Читать книгу Roy Blakeley Up in the Air - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 4

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Well here I am back again and I’ll stay until I tell you how we came to go up in the air. It wasn’t Pee-wee’s fault either and that’s saying a whole lot because even if he’s always up in the air himself that was the first time that Ben or Marvin or myself went with him. Anyway it started right after lunch and we had bread pudding for dessert so if you can multiply three helpings by Pee-wee why that’ll be the answer to how everything went wrong.

Anyway I had two helpings of bread pudding and I heard my mother say that the cook hadn’t made it as light as she usually does, so you can imagine how heavy I began to feel. Goodnight, I was wondering how I could go on that right and left hike until I happened to come out on the porch step and saw the kid sitting on the lower porch step eating a banana.

So I said, “What was the matter with the pudding, kid? Didn’t you have enough?”

“Sure I did,” Pee-wee answered taking a great big bite of the banana, “but your mother thought maybe I should have more because we’re going to hike. We’ll maybe be hungry before it’s late afternoon she said and so I thought so too and I took the banana.”

“You mean she knew you’d be hungry,” I said. “Did she give you some sandwiches to take along or anything?”

“She wanted to but I said no because we’ll be back from that hike maybe at four o’clock and we can stop at my house and get some crullers because our cook makes them every Saturday,” the kid told me, swallowing the last of the banana.

“If you’re back from a right and left hike in three hours, you’re a good one,” I told him. “Maybe we’ll just about be going right on the left road at that time instead of stopping at your house and eating hot crullers. Besides the left road may not be the right road either, how do I know?”

“Is this going to be a sensible hike or isn’t it?” Pee-wee wanted to know. “Even I’ll change my mind about going if you start talking nonsense and you got to promise that you’ll take right roads when you say you’re going to take them and the left roads too.”

“Maybe the roads will have something to say about that,” I told him. “One thing I can promise you, kid—we can’t take a right road and a left road together. That’s an easy promise.”

“There you go right away just like I said you would,” said the kid. “Anyway you know what I mean—I mean you got to stick to whatever road you say you’re going to take and not act crazy all of a sudden and decide to cross lots or swim across the river or something like that.”

Just then Ben and Marvin came hurrying up street so I didn’t get a chance to string Pee-wee along for at least five minutes. It took us that long to get started because we couldn’t decide which way to turn first until the kid said to turn left, so that settled it—Ben and I took the road to the right.

“You’ll see how much fun you have going that way,” Pee-wee said, disgusted like. “If you’d go the way I said we could stop and have some fun at Stan’s place but no, the way you’re going we’ll have to tramp through the airport and gee whiz, that’s no fun, do you say that’s fun, Marvin?”

Marvin didn’t know what to say so he didn’t say anything. He just kind of grinned, bewildered like because he didn’t know the airport from a hot dog up at Stan’s place where the kid wanted to go.

So I said, “A hot dog’s just as good at the airport as it is up at Stan’s if not more so. Another thing, Marvin’ll like to look at some of those planes flying in and out of the field. Jiminy, they’ve got some peachy planes down there now. One that I saw the other day could carry over twenty people. If the kid went along it would only carry ten. Anyway, it was a swell plane.”

“My father knows an aviator to talk to,” said Marvin kind of scared like. “Once he even rode in his plane, for nothing.”

“Goodnight,” I said, “that isn’t any excuse to ride in a plane.”

“Don’t you listen to that fool, Marv,” said the kid, taking Marvin’s arm kind of protecting like. “He don’t know anything anyhow about planes, so don’t listen to him. Even he’s so smart he’s never been up in the air like I have because I know a real aviator, a feller named Lowden Klammer down at the airport and a couple of weeks ago when I was down there he promised he’d take me up the next time I came down, so do you say I don’t know something about aviators?”

Ben smiled in that quiet kind of way he has and he gave me a poke in the ribs. So I said, “What’ll he take up the next time you come down—the pieces?”

