Rhapsody in Overdrive

All Rights Reserved © 2003 by Gary R. Peterson

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

Writers Club Press an imprint of iUniverse, Inc.

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iUniverse, Inc. 2021

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First Edition

Cover art by Gary R. Peterson

ISBN: 0-595-26828-5

ISBN: 978-1-4697-0950-5 (ebook)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

C H A P T E R 1

C H A P T E R 2

C H A P T E R 3

C H A P T E R 4

C H A P T E R 5

C H A P T E R 6

C H A P T E R 7

C H A P T E R 8

C H A P T E R 9

C H A P T E R 10

C H A P T E R 11

C H A P T E R 12

C H A P T E R 13

C H A P T E R 14

C H A P T E R 15

C H A P T E R 1

RIDING THE BLUE HORSE

The professor, circling the classroom, sneaks up from behind to make an example of Floyd.

Talking ducks and bunnies? he announces, That’s funny—the final exam will be about enzymes and electrolytes. I advise that you join us in the real world, Floyd, and acquaint yourself with today’s assignment. It will be on the test. Floyd Wolf shovels his hair back and yawns at the ceiling as the old professor confiscates the comic book, It’s a shame the teacher continues, that you don’t apply yourself.

This stuff’s boring Floyd says, flipping the pages of his textbook.

Nonsense. Your generation will greatly benefit from the wonders of chemistry, predicts the professor.

Thank you Doctor Jeckyll, Floyd induces a chuckle from classmates as Professor Grabonski retreats to his desk. Then, halfheartedly scanning a page of his text, Floyd’s bloodshot eyes skid past the end of the first sentence and fall, figuratively, onto an adjacent classmate—Morgana Delano. She is engrossed in study, and creates a soft rasping sound as she draws little circles on her nylon-covered knee with her fingernail. Floyd closes his eyes and conjures an enchanted forest, inhabited by wooly-bullies and other crafty beasts, through which he guides the complaisant girl to a clearing under checkerboard skies. Detached from his actual surroundings, he lays his head on his desk while infusing progressively lewd episodes into his reverie. A pocket of air has been trapped in his stomach since smoking the better half of a marijuana cigarette on his walk to school earlier that morning, and now, an hour later, he awakes with a start, raises his head, and soundly burps.

Recognizing his audience, he bows his head back into his arms until the bell signals the end of class. The crew-cut bulldog of a professor sitting near the door barks at him as he tries to sneak past.

Just one minute, Floyd the professors pulls him aside, Your S.A.T.’s show a strong mechanical aptitude and the art department talks about your creativity. So tell me. What do you want to be when you grow up—I mean finish high school?

An astronaut? Floyd guesses an answer to the pop quiz. Can I have my comic book back now?

Why such childish fluff? wonders the professor.

I’m not into super-heroes, says Floyd. Folding the Funny-Toons into his back pocket, he steps out the doorway and catches a glimpse of Morgana Delano’s crisp white blouse and blue pleated skirt before she is eclipsed by the other student bodies pouring into the corridor.

In a hazy crowded lavatory, Floyd lights a smoke and waits in the last stall for his best friend, Bailey, who strolls in on schedule, wearing a pinstriped shirt with a starched collar. His hair is parted higher every day until now it’s in the middle of his head.

What’s happening, Wolf? asks the collegiate looking one.

Man, I can’t wait until this term’s over. You wouldn’t believe the harassment I’m taking from Grabonski.

Yeah, I had him last year. Gimme a drag.

"Ross is lucky he doesn’t have to come back next year. Hey! Don’t hotbox it! Floyd snatches his cigarette back.

Well, so much for the Class of Sixty Nine. What are we going to do this summer?

Just get high every day he supposes, looking down his nose at the ember and not noticing that Professor Grabonski has walked into the john. By the time Floyd flicks the butt into the toilet, he’s fingered and as good as suspended from school—a situation promising considerable grief save for the fact that Floyd’s older brother happened to be home to field the call later that morning and well impersonated a concerned father.

Floyd Wolf winds down the short remainder of the school year studying mumbly-peg and joint rolling in the parking lot with other delinquents until he’s officially dismissed for summer vacation.

His continuing education takes places in and around the streets of suburban Oakdale near Detroit. On a sticky summer’s night, Floyd scootches over in the back seat of a ’63 Chevy Biscayne to make room for Shepp, an articulate drug dealer. The topic of discussion: Ethylamide of d-lysergic acid.

