Chapter 3

Bree and the little white Schweizer rode up the thermal over the clearcut field for quite a ways, farther than she’d managed with the first one at home. The view from the bubble canopy of the 1-26 told her she was getting close to the level of the bottoms of the puffy cumulus clouds that seemed to be growing all over the place now. In fact, there was a cloud right over her, giving her some cool shade in the cockpit, which could get stuffy with the sun beating in – it was why she was wearing shorts and a tank top instead of warmer clothes on this cool day. In case of an outlanding there were more clothes stuffed behind the seat, but she had no intention of using them if she could help it.

The thermal had given her a good ride, but it was dying down a little now. She found herself wondering if she’d stayed with it too long. In the back of her head, she wasn’t just trying to fly to Warsaw and back – she was at least trying out racing techniques she’d heard about, read about, and talked with other glider pilots about. In a race, the idea wasn’t just to get from Point A to Point B; it was to cover the distance as quickly as possible. That meant not working a thermal for every inch of altitude possible, but only staying with it while it was strong, then making her best speed to the next one and again gaining altitude as quickly as possible.

This wasn’t a race, of course – but earlier in the summer she and Mark had flown down to Mt. Vernon where the regional championships had been held. Fred had needed volunteers to help with all sorts of details on the ground, and they’d been glad to fly Rocinante down there to pitch in. They’d done all sorts of chores, then in the evenings camped out under the wings like Mark and Jackie had done on their sort-of-honeymoon almost forty years before – “sort-of” in that it had lasted eight months, and ended with their getting married, rather than beginning with it.

While Bree had often heard stories of that legendary honeymoon, the regionals were a new experience for both of them. There’d been almost three dozen sailplanes there, most of them long-winged fiberglass birds, a few of them open-class ships with wingspans twice the 1-26’s; sleek, smooth and expensive, with glide ratios nearly twice what the old fabric and aluminum Schweizer could manage. But there had also been a small handful of other 1-26s, racing in their own class. Bree wasn’t qualified to compete with them, at least not yet. But even if she couldn’t manage her trifecta today, all she had to do was send in the paperwork on flights already completed and wait till she turned sixteen and get her private glider pilot license to be able to compete in another year.

Enough woolgathering; it was time to go, in fact, past time to go. There were other thermals ahead. As the nose of the 1-26 swung around to the east, she rolled out of the thermal and got back on course, taking an instant to adjust the speed-to-fly ring for a little higher thermal strength, and a faster run between thermals.

Misty Frankovich hung up the phone. “What does he think he’s doing?” she snarled loudly enough that her mother could hear it.

“Howie?” her mother Linda asked.

“It’s the fourth time I’ve called over there,” Misty replied. “And he’s still not home! He knew I wanted to talk about getting together with him after football practice this afternoon, but he’s been out messing around somewhere instead. Then he’ll probably be out messing around somewhere after practice.”

“He ought to be at football practice by now,” Linda pointed out reasonably. “What did his mother say he did?”

“Some bull about going over to one of his friends to work on his geometry,” she pouted. “They were probably just hanging out together, having a good old time. His friends are all a bunch of dorks. I don’t know why he’d want to be with them when he could be with me.”

“Saturday morning seems like a strange time to be working on homework,” Linda observed. “He’s probably up to something. Maybe you’d better put a stop to it. Remember, with men, sometimes you have to use the carrot, and sometimes you have to use the stick if you’re going to get them to do what you want.”

“Does that mean I have to pitch a fit at him again?” This was a conversation that wouldn’t have been held if Misty’s father Bob or her brother Rusty was home, and both of them knew it. Fortunately, Bob was out fishing, and Rusty was at football practice. It gave mother and daughter a chance to talk openly.

“It may come to that,” Linda smiled. “First you have to let him know you’re upset, and then he has to find out what he’s going to be missing without you. You’ll have to be the judge on it. It depends on the situation. Just don’t give him much, and leave him wanting more.”

“I suppose,” Misty sighed. “But sometimes it seems like it’s more trouble than it’s worth.”

“It may be,” Linda smiled, “but the whole idea of you going out with him in the first place was for you to get a chance to learn how to handle these kinds of situations before you get to the real thing. Howie will do fine for a boyfriend while you’re in high school, but what happens when you get to college and meet some guy from a family with money? You’ve got to learn how to wrap him around your little finger so you can get what you want.”

“I know, Mom,” she said. “Howie is OK, but he’s going to be lucky if he winds up working out at the plywood plant or something. I want someone better than him in the long run.”

“It’s working out for your sister,” Linda replied. “Shay Archer was nothing more than a practice boyfriend, and we both knew it, just like Howie is your practice boyfriend. When Derrick came along, Bethany knew she had a winner, and she was able to use the kinds of things she’d learned with Shay to get him right where she wanted him and keep him there. As soon as they get married next summer, she’s going to be on Easy Street.”

