Airfield Read Online Free

see the thing again."
    "OK, but I've brought you something from the pilot."
    Ignoring the leaflet I reach up to him, Kenzie climbs down from the plane and gets the webbing himself. "Blockhead who designed this ought to be shot," he says. "No proper connections, doesn't fit, probably won't be no use, nohow."
    "Do you want this?" I ask, offering the paper again.
    "What? Put it on the workbench."
    Certainly, Mr. Kenzie. You're welcome, Mr. Kenzie.
    Reading as I carry it over, I see the leaflet is instructions for installing what sounds like that webbing he was swearing about. I briefly enjoy thinking,
Well, Mr. Kenzie, you can just find that out for yourself.
    But I can't be quite that mean spirited. Almost despite myself, I say, "Kenzie, this paper might help with what you're fixing."
    Â 
    An hour later I leave the airport, still uncertain just how Kenzie roped me into reading those instructions to him step by step. Or how I ended up wrist-deep in kerosene and grease again, sorting what he calls valves from valve springs and connecting rods and pistons.
    "What's this all for?" I asked,
    "Spare parts for overhauling engines, of course," he told me, with a look that dared me to ask what an engine is.
    And so instead I asked about Gold Lightning.
    "I don't know much but her name, Annie Boudreau," Kenzie answered. "Been giving flying lessons over in Fort Worth, and now she's decided to expand her business to Muddy Springs a couple of days a week. Even brought a car over."
    "She didn't sound like Fort Worth."
    "Yankee, I'd say. You keeping those parts straight?"
    "Yes, Kenzie," I answered, and kept at the work until it was done.
    And now I have to decide which way to go.
    I know I should return to town. Clo's expecting me.
    But there's the peaches in my bicycle basket....Just how far away is that bluff, anyway?
    Â 
    Past the airport, the road runs straight north. I'm not good at judging distances, but I suppose I've gone a mile or so when the bluff suddenly ceases to be a distant smudge and becomes, instead, a reachable line of gullied rock. A ribbon of brush and scrub oak meandering along its base shows where there's a creek.
    As I get closer I see it's almost dried up.
    So now where do I go?
    A sound like a door banging comes from somewhere fairly close. I search, at first not seeing anything in the heavy brush, then making out a line too straight to be natural.
    It turns out to be not a boxcar like Joe said but an old caboose, half falling apart, glass missing from its windows.
How,
I wonder,
did it ever get out here?
    I'm about to call a greeting when noise in the undergrowth startles me. Whirling about, I spot an armadillo digging through dead leaves.
    "He won't hurt," Moss, suddenly next to me, says. And then his voice gets an edge. "What'd you come after?"
    "Moss, you gave me a worse start than that animal did."
    "I asked, what do you want?"
    "To give you these peaches. There's no call to be rude."
    "I ain't hungry."
    "Then feed them to the blasted armadillo." Annoyed at him for making me feel foolish, I toss the peaches on the ground. One hits something sharp and splits open.
    "Hey," Moss says, lunging after it, "you shouldn' throwed 'em." Then he yells, "Ouch!" and cradles his hand.
    "Cactus spine?" I ask.
    "I guess." He probes a thumb joint, grimacing. "It's splintered off."
    "Let me see."
    I turn his hand to get the light. It's all calluses layered over ground-in grease. "You got tweezers? Or anything sharp?"
    "My pocketknife's inside," he says.
    I start toward the caboose, but he tells me, "Never mind. I'll fix it later."
    "Not without gouging yourself, unless you're left-handed as well as right."
    I pull open the door. Opposite, light shines in a rectangle where another door used to be.
    The inside's a mess, all but one end, and I realize that Moss has started cleaning up from that side. It's been swept—the trash, anyway—and a makeshift seat's pulled up to a counter. One bunk along the wall looks straighter