by Trent Reedy
Brian squinted his eyes and gritted his teeth. “Come on, baby. Come on, baby,” he whispered. He held the yoke in one hand and patted the wing with the other. “Now, girl!” Blackbird rose up two feet. Then three. Four feet. She kept rising, speeding up.
“The tow rope!” Alex shouted.
“Oh crap!” Brian had almost forgot. He yanked the red lever. The rope fell away. Seven feet. Eight. They soared up into the sky. Brian could feel himself pushed down into his seat.
“Warp speed!” he shouted.
Power lines crossed the road ahead. Brian slammed the yoke forward and the flyer dove down under them, but he still ducked. When they were clear of the cables, he pulled up, bringing Blackbird a hundred feet above the trees. He worked the foot pedals to operate the tail rudder and pushed the yoke to the right, banking to starboard. In a moment they flew over Carl Jacobs Park in the middle of the square downtown. He leveled the wings and steered just with the rudder.
They were flying. Really flying. All the hard work had paid off. Blackbird was airborne.
“Woooooo!” Brian shouted. “This is awesome!”
“We’re flying! We are flying!” Alex laughed. “This is so fun, I almost don’t even care that a sack of manure’s in my lap. We’re really, really flying!”
Grandpa’s farm was ahead to the right. The giant barn appeared small from up here. Brian thought back to when he and Alex had first swung from the rope in the hayloft, wondering what it would be like to be higher. Now they knew. He pulled back and right on the yoke and Blackbird soared up and to the north.
“Brian,” Alex shouted. “Max is on the radio. He says something like the NX-03 rocket was a success.”
“That just means the rocket burned out safely,” Brian called back. “His first two rockets exploded after ignition.”
They were flying high now over the north woods. Brian laughed out loud. “This is the greatest! Let’s get crazy!” He pushed the yoke forward and to the right, diving and banking tightly. The trees below seemed to grow as Blackbird dropped closer to them.
“Um, Brian?” Alex said.
“I’ve got it.” He straightened their roll and pulled the yoke to bring Blackbird out of her dive. There was a little bump. “What was that?”
“Dude, the back wheels just clipped the top of that tree!”
“Whoops.” Brian wiped his forehead and brought Blackbird over Riverside, heading south toward the river. He banked out in a wide curve to get a little room and then came in line with the river, about two hundred feet up. The giant white cement towers of the grain elevators were dead ahead.
“What are you doing?” Alex asked.
“She’s not a commercial jet. We built her to fly. Let’s really fly!” They drew closer and closer to the grain elevators. Brian centered Blackbird on the space between two of the towers, a gap of maybe six feet.
“Brian, look out!”
At the last moment he cranked the yoke to port, dipping the left wing down sharply and the right nearly straight up. There was a rush of displaced air as they shot through the small space, and a quick jerk of the yoke righted the wings. He pulled up. The American flag fluttered in the breeze on top of the towers behind them. “Yeah!”
“I’m so glad we put in seat belts,” Alex said.
Brian kept their raised pitch, letting Blackbird gain altitude while steering to the south. Soon they were even higher than they’d been with Mr. Piggly.
“Ground Control, this is Blackbird.” Alex must have been yelling into the radio. “That’s a good copy. Over.”
“What’s up?” Brian said.
“Max says he’s at the park. The target is in position, and we should begin Phase Four.”
“Roger that,” Brian said. He reversed course to fly back north to Riverside. “Let’s see what Blackbird can do! I’m going to drop altitude again, and we’ll do a flyby pass of the park to see where Frankie is. Then we’ll bring her around for our attack run.”
“Yeah!” Alex shouted. “Come on, Blackbird! You can do it!”
He’d been waiting for this moment. Brian pushed forward on the yoke. He felt his body lighten in his seat a little as the aircraft headed down. There was no way to gauge their speed, but it sure felt like they were flying faster. He worked the foot pedals to adjust the tail rudder and keep them in line with the park. They were up maybe three hundred feet.
