Free Glory Boys by Harry Bingham

Any case, if you ever get a postcard from your Auntie Poll, you don’t forget who sent it.’
    ‘I won’t.’
    ‘Goodnight, Hen.’
    ‘Goodnight, Captain.’
    ‘And thanks. I’m only sorry I couldn’t help.’

PART TWO
    Lift
    Heavier-than-air flight sounds impossible – and it is. People get confused because they think that planes must weigh a lot. But that’s not true. Not true at all.
    On the ground, of course, aircraft weigh something. But on the ground, they aren’t really airplanes, they’re just big chunks of metal with wings. The magic happens when the plane begins to roll forwards and air starts to move over those wings. At first, nothing much happens – nothing visible anyway. But, as the airspeed increases, the wings begin to experience lift. They’re pulling upwards, cancelling gravity, making the plane lighter.
    The airspeed gets faster. Once again, the lift on the wings increases. Invisible strings are pulling the plane upwards. As the airspeed goes on increasing, the lift begins to equal gravity. Push the plane through the air just a notch or two faster and the plane rises from the ground, not by some miracle of nature but because it’s helpless to do otherwise.
    And that’s it.
    That’s why heavier-than-air flight never has been possible and never will be possible. Imagine the biggest, heaviest plane you’ve ever seen in your life. Imagine it one thousandth of a millionth of a millisecond before take-off. The plane may look like it’s sitting on the ground, a clumsy metal skyscraper that’s fallen over. But that’s all illusion. That entire plane – pilot, passengers and all – has become absolutely weightless.
    It’s so light you could pick it up and throw it over the moon.

14
    Abe quit, he turned his back.
    One bright and breezy dawn, with a cool wind a steady ten knots from the south, Abe took Poll to the end of Main Street, opened her throttle, and roared upwards into the eggshell-perfect sky. He dipped his wings, once, twice, then flew away.
    As the red-and-white plane danced away towards the ocean, the knots of onlookers broke up, back to their daily business or their morning grits. The last person left squinting into the morning sun was Hennessey Gibson. ‘A nice guy that,’ he muttered. ‘Just a shame he wouldn’t stay.’
    Abe kept his date with Brad Lundmark. The Curtiss Jenny had been built as a trainer. It had two cockpits, front and rear, with full controls in each one. Abe took the kid up to fifteen hundred feet, then let the kid take over. Rudder bar left and right. Control stick up, down, port, starboard. Throttle full open, half-off, then full power again. Abe gave the kid two hours in the air. They did a couple of landings, a couple of take-offs. It was the best two hours of Brad Lundmark’s life. Abe dropped the kid back on the sand and filled the tank with gasoline from a red tin fuel can.
    ‘So long, Brad.’
    ‘So long, Captain.’
    ‘You mind you look after your mom, OK?’
    ‘Sure, Captain. I will.’ On the last two words, Brad’s voice twisted a little and rose half an octave. It was the sort of verbal stumble which probably means nothing. The boy immediately got his control back and added something else in a voice which was completely level and smooth. Only he’d looked away too. He’d darted his eyes quickly out to sea and kept them there ’til his voice had recovered.
    The conversation ran on a little. Abe still needed to stow the empty fuel can and clear a few stones away from his prospective take-off site. But the flier had become suddenly gruff, almost angry. They said goodbye again and shook hands. Then Abe took off, climbing aggressively. He headed south, long enough to be sure that Brad had already set off for home, but inside himself the flier was at war.
    On the one hand there stood Hennessey and the blind Sal Lundmark, her dead husband and the stricken town. There stood the redhead Brad, the engine-obsessed image of the boy that Abe had