deep wheel ruts, two thick ones for the main wheels on either side of a thinner one for the front wheel – like gigantic mole tracks. They must have been made when the pilot had braked on the rain-softened runway.
The door of the plane opened and a wooden ladder was thrust out. Nothing as grand as an ‘air stair’ for these passengers, then. And onto that wooden ladder stepped a plump middle-aged woman, who clambered down shakily with a baby strapped to her back.
“Hello there, Yoné,” Sticky Eye called to her. “I thought it might be you. How’s old Goro doing, then?”
“Bah. There ain’t nothing wrong with him. Just that the doctor said he weren’t to move,” she laughed, showing a mouthful of blackened teeth. “Goro knew you was here, and was that worried, saying he’d come and get you, like. But seeing as the doctor told him to lie down, I had to come instead, see.”
“Well, it’s a long time since we flew with you, Yoné,” Red Nose said cheerily. “I see you haven’t forgotten how to do it.”
“As if I would!” replied the woman, throwing him a flirtatious look as she laughed. She was obviously Gorohachi’s wife. “It kept coming back to me as I went along.”
Hatayama poked me several times in the backside. “Hey! Hey!”
“What,” I groaned. I didn’t turn round – I knew what he was going to say.
“Er, you’re not planning to get on this plane, are you.”
So I did turn round. I looked hard into Hatayama’s eyes, which were now completely round with fear. “And why not?”
“You mean you are? You’re going to get in a plane flown by a fat farmer’s wife who’s carrying a baby on her back and hardly knows her wings from her ailerons? An aeroplane you get in and out of using a ladder?”
But he obviously realized that I had no intention at all of changing my mind. A sardonic half-smile came over his face as he continued. “All right, let’s do it, then! After all, it’ll be a rare experience, won’t it, flying in a plane like this in a raging typhoon!”
“Cut the sarcasm, will you? You’re getting on my nerves,” I said, turning away from him. Actually, I was only pretending to be strong. I needed him to get on that plane with me. But deep down, I was quivering with fear.
Sticky Eye had been talking to Gorohachi’s wife and occasionally glancing back at us. Then he nodded and called over to us with a laugh. “Hey, travellers! You’re in luck! She says she’ll take you!”
“Really?” I approached Gorohachi’s wife with a suitably grateful demeanour. We were entrusting our lives to her care, after all. We could do worse than ingratiate ourselves. “Thank you. Thank you very much!”
“It’ll cost you though,” she said. “Two thousand yen each.”
Sticky Eye intervened from the side, rather hurriedly.
“Actually, Yoné, I just told ’em it were fifteen hundred, one way.”
“Oh. All right, fifteen hundred then,” she said casually, without any sign of discomfort. “Well, come on then. Up you get.”
“Gorohachi’s wife seems like a good person,” I said to Hatayama as we walked across from the hut with our baggage.
He was shivering with fright. “That doesn’t mean she can fly a plane, does it,” he replied.
I pulled a face. But he just carried on, with his waterproof camera case slung over his shoulder. “Just now, they said this Gorohachi had a proper pilot’s licence. I heard them. But they haven’t said anything about the wife. Then again, we’re in no position to go round asking questions, are we.”
“Exactly,” I answered in exaggerated agreement. “So don’t.”
“Yes, well, we’re sure to get back to Shiokawa in one piece, aren’t we. Yes.” Hatayama laughed nervously, nodding to himself several times. “After all, she’s had some experience as a pilot, hasn’t she. Even if she doesn’t have a licence. And even if it is a long time since she last flew. Yes. And those two farmers aren’t at all nervous about flying with her, are they. Even if they are ignorant and totally insensitive to danger. That’s all OK, isn’t it.”
I said nothing. Otherwise, he might have started screaming his head off.
We climbed the ladder into the aircraft. Inside, there were ten half-dilapidated seats, five on either side of an aisle covered with straw matting. There was no partition between the passengers and the pilot; the controls were in full view. Hatayama and I sat in the front two seats, on either side of the aisle.
As