Dunc Breaks the Record

by Gary Paulsen

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  JELLY BELLY, Robert Kimmel Smith

  MOSTLY MICHAEL, Robert Kimmel Smith

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  UPCHUCK SUMMER, Joel L. Schwartz

  YEARLING BOOKS/YOUNG YEARLINGS/YEARLING CLASSICS are designed especially to entertain and enlighten young people. Patricia Reilly Giff, consultant to this series, received her bachelor’s degree from Marymount College and a master’s degree in history from St. John’s University. She holds a Professional Diploma in Reading and a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Hofstra University. She was a teacher and reading consultant for many years, and is the author of numerous books for young readers.

  For a complete listing of all Yearling titles,

  write to Dell Readers Service,

  P.O. Box 1045, South Holland, IL 60473.

  Published by

  Dell Publishing

  a division of

  Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.

  666 Fifth Avenue

  New York, New York 10103

  Copyright © 1992 by Gary Paulsen

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

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  eISBN: 978-0-307-80372-6

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by Yearling

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  .1

  “It’s like this—I’ll put it the same way my uncle Alfred says it—if I’d been meant to fly, I’d have feathers on my butt and my feet would fit a limb.”

  Amos was standing on a hillside north of town. Actually, not standing so much as digging his heels in. He was wearing a helmet and orange sunglasses with pastel frames. The helmet strap was so tight, he had to talk through clenched teeth. “I won’t do it.”

  He was not standing alone. Dunc—Duncan—Culpepper, his best friend for life, was there with him. Well down the hill, a mile away and seemingly almost vertically below them, stood their helper and instructor, Tod Meserman.

  Dunc was standing beneath a hang glider and holding its pipe frames. It was early morning—just past dawn—and though the air was fairly calm, soft breezes wafted up the hill and fluttered the cloth on the glider now and then.

  “Come on, Amos. You did it at least ten times when you were taking the lessons.” Dunc wiggled the glider to emphasize. “It’s perfectly safe.”

  “I crashed.”

  “You didn’t crash. You made a slightly early landing.”

  “I crashed. I went down like an anvil out of a four-story window. I hit so hard, I saw colors and drove my knees up around my ears.”

  Dunc sighed. “It was your second flight, and if you hadn’t let go of the control bar to swat that fly, you wouldn’t have cra—come down quite so fast.”

  “Bee. It was a bee. Not a fly. Probably a killer bee. And I crashed.”

  Dunc shook his head and turned to face down the hill, wiggling the glider around. “Call it what you like—it doesn’t matter. This time there’ll be two of us. I’ll be there with you. All we have to do is launch, let the glider float down the hill to Mr. Meserman, and we’ll have the record.”

  “The record—that’s another thing. You’re being a little pushy about this record business. It’s not all that important.”

  “Not important? It’s the world record, Amos! The longest flight ever for two boys our age on a hang glider! We’ll be in all the record books.”

  “Big deal.”

  “We’ll be famous.”

  “Right—as the first two boys our age to drop like anvils from a four-story building.”

  “And everybody—even Melissa—will read about us. Think of it. Melissa Hansen reading about you being a hero.”

  Doubt mixed with interest on Amos’s face, starting a small battle with a frown between his eyes, and in a moment interest won. “Melissa …” Melissa Hansen had been the object of Amos’s dreams, it seemed, since before he was born, before he could think. She didn’t know he walked the planet, and she had never spoken to him or touched him except once when she thought he was his cousin, the skateboarder Lash Malesky, and again when she thought he was a dog because Amos was a dog.

  “Sure”—Dunc nodded—“I can see it now. She’s in the library, the record book is open on a table. She looks at it. Hmmm, she thinks. Hang gliders. And look, here’s Amos Binder. Cool, she thinks—he’s got the record. I should meet this guy.”

  And it worked. Amos nodded, smiled, and moved to stand with Dunc inside the framework of the glider. He slipped into the harness that would hold him while they flew. “Melissa …”

  “All right,” Dunc said, “hold the bar and run with me, and when I give the word, kick off. Just like Mr. Meserman showed us. All we have to do is glide down the hill to where he’s standing, and we’ll be in the record books.”

  “Melissa …”

  Dunc started his run, and Amos trotted beside him.

  Dunc started to run faster, and Amos picked up speed.

  The glider started to lift. Just a bit at first, and then the morning breeze, which was gaining speed coming up the hill even as they ran, caught under the front of the glider.

  “Now!” Dunc pushed forward on the control bar. The nose of the glider went up, and with a surge they were off the ground, flying.

  “Lie out flat.” Dunc kicked his legs back, and Amos copied him.

  The glider wobbled a bit, but Dunc corrected with the bar, and it settled into a proper attitude and began to slide down the hill, about thirty feet off the ground.

