Part 8 (1/2)

I had always been curious about whether he talked in private life as he does on the stage and radio, and if the poor grammar in his writing was deliberate or natural. He talked to me exactly as he does on the stage and radio, and his grammar was just as bad as it is in his writing. So I decided that, if it was an act, he was carrying it pretty far.

I noticed that he made certain movements with difficulty. He seemed to be crippled up a little. I asked him what was the matter. He said he had fallen off his horse before he left California and had broken a couple of ribs. I thought that was kind of funny, because I had always supposed he was a good horseman. I told him that, and he said it was a new horse and he wasn't used to it. I still thought it was kind of funny, but I let it pa.s.s.

I managed to bring out a little later in the conversation that I was a professional pilot myself and that being a pa.s.senger was a rare experience for me. He said he could tell me the truth then. He said he really had had an airplane accident the day before. An airliner he had been riding in had made a forced landing, had nosed over pretty hard, and had banged him up a little. That's how he had broken his ribs.

He said it hadn't been the pilot's fault that they had cracked up, that the motor had quit, and that the pilot had done a good job considering the country he had to sit down in. He said that only a good pilot could have kept from killing everybody in the s.h.i.+p, and that he was the only one who had been hurt.

He said he had told me that story about the horse in the first place because he thought I was a regular pa.s.senger. He said not to tell any of the rest of the pa.s.sengers, because it might scare them and spoil their trip.

HE NEVER KNEW

Pilots often play jokes on each other when they fly together.

Two pilots I knew at Kelly Field had been up to Dallas on a week-end cross-country trip. They started back on a very rough day and were bouncing all around the sky.

About fifty miles out of San Antonio, the pilot who was flying the s.h.i.+p turned around to ask the other one in the rear seat for some matches. He couldn't see him, so he figured he was slumped down in the c.o.c.kpit, napping. He looked back under his arm inside the fuselage. The rear c.o.c.kpit was empty!

He was only flying at about five hundred feet, hadn't been flying any higher than that on the whole trip, and at times had been flying even lower.

Scared to death that his pa.s.senger had loosened his belt to stretch out and sleep and had been thrown out of the c.o.c.kpit in a b.u.mp, perhaps even failing to recognize his predicament in time to open his chute, the pilot swung back on his course and started searching the route he had covered for signs of a body. He searched back over as much of it as he dared and still have enough gas left to turn around again and go on into Kelly Field.

He found nothing and was worried sick all the way back to Kelly. But when he landed, there was the other pilot, grinning a greeting at him.

The pilot who had been in the rear seat explained that he had undone his belt to stretch out and sleep and that the next thing he knew he felt a b.u.mp and woke up with a start to discover the c.o.c.kpit about four feet beneath him and off to one side. He said he reached, but only grabbed thin air. The tail surfaces pa.s.sed by under him, and he saw the airplane flying off without him.

He was too astounded at first, but quickly realized he ought to do something, sitting out there in s.p.a.ce with no airplane or anything, so he pulled his rip cord. His chute opened just in time.

He walked over to the main road he had been flying over so recently and thumbed himself a ride to Kelly Field. He said he had seen the s.h.i.+p turn around and start back looking for him.

The pilot who had been flying the s.h.i.+p never knew if the other one had really fallen out of the s.h.i.+p, or if he had jumped out as a joke.

BONNY'S DREAM

Bonny had a dream. His inventor's eyes gleamed with the light of it. His days lived with the hope of it. His nights moved with its vision.

Because of his dream we called him Bonny Gull. He dreamed of building an airplane with metal, wood and fabric to emulate the sinewed, feathered grace of a soaring gull.

He studied gulls. He studied them dead and alive. He studied their wonderful soaring flight alive. He killed them and studied their lifeless wings. He wanted their secret. He wanted to recreate it for man.

He might have asked G.o.d. He might have asked G.o.d and heard a still small voice answer: ”Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto G.o.d what is G.o.d's. Render unto man his own flight and leave to the gulls their own.

Man's flight is different because his destiny is different. He doesn't need the gulls' flight.”

But Bonny envied the gulls. He killed hundreds of them, yes, thousands, and buried them in the field. He built an airplane from what he thought he had learned from their dead bodies.