The Happy Bottom Riding Club – Excerpt
She scanned the horizon. She looked earthward. She checked the key chain hanging from the controls. She pulled back slightly on the stick. Then she stopped thinking and started flying. She climbed to a thousand feet and circled the field a few times, then brought it in for a good landing. She had been airborne, alone, for five minutes. She was a pilot.
Ben barely had time to congratulate her when she took off again, this time with her first passenger, a childhood friend named Nelse Griffith. The excitement of being up with a new pilot was not enough for him. They were all daredevils. They were all invincible.
“Hey, let’s show them something,” he yelled at Pancho when they had flown around for a few minutes. “I’ll wing walk. You bring it across the field low.” Nelse inched out of the passenger cockpit and stepped out onto the wing, crouching, holding the flying wires with both hands. Pancho, grinning, flew the plane fifty feet above the field, made a pass, then zoomed up and came around again with Nelse still clutching the wires. When she unloaded Nelse, it was Dean’s turn for a run. She didn’t want the afternoon to end. Up above the earth, in the pilot’s seat, she was herself — no apologies, no compromises, no holding back.