Free Book Excerpts

Flying-themed short stories that center on the interesting and special people attracted to small airplanes.

Excerpt

The years since I had last done aerobatics began slipping away, just as the ground had slipped away during our climb. I grew younger deep down, right into my bones. My soul became lighter. Soon, I was laughing with the sheer joyful freedom only this type of flying can provide. The planet, which hung above the canopy at that moment as if it were some fantastic chapel-ceiling mural, had been given a new/old perspective. The world was suddenly a place filled with happiness, challenge and adventure.

My mind began replaying events from my flying history.

Aerobatics in formation, breaking out of the cloud tops into the dazzling brilliance of crystal sunlight, my first loop, the initial flight in the airplane I built, my first solo flight, all these images paraded across the pallet of my memory. It felt as though a former life had suddenly surfaced and spilled its wonder into the present. I was so
completely immersed in the emotion of the moment that it took me a while to realize Alex had been hooting in shared glee.

“Let’s go home,” he suggested. When I checked the clock, it said we had been airborne for almost an hour. It seemed much shorter, but the fuel gauges confirmed that it was indeed necessary to make our way back for landing. I set up a shallow descent and turned to the heading that Alex provided. The throttle and prop controls moved to their cruise positions as he manipulated them from the rear seat.

The air maintained its silky smoothness until we reached eighteen hundred feet above ground where we punched through some strange turbulence. It felt as though we had driven a car over some tight “washboard bumps,” then it smoothed out just as abruptly. Once more, we were running clean and steady.

“What the hell was that?” I demanded.

“I’ve got it,” Alex answered, taking control. He swung us back into the disturbed airflow while he elaborated. “I think it was some turbulence off, a, helo. Probably an E-H if it’s out this far. Now if I can just, find, its, trail.

“E-H?”

“Enforcement Helicopter.”

I watched, fascinated, as he punched through the wake several times in the next couple of minutes. We gradually spent longer and longer in the helicopter’s burbled air until Alex roughly matched the course it had flown. It reminded me of a predator stalking prey. A shark scenting a blood trail.

But a nagging uneasiness gnawed at the back of my thoughts

Read more about Songs of the Archaeopteryx and Keoki Gray HERE.

Copyright 2009 Keoki Gray. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.