. The second time I pulled the engage handle the engine roared awake at once, and the jumper looked at me as one looks at a poor dumb beast in a cage. I taxied quickly away and was airborne a moment later with my passenger. The biplane fell into a pattern for Palmyra at once, with a circling detour to look at one of the lakes and to climb a little higher, for there was no emergency landing field anywhere east of town.
The pattern took ten minutes exactly. Touching down, the biplane swerved for a second as I was thinking about what a pretty grass runway this was. Wake up! she was telling me. Every landing, every takeoff is different, every one! And don’t you forget it!
I did quick penance by stomping on a rudder pedal to stop the swerve.
As we taxied in, Paul was taxiing out in the Luscombe with a passenger of his own. My spirits brightened a little. Maybe there was hope for Palmyra, after all.
But that was the end of it for the afternoon. We had watchers, but no more passengers.
Stu collected my rider’s money, and walked to the cockpit. “I can’t do anything with ’em,” he said over the engine-roar. “If they stop and get out of their cars, we get passengers. But if they stay in the cars, they’re watchers, and they just aren’t interested in flying.”
It was hard to believe that we could have all those cars and no more riders, but there it was. The watchers all knew each other, and soon a lively conversation was going on. And the Directors arrived to size us up on their own.
Paul landed, taxied in, and lacking more passengers, shut his engine down into silence. A fragment of talk drifted to us. “… he was right over my house!”
“He was right over everybody’s house. Palmyra isn’t that big.”
“… who told you we were having a meeting tonight?”
“M’wife. Somebody called her and got her all shook up…”
Joe Wright came over and introduced us to some of the directors, and we told our story again. I was getting tired of this becoming such a big thing. Why couldn’t they tell us right out that we were welcome or not? Just a simple thing like a couple of barnstormers.