In a few minutes, they were close enough for Brian to turn to port. Down below, little dots of people had gathered near the skate ramps in Riverview Park. Brian slammed the yoke forward and Blackbird dove at a steep angle. Alex let out a whoop behind him, but Brian focused on the maneuver. He could feel the aircraft shaking. The park and the kids in it appeared to grow larger. Some of them were shouting and pointing up at Blackbird.
Frankie had his hand up, keeping the sun out of his eyes to get a better look at the approaching aircraft. “There you are,” Brian said quietly to himself. Frankie started moving off toward home.
“He’s trying to get away!” Alex yelled.
“Not a chance!” Brian banked the flyer and shot down again to cut him off. They swooped by only about four feet from the ground, close to a dozen feet in front of Frankie. People, trees, ramps passed by in a blur. Brian pulled up, soaring back into the air. They were past the park already. He used the river as a ground guide to maneuver to port and get lined up with the park again.
“Let’s do it!” Brian yelled.
“Ground Control, this is Blackbird,” Alex said. “We are in position now. We’re starting our approach for the attack run. Over!” There was a pause. “Roger that, Ground Control. That’s a good copy. Talk to you after it’s over. Blackbird out!”
“You ready, Alex?” Brian asked. Riverview Park was coming into range again. He eased the flyer down to maybe two hundred feet.
“Max says he’s worked out the geometry,” Alex yelled. “We need to pass about three feet above Frankie’s head, then it’s bombs away when we’re eight feet in front of him. Whoa!”
Brian pushed the yoke forward and Blackbird plummeted toward the ground. They picked up speed as they descended, moving so fast that the flyer shook again. All the kids were watching them. Some clapped. Some pointed. Frankie moved a little to the right. Brian adjusted course to keep him centered.
“Brian, are you sure she’ll pull out of this?”
“Get ready, Alex!” They had seconds until they were in range. One poop bomb, one shot. He brought Blackbird out of her dive so they’d just barely pass above Frankie. Thirty feet. Fifteen. Eight. “Now! Now! Now!”
“Bomb away!” Alex shouted.
Brian pulled back on the yoke to bring Blackbird back up, but he didn’t even watch where they were flying. Instead, he looked back to see the blob of thick wet manure expand. The soupy dark brown poop slammed into Frankie so hard that he went flying back off his feet. He flailed his arms, landing on his butt.
“We nailed him!” Brian yelled. He put Blackbird in a tight low curve. “Alex, you timed it perfectly!”
“Dude, it plastered him!” Alex laughed, but then stopped. “Ground Control, this is Blackbird, go ahead. Over.”
Brian brought them around toward the Runaway Bridge and did a dive run under it. He pulled up to gain altitude.
“Max says everyone is cracking up,” Alex said. “Frankie is spitting manure out of his mouth and wiping it from his eyes and nose. He’s not sure, but he thinks Frankie might be crying.”
“Let’s go check it out,” Brian said. They’d turned around and were coming up on the park again. He brought it in at a low twenty feet. Frankie saw them and started running out of the park toward home. “There he goes!” Brian laughed. “But we’re still here. Looks like you won your bet.”
“I always win!” Alex said.
Down below, their classmates clapped, laughed, and cheered. Brian dipped a wing to them and then took Blackbird up high. They’d done it.
“Brian, Max says he has no idea how fast Blackbird
burns fuel, so we shouldn’t take any chances. We should go ahead with Phase Five and bring it in for a landing heading north on First Street. It’s at the bottom of the hill and should be level enough.”
“Roger that,” Brian said. He put Blackbird through a series of maneuvers that lined them up with First Street.
“Watch for cars and power lines,” Alex said.
They were coming in nice and shallow, maybe twenty or twenty-five feet up, just like Dad bringing the Cardinal in for a landing on some little grass airstrip. Brian eased the throttle lever forward and felt the engine power down a little. The flyer began to descend. “Be ready on those brakes,” he shouted to Alex, but he did not look away from the street. Twenty feet. Ten. Five feet up. They were just above the pavement. He eased the yoke forward and throttled all the way down. The skateboards made smooth contact. Brian hit the kill switch to shut the engine off. “Brake! Brake! Brake!”
“I can’t … stupid things …” Alex muttered. A horrible screeching noise came from the rear of the aircraft.
