Authors: Eric Kraft
On the Wing (34 page)
“Rrrr,” he said, baring his teeth.
“If you're looking for a way to decide whether you can trust someone or not, check his pockets for wads of cash. If you find wads of cash, don't trust him.”
He sprang. I leapt aside. He missed.
“I'm out of advice,” I said. I looked at the leader. I smiled. He straightened up and started toward the microphone. Into it I said, “I'd like to end with a request, if I may.” What could he do? He stopped and nodded. I turned to the crowd.
“If strangers should come into your midst,” I said, letting my eyes roam the crowd, “strangers passing through, visitors from afar, take them in. Try to feel their loneliness, the terrible isolation of outsiders in an alien culture, and if they seem odd to you, if the things they say and do seem disturbingly different from the things that you and your neighbors say and do, please realize that in their loneliness those strangers may be clinging for consolation to familiar customs and trying desperately, awkwardly, ineptly to ingratiate themselves with you by trying to show that they have something in common with you. Don't reject them. Welcome them. The foods they eat, the ideas they hold, the emotions they feel, and everything they hold dear may seem weird or worthless to you, but they are neither weird nor worthless to them. Open your hearts. Open your homes. Let the strangers in.” I paused. In the hush, I could hear sniffles. Then I asked, “Would anyone out there be willing to put me up for the night?”
Chapter 28
On the Street of Dreams
I WOULDN'T HAVE RECOGNIZED the place. The little college that had hosted the Summer Institute so many years before had grown into a university. I couldn't get my bearings, couldn't match the map of memory to the new data, the terrain of the facts.
“I'll park somewhere, and we'll walk around the campus,” suggested Albertine. “You'll start seeing landmarks that you remember.”
She parked, and we began walking aimlessly, just to see what might spark a memory.
After a couple of minutes of that, Albertine said, “Instead of wandering aimlessly, why don't we see if we can get a map or take a tour?”
I approached a man who seemed to have a professorial air about him.
“Excuse me,” I said. “I wondered if it would be possible to take a tour of the campus. You see, I was a student here for one memorable summer when the institution was known as the New Mexico Institute of Mining, Technology, and Pharmacy. It was quite an experience for me. I flew here from Babbington, New York, on an aerocycle that I had builtâ”
“Admissions Department,” he said abruptly.
“I'm not applying for admission; I just wanted toâ”
“Take a tour.”
“Right.”
“Admissions Department.”
“I seem to be missing something.”
“The tours leave from the Admissions Department.”
“Ah! Of course. I should have understood what you meant. The heat must be getting to me. It'sâ”
“It's a dry heat. Never bothers anybody.”
“I guess it's just me. Where is theâ”
“Admissions Department.”
“Right.”
“Down here, turn left, turn right.”
“Thanks.”
We began walking in the direction that he had indicated.
“Did anyone offer you a place to stay after you had given them all that advice?” asked Albertine.
“They were scrambling over one another to get at me,” I said.
We turned left.
“Was there a dark-haired girl?”
“Ahh, yes,” I said, teasing her with an exaggerated display of pleasurable recollection. “There was.”
We turned right.
“Did you get lucky?”
“Iâ”
On the wall of a building, directly ahead of us, was a large, colorful poster, announcing the 21st Annual “Land of Enchantment Fly-In.” I read it in a glance. It promised fun for the whole family. It promised kit-built, home-built, and experimental airplanes. It made the event sound like great fun, not only for the whole family, but for Albertine and me, the perfect ending to our journey. I was just about to point it out to her, when I saw that it promised something else. It promised a thrilling competition among “those daring superheroes of the air, our nation's top-ranked flying EMTs.”
“Well?” she asked.
“Iâ” I snapped my head around, looking for something to distract her from the poster. “Were we supposed to go left and then right or right and then left?”
“Straight, then left, then right. Aren't you going to tell me what went on between you and the dark-haired girl?”
I took her arm and tried to turn her away from the poster, but she resisted, and in an eager, gleeful voice that made me think that all was lost, she cried, “Oh, Birdboy, look.”
“Al,” I said, “I thought something like this might happen. It's been on my mind ever since we left New York. Iâ”
She put her hand under my chin and raised my head. “Look!” she insisted. “If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes,” she said, “I would never have believed it.”
THE PERSONAL HISTORY, ADVENTURES, EXPERIENCES & OBSERVATIONS OF PETER LEROY
BY ERIC KRAFT
(so far)
Little Follies
Herb 'n' Lorna
Reservations Recommended
Where Do You Stop?
What a Piece of Work I Am
At Home with the Glynns
Leaving Small's Hotel
Inflating a Dog
Passionate Spectator
Taking Off
On the Wing
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
ON THE WING
. Copyright © 2007 by Eric Kraft. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
Author's notes: The part of the Electro-Flyer on the cover and
here
is played by the Starlite Electric Runabout, a prototype conceived by the Nu-Klea Automobile Corp. of Lansing, Michigan, in 1960, but never manufactured; the image is reproduced from an advertising postcard in the author's collection. The passage on aerodynamic lift
here
, and the accompanying illustration, are from pages 104, 105, 112, and 113 of
Elements of Aeronatuics,
by Francis Pope and Arthur S. Otis, copyright 1941 by World Book Company. Yonkers-on-Hudson, New York.
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ISBN-13: 978-0-312-36374-1
ISBN-10: 0-312-36374-5
First Edition: July 2007
eISBN 9781466884151
First eBook edition: September 2014