“Yeah, but Derrick is such a dork,” Misty pointed out.

“Yes, but he’s a rich dork, from a rich family. That means she’s going to be enjoying the finer things in life. Granted, she had to do a few things the hard way to land him, but nothing worth it in life comes easy.”

Linda had the firm belief that it was not only a man’s job to provide for a woman, but to do it in style while doing exactly what she wanted. Marrying Bob had been a big step up in life for her, and she had hopes of her daughters doing better. Thus it was that she spent a great deal of time teaching her daughters how to get what they wanted out of a man, while keeping them off balance and attentive to the woman’s needs. So far, it had worked out pretty well.

Shay Archer had been a nice young man, and in some ways it was a shame that Bethany didn’t keep him. But the last she’d heard, Shay had his eyes set on being a park ranger someplace, which while it might have been an interesting job, it wouldn’t provide Bethany with the life Linda wanted for her daughters. It was part of the reason she’d suggested that Bethany go to a different college than Shay, to tail off a relationship that was almost too hot for a practice boyfriend. And it had worked; it had taken Bethany over a year at college before she was able to make the connection with Derrick. After her practice with Shay, and the other guy she’d dated at college, whose name she couldn’t remember, it hadn’t taken much more than getting Derrick in bed to have him thoroughly under her control. The rewards for all that work were not far off, and it was proof to Linda that her system worked.

The system had also worked well for Misty, at least so far, Linda thought. She was a long way from getting where Bethany was, but she’d started to learn the things she would need to know – and when the time came, she’d have to know how to do them on the fly, rather than consulting with her mother. That was the point of having a practice boyfriend, after all, and from what Linda could tell Misty had done an adequate job of keeping Howie off balance.

Misty had given her mother detailed reports about her progress right from the beginning, and as far as Linda could tell, her daughter had mostly followed her advice. Misty and Howie got pretty physical early on just so Misty could let him know that greater things followed, but she’d drawn the line pretty solidly, too. Now, brief, minor excursions below that line made it look like he was getting somewhere when he was really little closer to his goal. If they kept going this way for a while, fine; if it meant Misty wound up in bed with Howie in six months or a year or so, that was fine too. If it didn’t go that far, Misty was still going to come out of it knowing a lot more about what it would take to get a boy to do what she wanted.

“I guess that means I’m going to have to pin his ears back, then kiss and make up,” Misty commented.

“Something like that,” Linda smiled. “Just don’t let him get too far. Keep him wanting more, and that’ll keep him trying to please you. The time will come when you’ll have to go all the way with him, but you can keep dangling it in front of his nose for a long time before you’ll have to do it. You’re younger than Bethany was when she was at this stage with Shay, so you can drag it out longer if you need to. Keep Howie wanting you, and you can keep him under control.”

“Yeah, Mom, I know,” Misty said. “I just wish he didn’t want to hang out with some of those friends of his. I need to have him thinking more about spending time with me.”

“Let’s face it, there are times when you have to let a man have his head for a bit,” Linda sighed. “That’s why I didn’t say anything about letting your father go out fishing. But you can’t let it get too far, especially at the stage you’re at. You’ve got to keep him interested in pleasing you so maybe he can get at least a little of what he wants. It’s possible to let him have too little, and then you lose his interest. It’s a delicate balancing act. Like I said . . .”

“Sometimes it takes the carrot, and sometimes it takes the stick,” Misty finished for her.

“Right, and you have to know when to use which one, and it usually works pretty good to give him hell, and then make up with him a little.”

“Well, when and if he gets home, I guess I’ll just have to go over there and give him a little of both,” Misty sighed. “I guess maybe I’d better go up, change out of these jeans, and put on a miniskirt.”

“You’re getting the picture,” Linda smiled. “Give him a vision of what could be, even if it’s not going to be for a while. You’re really starting to understand how you have to treat a man, Misty.”

By the time Jared got Howie’s geometry under control, Bree was far to the east of the airstrip, and making good time. She’d found another good thermal a little sooner than she expected in a place where there was no good reason to be one, as far as she could tell. This was a good place to practice one of the very basic rules of the cross-country sailplane pilot: Get high and stay high. There was no reason to risk getting low, especially in the next ten miles or so – there just wasn’t any place to land. There were few holes in the forest cover, and much of the distance was swampy, which meant that the potential for good lift was low. It would stay that way until she passed the little village of Hoselton, where the forest thinned out a little and there were occasional farm fields, mostly producing potatoes or alfalfa.

Bree had discussed this with Mark and Jackie, and she had it firmly in mind that she wouldn’t leave County Road 919 and the Turtle Hills area without all the altitude she could get, trying to work thermals efficiently or not. She edged her course to the right of the direct line, more following the state road rather than the railroad. In a real pinch, if everything else went bad, she stood a good chance of being able to make a successful outlanding on the state road, but even that was risky, thanks to overhead wires and trees close to the road. It beat nothing, but not by much.

