The Cannibal Queen by Stephen Coonts Page B

couple of two-G turns to give him the taste of it, then head back for the field. On the downwind we fly over a Little League ballpark with four fields arranged like pie quarters. The lights are on and the teams are on the fields. We float overhead under the overcast.
    I decide to land on the grass runway they have mowed to the right of the east-west paved one. As I float in, the man on Unicom tells me that we have two spectators, so I should wave. I ask if they are out on the grass. When he doesn’t respond I add power. We fly down the runway at fifty feet as I repeat the question. I feel absolutely confident David knows not to leave the area of the parking mat, but this could be someone else. The Unicom man says, No, they are on the mat.
    I put her down on the next approach and taxi in. David assists Ray from the cockpit and straps in Corey while I keep the engine running. This time I take off from the grass. Corey tells me this is his very first airplane ride.
    Thirteen and never been up in a plane? I am stunned. I took my first airplane ride at the age of six in an Aeronca Champ without an electrical system. I can still remember my Dad hand-propping the engine while the pilot, my Dad’s law partner, grinned at me. I was too small to see over the instrument panel, so I looked at the gauges and listened to the engine and savored the weird sensations. I recall looking out the window at the trees below and thinking how wonderful it all was. The flight lasted seventeen minutes. Didn’t matter. I was hooked.
    I let Corey fly the Queen. We go north around the end of the island, make the turn up the St. Marys River, then drift south over the anchorage where David and I had our jet-ski adventure this morning. Two pulp mills are pouring their fumes into the still evening sky.
    I enter the pattern for the grass runway on a left base. On final we are ten miles per hour fast, so I lower the nose. When I flare we float along above the grass like cottonwood fluff drifting on a breeze. At last we alight and I use the remainder of the strip to get stopped.
    I am furious with myself. Why didn’t I slip her down, scrub off that excess airspeed? What was I thinking about?
    I am still seething at myself as we say good-bye to Ray and Corey and watch them leave. Damnation! Am I ever going to learn to fly this plane?
    “Corey said flying in a Stearman has been a lifetime ambition for his dad,” David tells me. “He told me so while we were waiting.” This makes me feel better.
    We are sitting in a Pizza Hut when the last of the twilight fades. In minutes some of the Little League crowd comes in, two complete teams and their parents. They are boisterous, happy. The last of my frustration leaks away.
    David is smiling, the crowd is raucous, I am content. A summer evening in small-town America. I like it more than words can express. My life is passing too quickly, but by God I am spending it well.
    The next morning I wake up David at seven o’clock. I want to arrive in Orlando by noon before the usual Florida afternoon thunderstorms get cooking. The morning here is foggy. The briefer at the Flight Service Station tells me that Jacksonville airport just a few miles east is 200 feet and a quarter mile in fog. “This stuff looks localized in the Jacksonville area, though. Gainesville is clear and so is Orlando. It should burn off before long.”
    I thank him and go out onto the lawn that leads to the beach and look at the sky. Fog floating eastward in strands, with patches of blue above.
    David and I turn in the car at the airport FBO and I get a cup of coffee from the courtesy pot. I leave a quarter in the kitty. Out on the mat where the Queen is tied down we can see the goo westward toward the Jacksonville airport. I look south. That’s the way we will go, south along the beach, through the Mayport Naval Station airport traffic area, flying just off the beach until we near Daytona Beach, where we will strike a little southwest for Orlando.