High, you guys says the peddler with the charm of an insurance salesman. I sold my last ounce of Panama Red just this morning, but I’ve got something better. You dudes ever dropped acid?

The undergraduates are caught off guard. Floyd rolls down the window to break the vacuum-sealed silence. Na. How about some pep pills? You got any Dex?

This stuff’s ten times better, Shepp asserts.

I heard it can wreck your genes, Bailey says from the front seat.

"No, man. Battery acid will wreck your jeans. I’m talkin’ about

L.S.D. here. He means, you know, chromosomes, Floyd clarifies. They did tests on tsetse flies. It made their kids deformed."

Propaganda, man. Scare tactics. ‘Drug Crazed Hippies Breed Human Flies.’ Listen, I’ve got business downtown. You want to make a purchase or not? Five dollars for a tab. Three bucks for half-a-hit.

What does it look like? Floyd wonders. Shepp hands him a gelatin capsule of white powder with blue crumbs mixed in it.

The white stuff’s vitamin C. The acid’s the blue stuff. Here’s a whole tablet.

Floyd inspects the tiny blue pill. Not very big.

One thousand micrograms, Shepp assures him. It’s called Blue Horse ’cause it’s got a real kick.

Hurry it up, you guys, says Ross, This is a no parking zone. Pooling their funds, they trade dollars for dots. The curbside pharmacist, in his corduroy sport coat and shoulder length hair, squeezes out of the green sedan and slaps the fender.

Have a nice trip, boys.

Floyd and Ross each swallow a capsule—Bailey, a whole tablet—and ride across the tracks to a garden party to which the high school’s head cheerleader invited them. Cynthia told me her parents won’t bother us if we just be cool, as Floyd puts it.

I’m there, says Ross, I can’t get those chicks to look at me in school. Soon he’s mingling at the soiree while Floyd and Bailey sit at a picnic table near the portable stereo.

You getting off yet? Floyd asks out of the side of his mouth.

I don’t know. My face feels kind of funny, Bailey reports.

That figures. Nothing’s happening to me. Give me a swig of your pop. Floyd swallows another 1000 micrograms of the psychoactive substance. Suddenly, the butterflies in his stomach rush to his head and then he shivers as a cold chill chases a hot flash up his spine. Bailey’s dumbfounded expression mirrors similar symptoms.

My head feels like a circus tent Bailey mutters, How’s yours, Wolf?

Like Cobo Hall Floyd replies with considerable effort of his lips and tongue. He watches flickering firebirds dance atop three candles on the table, and, at a loss for words, grabs a ball-point pen from a word game box and tries to afford graphic expression to the sensations he feels. But the pen is constipated and faster he scribbles, the higher his thoughts pile up in his head.

I hate to tell you, Wolf Ross chuckles as he sits down, but your pen is out of ink. You want a crayon?

Floyd studies the blank white paper and thinks Ross is mistaken. There are splendid colorful designs bleeding from the paper onto the picnic table and over the edge. He continues to write:

I am but a point…

But his solipsism is overpowered by another intuition. He slowly turns his head and sees Morgana Delano. Even at a distance she steals his breath, prompting Floyd to rise up and trip around the landscaped yard in a light fantastic way, keeping her at the center of his leisurely orbit. He spirals closer and she smiles at him, filling his heart with all of the colours that Donovan is singing about on the record player. Floyd sits and leans back against an apple tree at the back of the yard. When he looks up again, he beholds Morgana, her glowing nimbus of hair billowing with humidity and moonlight as she descends like an angel to sit on the ground beside him.

Hello Floyd. I haven’t seen you since school got out. How did you do on the chemistry exam? her voice chimes in Floyd’s ears.

Just lucky I guess he interpolates the question.

You mean you did well?

Thank you, Floyd smiles stiffly.

Are you still into music? she changes the subject. Floyd methodically attempts to formulate a coherent sentence so as not to belie his altered state of mind.

Guitar, is all that comes out. Soft light radiates from the freckles on her nose. Beyond her halo, a million black diamonds sparkle in the silvery night sky. Her fragrance tickles his nose and taste buds.

I play the French horn. We should duet some times, she suggests. Floyd nods his smiling head, awash with the psychedelic experience of butterflies, zebras and moonbeams he sees in her ‘fairytale eyes’—and Jimi Hendrix on the stereo. So absorbed in the sights and sounds is Floyd, that he doesn’t notice when Morgana disappears into the night. When Cynthia’s parents break up the party at midnight, Floyd is still gaining altitude.

