Carl Gets Caught

        Carl had been flying to little airports all over the State and up into Virginia either by himself or with Grover or Buddy or Paul.   The similarities between sea charts and airway maps had made it relatively easy enough for him to navagate, and he had read the manual closely and it had been done before that people had just gotten airplanes and learned how to fly them starting with the people who had built them.

        He had made a few mistakes and had some close calls and it had helped that he was a big man and some of the pilots mechanics or linemen that he had run into who sensed that he actually didn’t have a license had made some oblique suggestions at various places and times where he had shown up.

       Harvey the mechanic who had come over from Raleigh with a Stearman he had bought which was cheaper to park at the field half way between Oxford and Durham, that it was for him at RDU, where he worked for Eastern Airlines had done Carl a big favor by talking with him about carburetors so that when Carl had first been flying in early humid summer air and his engine had started rumbling oddly he remembered Harvey looking him in the eye with one eye arched up and a bead of focused critical eyeball asking Carl if he knew what would shut his engine down.

        That was after they had been talking for awhile early on the middle of that first 12.   Harvey was a small man of great intensity and absolute practical views.    He was 45 and his face was lined and brown and he was one of those people who actually appears and does have thick skin so much so that it carries over into their ablity to say anything they feel important to say for practical reasons and does not necessarily ever talk to anyone for fun.

       His job was to make sure that airplanes did not fall out of the sky because of anything he did, or had done, and he signed his name many times a day to forms and made or looked over log books at initials and signing his own and he was looked up to by the mechanics he worked with because he was a great mechanic and when he was mean about it it meant something because he had no problem saying,   "If I sign off and it falls out of the air, you’ll wish you were on it."

      During the War Harvey had been the Chief Mechanic on the Independence a Carrier that sent Mitchells B24s early on bombing Japan.   His pilots loved him because  the engines ran under his care till they were out of gas or you were shot up and that was about all the security they were going to get.

      Harvey had flown the Stearman in and parked it and tied it down and was looking around to see if his wife’s car was in the parking lot yet.

       It wasn’t.

       He watched a red Taylorcraft come straight in with no downleg and wobble over correcting for the crosswind that disappeared as soon as you came down past the treeline that took it away.   He noted that as hot as the pilot landed he needed every bit of the runway and then some.

       Harvey had watched many a take off and landing so he had a real good idea of what the pilot knew or did not know.

       Carl sat in the plane with his feet on the brakes for a minute and thought about doing a touch and go to see if he could do it better, but thought better of it.    It was the sort of thinking process that made him good at poker.

       Best to not push your luck.

       So he taxied to the tie down noting the short man in the tight leather jacket smoking a cigarette by the Fuel Shack where there was a picnic table and a preflight desk and the phone.

        When Carl walked toward the parking lot Harvey was still waiting for his wife to pick him up and take him home to Raleigh.   His plan was to turn the Stearman into a crop duster for tabacco farmers since if a plane wasn’t going to make him some money he had no real need for it and wouldn’t justify it.

       Carl nodded to Harvey as he walked towards the Ford he had driven out to the airport.   Buddy had bought it to sell and Carl had borrowed it from the station because the fuel pump on his Pontiac had gone out.   He didn’t like the Ford as well as he like the Pontiac but could see why some people did since it did have a strong engine.

        Harvey nodded back and dropped his cigarette and stepped on it and looked back up at Carl who was still walking and said,  "Crosswind was strong wasn’t it."

         Carl was not quick to stop since he was of two minds, one a little rattled from the struggle landing in the crosswind which had been more severe than the had prevously had to deal with and wondering what to do with himself for the night.

        Harvey saw his wife pull up in the Ford.   He looked over at her and Carl and said,   "I’m looking to do some crop dusting."

        Carl was standing between Harvey and the parking lot and the cars and the planes and on the grass and held out his hand and they shook hands.

         "I’m Carl Dunham."

         "Harvey Totel."

         Phyliss sat in the car and lit a cigarette and then got out of the car and walked toward Harvey and the tall man who were talking now about the weather.

         "Cold and the engine runs good but this time of the year when the weather is changing you can get blown around like in March or when the July thunderstorms are around."