  “See?” Dunc said. He was smiling. “Isn’t this great? We’re just greasing on down, and then—”

  They would argue later over what he had been about to say next. Dunc said he was going to talk about being in the record books. Amos swore he was going to say: “—–just greasing on down, and then we’ll fly away and ruin our lives and everything, and die.”

  At first there was a natural flow to what happened.

  The morning breeze coming up the hill freshened still more, and a sudden gust caught the glider. It shot up two hundred feet.

  “Yalp!” Amos shouted, or something very like a gulp that turned into a yell. “What happened?”

  “No problem,” Dunc said. He pulled the bar back, and the nose of the glider dropped. “It was just a little updraft.”

  “Mr. Meserman looks awful small down there.” Amos took his hand off the bar to point. The glider wiggled. He put his hand back on the bar. “I mean really small.”

  “I just have to compensate a bit more.”

  “So do it. Compensate.”

  Dunc pulled further back on the bar. The nose dropped still more
, but it didn’t help.

  The glider continued to climb.

  “Compensate,” Amos said, his voice becoming shrill. “Compensate!”

  “I am.” It was a cool morning, but Dunc was starting to sweat. Damp spots showed through his jacket. His forehead under the helmet was damp. “I’m pulling back all I dare.”

  “Why aren’t we going down?”

  “I don’t know—we should be dropping fast.”

  “We’re still climbing!”

  “I know, Amos. I’m here with you, remember?”

  “I can’t see Mr. Meserman.”

  “Sure you can—there he is, by his car. See?”

  “He’s just a dot. A tiny dot!”

  Dunc pushed sideways on the bar. The glider swooped off to the left.

  “What are you doing?” Amos fought him on the bar, and the glider wobbled like a sick bat.

  “I think we’re caught in some kind of updraft or thermal. I thought maybe if we slid off sideways we would start down.”

  “We didn’t.” Amos’s knuckles were white on the bar.

  “I know.”

  “We’re still climbing.”

  “I know.”

  “We’re going to die.”

  “No, we’re not.”

  “We’re going to fall and fall and crash and drop and plummet and die.”

  “No, we’re not.”

  “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Be quiet now.”

  “Bad.”

  “Amos—”

  Even though the nose stayed down, the glider continued to climb, until even Mr. Meserman’s car—a large station wagon with a rack on top to haul the glider—couldn’t be seen.

  Until town, eight miles away, was lost in the blurry haze of altitude.

  Up and up and up …

  .2

  “Yes,” Dunc said, nodding. “It’s a thermal. That’s what it is.”

  Amos had his eyes closed tightly, the lids jammed down. “I don’t care. I’m not looking.”

  “Oh, heck, Amos, it’s not so bad. We just got carried up a ways. As soon as we get off this thermal, we can get back down.”

  “That’s what bothers me—the down part.”

  “It’s all very simple.” Dunc pulled himself slightly around so he could see to the rear. “The air moves up that hill, just like Mr. Meserman told us. I guess it just moves more than he thought it would, or faster. See out there off to the right—those clouds? That’s what caused the wind and the thermal to come up.”

  “I don’t see anything.”

  “You will if you open your eyes.”

  Amos opened his eyes. Then wider—so wide, they seemed to pop out of his head. “Dunc, I can’t see anything! I’m blind! The altitude is making me blind!”

  Dunc reached across and jerked on Amos’s helmet strap. “Your helmet is in front of your eyes. Look—it’s beautiful.”

  “It’s down—everything is down from here.” Amos blinked. “There is no up.”

  Dunc pulled the bar sideways, and the glider moved off to the right.

  “What are you doing?” Amos clutched at the bar. “Don’t move that way.”

  “It’s so strange. I can turn left or right, but it won’t go down. In fact, we’re still climbing. I’ll bet we’re ten, twelve thousand feet up now. I wish I had an altimeter—I know we’ve got the record now.”

  All the time he talked, Amos had been strangely silent. He craned his neck around to look back, then forward. “Dunc …”

  “Not just the distance record for two boys our age, but probably the altitude record as well.”

  “Dunc …”

  “Maybe if I held the nose up a little, we’d climb still more—just to clinch it.”

  “Dunc!”

  “You don’t have to scream—I’m right next to you.”

  “I’ve been looking down.”

  “I know. And I’m very proud of you, conquering your fears that way.”

  “That’s not it. I’ve been looking down, and I don’t recognize anything.”

  “It all looks different from up here.”

  “No.” Amos shook his head, his helmet wobbling in the sunlight. “I mean, we’re moving. It’s hard to tell from up here, but I think we’re sliding sideways all the time.”

  Dunc studied the ground, then nodded slowly. “I think you might be right—there must be a sidewind, and we’re blowing with it. I think we’re moving southwest.”

  “Southwest,” Amos said, “southwest. How fast are we going?”