Where’s Ross? he asks Bailey when he finds him.

He gave Carla what’s-her-name a ride home an hour ago. We may as well start walking.

I’m really spaced out, Floyd declares.

I hear ya. I feel like I smoked ten sticks of Black Ganja.

Do you see trails? Floyd wonders, waving his arm in front of them as they walk.

Trails? Hell, I nearly freaked out playing badminton in the dark!

Are those my feet down there?

No, yours are way up ahead. Slow down.

A mile and a half later, the slap-happy wanderers sit down on Floyd’s front lawn and exchange a few more mystic revelations before Bailey suddenly decides to call it a night.

Catch you later, Wolf.

"Huh?

As Bailey jumps up onto his feet, Floyd watches his friend’s facial features fall to the ground leaving only a smooth fleshy void on the barren head of the body that walks away down the darkened street towards a row of zebra-striped wooden barricades with silently blinking yellow hazard lights. Floyd leaps to his own feet and dances around, his head in a tailspin, trying to keep his composure. His heart pounds as he clenches his fists and bites his lip to keep quiet so as not to see Bailey’s disfigured visage again.

He cautiously enters his house—his mother will be listening for him—and slips into the bathroom. Flipping the mercury switch on, he must wait for the swirling colors to subside before he can see his refection in the mirror. He raises his hand and touches his face. The translucent skin of his nose sticks like taffy to his fingers as he pulls them away. Trying to smooth his plastic complexion only makes it worse. A full panic state is averted only as he hears a stirring in the bedroom across the hallway. Stepping lively into the family room, he switches on the T.V. and reclines on the couch to feign sleep.

Floyd? Is that you, the electronic-momma-voice warbles. Have you been drinking?

Out of a cracked eyelid Floyd sees only the fluttering Indian head test pattern that defies the force of vertical hold. In her flowered bathrobe, his mother walks over and turns off the television. He conceals his silly-putty face under his arm until she goes back to bed, but he still sees the phosphorescent pattern on the screen. He needs to do something simple—familiar, and gets up to pace the floor. He walks his hollow body into the kitchen where he finds a slice of watermelon in the refrigerator. He takes a bite but the blood red juice coagulates on his hands and face. It starts seeping in through the cracks of the doors and windows until the entire kitchen is awash with red. It engulfs him. The sound of a thousand crying babies fill his ears as he spits out the seed and fights his way out of the man-eating watermelon room and finds his way upstairs to his bedroom where he becomes tangled in a spider’s web-like filigree of intricate lace spinning a hallucinatory cocoon around him as he falls onto his bed. His brain, like steel wool, scours the inside of his head as he tumbles slowly in the vivid darkness, liberating every thought, dream and sensory stimulation that it ever recorded and displays them in an unstoppable stream of consciousness to his naked eyes—revealing secrets that he’d been keeping even from himself. Closing his eyes only intensifies the waves of visions that inundate him. There’s no escape. He can’t move save to clasp his sweaty hands together in prayer. It’s no bedtime rhyme, but words of serious plea-bargaining that well up in his throat only to be snagged on numb and useless lips. Dear God, he thinks as loudly as he can, I screwed up. His eyeballs roll counter to his body that spins like a cosmic pinwheel. Dragging a foot on the floor slows his motion enough to train his sights on the deer rifle hanging on a rack in the corner. But the forgiving peace of death is more than an arms length away, and the bullets farther still. He worries about waking his little brother Darrin, who is sleeping in the adjacent bed, with any loud noises like gunfire, but his self-preservation instincts prevail as he senses somebody plodding up the stairs.

He sees like a cat in the darkness now. It’s his big brother Frank, drunk and stumbling around the banister. Floyd knows he can confess his predicament to him, if he can talk at all. But he can’t. His stomach churns as he watches the approaching monster—a green skinned creature with hair-like tentacles sprouting from its enormous forehead—as it negotiates its way around the obstacles that include Floyd’s bed. The ogre walks to the far wall of the loft, raises the screen on the window, and urinates onto the driveway below.

Floyd is, also, somewhat relieved by the creature’s familiar ritual and resigns himself to the barely manageable phantasms of his living nightmare until they are finally vanquished by merciful sleep.

The Difference A Day Makes

Floyd. It’s time to get up now, his mother’s voice echoes in the stairwell. Young Darrin’s bed is already vacant and Frank is snoring in his own. Sunlight through the windowpane blinds Floyd as he loosely reconstructs the events of the preceding twelve hours in his head. The colors swirling in his eyes are pastel tints now. The vivid hallucinations have stopped.

