Voodoo Ridge

Voodoo Ridge Read Online Free PDF

Book: Voodoo Ridge Read Online Free PDF
Author: David Freed
facetiously.
    He might’ve fancied himself a badass, but Larry was, in truth, a big softie who’d give you the proverbial size XXXL shirt off his furry back if you needed it. He knew that my “wildly successful” flight school was on the brink of insolvency, and that I owed him about $30,000 in repairs to the Ruptured Duck , as well as back rent. He also knew that I had no way to repay him in full given my financial straits, which was why he’d stopped hounding me. Every so often, though, he couldn’t help but get a dig in. Call it catharsis. I couldn’t say I blamed him.
    “Well,” Larry said, “I hope you at least got enough cash to pay for the marriage license.”
    I locked the Duck’s cargo door and resisted the urge to check my wallet.
    “How much does he owe you?” Savannah said.
    “Twenty-nine large and change.” Larry took off his glasses and wiped them on his T-shirt. “But who’s counting anymore, right?”
    “How ’bout thirty grand and we call it even?” Savannah asked, digging through her Louis Vuitton shoulder bag. “What would you say to that?”
    Larry looked at her like he wasn’t sure she was serious. “I’d say, ‘Thank you, Jesus,’ ” he said.
    My ex-wife got out a pen and her checkbook.
    A real man is supposed to make his own way in the world, relying on no one but himself. A real man’s code of honor prohibits him from taking anything except that which he deserves. He doesn’t stand idly by, watching his wealthy former spouse casually cover his five-figure IOU like she was buying a few boxes of Girl Scout cookies. But all I could muster was a meek, “You really don’t have to do that, Savannah.”
    “You’re right. I don’t have to, Logan. I want to. We’re a team now. And, besides, Larry needs the money, right?”
    “Putting it mildly,” Larry said.
    Savannah filled out the check, then handed it to him. He stared at it like it was manna from heaven and muttered something about how he’d never say another unkind word about me as long as he lived.
    I told Savannah I could never possibly repay her generosity.
    “Take me to Tahoe, flyboy,” is all she said.

THREE
    P ilots joke that a smooth landing is mostly luck, that greasing an airplane onto the runway twice in a row is all luck, and that three in a row is prevarication. Many aviators consider their ability to return a flying machine safely to the ground in reusable condition the ultimate measure of skill. Not me. For me, it’s all about passenger comfort. Looking over at Savannah napping peacefully in the right seat, snuggled under my leather flight jacket, her head propped against the door, I had every reason at that moment to consider myself among the greatest pilots who ever lived.
    For any good airman, regardless of how relaxing he may claim it is, flying is rarely without worry. You worry about the ever unpredictable variability of weather. The fear of midair collision with another airplane ranks right up there. Little, however, contributes more to a pilot’s pucker factor than the potential of some catastrophic mechanical failure occurring miles above the earth, especially in an aging, single-engine bird like the Ruptured Duck. Ordinarily, I would’ve been constantly scrutinizing the gauges, fretting about the occasional creak or groan that all airplanes make—“Indian night noises,” the leather-helmeted old timers used to call them—all the while scanning the ground for suitable emergency landing sites in the event of “what-if?”
    But not on that day. On that day, flying Savannah up to Lake Tahoe and what would be the beginning of Our Life Together, Chapter 2 , my aging four-seat Cessna performed flawlessly. Invigorated by the cold at 10,500 feet, the Duck carried us through California’s Central Valley on air so silken that I flew virtually hands free, needing only to adjust the elevator trim every few minutes to maintain altitude.
    Off our right wingtip, the sawtooth mountaintops of the
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