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can fell over to his left. Were a 12-gauge shotgun in his hands, that trash can would have breathed its last. He hit it with a feeble shot from his flashlight.
    “Darn raccoon,” he blurted.
    Turning to continue his search for evil varmints, he bumped his head on a biplane wing and fell to the ground. Since it was after midnight, he would probably debit this clumsy event from his quota for the following day. His flashlight had enough energy to illuminate a step-ramp underneath the plane. Like a two-step stool with a board extending over the wing, it was used to prevent novices or stupid people from putting a foot on a wing. Old biplane wings were made of linen, cotton, lightweight fabric, or sometimes modernized to a nylon or polyester-type concoction. A foot in the wrong place resulted in embarrassment and a hole in the wing. A foot on the wing close to where it was attached to the fuselage was acceptable.
    Trip looked up at the open cockpit. He knew that Buzz had this graveyard off-limits. But Buzz wasn’t here at three a.m. Trip positioned the step-ramp and unfolded it over the wing. Step-by-step he inched closer to nirvana. Stearman–eventually part of the Boeing Company–started making these biplanes in 1939 and throughout World War II. The N25 and PT-17 models that formed Buzz’s graveyard collection earned their reputation as trainers. They were somewhat clumsy to fly, likened to trying to land a refrigerator with its door open. The Army Air Corps figured that if a fly-boy recruit could handle these flippity-flop contraptions, they could fly anything. They were ready for combat.
    Trip turned his shoulder, pointed the flashlight at the step beneath him. He was only about three feet off the ground, but his fear of heights got the best of him. Though he dreamed of being a pilot, he hadn’t quite made the connection between success in a cockpit and his fear of heights. He lost his balance and fell butt first into the cockpit. His feet straight up in the air above his head, it took him a moment to regain his bearings.
    Twisting around in the correct, forward-facing position, he looked into the second, open-air seat in front of him. He was seated where the action was as these old biplanes were piloted from the rear-cockpit position. The controls necessary to operate the plane were duplicated in the forward-cockpit seat. Quite effective for pilot training.
    His flashlight illuminated the instrument panel, joy stick, rudder foot bars. The foot bars screeched and screamed as rust and metal-on-metal were reminiscent of fingernails on a chalkboard. With a loving index finger, Trip wiped thirty years of grime from the limited gauges on the instrument panel.
    The world was at peace. Trip ignored the thunder and lightning. Hail on the roof and sides of the hangar could have been flakes of new Christmas snow. The rattling of the tarmac double-wide doors was smothered by the thunder beating in his chest. “I was born for this,” he confirmed. “Someday. Tomorrow I’m different. I can do this.”
    Rat-a-tat-tat came the gun fire from the rear. The German Messerschmitt was gaining on him. Another German plane was at ten o’clock high. It had drawn a bead and looked ready to fire. Trip was the wingman for this twenty-plane squadron over Nazi-occupied France. It was 1943. If he could draw the fire away from his squadron Captain, the mission would succeed. It was up to him. Trip did a combination dive-roll where he peeled off from the Allied formation. It worked. He had sacrificed himself for the good of the mission. The two Luftwaffe planes pursued him toward the French countryside below.
    Trip’s World War II dream had become intertwined with the reality of the thunder and lightning storm outside his airstrip hangar. Was it present day thunder or was it Messerschmitt 80mm canons?
    Trip saw only one way out. Ahead was a wooden bridge over a small stream. The stream was flanked by lines of trees on both sides. The cool morning