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At last I got a thumbs-down signal from Stu that there were no passengers waiting, and shut down the Whirlwind.
Paul had just come down, and his passenger, an attractive young lady of nineteen or twenty, in a rather low-cut summer dress, walked directly to me.
“Hello,” she said, “My name is Emily.”
“Hi, Emily.”
“I just got down from my very first airplane ride and it’s just wonderful! Everything’s so pretty! But Paul said that if I really wanted to have fun, I should ride with you!”
Paul thought I was off-balance whenever confronted by a pretty woman, and Emily could only be a part of his experimenting to prove it. I glanced at the Luscombe, and there was Paul, all right, polishing spots from his spotless engine cowl, all of a sudden looking very intently at his work.
I’d show him. “Why Emily, ol’ Paul was ’zackly right. You want to know what flying really is, you just pop right over to that young fella there in the yellow jumpsuit and get yourself a ticket, and we’ll go flying.”
She looked downcast for a moment, and moved to stand very close to me. “I’m all out of money, Dick,” she said softly.
“I don’t believe it! Three dollars is nothin’ for a ride in a biplane! Not many left, nowadays, you know.”
“I’d sure love to fly with you,” she cooed.
“Be worth it, too, ma’m. A beautiful day to fly. Well—as you know, if you were just up with Paul.”
She was in no hurry to rush off and pay Stu her three dollars and was happy just to stand and talk and let the sun reflect bright colors from her low summer dress.
Just then an earlier passenger was back, wanting another “wild ride.” I said a careful goodbye to the girl, started the Wright and taxied out. As I passed the Luscombe, I shook my head slowly at Paul, who was now quite vigorously polishing the propeller. We never saw Emily again.
The morning roadside on the walk back from breakfast was deep in purple flower.
“Hey, you guys,” I said, “Honey-clover!”
“Pretty.”
“No, it’s not pretty, it’s good to eat. Like when you were a kid, remember?” I picked a boll and tasted the hollow petals. There was a tenth of a drop of nectar in each one, a delicate sweet flavor of morning. Paul and Stu tried one each, as we walked.
“Tastes like eating a flower,” Stu said.
“Can’t figure you guys out.” I picked another handful of purple, and crunched on the tender petals. “This great stuff growin’ all over, and you walk right by.”
There was a concrete bridge between town and the airport, crossing the one straightest mile on the length of the Pecatonica River. We heard the sound of outboard motors, and a pair of tiny racing hydroplanes came buzzing full throttle down the river, battling for the lead. They roared echoing under the bridge and through in an instant. The drivers wore helmets and heavy lifejackets, and they were completely absorbed in their race. At the end of the straight they slowed, turned and came back again, tall arcs of spray leaping behind them. It was a sort of aquatic Dragging Main, but somehow it seemed a much cleaner sport.
We walked on across the bridge, and past a lawn where a boy was beating a rug with a twisted wire hoop.
“What’s the plan?” Paul said as we walked by Skeeter, who whinnied, and out to the airplanes. “You want to try for something during the day again? Might get somebody.”
“Anything you say.”
“I’m running out of time,” Paul said. “I should head back pretty soon. Take me three days to get home from here, about.”
“Well, let’s give it a try; go up and fly a bit,” I said. “Might get a couple people out to fly. Be cool, anyway.”
We took off and climbed to 3,000 feet in formation over the summer town. The hydroplanes hadn’t stopped; their twin white wakes still ran neck-and-neck along the dark river. The boy was still beating the rug half a mile beneath us and I shook my head. It had been 20 minutes since we walked by. What a devoted young fellow that must be, beating a rug for 20 minutes. Three minutes of rug-beating used to be my outside limit. The world is an earnest place, in 1929.
Paul broke away in a wide sweeping turn and swung around toward me to begin the old familiar aerial battle. I pulled the biplane’s nose straight up in the air, hoping for the Luscombe to swish right on by beneath me and give me the chance of dropping down on her tail. The first part of our dogfights were never staged; we were trying our best to work into a firing position behind each other. It was only at the end that I had to let Paul win, because I had the smoke flare and was still the only one eligible to go down in flames.
The earth twisted around us in green, sky in blue, and for a while I didn’t care whether potential passengers were watchin
g or not. It would not do, in this first part of our game, to let Paul get behind the biplane. I had Air Force training in this business long before he learned to fly; I had practiced air combat in front-line military fighters while Paul was still taking fashion pictures in his elegant studio.
Everyone else I knew began to fly in slow airplanes, little airplanes, old airplanes, and then went with the times. In a few years they were flying faster, bigger, more modern machines. It had been just the other way around for me.