Out of the shower, he sits down at the breakfast table with his mother and his sister Signe who is home from college for the summer.

Morning mom! Hi, Sig, he stiffly smiles.

It’s afternoon. Where were you last night? his mother asks.

Cynthia Sheffield had a party, he answers, masticating a syrup-laden pancake.

Well, I don’t know what you do at your parties, but I don’t like you coming home at all hours of the morning and falling asleep with the T.V. on. You know how mad that makes your father.

Everything makes him mad.

That’s enough. Now I want you to tell me—have you been experimenting with drugs? There’s a lot of that going around.

Floyd coughs up some pancake and then clears his throat. No. I’m a little smarter than that, mom. Don’t worry, O.K.?

I was very upset with you this morning when I walked into the kitchen and found watermelon splattered all over the walls and floor and table. I almost had a heart attack.

It was probably Frank. Or maybe I was sleepwalking or something. I don’t know. It won’t happen again. So, how’s college life, Sig?

Grow up! That’s how it is, she replies and leaves the room.

In his cool dark basement retreat, Floyd finds that he hasn’t quite shaken the lingering effects of the L.S.D., so he goes outside to face the sunshine and walks, with spiritual repentance in mind, towards the church at the end of his block. He gets as far as Bailey’s house, which is the Saturday morning hangout because his parents are both at work. Floyd walks into the small bungalow where his pals are reclined on the living room carpet in front of the T.V. eating Cheerios and watching Road Runner cartoons.

Hey Wolf! How’s it going?

You got any aspirin? Floyd asks.

In the medicine cabinet.

Floyd takes three aspirin tablets and then a catnap on the couch. An hour later he awakens feeling like a new man.

Welcome back to Earth, Ross greets him, Have a nice trip?

I think I had a bummer, Floyd says as he rubs and tests his eyes a few times. Where’d you get off to last night anyways?

"I took Carla Queen home, but the next thing I know, I’m up at Memory Park with her brother and some other clowns. There’s a carnival going on, right? So they figure out that I’m high and try to stick me on the Salt ’n’ Pepper Shaker. I start kickin’ an’ yellin’ and going ape-shit, when this cop comes over and breaks us up. So I get on the double Ferris wheel and ride until the park closes and then went look

ing for you guys but ended up going home to sleep."

How could you sleep?

Counting babes: bare naked chicks dancing over the rainbow. I woke up this morning with a hard-on that wouldn’t quit. How about you? Your chromosomes O.K.?

When I left him last night he was doing the Watusi on his front lawn, Bailey pipes up, What was that all about?

Just too fucking high, I guess, Floyd mutters, I don’t care if I never try that shit again.

That’s funny. I sold my other two hits to Larry Stone last night at the carnival and he calls me up this morning for more. I told him to call Shepp.

The next time I see Shepp, I’m going to call him a few things, too.

Hey—he warned us that stuff was heavy gauge. I wish I had snuck back to Cindy’s pajama party with all those girls. Hotchabinga!

The three teenagers spend the early afternoon antagonizing one another. Floyd’s angst subsides. He laughs about having scared himself nearly to death—just another war story in the battle against bore-dom—and forgets about going to the church, now that his longest night is apparently over. Later still, the telephone rings. Someone having a party, I hope, Bailey says as he jumps up and walks to the hallway to answer it. But after a short conversation, he relays a message to Floyd.

That was your brother Frank. He said to get home right away.

What the hell for? Floyd protests.

I don’t know. He didn’t say.

Aw, jeez, I bet my old lady found a roach in my pocket or something.

Maybe Frank finally noticed the busted motor mounts on his car from you pulling whole shots, Ross speculates with a snicker.

It could be a hundred stupid things. I’ll be back in a minute, Floyd figures.

Mom passed out or something at the Women’s Club meeting at the church explains a hung-over brother, Frank, They took her to Belmont in an ambulance. Dad’s on his way there now.

Floyd’s numbness passes for calm. It can’t be too serious, he reassures himself on the way to the hospital. But two hours later he is back at home grieving with his family and friends over the sudden death of his mother.

The most intense 24 hours—and counting—of his life, has blown his hubris to oblivion. The blessings he’d been forgetting to count, were falling like dominoes; like toy soldiers decimated by the Robot Commando of Fate. In his mind, Floyd blames himself for her death. She had a premonition at breakfast. Sister Signe was there to hear it too, but now he views her grief as smug silence while God exacts His revenge on him. Another seemingly endless night spent with his father, their tears temporarily filling the generation gap between them. In the morning, the death relatives descend upon the Wolf household to help clean the closets.

