Read The Man Who Ate the 747 for Free Online Page A

an hour. Rapid-fire, he learned about every pretty girland every unfaithful farmer in the county. He also heard about the chief’s desperate struggle to stay
above
the minimum weight requirement for Nebraska police officers. Shrimp weighed just 114 pounds. The limit was 120, and the annual physical was just weeks away.
    After four doughnuts and two milkshakes, a “1018” emergency radio call interrupted their talk. A bobcat had fastened its fangs onto Mrs. Esther Hoshaw’s leg. The 89-year-old woman had whacked the animal on the nose with her dandelion digger and driven it off, but now she needed medical help.
    Before running off, Shrimp scribbled directions to a farm on the outskirts of town. It was the roundabout way to get there. On foot, cutting through the Bargen family’s wheat fields, it only took ten minutes. But he didn’t want the newcomer getting lost.
    On the ridge up ahead, where the heat rippled on asphalt, J.J. saw a broken Fairbury windmill ravaged by weather, just two beaten blades still cutting the air. He turned right onto a dirt road running beside a stream. It crossed over a wooden bridge, climbed up a hill, and gave way onto sweeping land. The cornstalks were lush green. In the middle of the fields, he saw a red farmhouse and barn faded by the sun. A brown dog slept on the porch. A rooster ran across the front yard.
    Then he saw it for the first time, unmistakable, unbelievable.
    A 747 in a farmer’s field …
    He stopped the car by the side of the road. Hewanted to remember every detail. He wanted to remember the way the sunlight glinted off the tail and rudder. He wanted to remember the exact angle of the jet jutting from the ground. He wanted to remember the way the plane stretched out against the horizon, like a giant nesting bird. He wanted to remember the sensation of awe. In all his travels, he had never ever seen anything like this.
    He left his car on the road and walked through the rusty gate with its hand-painted sign: TRESPASSERS WILL BE VIOLATED. He tramped up the dirt lane toward the farm, and as he came closer, the perspective shifted. Now the barn was dwarfed by the remaining fuselage. Up close, he could see the tail end of the plane was as solid as Boeing had built it. The marking on the fin was simple: an American flag. From the nose cone all the way past the wings, the aircraft was picked clean, a metal carcass under the hot sun.
    J.J. felt the full blast of the discovery. A 747 was no run-of-the-mill jet. It graced the pages of The Book as the world’s highest capacity airliner and, perhaps, the most important aircraft ever built, revolutionizing mass transportation, hauling more than 1.6 billion passengers around the world.
    The dog barked from the porch, watching every step as J.J. walked straight to the behemoth. He stood beneath the gleaming hulk of a plane and its towering horizontal and vertical stabilizers. He reached up on his tiptoes, ran his fingers over rivets and aluminum skin. Warm and smooth.
    It was real, this 747, in the middle of a cornfield.

    No one ever knocked. The house was always unlocked. Why was someone banging on the screen door?
    Wally Chubb hauled himself off the couch, turned off the Weather Channel, and searched the living room for his orange hunting jacket. He needed something to cover his red union suit. He was a big man with square shoulders and hands like slabs of steak. His face was long and wide, covered with bristle the color of rust. He patted down his bushy hair and lumbered to the door.
    “Who’s there?”
    A man in a blue blazer stood on the porch with his hand outstretched. He was too dressy to be a salesman, too good mannered to be a debt collector.
    “Afternoon,” the stranger said. “How you doing today?”
    “Can’t hurt a Christian.” Wally wiped sleep from his eyes. “What can I do you for?”
    “You Walter Chubb?”
    No one ever called him Walter, except for school principals and lawmen.
    “You from the IRS?” Wally