Brian felt them slow down a little, but there wasn’t much more he could do. He lowered the horizontal stabilizer to push the nose down a little, but given that they were rolling on two skateboards, they could pretty much move only in a straight line.
They had maybe two blocks to go until First Street intersected with Lincoln Street. The yellow house directly ahead loomed closer and closer. “Why aren’t we stopping?” Brian turned around. Two trails of thick black smoke rose from the ground below Blackbird.
“I got ’em locked down! The door stopper things are just burning up!” Alex said.
One block to go. They were still moving too fast. “Dude, these brakes are useless!” Alex’s whole body jerked as he tried to push them down harder, then he jumped back as sparks shot out. “The rubber’s all burned off. We’re grinding metal!”
“Flintstones brakes!” Brian shouted.
“What are you talking about?”
“Come on! Do it!” He leaned back in his seat and pressed the soles of his shoes to the street.
“Do you know how much these shoes cost?” Alex said.
“Do it now!” Brian’s legs shook as his shoes skidded along the pavement. He heard another scraping noise and saw Alex was dragging his feet as well.
“First my pants. Now my shoes. Want to ruin my shirt next?” said Alex.
Blackbird rolled across Lincoln Street and up a slightly sloped driveway. They were eight feet from smashing right through the Iowa Hawkeyes mascot painted on the white garage door. They rolled closer and closer. Brian cringed and instinctively held his hands up in front of him. “Stop, stop, stop, stop!”
Blackbird scraped to a halt about two feet from the garage door.
Brian finally let out a breath. His heart pounded in his chest. He looked back at Alex. “Touchdown.”
Alex was shaking. He slowly nodded as he fumbled for the radio handset. When he picked it up, he took a deep breath. “Ground —” He swallowed and licked his lips. “Ground Control, this is Blackbird. Blackbird has landed. I say again, Blackbird has landed. We’re at First and Lincoln. How copy? Over.” Brian could hear the faint sound of Max’s voice on the radio. Alex frowned. “Negative, Ground Control. I just said ‘Blackbird has landed.’ I didn’t say it was a safe landing. Blackbird out.” He switched off the radio and clipped the handset to the wire basket. Then he looked at Brian and pointed at Herky the Hawk on the door right in front of them. “Whoa.”
Brian nodded. “As Max would say, ‘precisely.’”
Brian and Alex stepped down off of Blackbird and onto solid ground. They picked the flyer up, each carrying a wing. They intended to hide it in the north woods until dark, when they could safely sneak it back to the Eagle’s Nest, but before they could carry it very far, Max rode up on his two-seat bike. Wendy was pedaling in the back.
They put the flyer down as Max ran up to them. “I believe the mission was a resounding success! I’m a little concerned by the trails the brakes seem to have made in the street, but the flying was impressive.”
“Yeah, Max, about those brakes …” Alex said as he checked the worn bottoms of his shoes.
Brian left the two of them and went over to talk to Wendy. “Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” said Wendy.
Was she angry? Did she hate him for what he’d done? Maybe she’d come here to say she never wanted to talk to him or to slap him or something. “I um … sort of poop-bombed your brother.”
“I saw that.” Wendy shook her head. “I suppose you had to do something. Frankie needed to be taught a lesson.”
“It was the only one we could think of,” Brian said.
She laughed quietly. “Really? Poop? That’s all you could think of?”
“Sorry.”
Wendy reached out and squeezed his hand. His heart beat heavier than it had when they’d nearly crashed into the garage. She smiled at him. “I’m just happy you didn’t fight him.”
“I thought I’d try something new.”
“You … kept your promise … I guess.” She moved closer. He looked into her amazing green eyes, and she looked back at him.
“Hey, you two,” Alex said. Brian and Wendy jumped apart. “We need help carrying Blackbird. We have to hide it before everyone finds us or we’ll never get it put away tonight.”
“I gotta go,” Brian said to Wendy. He hoped she’d understand.
Wendy stepped away from him and picked up Max’s bike. “I’ll take this to Max’s house. Then I’ll call you tonight,” she said. “And you don’t have to worry about my brother. If Frankie ever manages to get the stink washed off, he’ll think twice before bothering you again.”