         "You live nearby?"   Carl asked, looking over at the woman in heels and in a long coat her blonde hair pulled up like a movie stars picking her way and her stepts towards them in the gravel and on whatever solid ground pressed paths she could find and finally stopping when she came to Harvey and gave him a little kiss and said,  "Sorry I’m late."

        Havey said.    "This is my wife Phyliss."

       Phyliss was taller than Harvey.

       Phyliss shook Carl’s hand and said,   "Nice to meet you."

       Then she turned to Harvey and said,   "Where is there to eat around here.   I’m hungry."

        Carl said,   "What sort of food do you like?   Turners is a good steak place downtown."

        "A steak sounds good to me."   Harvey said.

         Carl was looking at Phyliss and thinking she was more sexy than she ought to be married to the man he was looking at.   He was intriqued and didn’t really have to be anywhere though and there was a waitress at Turners who he sometimes had flirted with.

        "I’m hungry myself."   Carl said,  "Do you want to follow me?"

         Harvey let Phyliss drive following Carl to the restaurant.

         "How was your flight?"   She said squinting a little to keep up with the car infront of her that she was following on the two lane country road.    One of the reasons Harvey had married her was that she was a good driver and beautiful and happily practical whereas he was not so happy but mostly practical and wanted her around because she was genetically happy.

        "I enjoyed watching that guy nearly crash."

        "You’re horrible."   She said.

        "I’d be horrible if I enjoyed watching crashes, watching an almost crash is alright."

       Phyliss laughed because she liked it when Harvey was drowl.

       When they pulled into the parking lot of Turners it was getting colder and the wind was blowing some and they hustled into the place without much conversation other than Carl saying,   "I hope you like it."

        It had a bar and a dining room of dark wood and booths and they sat in a booth and Carla came with menus and brought them beers and Harvey lit cigarette after cigarette and Phyliss drank a Gin and Tonic and a Scotch and water and Harvey drank beer and Carl drank beer and they talked about where they had been during the war.

        "So you got out of the Navy and bought that plane and you’ve never had a lesson."   Harvey said before he put his fork into a piece of the steak that was on his plate.

       "Yeah."    Carl said.

        "How long you had that plane?"

        "Since November."   Carl answered. 

        "You’re lucky to be alive."   Harvey said.

        "Everybody is lucky to be alive."   Carl said, and Phyliss laughed.

         "You’re going to do what you’re going to do, but I’ll tell you what you need to know about your engine if you like."   Harvey said.

         Later Harvey met Carl at the airport and told him that it was a good thing he had started flying when it was cold and pointed out to him the toggle that he needed to pull when in the summer the air was full of moisture and ice would need to be heated off the venturi tube in the carbuerator.

       Harvey also made Carl to promise to drain the water out of the tanks everytime he flew, and these little admonitions saved Carls life early on in his experiments.

Happy Sad Makes A Soul – a song lyric

by Russell Scott Day

Twenty years in the blink of an eye

Happy sad makes a soul.

Never tell her thank you.

Think like a dog.

Think like a cat.

Mama stays home.

Daddy roams.

The kids learn to lie.

Hungry pigs

Escape the sty.

If you do good

twenty years

Your name never dies.

Twenty years in the blink of an eye.

It Was So Cold

     The snow was swirling in 70 mile an hour winds across the flat underblack of the nightlit, airport.   Oddly this airport in this American city not even really right on any border had spawned kidnapping and murder and made getting on a plane dependent on searches by poorly paid Black women who seemed to possess a cultural willingness to pry into baggage and look at everything in the travelers pockets as compensation for their lack of pay or power as if they had become perfectly suited to be nosey and enjoyed making people uncomfortable and enforcing the destruction of civility or privacy, as a perfect personal revenge on a society that was pledged to hatreds.

    He drove the 5,000 gallon fuel truck across the tarmac ramp seeing it as the place he was working and feeling like a witness to his own work alone then in the cold where white snow moved like a herd of white snakes.

      It was cold and beautiful and it inspired in him awe because it was beautiful.

      The Mac truck pulled the 5,000 gallon tank stretched out behind him like all the pain in his back.   Always he had to think about what he was dragging behind him.    Once he had nearly crumpled up the wing of a GII when turning in the sunlight in Fort Lauderdale where he had done much the same job in different weather.

