Читать книгу Roy Blakeley Up in the Air - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 6

CHAPTER IV
HOODOO?

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That’s one time Pee-wee had the laugh on us because he came running back grinning and all excited. Klammer was standing down the field where the kid had been talking to him and you could tell he was sort of waiting for something.

“Even he’s going to take the whole bunch of us in his plane!” the kid shouted. “Even after we were so fresh to him and all he’s accepted my apology and on account of he needs just about our weight in a new plane he’s got to try out because he hasn’t any baggage to take he’s going to let us go!”

I said, “Do you think that’s a compliment? Look the way they throw baggage around! How do we know that he won’t do the same thing to us when he gets us up in the air?”

“Don’t be such a fool!” said the kid. “Come on, because he’s waiting and he has to start in five minutes and he’s got to make a trial spin of fifteen minutes so we’ll have a nice ride so isn’t that something? Anyhow we were fresh too, you got to admit that—gee whiz!”

“Sure, but he started it, kid,” said Ben. “He wasn’t what you’d call a gentleman either, taking our heads off like he did.”

“Gee whiz, is that anything when he asks us for a ride in a new plane for fifteen minutes and besides isn’t it just the same as an apology when he asks us to come?” Pee-wee wanted to know.

“Sure,” I said, “you win the argument by a large minority. We like Klammer’s plane better than Klammer. Skyward we’ll go, quoth I. Come on, fellers.”

So that’s how we came to go up in the air with Klammer. Even if he didn’t pay much attention to us and took us up like baggage we didn’t care; it was a good way to get cool on a hot day. Besides we had a lot of fun.

It was a new type of plane and there were two mechanics besides the four of us that went along with Klammer. We each took a seat by a window and boy, what a breeze we got as that plane left the field. It was peachy.

So I was all settled for a fifteen minute breeze when the mechanic who sat opposite me said to the fellow sitting ahead of him, “Believe me, I don’t like being assigned to a job with Klammer.”

The fellow ahead looked up in the cockpit where Klammer was busy at the controls and he answered, “Neither do I like it—nobody does.”

Pee-wee heard them talking the same as I did and right away he said, “Why doesn’t anybody like to go with Klammer, huh? What’s the matter with him?”

The mechanic who first did the talking, looked over at the kid and grinned. He said, “If you want to know, kiddo—Klammer’s a crab and he has a swell head. But that wouldn’t make any difference about his flying; not with us fellers. It’s just that he’s a kind of hoodoo in the air—we get so we spot a pilot like that down at the field.”

“You said it,” said the other mechanic. “Some pilots fly and some don’t! That’s all there is to it.”

Right away Pee-wee was worried. “Gee whiz, do you mean he has accidents?”

“Plenty,” said the first mechanic. “None of them have been serious—just scratches that he’s got in bum landings. The trouble is he’s got such a swell head, he won’t listen to advice and that’s where he makes his mistakes. Maybe he wouldn’t be so bad if he listened to some of those who know more than he does.”

“Goodnight,” I said. “Then we’ve got a lot to look forward to, huh?”

“We’ve all got on parachutes,” the second mechanic said, laughing.

“Suppose the string on mine don’t work?” the kid wanted to know, all worried and excited. “Gee whiz, what then?”

The first mechanic laughed like everything and he said, “You’ll just bounce harder than the rest of us, that’s all.”

Just then I happened to notice that we were flying over the river and I said, “Maybe he’ll bounce in the river and out again. There’s worse places to go on a hot day. Think how nice and cool it must be down in the water, kid.”

“Is this a time to be fooling and talking nonsense?” the kid came back at me. “Maybe right now we’re in danger and even I’m sorry I came. Gee whiz, you fellers should have told us about Klammer,” he said to the mechanic. “How did I know he was a no-good pilot, huh? Gee whiz!”

“You’re more to be pitied than scolded,” I said. “I could tell right away that this Klammer is a lot of noise—I’ll leave it to Ben if we weren’t talking it over while you were begging for this ride.”

