Despite spending his entire life in a town where he knew everyone by their first name, he now felt out of place. In Buxton, one either farmed or fished, not a good fit for someone who preferred the speed of a plane to the crawl of a tractor. And besides, he had always been allergic to shellfish, unable to have even a nibble of lobster without breaking into hives and running for the bathroom.

With a college degree, he would certainly have options to design or build planes, taking him to new parts of the country, perhaps as far as California. But what he really wanted to do was fly. Since the first time his father had taken him crop-dusting, he was hooked. Ollie’s father had placed Ollie on his lap, slid a leather flight cap on him that was several sizes too big on his son’s head, and took to the sky. Ollie, a grin carved into his face, loved the way the plane angled upward to the clouds as he pulled the stick to his chest. He felt his father laugh, his back bouncing against his father’s tummy. Then his father eased his hands forward to keep from pulling a loop, a dangerous maneuver considering the biplane was missing safety harnesses. By the time he was fourteen, when he had grown big enough to reach the pedals, his father acted as a copilot, gradually weaning him from instructions. Within a year, he was flying on his own, much to the chagrin of his mother, who still worried about him getting hurt playing football. To help put his mother’s mind at ease, his father installed new safety harnesses, but considering Ollie’s fearless acrobatics, that was about as useful as giving a tightrope walker an umbrella.

As he approached a large farm, Ollie pushed the stick forward and felt his body rise, and the nose of the biplane tipped down. The engine roared. Wind pressed against his face. Approaching the ground, he adjusted the stick, feeling the pull of gravity sink him into his seat. The plane leveled off. Five feet above a potato field, he pulled the lever. A spray of dust streamed behind the tail and fell like snow. At the end of the field, he pulled back hard on the stick, shooting the plane over a row of towering pines. He arced to the left and came around for another pass.

Ollie spent the morning dusting fields. Finishing his last farm, he checked the fuel gauge—the only instrument that seemed to work—and tipped the wings to the north. The scattered fields disappeared, and in the distance, he saw his favorite spot, Sebago Lake. There were few farmers in this area, at least none who were clients of his father’s business, making it unlikely that word about Ollie’s stunts would get back to his mother. Otherwise, he’d be skinned alive.