Nothing by Chance by Richard Bach

Author:Richard Bach
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs
ISBN: 9781451697469
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2012-06-25T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

I CHECKED THE TAILSKID SHOE first thing in the morning. It needed some extra wire to hold it in place and this meant lifting the tail back onto the oil cans.

Paul stood glumly by.

“Think you could give me a hand with lifting the tail?” I said. “Stu, you ready for us to lift?”

“Lift away,” said Stu from his oilcans underneath the tail.

Paul apparently hadn’t heard me, for he didn’t move to help. “Hey, Paul! Why don’t you stop sucking that cigarette for a minute and give us a hand here?”

Paul looked at me as though I was some kind of repugnant beetle, and moved to help. “All right, all right I’ll help you! Take it easy.”

We picked up the tail and set the skid on its oilcan jack. Later, we walked to town for breakfast and Paul trailed behind, saying nothing, the picture of depression. Whatever his problem is, I thought, it is none of my business. If he wants to be depressed, that’s his option. It was the quietest, most uncomfortable breakfast we ever had. Stu and I traded comments about the weather and the tail skid and the wagon jack, how it couldn’t possibly work, and all the time Paul said not a word, made no sound at all.

We all had separate places to go after breakfast, and for the first time since we began the summer, we did not walk together, but went three separate ways. It was an interesting sort of thing, but puzzling, for the same wave of depression hit us all.

Well, heck, I thought, walking alone back to the airplane, I don’t care. If the other guys want to do something else and feel bad, I can’t stop ’em. The only guy I can control is me, and I’m out here to barnstorm, not to waste time feeling bad.

I resolved to fly to the airport and change the biplane’s oil, and then I was pushing on. If the other guys wanted to come along, that was fine with me.

When I walked onto the hayfield again, Paul was sitting alone on his sleeping bag, writing a note. He said nothing.

“OK, buddy,” I said at last. “What you do is none of my business except when it starts to affect me. And it’s starting. What is bugging you?”

Paul stopped writing, and folded the paper. “You,” he said. “Your attitude has changed. You’ve been acting different ever since I got back. I’m leaving today. I’m on my way home.”

So that was the problem. “You’re free to go. You mind telling me just how my attitude has changed? I no longer want to fly with you, is that it, you guess?”

“I don’t know. But you’re just not there. I might as well be some brand new guy you never met before. You can treat other people like outsiders, but you can’t treat me that way.”

I scanned back over everything I had done or said since Paul returned. I had been a trifle stiff and formal, but I had been that way a thousand times since I had known Paul.

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