“The pieces of what?” Pee-wee shouted. “What are you talking about?”

“Whatever you’d like me to say—I don’t care,” I said.

So he got kind of peeved at that and he walked on ahead with Marvin, talking fast and loud like he always does. I didn’t pay so much attention to what he was telling the kid because it was one of those nice summer days after a rainy spell when the trees look all nice and green and cool and I was looking around and wishing we could have gone in the opposite direction. That would take us to Salina Swankey’s house—goodnight, it’s some house, about forty rooms and a couple of dozen baths and it’s sort of hidden in a big park with a big iron fence all around it. I’m talking about the Swankeys’ house.

Anyway you can imagine why I was wishing we were going that way because it’s so nice and cool there, but instead we were hiking toward the open meadows where the airport was. Jiminy, the sun is stronger there on a warm day than any other place on earth. That’s the way it feels anyhow.

Another reason I was so anxious to go to Sunny Acres was on account of Major Bigwing who was going to be there that afternoon at two o’clock. Salina and her mother invited him to come and autograph his pictures for the benefit of the Blue Bird League—that’s a swell club that the society girls in the country belong to. Salina’s president of it.

She was the one to get up the entertainment for the Major and the money they took in was supposed to be given to some other society for blind horses or something like that. Maybe it was blind cats or dogs or even birds, how do I know? Anyway I wasn’t thinking about that—I was just thinking how nice it would be to see that famous airman land in Swankeys’ Park. And most of all I was thinking about how much I’d like to have the fifty cents that Salina was charging to get past the gate so a fellow could see him. Goodnight, she’s a burglar that girl. She advertised that she and the rest of the Blue Birds would serve refreshments as if that was worth fifty cents. But I should worry because who cares about refreshments when a feller like Bigwing is around.

Anyway I know I was as anxious as anything to see an aviator who could fly from Canada to Brazil in the time that he did. Goodnight, what a record! They say he even lost his compass. He should worry about compasses, huh?

So that’s what I was thinking of while we were hiking in the sun toward the airport when Ben kind of nudged me and winked.

“Listen to the kid,” he said with a kind of a chuckle. “He’s trying to make Marvin believe that this Klammer gink is his second cousin or something.”

So I said, “How does the kid know him anyhow?”

“He doesn’t know him hardly at all,” Ben laughed. “Klammer kind of hurt himself when he was making a landing one day last summer and Doctor Harris treated him a few times. That’s how much the kid knows Klammer.”

“Do you think I didn’t hear what you said?” Pee-wee shouted back. “Even if I was talking I could hear you say how much I don’t know Lowden Klammer and you’re so smart I know him more than that because I talked to him twice when he was sitting in my father’s waiting room and he did ask me to come down to the airport and even he promised to take me up in the air!”

“You don’t have to go to the airport for that, kid,” I said. “You’re up in the air right now.”

“Even I can prove he promised to take me up with him!” the kid screamed back. “I can prove it by my father’s nurse who was sitting at her desk right near where I was sitting with Klammer because she said she wished she was me, getting such a nice invitation and I’ll leave it to her if she didn’t say it!”

“Even so, I bet he’s kind of forgotten all about you, kid,” Ben said with that nice kind of smile he has. “Gosh, you don’t expect a feller that meets so many people can remember everyone he gives an invitation to, do you?”

“Gee whiz, does that say he couldn’t remember me by sight after I talked to him and made him laugh?” the kid wanted to know.

“He’d have to be near-sighted,” I said, “but still I don’t blame him for laughing. I’ve laughed at you myself, kid.”

“Do you know what you’re talking about—near-sighted, laughing?” the kid roared. “What’s that got to do with Klammer asking me to go up in his plane, huh?”

“I don’t know, kid,” I told him. “Ask me another!”

Goodnight, I should worry about Klammer then! I was thinking about Bigwing, but you’ll have to read the next chapter to hear how I had to worry about Klammer—and how!