The odds were that she was going to have to get to Hoselton, even somewhere past it, on pure glide ratio. While she’d stop and use a thermal if she happened to find one, the odds of it seemed low. This was no time to depend on the speed-to-fly ring; this called for slowing up to stretch the glide as far as it would go, if for no more reason than to have some altitude left to find another thermal over near Hoselton somewhere. This wasn’t like home, where she knew of spots that reliably produced thermals; on the other hand, the sun was high and getting into the peak heating of the day, which would tend to produce them.

She rode the unexpected thermal upward to the point where she was getting very little out of it. Then, once again when the nose of the sailplane was pointing to the east, she rolled out of her turn and headed off a little south of east, a hundred degrees by the not always reliable magnetic compass on top of the panel in front of her. Really, the compass didn’t matter much; she was navigating by looking at the chart that was usually in her lap.

It was getting to be time to check in with Aunt Jackie. Once again she punched the button for the microphone and without preamble called, “Coming up on 919 at cloud base.”

The reply was a few seconds coming; presumably Aunt Jackie was working on a sign or something; it was her job, after all, and just because it was Saturday didn’t mean she wouldn’t work on one if she had one to do. “Roger,” Aunt Jackie’s voice sounded in the headphones. “919 at cloud base. Stay high.”

“Roger that,” Bree replied. There was nothing else that needed to be said. She was on her own, just as she liked it; while it was good to know Aunt Jackie was keeping track of her, this was her flight to make and there really wasn’t much her aunt could do to help now that it was under way.

Get high and stay high, she smiled to herself as the forested, swampy miles slowly started to pass beneath her. She knew kids who seemed to have that as their main goal in life, but using drugs, not wings. Bree knew she had a much better way to get high and stay high, and she was doing it.

The minutes seemed to pass like hours as Bree and the Schweizer pressed on to the east. Unlike her earlier runs between thermals, Bree was taking it slowly as she tiptoed her way across the badlands. Instead of the mumbling whisper of the wind on the wings at seventy-five miles an hour, there was scarcely a sound as she pushed ahead at fifty.

Five miles past County Road 919 she felt a bump, and the right wing rose in response to a thermal where no self-respecting thermal had any right being. Right then, Bree wasn’t going to pass it up. Almost instinctively she rolled the 1-26 into it; right here, any lift was good lift, and would contribute to staying high.

After only a couple circles she had a better picture of things. The thermal was wide, weak, and choppy, but going up, perhaps a hundred feet a minute, no more. But it was out toward the middle of the swamp, and she knew she’d be stupid to not ride it for what she could get out of it. She might not bother with it elsewhere, but right here it was a gift of the sky.

Bree rode the thermal upwards for five minutes, perhaps more, until all of a sudden it was gone. Somehow she’d flown out of it; it wasn’t hard to do as broken up as it was. Should she waste altitude trying to find it again? Good question, and one of those that had to be answered quickly and instinctively. She decided to make one more circle, extending it toward the direction where she’d last had lift, but if she couldn’t find it, head on her way again. At least she’d have more altitude than she had before; the few hundred feet she’d gained bought her miles to find another thermal on the far side of the swamp. In less than a minute she’d leveled the wings of the sailplane again and was heading on to the east.

Several minutes later, to the east of Hoselton now, Bree was getting lower than she wanted to be. It had been just about dead air ever since that weak, scattered thermal now miles behind her, but she was grateful for every inch of altitude it had given her. There had been little bumps in the last mile or so, but nothing that seemed to be worth investigating. If she found anything working, anything at all, she was going to have to use it; she was getting to the point where she couldn’t be picky.

Though she still had plenty of altitude in hand, it was time to be considering outlanding options, just in case. There was a good field not much farther on, one she and Mark had checked out on the ground as recently as two weeks before. It seemed to her that she’d better stay in reach of it till she could get back some of the altitude she’d lost in the run across the swamps. It was irritating; with all the cumulus clouds in the sky it was obvious that the atmosphere was working hard – it was just that she hadn’t found any of it. It wasn’t surprising out over the swamps, but she was past them now . . . There!

There was a bump, more than a bump at that, as the 1-26’s left wing rose sharply. Instinctively Bree yanked the stick over and stomped on the rudder to make a hard turn into the rising air. In only half a circle her worries were gone. Lift, so sweet, so exquisite! Not real strong, she realized after a full circle, adjusting to get toward the core of the thermal, two or three hundred feet per minute, but up! That was what counted!