     There had been differences.   Fort Lauderdale had been a vacation town where he had fueled the private planes of rich white people who flew in for vactions away from the cold he was now working in.

       The Sun had beat down there in Fort Lauderdale so that your sun glasses were part of your clothing and you wore them everyday all day from morning to sundown.   There it had been bright and hot.

       He knew it would be cold outside the oily insides of the cab of the truck.

       There was nothing to think about but what he was seeing which he knew to be another extreme and therefore worthy of memory.

       What was the point of remembering anything?

       If something, some experience did not have the ingredient of the extreme he saw little reason to click the shutter of his brain.    It was as if if you need a picture of someone you love, you don’t really love them enough.   If you really love them they will come to you in a dream.

     He knew he had then everything that a man gets to have.   He knew that he could think of something important as he drove across the airport in the cold night of blowing snow.   He was sure it was all an adventure that would end with his success no matter the pain.

       He was seeing three women who were all interesting and liked him no matter his or their station in life.

       His theory was that three women was the correct number for a single man.   They then amounted to one, and he had joked that,  "Yeah, then you are seeing one, and have one on the way in, and one on the way out."

     His favorite was married, Japanese and English and freckled and lithe and he liked the way she looked at him as if he was something actually to watch as he had watched some women and just watching them had been enough.

       Sometimes she would show up at his door and stand there at the door and look at him like a cat that wasn’t sure whether or not it wanted to come in and had to be assured that it was welcome before it would enter a room to be petted.

      He hadn’t really meant to have her at all, but she had wanted him and he had liked her style of hats and gloves and willingness to see him in his poor room of nothing but a suitcase and a mattress and a clock and a radio.

      He knew better than to mess with a married woman and had looked at hands looking for rings after he had asked a woman out before looking and her husband had shown up where he was working on a sunny day and pulled out an engraved 45 and showing it to him had said that he was very happily married since when she had told him she was married he had blurted out,  "Happily I hope."

       On the ramp the light was bright reflecting on and from the white of the snow that was in the air and on the ramp still or moving.    The 737s, and the 727s and the DC9s and the MD80s all parked sitting there, their tails and their bodies turned away from the wind that blew the crystal snow like smoke on a pictured blackboard.

       He knew his life was being written for him and hardly cared at that moment to do anything other than look at it.

       Out the window of the truck it looked cold.    He knew it was cold.   He knew he would get out of the truck cab and drag out the hose and engage the spumeing pump as the sloppy diesel pumped two and a half thousand gallons up into the wings of a thing that was beautiful to him moving or standing still.

      He had had that job in that place for two years and that had been as long as he had had most any other job and he was thinking about how to get out, go somewhere else.  Somewhere else was always there to go to and he was a tourist and a spy in his own life and like a sailor he expected forever to only visit and he did not yet know that he would eventually get old and tired and be stuck someplace that he did not yet know the name of and thought he could still name his own life.

      He did not care about anything than it was beautiful and cold.   It was so beautiful that he became nothing but awed memory.

       He achieved in the context of the night and his relations and his sight and the feel of the wind on his skin, face, hands feet, covered or uncovered a oneness with machines and was a robot and a servant to machines that needed him to give them fuel.

      The controllers in their tower were tired, and their eyeballs floating in caffeine could see the truck move from one plane to the next if they looked out the windows.

       There was no reason for anyone to talk to anyone outloud.

       It was cold, very cold.              

Force of Nature:

          Grover was Angry

     Grover was angry that Carl had taken the plane without telling him.   He knew he shouldn’t be since it was really Carl’s airplane, but all the same he was pissed off.    He’d driven the Packard out there to the field to discover the plane gone.    The lineman Zack told him Carl had taken off sometime after lunch.

     Carl’s Harley was in the woodshed hangar they had built.   Grover felt like kicking it.    He got a Coke out of the red machine conscious of the bottle he pulled past the rollers, noting the grinds on the glass.   He turned and ran his hand over his bald head feeling the sweat and heat of the sun on the back of his hand.

       Grover drank the Coke and watched Zack fueling a Staggerwing.   He forgot about how mad he was because the Staggerwing was so beautiful it was a distraction.   He wanted it.   He walked down the steps from the Line Shack to the pad and asked Zack where the pilot was.