“You make me sick and disgusted!” the kid shouted so loud that Klammer stopped paying attention to himself long enough to turn around. But he couldn’t hear what we were saying on account of the noise and it was a good thing.

So then the mechanic whose name was Jack, said, “I guess you kids all got in here with your eyes open, didn’t you? I mean, Klammer didn’t urge you to come, did he?”

I said, “No, he didn’t even want us at all. We were lucky that we didn’t walk in here with black eyes, that’s how much Klammer liked us a few minutes ago. But don’t mind Pee-wee, he never opens his eyes anyway—not until he thinks he’s going to get in trouble. We ought to call him Kitten because....

“Shut up!” yelled the kid. “Anyway, I guess you wanted to come as much as I did.”

“Sure, we did,” Ben spoke up. “That’s why we’re not getting excited about hoodoos or Klammer or anything else.”

“Not even parachute cords,” I said. “Better fellows than us have worried about them, so why should we? Besides, if we should fall, we’re sure to land some place and not knowing where saves a lot of worry beforehand. Am I right, Ben?”

“Absitively, Roy,” Ben said. “It’ll be the fall of a lifetime.”

You can imagine how worked up the kid was by that time. He did nothing but look from Klammer to the window, staring down as if he was measuring the distance. Then every couple of seconds he’d feel his parachute cord with that awful worried look on his face. I thought the other mechanic whose name was Charlie, was going to have hysterics on account of Pee-wee.

So he winked at me and he said, “Does your mother have insurance on you, kid?”

I said, “Sure, but it doesn’t count in case of airplane accidents—I heard her say that one day. She says they count it the same as suicide in the policy they have for me.”

Very solemn like, Ben said, “That’s just the kind my mother has for me.”

“Will you fellers keep still?” Pee-wee roared. “Even I know you’re just saying these things, but is it right to talk like that to a new feller like Marvin who’s never even been up in a plane before?”

Goodnight, we hadn’t thought about Marvin at all and I looked over Ben’s shoulder quick to where the little shrimp was sitting, but he was grinning all over. And what was more, you could tell he was having a lot of fun with the whole business.

He said to me, “I don’t get scared so you can talk nonsense all you want. Even if we did spill, I wouldn’t be scared ’cause I got a hunch I wouldn’t get hurt. Gosh, I like it.”

“That’s Pee-wee’s trouble,” I said. “He’ll be disappointed if we don’t spill—on land!”

Goodnight, I hardly got a chance to close my mouth, when all of a sudden everything got awful quiet inside that cabin. At first I thought maybe we had frightened the kid to death and that he had fainted or something. When I looked I saw that he was frightened enough, but he hadn’t fainted—he was too scared.

So then Charlie kind of whispered to Jack, “Klammer’s stalled all right.”

Jack got up quick then and went to the cockpit while we all sat as quiet as mice. The plane kept going just the same and Klammer steered her in circles. Charlie got up after a second and went to the cockpit too and the three fellows all began to talk excitedly.

Jack sat at the other controls and began working them but still there wasn’t any noise from the motors. Goodnight, there’s only two silences I know that you feel right away. One silence is the one that comes after a plane stalls in mid-air and the other one is the one that comes after Pee-wee stops talking. There’s not much difference.

Anyway Klammer began to boss those two mechanics just like he tried to boss us. He yelled at them and went on like as if they didn’t know anything. I can’t tell you much about what went on because they wouldn’t let any of us kids up there in the cockpit. All I know is that that stuck-up pilot wouldn’t listen to what Jack or Charlie told him and that’s what caused the trouble, just like they said it would.

Finally Charlie said, “Now you’ve gone and done it, Klammer. There’s nothing we can do for you now. You’ll just have to glide her down.”

Klammer mumbled something under his breath, good and mad like.

Jack turned around and said, “Keep calm, kids. Looks as if we’re going to make it pretty nicely. We’ll glide around and get clear of these woods first.”

Then what?” Pee-wee asked as worried as could be. “Gee whiz, where’ll we go after that, huh?”

“Is that a riddle?” I said. “Maybe if you’re not in a hurry, we’ll go calling on the birds.”

Roy Blakeley Up in the Air

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