Again, circle after circle, working the thermal, trying to stay in it efficiently. In a few minutes she’d gained a thousand feet, with more to come. Now that she was past the swamp she knew she didn’t have to think quite as conservatively as she had needed to earlier. The turn point at Warsaw was only about eight or nine miles away, and if there was one place out at the end point of this run she could reasonably expect a thermal it was there. The streets of the village on this sunlit day, and the asphalt parking lot at the paper plant there had been a reliable thermal generator on every active day they’d checked it, in either Rocinante or the sailplane. She couldn’t be sure about such things, of course, but the odds were pretty good.

And, if for some reason the paper plant thermal wasn’t working and she couldn’t find anything else, the parking lot at the football field was a solid gold place for an outlanding, one of the best possible places they’d checked. Given a chance to set up for it she could land the Schweizer in a very short space; the parking lot was more than big enough, and without obstacles. She didn’t want to be excessively low when she went over Warsaw, but if she had a couple thousand feet in hand it would be more than enough.

So, again, a decision: ride this thermal higher then race toward Warsaw at what the speed-to-fly ring told her was the best compromise between altitude and airspeed, or play it conservative, keeping the speed and sink rate down, and go now?

She mentally flipped a nickel, and it came up tails. Go now, she decided. She could make it to Warsaw with what altitude she had, and it seemed likely there might be another thermal along the way. Maybe it would be a boomer, a big, strong one she could ride up to cloud base in a hurry. There was no need to be low when she got there; all she had to do was to get there, and high or low didn’t matter, although high would be lots better.

As the nose of the sailplane started pointing in the general direction of Warsaw, she again rolled out of the circle and headed eastward – well, east-northeast, about seventy degrees; the safer route across the swamp had taken her south of the direct course. Within seconds of leaving the thermal she was starting to have second thoughts. Was that the right decision to make? She still had a chance of going back and finding the thermal again; after all, a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush, or so the old saying went.

But in a few seconds it was no longer worth worrying about it. Every inch farther she went made the chance of finding the weak thermal again grow longer. She’d pretty well committed to the course of action now, and with every second that passed there was less and less chance to turn back.

More by eye than anything else she set her speed toward Warsaw, with the idea of having twenty-five hundred feet or so in hand when she got there. That seemed like about the right amount to allow some searching for a thermal if the reliable one at the paper plant wasn’t working.

A few minutes later Warsaw wasn’t far off, only a couple miles away. She was concentrating more on that than she was on thermals when the sailplane was rocked to the left, almost violently. A thermal! A big one!

Again almost instinctively she rolled to the right to pick it up. A circle and a half later she had it pretty well pegged: six and seven hundred feet a minute, the strongest she’d seen all day by far. She had no trouble with this decision: ride this boomer clear up to cloud base, at least if she could hold onto it.

Five minutes later the cumulus clouds were getting close again – it seemed like a long time since she’d been this high. She had a good idea of where it was in relation to the ground, and now she formulated a plan. As soon as she got up near cloud base, she’d break away from the thermal and dash into the turn point as quickly as she could and snap a couple pictures to prove she’d been there. If the paper plant thermal wasn’t working she’d dash right back to this one, hope it was still working, and ride it back up to cloud base again.

It was hard to tell when she was at cloud base although she could tell she was getting close. There was no point in being picky about it; she rolled out of her turn, pointed the sailplane at the paper plant and put the nose down far enough for the airspeed indicator to start showing her eighty miles an hour.

There was a digital recording barograph behind the seat that was keeping a record of her time, altitude, and position from GPS signals. However, they had been known to crap out, so she had a backup system: a small film camera, rather old, but one that put a time-date stamp on every photo. She’d snapped a couple pictures on the ground at home before the launch; now all she needed was a photo of the paper plant, pointing back to the west. At eighty miles an hour it only took her a couple minutes to get east of the paper plant and roll into a lazy turn to the left, snapping a picture out through the canopy of the Schweizer’s wingtip pointing down on the paper plant. To be safe, she snapped another one as she continued her turn back to the west.

She was putting the camera away when she realized she hadn’t seen a sign of the big boomer thermal she expected over Warsaw. Well, not a surprise when she thought about it for a moment; they didn’t go straight up, depending on how the wind took them, and she was pretty high up. It only took a moment for her to decide not to bother looking for it since she felt fairly confident of finding the big boomer that had taken her to cloud base only minutes before. The odds were it was still working and she could probably ride it right back up again.

With the camera now safe in a pouch near her right side, she turned back to what she was doing. Aunt Jackie needed to know she’d made the turn point. She’d tried to radio in from Hoselton when she was down pretty low, to let her know she’d made it across the swamp, but hadn’t been able to raise her. She hadn’t tried very hard; sometimes it was hard to make contact on the radio from this distance, especially down low. If it had been absolutely necessary, there was still a cell phone that could have been used. There were dead spots on the ground between Spearfish Lake and Warsaw, but none in the air.

In any case, she was high enough to try it again.

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