       Zack was a tall skinny guy who had simply hung around at the field so much making himself useful one way or another that they had gotten together and hired him to operate the surplus Fuel Truck they had bought.   Zack had a long face and was wearing herringbone coveralls.   They thought him a bit odd for though he was 28, and had survived combat in the Pacific, he somehow seemed to be still a teenager, or 05be he had decided to go back to being the self he had been before he was wrenched from school to fight.

      Looking down from the ladder holding the hose into the wing while pumping the gas from the whinning truck Zack said,  "Pilot went to the Hotel, and passengers went to Graduation."

      Grover remembered then it was Graduation Day at Duke.

      He looked at the plane and wondered what it would be like to fly in anything that and fast at the same time thinking the cabin had about the same interior as the Packard.

       Then he heard the sound of the Taylorcraft and looked at the treeline and watched as Carl landed.    He finished the Coke and put the bottle in the round tall galvanized trash can for empty oil cans and rags strapped to the back of the still army green fuel truck.

      Carl nodded to Grover as he taxied past headed up the line past the tie downs towards their little hangar.   Roger Adams was in the plane with him and he could see the huge camera Roger used held up to Rogers chest in the cramp of the cockpit.

      Gover walked down the line following the plane and arrived while Karl was chocking it.   Roger was looking around through the Speed Graphic.   Grover thought of the photograph he had taken of them in the plane they had put up in the gas station.

       Roger pointed the camera at him and Grover made the snarling face he put on whenever a camera was pointed at him.   From youth he had snarled whenever told to smile for the camera and as somepeople smiled automatically whenever noticing a camera pointed at them, Grover was in the habit of snarling.

      He heard the sound of the shutter, a light sound like a swoosh and a click different from the mere click of the Brownie he himself used to take pictures on holidays.

      "Fuck you Roger."   Grover said.

      "Nice to see you too."   Roger said smiling as he took down the camera and stuck in a slide and pulled the film holder out of the back and turned it around and stuck it back in its place and then pulled the other slide out.

        Carl was sitting on the Harley by then and kicking it.   It started on the third kick and Grover and Roger looked at Carl who gunned the engine and grinned at them.   He let the engine die down and sat there as it ticked over.

       "I’ve got to go, anything important to know?"

       "Paul’s at the station.   Buddy’s gone with the new driver to Brooklyn, and Dad says Mother wants a television for her birthday."

        Carl put the Harley in gear and creeped it up to where Grover and Roger were standing.   Grover noticed that Carl had looked at the Staggerwing as he moved the bike next to him.

        "I looked at an RCA up at Tobys the other day.   He wants 4 hunderd and 25 dollars for it.   He says if you put up an antenna it’ll get the station from Raliegh.   I told him he ought to throw in the antenna for that price."

        Roger walked off toward the Staggerwing looking at it through the viewfinder while he walked and Carl and Grover watched him while they looked at the plane as well.

        Carl nodded at the plane and asked,  "Think we could make any money with one of those?"

       "’Bout the same as a taxi or a limo I imagine."   Grover said.

       "Be more sensible to buy a plane like a truck, since we know about trucking."

        "Taxi’s make money too."

        They watched Roger take his picture and start to walk back towards them and Carl said,  "I’ll pick up the TV from Toby tomorrow.   Are we spliting it 4 ways or just between us two and Matt and Paul can get Mom something else?"

       "Four ways, but less from Matt works far as I know."   Grover said as Roger walked up and got his equipment bag out of the plane and closed back the door.

       Roger then turned to Carl wearing the bag and holding the camera and said,   "Thanks for taking me up.   I’ll call you when I get the money from Arnold."    Arnold was an attorney involved in a land dispute and had hired Roger to get some aerial pictures which was something Carl had come to think was about the only moneymaking thing the Taylorcraft was good for.   He thought he had about talked Roger into buying it from him.

       "Okay and tell that shyster we want to talk to him about 05be buying that airport you say he’s got a line on in Florida."

        "What are you talking about?"    Grover said.

        "Roger told me Arnold knows some people who are leasing land on the airport in Fort Lauderdale."

        Before Grover could say anything else Carl revved the Harley and dropped it  into gear, nodded to Roger, and letting out the clutch yelled,  "See you guys later." as he rode off leaving them watching him run up past the line past the shack hangars and tie downs and turn on the road toward town.