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Show Flying - 100 CHAPTER VIII From Edwards Air Force Base the convoy travels west on Route 58 toward the town of Mojave, the top of the Tehachapi pass, the fertile valleys of California. The lieutenant's jeep leads the military procession at a steady thirty-five miles an hour along the desert road. "Where did you go to school, Pierson?" says Wilberforce to make the time go by. Cars and trucks move past the crawling convoy in a steady stream, leap-frogging from gap to gap as the oncoming traffic allows. Sometimes the truck-drivers wave or blink their lights. The air-conditioned cars move by with only the hiss of fat tires on the blacktop. White faces behind the glass turn once in a while to gaze without too much interest at the sweating soldiers. "I went to school in Catskill, sir," says John Henry, "Catskill, New York. My father taught American literature at the high school there." "Is that why he named you John Henry?" "He wanted to call me Daniel Boone," says John Henry, "but my mother thought the other kids would make fun of me. So they called me John Henry." Which is all right by me. A good man, John Henry. |