Wings

“Yes, you should have, son,” Pat said sadly. He hated to see him lose when, with a little effort, he could have been a great flier, or so Pat thought. But Pat was the only one who thought of Chris that way. Everyone else knew the truth, even Chris, that he just wasn't a flier. But Cassie congratulated him anyway.

“Good job, baby brother. That was a pretty piece of flying.”

“Not pretty enough apparently,” he grinned at her, and then congratulated her for taking first prize in the previous event.

And a few minutes later she saw one of Billy Nolan's friends take second place. He had done some very fine flying.

Cassie's next race was at ten o'clock and it was more difficult this time. It involved speed, and she was worried that the Vega couldn't do it. It was fast, but some of the racing planes were faster.

“She'll do it if you play her right,” Nick promised as he talked to Cassie right before takeoff. The Vega was a great plane and Cassie flew it well. Nick knew that for this race it was better than the Bellanca. “Just keep cool, Cass. Don't let it scare you.” She nodded and said not a word as she taxied off, and a moment later she was in the air, and flying remarkably. Nick had never seen anyone more precise or faster, and she managed some extraordinarily complicated maneuvers. He couldn't take his eyes off her, and he noticed that Pat was watching her intently too. And so was a tall blond man in a blazer and white trousers. He was watching her very carefully through binoculars, and talking to a man who was taking notes. He was out of place and Nick figured he was probably from one of the Chicago papers.

Cassie won second prize that time, but only because she hadn't had a faster plane. She had overcome every handicap the Vega had, and Nick still couldn't believe it. He had never expected her to win that race, and she had placed handsomely. When she was down again, Billy came over and congratulated her. He had won third against her. They were a great bunch of fliers, and Nick liked what he had just seen of Billy. He was careful and sure, and he had won in spite of an inferior plane. Like Cass, he had pushed it to the limit.

She had two more races to fly that day. One at noon, which went well, and the last one in the afternoon, which was a race Nick would have preferred she hadn't entered. She and Nick had had lunch with Billy Nolan and his friends, Chris had joined them eventually, and when her father wandered by, she introduced them to the famous Pat O'Malley. He liked all the young boys, and Billy spent some extra time talking to him, telling him about his father. Fat remembered him well, and was sorry he had lost track of him in the past twenty years. He had genuinely liked him.

And then it was time for Cassie's race. When Pat heard that she had entered, he was furious, and his eyes blazed as he berated his partner.

“Didn't you tell her not to?” he barked at Nick, who looked annoyed and unhappy at Pat's reaction. He felt guilty enough for letting her enter it and Pat wasn't helping.

“She takes after her old man, Pat. She does what she wants.”

“She's got the wrong plane for that, and she doesn't have the experience to do it.”

“I told her that. But she's practiced a lot, and I think she's smart enough to let it go if she can't make it. She's not going to push it to the edge, Pat. I told her that myself.” He only prayed that she had listened.

The two men stood staring up at the sky unhappily, with Chris, and Billy and his friends, and the man in the white trousers. It was a daredevil event, usually entered only by old stunt pilots with aerobatic planes, which Nick's Bellanca wasn't. But she had desperately wanted to try her hand at this event. It allowed her to show off all the stuff she did best, and pull off a miracle or two, if she could get the plane to cooperate with her at low altitudes. She knew it was going to be scary, but she was prepared to scrub the race if she really had to.

There were over a dozen moves she had to do, all of them impressive and frightening, and she went through the first half dozen of them without being a hair off. Pat was even beginning to smile as he watched her. And then on the final dive, she seemed to lose control. Her plane dove with its wings askew, and Nick wondered if she was panicking and had forgotten everything he had taught her, or maybe she had fainted. But she was doing absolutely nothing to save herself, nothing at all, and no one moved as they stared in horror at what was going to become a tragedy in a single instant. But suddenly, with a roar, she throttled the hell out of it, and pulled up, barely higher than the heads of the horrified crowd, and pulled out of it, soaring high and completing a triple roll that took everyone's breath away. She completed every move and did a final loop that won her the race hands down, without even hearing from the judges.