On the Wing by Eric Kraft Read Free Book Online Page A

eyes on the road.”
    â€œWhy do you talk to yourself?”
    â€œI know not why others may do so, but as for me it has always been a way to clarify my thinking—”
    â€œClarify somewhat.”
    â€œIt has always been a way to clarify my thinking somewhat, and in the years that you and I have been together, it has been a way for me to prepare the witty aphorisms, entertaining anecdotes, and penetrating commentary that I use to impress, entertain, and seduce you.”
    â€œDo you have anything ready?”
    â€œMore or less.”
    â€œSpeak.”
    â€œI’ve been reflecting on my role in this adventure.”
    â€œAre we having an adventure?”
    â€œLife is an adventure.”
    â€œNot when I’m waiting on line at the pharmacy.”
    â€œOkay, but this part of our life together is an adventure, and I’ve been reflecting on my role in it. After all, there you are, at the wheel, clearly the driver, or pilot, and here I am, beside you, with a folder of maps at the ready—”
    â€œA handsome leather folder of maps.”
    â€œYes. Very manly. I appreciate that. But even with my maps I can’t be considered the navigator, since you have chosen the route in advance and printed turn-by-turn directions from three map sites on the World Wide Web.”
    â€œOh. I see. I’m sorry—”
    â€œNo need. No need. I’ve defined my role, and I’m happy in it.”
    â€œStud muffin?”
    â€œNot while you’re driving.”
    â€œYe gods, what good are you, then?”
    â€œExactly the question, I think, that teenage boys used to ask themselves when they cadged rides from friends who had driver’s licenses and the use of the family car when they had neither themselves.”
    â€œWhat good am I?” she cried to the open sky above the crystalline plastic top of the Electro-Flyer in excellent imitation of the wail of a boy whose voice is still changing.
    â€œAnd the answer, I’ve decided, is that I am fulfilling the role that in my teenage years was called ‘riding shotgun.’”
    â€œNow why did you call it that?” she asked, speaking this time in the manner of Mr. MacPherson, my high school French teacher, an enthusiastic student of idiom.
    â€œI’m glad you asked,” I said. “I can answer with confidence because as a boy I spent many Saturday mornings at the Babbington Theater, watching westerns.” In the voice of one who knows, I said, “My dear Albertine, we teenage boys used the term because when we were even younger boys we had heard it used so often in westerns that involved stagecoach travel. In those movies, there were always bands of marauding bandits. I should point out that many of those bandits were actually good guys who, through no fault of their own, often just because of a case of mistaken identity, had been driven out of polite society and found themselves forced to turn to banditry to make a living. I don’t mean to suggest that all the bad guys were good guys forced to be bad—many were actually bad—most of them, in fact. Sometimes they were greedy, and sometimes they were just mean. They had been brought up that way, I guess, or perhaps they had been starved for affection during childhood. Something like that. Anyway, the point that was brought home again and again to an impressionable boy in the Babbington Theater was that driving a stagecoach through the Old West was a dangerous undertaking, especially if the stage was carrying something valuable that bad guys would want, like gold or the new school marm or somebody’s bride from Back East. The hills out there were crawling with bad guys. So, a stagecoach required, in addition to a driver, a second man sitting beside the driver, his right-hand man, right up there on the seat where the driver sat, a man who could fight off the bad guys if they attacked. This second—but equally important—man