Casket shopping is almost as traumatic as the first viewing at the funeral home. Floyd unfastens a tarnished chain that he’d worn on his wrist since junior high school, and drops it, unobserved, into the white satin folds with his lifeless mother. The orchids at the foot of the coffin bear a card with the names of all the girls he’d just seen at Cynthia’s party, including Morgana’s. Bailey and Ross fidget respectfully in the background, not even stoned.

The burial is a crash course in entropy: the irreversibility of time. The oldest of the Wolf siblings, Fred, is noticeably absent—last reported downed in the jungles of Viet Nam. Floyd offers young Darrin chewing gum and noogies and lets him drive the car in the parking lot to help occupy both of their minds, but Floyd’s thoughts ebb and flow with the vicissitudes once back inside.

My goodness, Floyd, how you’ve grown up. Do you remember visiting my house when you were this tall? aunt Lillian solemnly intones, holding her hand above the floor.

Sure Floyd says, I remember the coal bin in the basement and a furnace that looked like a giant octopus…

Why, that’s right, Aunt Lillian responds.

…And all the little dog turds on the floor around it, Floyd concludes.

Oh, well yes, but Chico’s long since gone to doggy heaven—and we’ve converted to gas. You do have a photographic memory!

Clean up your act, Signe pulls Floyd aside and brow beats him.

What do you mean? he asks, but brother Frank intervenes.

That means it’s time for acting cool—not cold.

Why should I act at all?

Because ‘all the world’s a stage’ you dildo! Frank grits his teeth. Floyd looks around at the morose; familiar faces, and waves his arm as if to make them all disappear.

If everyone’s just acting, then how do you know what’s for real?

I don’t know, Flo, Frank admits, Tell me when you figure that one out.

In the days following his mother’s death, Floyd’s turmoil turns restless. A hollow resonance settles in after the kinfolk depart and gloom fills the house. How’s your dad doing? Bailey asks Floyd who walks in the door of the neighborhood clubhouse.

He’s vegetating, replies Floyd, I always thought it would be nice if he’d be quiet sometimes, but it’s getting pretty weird. He even fell asleep on the couch last night.

What’s goin’ down, boys? Ross enters the house with a joint dangling from his lips.

Not much, Floyd reports.

Well here, take your mind off things. Have a toke. Floyd goes through the motions, but things have changed and he has to keep his thoughts from running away. I brought over the new Quicksilver album—it’s heavy! Ross says, enthusiastically starting the long-playing record. I was talking to O.D. Kilmer. His brother Karl is in California and saw these guys—blew his mind!

I hear they’re coming to The Grande Ballroom, says Bailey, but Ross isn’t listening to him.

I guess there’s always free concerts out there too Ross continues.

At The Grande? Bailey wonders.

No—California Ross clarifies. But that reminds me. There’s a concert at the State Fairgrounds today. Johnny Winter, The Frost, Bonzo Dog. You guys into it?

I was kind of thinking about going to Crass Lake and watching the butts, Bailey suggests, but I don’t care. What do you say, Wolf?

Yeah. Sounds good. Let’s do it.

Do what—the concert or the beach?

California! says Floyd.

The two others stare blankly at each other before their faces light up. How, and how much? Ross tests the plan. Bailey makes a phone call.

Sixty three bucks. Student stand-by. American Airlines, he informs them. We could leave tonight.

Signe and Darrin are sitting in front of the television as Floyd passes through the family room and announces his intentions. What? Where? his father lowers the newspaper from his face to challenge the notion.

Burlington Beach, California. Ross’ older sister lives out there. She invited us to come and visit. Floyd silently counts to three while Mr. Wolf digests the carefully fabricated half-truth, and then adds, She’s married.

Where do you think you’re going to get the money for that?

I’ve got a hundred dollars in my savings. I’ll live off the land and eat wild chickens.

No you won’t. You’re not flush enough. I’ve got enough to worry about without you wandering across the country. There’s no reason to spend what little money you’ve got when you should be working this summer. Where’s Frank? Maybe he can talk some sense into you.

He’s gone for the weekend, dad, remember? Darrin pipes up. Floyd goes to the attic and finds a suitcase, and passes through once more to hear his father’s final words.

Don’t call me when you run out of money. No calls from the police, either!

Don’t worry, alright? Floyd forces a glance, I’ll see you later.