  Dunc shook his head. “I can’t be sure. I think I read an article in the library once that said the fronts go through here at about thirty-five miles an hour.”

  “And we’ve been up here how long?”

  Dunc looked at his watch. “Almost an hour—man, that’s got to be the record! Not only distance but altitude and time—we’ve got them all!”

  But Amos was figuring. “So we’ve come close to thirty-five miles, heading southwest.”

  Dunc nodded. “I think so—maybe. About.”

  “And we haven’t started down yet.”

  “Not yet.”

  “This isn’t good,” Amos said. “Not good at all.”

  “What’s the matter? We’ll come down sooner or later.”

  “Think,” Amos said. “You’ve been so caught up in this record business, you’re forgetting something. We’re heading southwest. We’ve come thirty or so miles, and we’re still heading that way.”

  “Right—when we come down, we’ll get to a phone and call home. It’ll all work out.”

  “Except for one point—the Davis Wilderness Area starts twenty-five miles southwest of town.”

  “Oh.” Dunc nodded. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “And it stretches for close to eighty miles in a southwest direction.”

  “Almost ninety, actually,” Dunc said. “I read that it was named after a guy named Milton Davis who worked hard to save some small trees or fish or something. He disappeared back in the seventies.”

  “You’re not following me, Dunc.” Amos took his hand off the bar long enough to wave a finger, then slammed it back down when the glider wiggled. “Stay with me now—we’re flying in a hang glider out over a wilderness area where there isn’t a phone or a road. We don’t have any way to get out. We don’t have any food or clothing with us. We don’t even have a compass.”

  Dunc studied Amos for a moment, then nodded slowly. “I see your point, but I think you’re worrying needlessly. We haven’t started down yet. Heck, we might go all the way across the wilderness area before we come down.”

  But they didn’t.

  .3

  “Dunc, why is everything getting bigger?” Amos was looking down. “See the trees, and that river—aren’t they getting bigger?”

  Dunc nodded but said nothing. He was also watching the ground intently, frowning. Below them stretched miles and miles of raw wilderness—thickly wooded small mountains and rolling hills. Here and there lay a lake, cut back between hills, and across the whole of it stretched a river.

  “Are we going down?” Amos looked at Dunc.

  Dunc nodded. “We must have lost the thermal.”

  Amos looked down at the forest. He looked forward, then back, then left and right. “I don’t want to seem like a party pooper, but has it occurred to you that there is nowhere to land? I can’t even see a clearing.”

  Dunc nodded again. “I know. I’ve been looking for some time now.”

  “Well, we’ll just have to not land, that’s all.”

  “Amos …”

  “Keep the nose up, and we’ll just keep flying.”

  Dunc sighed. He held the glider almost on the edge of stalling, felt it shudder, dropped the nose, and turned to the right a bit. “It doesn’t work that way. When it’s time to come down, it’s time to come down. There’s nothing I can do. Now, help me find a place to land—quick. We only have a few minutes.”

  He angled back to t
he right, then to the left.

  “I don’t see anything,” Amos said. “Do you?”

  “No.”

  By now, the glider had dropped low enough that they could make out individual trees and brush.

  “There’s nothing,” Amos said. “We’re going to crash in the trees.”

  “No.” Dunc canted the bar. “We can’t land in the trees. If we lose flying speed at the tops of the trees, we still have to fall to the ground.”

  “There’s nowhere else.” Amos’s voice rose to the edge of shrill.

  “Only one place,” Dunc said, lining the glider out. “The river.”

  “In the water?”

  “We don’t have any choice.” Dunc moved the bar again and slowed the descent as much as he dared. Still the glider dropped, and now he could see limbs on trees, even large leaves.

  The river below them was not a peaceful winding stream. It shot through cuts between hills, and here and there it had whitewater rapids. It was also not straight. Because the hills kinked it back and forth, most of the river below the glider—where Dunc would have to bring it down—was in narrow twisting cuts.

  “There,” Dunc said, pointing with his chin. “Right there—see where the water cuts across the face of that hill, that straight part? That’s where we’ll bring it in.”

  “Those are rapids, Dunc.”

  “Just out in the middle. I’m going to come in on the side. I’ll just skin her in, and …”

  He trailed off as he concentrated on flying. He turned away from the landing spot, let the glider sink a bit, then brought it back around, lined the nose up heading back up the river and into the wind, and aimed directly at the site he’d picked for landing.

  It almost went perfectly. Even Amos was impressed.

  Dunc brought the glider in just as he’d said, lined the nose up on the side of the river, wobbled it down into the wind, and flared just above the water. The two boys lowered their feet until it seemed they were just about to walk on the water.

  “Beautiful,” Amos said. “I couldn’t have done it better—”

  He had been about to add the word myself. But he didn’t get it out. He very nearly never said another word again of any kind.