Richard Bach: Nothing by Chance

“Kind of a funny way to buy gas,” he said.

“Yep.” The nozzle poured fuel down into the black emptiness of the 50-gallon tank, and I was thankful for every second that it did. I had worked hard for that $6.81, and the fuel that it bought was precious stuff. Every drop of it. When the pump stopped, I held the nozzle there so that the last thin droplets fell down into the blackness. There was still a distressing amount of emptiness down the filler hole.

“Comes to sixteen gallons.”

I handed down the hose and with it the money. Well, sixteen gallons was more than I thought I was going to get… now if I could go back to Milan at the lowest possible throttle setting, I might have a little more gas in the tank than I did when I left.

We chugged south with the engine turning 1575 revolutions per minute, nearly 200 rpm slower than low-cruise power. We crawled through the air, but the time that it took to get back to Milan was not so important as the amount of fuel we used. In 30 minutes we had covered 30 miles, and glided once again to land on the hay. No one waited.

Since I couldn’t afford fuel for aerobatics, since Stu and his parachute were 1500 miles away, I was left with Method C. I unrolled the sleeping bag under the right wing, and resolved to employ C for one hour. If there were no passengers by then, I’d move on.

I studied the hay stubble a few inches away. It was a huge jungle, with all kinds of beasts roaming it. Here was a great crack in the earth, wide enough to keep an ant from crossing. Here was a young tree of a hay-stem growing new, a half-inch tall. I pulled it up and ate it for lunch. It was tender and tasty, and I looked for others. But that was it, the other hay was all old and tough.

A spider climbed a tall grassblade and threatened to jump down onto my sleeping bag and torment me. Easily met, that challenge. I uprooted the blade and moved the spider two feet south. I rolled over and looked up at the bottom of the wing for a while, and drummed my fingers on its tightness.

One-thirty. In half an hour I’d be on my way… the people here were just too frightened. That little town of Lemons, on the way to Centerville, might have some chances.

A pickup truck clattered down toward me. Like every pickup in every town, it had its owner’s name painted on the door. William Cowgill, Milan, Mo. I read upside down, under the wing. A black pickup truck.

I got up and rolled my sleeping bag; it was time to leave.

An interested sharp mind peered at me from under a shock of white hair, through quick blue eyes.

“Howdy,” I said. “Lookin’ to fly at all today? Nice and cool up there.”

“No thanks. How y’ doin’?” Next to him sat a boy of twelve or so.

“Not too good. Not too many people feel like flyin’, ’round here, I guess.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Think you’d probably get quite a few this evening.”

“This is too far out,” I said. “You got to be close to town, or nobody even sees you.”

“You might have better luck over at my place,” he said. “It’s not too far out.”

“Sure didn’t see it from the air. Where is it?”

The man opened the door of the truck, took a wide board from the back and drew a map. “You know where the cheese factory is?”

“No.”

“Lu-Juan’s?”

“No. I know where the school is, with the race track.”

“Well, you know the lake. The big lake, south of town?”

“Yeah. I know that.”

“We’re just across the street from that lake, on the south. Ridge land. There’s some cows in the place now, but we want ’em out anyway and you can land there. Fact, I’ve been thinking of making an airport out of it. Milan needs an airport.”

“Guess I could find that. Just across from the lake.” I was sure that the pasture wouldn’t work, but I had to be on my way anyway, and I might as well have a look at it.

“Right. I’m driving the truck, and Cully here’s got the jeep at the corner. We’ll go on over and meet you.”

“OK. I’ll look at it, anyway,” I said, “’f it don’t work out, I’ll be on my way.”

“All right. Cully, come on.” The boy was standing by the cockpit, looking at the instruments.

In five minutes, we were circling a strip of ridged pasture. A flock of cows clustered around the center, apparently eating the grass. We dropped down for a low pass, and the land looked smooth. The pasture was on the side of a long hill, and rose like a gentle roller-coaster to the crest. Just beyond the crest was a barbed-wire fence and a row of telephone poles and wires. If we rolled off the ridge-line, we’d be in trouble, but then if we did that it would be our own fault. Carefully used, this would be a good strip to work from. We could take off downhill and land uphill.

Best of all, there was a hamburger stand a hundred yards down the road. If I carried only one passenger, I could eat!

The cows galloped away after the first pass over their horns. There was one scrap of paper on the whole strip, a crushed newspaper just by a place where the ridge turned right. As soon as I saw that paper go by, I’d touch right rudder, just a little.

It was more difficult than it looked, and our first landing was not as smooth as I wanted it to be. But cars were already parking by the fence to watch the biplane fly, and passengers came out at once.

“How much do you want for a ride?”

“Three dollars. Nice and cool up there, too.” Passengers before the sign went up, I thought. A good omen.

“OK. I’ll fly with you.”

Haha, I thought, lunch. I emptied the front cockpit again, feeling that I had spent the whole day loading and unloading that front seat, and strapped my passenger aboard. The view from the ridge-top was a pretty one, rolling hills away off to the horizon, the trees and houses of the town they called “ My -l’n” resting easy on a soft rise of ground. Taking off downhill, the biplane leaped ahead, was airborne in seconds, and climbed quickly over the fields.

We circled town, the passenger looking down at the square and the county courthouse centered there, the pilot thinking that he just might have found a good place to barnstorm. A circle to the left, one to the right, a turn over a private lake and boat dock, a gliding spiral down over the pasture, with a gathering row of automobiles waiting, and our second landing on the ridge-top. It went smoothly. The place would work. Finding this field was finding a diamond hidden in a secret green jewel-box.

It was a different town, here. The people were much more interested in the airplane, and they wanted to fly.

“You might go out east, over the golf course,” Bill Cowgill said as he arrived in the pickup, “get some folks out there, maybe.” He was more interested in making the flying a success than anyone we had worked with. Probably because he wanted to see how the land worked as an airport.

“How are you fixed for gas, Bill?” I said. “There a filling station around, have a five-gallon can of gas, regular car gas?”

“Got some down at the house, if you want. Got plenty.”

“Well, I might take you up on ten gallons, maybe.”

Two more men stepped from the cars. “You giving rides?” they said.

“Sure thing.”

“Well, let’s go.” We went..

Circling to land, I saw that the cars had parked exactly across the end of my strip. If we touched down too long, and rolled straight along the ridge-line, we’d run right into the middle of them all. I cut the throttle back and decided that if we were rolling too fast, I’d turn left, down the side of the ridge, up the side of the crest and then deliberately ground-loop right. If everything went well, I wouldn’t even damage the airplane. Still, I didn’t want to land long.