Читать книгу The Parachute Jumper - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 4

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Meanwhile the belated hero, Billy Donovan, was speeding along the road in an old ramshackle Ford to keep his promise to Tom Slade. He was anxious, and reckless, for he needed money. He had passed a stop signal down in the neighborhood of Perth Amboy and they had delayed him fifteen or twenty minutes to give him a brisk lecture and a ticket. For the next hour he drove his sorry little car at a breakneck speed.

It was along the open road a mile or two south of the airport that he made a spectacular jump without his parachute. A dilapidated front tire blew out, the old rattle-trap swerved against a tree, went tumbling over the crumbling culvert and halted upside down in the low lying field.

Billy Donovan did not look at all like a spectacular hero (the White Meteor, he called himself) as he crawled out from under his wrecked Lizzie with a scratch and a look of perplexity upon his rough countenance. His white trousers and white sweater, worn to make him conspicuous in mid-air, were bespattered with mud. He clutched his left arm with his right hand, soothing a bruise. It seemed rather ludicrous that this young fellow whose business it was to exhibit himself in perilous feats, should receive his first injury in a most inglorious descent from nothing more romantic and thrilling than a six year old Ford.

But in truth, the White Meteor was a commonplace enough young man when seen close at hand. He belonged to the race of steeplejacks and bridge jumpers and it was his sprightly trade to afford thrills to the patrons of amusement parks and suburban carnivals by jumping out of airplanes and descending amid clustering and spellbound throngs. Then a collection would be taken up for him, and sometimes it seemed as if this was not worth coming down for. He always told the promoters of these festive enterprises to announce his daring “feat” with the grim pleasantry that “if the chute fails to open, the collection will be used to buy roses.” He had great faith in this quaint suggestion of tragedy, and perhaps it did increase the number of nickels and dimes.

But first and last, Billy Donovan’s business was in a bad way. “Wid these ameytoors, and all them army guys, de stunt is all shot,” he was wont to say. He even specified where it was shot to. “Dey’ll be learnin’ it to boy scouts next,” he said. “Me, I ain’t done but eleven hops dis season, and I’m lucky if I get ten bucks out of a hick carnival.” He had even thought of accepting the rather novel job of being shot out of a cannon in a circus. “You hits de net and it’s a hundred bucks a throw,” he had commented.

You will appreciate, therefore, with what dismay he contemplated the utter wreck of his little car. He had been summoned by Tom, who had never met him, to do his act at the Oakvale County Fair in Connecticut and he had permitted himself to hope that the thrilled pleasure seekers might “loosen up” and make his rather long journey worth while. And here he was about two miles distant from the place of taking off, and his trusty chariot a ruin.

A ruin indeed! He limped down into the field and looked it over. The spare tire in the rear, on whose cover was printed,

BILLY DONOVAN

THE WHITE METEOR

had been completely wrenched off and flattened by a jagged piece of metal which had pierced it in two places. A rear wheel was shattered, one side of the body stove in, the windshield smashed into a thousand fragments, and the steering gear bent and broken beyond repair. Poor Billy knew that to restore his car would cost the sum total of many hat collections.

Suddenly he bethought him of the one thing in his car needful in his distant engagement—his precious parachute. Crawling under the wreck, he recovered this, a rectangular package that might easily have been sent by mail. Carrying it under his arm he ran with might and main along the road until he came to a crossroad where there was a sign which read TO BRENTWAY AIRPORT. He turned into the side road and ran like mad.

In a few minutes he emerged from surrounding woodland, and there, upon the wide meadows in the distance, he could see the buildings of the airport, a lonely cluster, in the vast surrounding meadowland. On closer approach he could see that the biplane just the other side of the big hangar had painted in great black letters on her gleaming silver hood, the name Goodfellow.

“Dat’s me, I guess,” Donovan observed without lessening his speed. “It sounds like the name that guy wrote in the letter. Some fancy moniker fer a ship. Here’s hopin’ it’ll mean luck and bring home de bacon.”

And that was his creed, perhaps the creed of every professional parachute jumper. Always it was Donovan’s hope that the imminent jump would be the jump—the one that would most assuredly bring home “de bacon.” It seemed never to occur to him that there would one day be a jump which would be the means of death instead of the means of sustaining the frail thread of life to which he clung.

To be sure he thought of death very often, but never in regard to himself. Pilots and passengers, mechanics, and myriads of jumpers had been killed since first he entered the stunt field, but certainly it would not happen to him. He had maintained a stubborn superstition since the beginning of his hazardous business. “Me, I’m too tough to die,” he would say lightly. “Sure, I’ll die sometime, but I’ll never smack de earth, I know dat,” he would add confidently.

This prophecy was not uttered today; there wasn’t time. He gave no heed to anything but the biplane waiting for him, and to save precious time he wriggled himself into his parachute as he ran past the hangar. Certainly he fairly radiated energy and life and as he pulled on his helmet and goggles he called in a lusty voice to the patient Tom, “You Slade?”

“Uh, huh. You Donovan?” Tom returned briskly and put his right foot up on the step plate.

“Sure. My Lizzie took a flop over in the dump.”

“On the turnpike?”

“Yeh. Glad tuh meet you, Slade.” Donovan showed a row of firm, even teeth in a pleasant smile and put out a large brown hand whose little finger was adorned with a silver snake ring.

Tom gave the ring a brief glance, then firmly clasped the proffered hand and idly wondered whether the eyes hidden behind the dusty goggles were as steadfast as the hand shake that the jumper gave him. He was sure that they were.

“All right, Donovan,” he said briskly. “In a few more minutes they’ll be getting tired of waiting. I’ll give ’em a few loops when we get there to quiet them down, then I’ll whistle your cue through the earphone. O. K.?”

“Oke,” Donovan agreed cheerfully and climbed into the forward cockpit. As he belted himself in, he whistled gaily.

The crowd cheered and Tom smiled thoughtfully. The engine started with a terrific roar and he let it idle a moment while the temperature gauge worked itself out of the red. Then they took off and while they were climbing he listened at the ’phone. Donovan was whistling through it, a new and popular melody.

Tom laughed outright. It was a great life—while it lasted.