Part 43, page 279

Transcript

The scan is the source; the transcript is machine-generated from it.

[asks.] "I snagged the caboose and crawled across the top. Wind like to blow me off a dozen times." "You're my hero, Pa." "I'd rather . . . just be your fa- ther." "What do you mean, Pa?" Old Man Cooper adjusts his rump to the hard, cold floor. "Because," he says, "heroes always end up like this boxcar. Stuffy — and hard to ride with." "Yes, sir, Pa," the boy says. "Yes, sir, and amen." When Hollywood makes the D. B. movie, I hope there's a part for Brian Ingram. The kid is a natural. * * * People are again asking me the $200,000 question: Is D.B. Cooper dead or alive? Since the whole episode is a movie anyway, I turn to the silver screen for my reply. I hearken to the white stallion in "Viva Zapata!" Zapata has been am- bushed and killed, but his horse runs away. "The horse, the horse!" the assas- sins cry. "Get the horse!" Too late. Mane flying, the stallion thunders off into the hills, drumming the legend of Emiliano Zapata with each mercurial stride. So it is with D. B. Cooper, the first — and probably the last — successful parachute skyjacker. They can find all of the ransom money, they can dredge up bones and skulls, they can prove beyond a doubt that D. B. drowned in the icy waters of the Washougal or the Lewis rivers. But his legend will never die; the white horse will gallop free for as long as men tell stories and writers ply the midnight Remington. Punk or paragon, cutthroat or av- atar, see him as you will. But yes, gentle reader, D. B. Cooper lives. He lives in your dreams — and in mine.

---

DB Cooper-17501