"You be careful, the elder Wolf admonishes his prodigal son and buries his head back in the newspaper.

C H A P T E R 2

SHOOTING THE MOON

As he gazes, slack-jawed, at the city lights below, Bailey is awed by his first jet plane excursion. Across the aisle, Ross sits fantasizing about the accommodating charms of the stewardess as she attends to the passengers seated in front of him. Somewhat stiff but reclined between them, is Floyd, as they set out on their quest for the where-it’s-at, never-come-back, endless summer and mystical enlightenment to be found on the West Coast during these soul-searching times of the late 1960’s. In the ethereal twilight, Floyd breaks in and out of a cold sweat induced by white noise and fluctuating air pressure. He wipes his sweaty palms on his blue jeans, and glances at the luminous watch that he had found and strapped dial down on the palm side of his wrist. They’d been airborne for half an hour.

Look! Bailey says, incredulously, There’s the Ambassador Bridge! referring to the familiar landmark that connects Detroit with Windsor, Canada. Floyd and Ross look at each other and laugh out loud. What’s so funny? Bailey wonders, his finger still pointing out the window. Just then the No Smoking/Seat Belts sign lights up with a chime and the captain addresses the passengers over the intercom:

Ladies and gentlemen, we are now making our descent into O’Hare National Airport in Chicago for a short, scheduled stopover…

Bumping around the terminal, the trio finds a corner booth of a Naugahyde and Formica clad cafeteria where they watch, through a plate glass window as a maintenance crew performs a pre-flight routine for the diners. Look at that ramp-rat hump that luggage Ross jokes, having worked as a hotel bellhop himself the previous summer.

Probably keeps an old bag at home just to hump when he’s horny, Floyd adds while munching a hamburger. Bailey snorks a gulp of cola out of his nose.

Ouch! Damn, that burns he laugh-cries and blames Floyd for the caustic membrane washing. The wise-cracking banter about school girls and beavers in the glass hall continues, all of which help keep the uneasiness from filling Floyd’s head for the length of an after dinner smoke. Bailey is eating french-fries and lecturing about cheerleaders and backseat etiquette when Floyd’s train of thought suddenly jumps the tracks and highballs over an open switch in his roundhouse of spontaneous recollection. Sliding off of the bench seat, he walks out of the restaurant without leaving a tip, let alone paying his bill. His sudden departure causes the verbal account of Cheryl Lumley’s something or other to be left dangling from Bailey’s lips. Where the hell is he going? Bailey interrupts himself.

Beats me, Ross raises his palms, But I ain’t paying for his cheeseburger. Let’s get out of here. He takes the lead past the checkout counter, his eyes lowered and looking straight-ahead. Bailey, on his heels, is wide-eyed and side-to-side. They join Floyd in a tight formation along the concourse as he banks left into a drugstore, stopping long enough to adjust his sights on the mod wall decor and bold painted letters that denote the departments, and follows the maroon stripe to Cosmetics.

Hi, Mrs. Plum he surprises a fortyish woman, well kept in a navy blue dress, white silk scarf, and her dark brown coiffure doing time-and-a-half around her head.

Well hello there, ah, how are you, um, Floyd? I haven’t seen you since our vacation last summer. What brings you to Chicago? Are your parents with you? she asks, studying his boyish face until his more mature looking partners in crime catch up to him.

No. Just stopping over on our way to Los Angeles. I remembered Dorothy saying you worked at the airport, and thought maybe you’d say hi to her for me.

Oh, yes—of course, Mrs. Plum smiles in relief, She’ll be disappointed that she missed you.

We better get back on the plane. I’ll send her a post card from California.

Yes. Do that. It was nice seeing you again. Don’t sew too many wild oats, she says with a wink and a wave good-by.

What did she mean by that? Bailey wonders on their way out.

‘Don’t trust city boys in the bushes’ is what she told Dorothy last summer when we were camping, Floyd recalls.

I never thought I’d see the day that you’d go out of your way to talk to anyone’s parents. This Dorothy must be hot! Ross surmises.

We had some fun, Floyd thinks out loud about less complicated times.

With sentiments revived, a sense of freedom swells from within, and, strapped three abreast in the 707, Floyd Wolf and company thunders past the lights along the east-west runway of the world’s busiest airport. The aircraft rotates on the axis of its flowing wings as they divide the calm black air, and reunite it with hurricane force while reflecting metallic moonlight through the vacuum that sucks them from the earth towards the stars. His watch strikes midnight at