Brian ran to take hold of Blackbird. They carried it around the back of the house they’d almost hit, across a grassy field, and deep into the north woods.
“Dude, do you have my dad’s camera?” Alex asked once they’d hid the flyer under some thick bushes. Max unslung his backpack and pulled out the device. Alex took it from him and checked it over. “Whew. It looks okay. If it was messed up, I’d be a dead man.” He hit a couple buttons. After a minute or two, video came up on the little flip-out screen. “Beautiful.” He showed the screen to Brian. “Check it out. In high def too.”
The zoom on the camera was impressive. Close-ups showed Blackbird in flight with her Plastisteel wings and tail shining in the afternoon sun, and long-distance shots caught the flyer swooping over buildings or dodging around trees. Max had even filmed their crazy banking maneuver between the grain elevators. With a little editing, the video was sure to razzle-dazzle Mrs. Douglas. Max had also scored perfect footage of Frankie getting nailed by the wet manure bomb.
“Awesome,” Brian said. “We can send a copy to Frankie, and if he tries to be a tough guy again, we’ll just threaten to put the video online.”
“Guys, seriously, this was probably the coolest thing I’ve ever done. This was something real.” Alex rubbed his knuckles under his chin. “Magazines, television … They’re going to pay so much for our story.” He laughed a little. “I’m going to start tracking down people who owe me money. B.A. has some winnings coming too.”
Knowing they’d be back for Blackbird soon, they walked out of the woods and headed home.
At one o’clock the next day, Alex, Brian, and Max were up in Brian’s room. “Gentlemen, ties.” Alex tossed pre-knotted neckties to the other two. “Brian, you said your shirt was stained.” He looked at Brian’s dingy dress shirt and handed him a jacket. “I brought this from home. See if it fits.”
The jacket’s sleeves came up several inches too short when Brian finally wiggled into the thing. He sighed and put his hands on his hips.
“Better than letting everyone see those mud stains,” said Alex.
“It is an improvement.” Max did not sound very convincing.
The sound of a car outside drew Brian to his window for the hundredth time. Earlier, he had watched Max and his parents arrive in their
Prius and Grandpa in his pickup. A few minutes after that, Alex and his mom, dad, and sister had pulled up in their Lexus. The latest car rolled right by — not the vehicle he was hoping for.
“Brian,” said Max, “no doubt everyone downstairs is wondering why we called this meeting. It was not easy to get my parents to come.”
“Yeah,” said Alex. “My dad was supposed to drop Mom and Katie off at the mall when he went in to the office. It took some time to convince them this was important.”
“We wouldn’t even be having this meeting if you hadn’t uploaded the video to the Internet,” Brian said.
Alex held his hands up. “Dude, what could I do? Someone put up a crappy video he took with his phone. It was starting to get a lot of views. I had to put up our good video to stay on top of publicity. How was I supposed to know it would go viral so fast?”
“In any case, Brian, we can’t change what is already done,” said Max.
They were right, and they couldn’t just leave everyone downstairs wondering what was going on either. “We’ll just have to start,” Brian said.
“Remember, play it professional.” Alex straightened his tie and picked a piece of lint off his blue jacket. He looked like one of those guys at expensive boarding schools that Brian had seen in movies. “They’re going to find out about Blackbird soon anyway. We might as well tell them ourselves.”
“It’s the most logical approach,” said Max.
Alex rolled his eyes. “Thanks, Spock.”
Max frowned. “I consider it a compliment to be compared to the greatest Vulcan who —”
“Oh, come on,” Brian said, leading the way out of the room before Max and Alex could get into a Star Trek debate. This meeting would be like skating, flying, or almost anything else. It was best to just go for it.
Downstairs in the living room, Brian’s and Max’s parents sat on chairs brought in from the dining room, while Grandpa sat in the old leather recliner. Mr. and Mrs. Mackenzie occupied either end of the couch, with Alex’s little sister Katie pouting in the middle. She perked up when Brian and the guys entered the room, giggling and giving Brian a little wave.
