The Floatplane Notebooks (16 page)

But anyway, I love it. I'm flying alone now. Before a mission, I climb up the right side, open the fuel cap on top of the wing, look at the fuel, close and check the fuel cap flush with the wing. Then I climb down and start around the aircraft. I check the right propeller for nicks and rotation; check
the oil cap; pull the pin from the main gear wheel; check the strut, right main gear wheel; check the right sponson doors—closed and tight, and so on. Then I climb up and in. Airman Higgins follows me up, helps strap me in, and hands me my helmet. It's a little bit like being a king.

On the runway I line up with the centerline, hold in the brakes, open the throttles, check instruments, release the brakes. At eighty knots, I pull back the stick, rotate the nose into the air—hold it. At eighty-five knots: airborne. Hesitate, gear up. Hesitate, flaps up. Three radio calls. This is the real thing.

The cockpit fits like old soft clothes. I know the instruments and switches by heart. I wish Meredith could see me up here. What I'd really like to do is fly over where he is, and do some acrobatics. Or just run into him on an air base or something, with me wearing my survival vest. It's got a holster with a .38.

Meredith writes once every two or three weeks. He hopes I get a chance to come to Saigon instead of Bangkok. The pilots here ride a cargo plane to Bangkok for four days out of every six weeks. He says the Saigon Vietnamese are beggars and whores and thieves. Nice whores though, he says. Friendly. I know what he means. There's one place we go in Bangkok just to talk to them. They ask about pilots not there that weekend and we ask about whores not there that weekend. Just drink and talk. It's not like home, but I'm not home now.

Meredith says that fourteen guys he knows have been killed, six by mines. The last guy they sent home alive stepped in a spiked foot trap and they had to evac him with the whole
thing on his foot, metal spikes out of a concrete block through his foot.

Once I'm airborne, I fly across the Mekong River, on across western Laos and into eastern Laos where I see, way down there, the Ho Chi Minh Trail: a network of roads, north-south, light orange against the dark green forests, winding like long, thin, stringy fingers, disappearing, then in the open for a distance, through mountains and flat jungle, disappearing, reappearing. The land along the roads is riddled, freckled, with bomb craters—in some places, strings of craters. Four major intersections have been bombed so bare they look like the moon. No vegetation, just sand.

When I fly reconnaisance, I hold the stick with one hand, binoculars to my eyes in the other, and look down through the Plexiglas canopy. I reverse hands—turning the aircraft gently, never flying level in a straight line. The enemy trucks, below, move north to south, south to north, usually at dawn or dusk or in the night. The big guns are camouflaged. I memorize map coordinates. I come to know intersections, river fords. I hold them in my mind almost like they are parts of my bare hand. For the longest time I did not see a person down there, until one gray morning just as it's getting light, my eyes, through binoculars, move past and then quickly back to a lone man—walking fast along the side of a road, then crossing to the other side. I watch through the binoculars from eight thousand feet up, unable to take my eyes from him. I have somehow almost believed that no humans are down there. I just find the trucks, storages, guns, river fords, and direct the air strikes. No humans are down there. Rather,
some nonhuman, piranha-like force lies, swarms, sits, breeds, broods beneath the green canopy, waiting for me to fall. If we go down they chop off our heads. That's what we hear they do. And suddenly in the first gray light of day I watch this lone human being walking down a road. It is a man … shaped like a human being … walking rapidly through the gray first light. He seems soft. He is alive… the road another road, a country road in North Carolina and the man is someone I know; the road is a dirt road that I know with a man I know walking on it, walking on the dirt road along which he lives somewhere and the person is Meredith, Uncle Albert, Tyree, Ross, an American man from
The Grapes of Wrath;
the road a dirt road in North Carolina I've seen that man walking down a dirt road it is Lumley Road a dirt road with the gravel, the road grader has worked on it, and then, gentlemen, the body of the BLU-1/A is a hollow shell which is hinged at the base of the conical tail finassemble. The upper half acts as a lid. The filler is small, solid missiles—Lazy Dogs—having winged tail assemblies. A mechanical time fuse opens the lid, allowing immediate dispersion of the approximately 17,500 missiles, which then free fall to the target where they inflict damage by penetration. Color Code: The missile cluster adapter is painted olive drab with black markings. We also have the BLU-24/B, antipersonnel bomb sometimes called the “jungle bomb.” It penetrates jungle foliage and detonates after spin is reduced below 2,000 rpm. Upon detonation, the bomb bursts and scatters cast-iron fragments in all directions. The bomb consists of a smooth cast-iron body assembly, fuse assembly, explosive train, and plastic vane assembly. When the bomb is ejected from the dispenser, the
airstream reacts on the vane assembly and causes the bomb to spin. As the spin of the bomb increases, centrifugal force causes three weights in the fuse to rotate out and engage the firing pin-spring and retract the firing pin from a slide assembly which contains the detonator in an out-of-line position. The slide assembly is moved outward by centrifugal force until it is locked in place by a spring-loaded detent. The detonator in the slide assembly is now in line with the lead assembly and firing pin, and the bomb is armed. As the bomb is slowed in its fall by foliage, spin is reduced. At about 2,000 rpm, the firing pin-spring overcomes the centrifugal force of the weights, causing them to rotate inwardly until the firing pin is released. The firing pin-spring continues to act on the firing pin until the pin strikes the detonator, initiating the explosive train which bursts the body and scatters cast-iron fragments which are effective against trucks, fuel tanks, radar equipment, and personnel. Color Code: The bomb body is painted yellow with black markings. The vane assembly is ivory-colored, walking along the dirt road myself walking to the store in North Carolina myself along Lumley road to get a loaf of Merita bread and a quart of Long Meadow milk in a brown paper sack.

Caroline and Vera sat in the yard in the shade shelling butter beans.

I look at that trellis said Caroline and remember how Isaac and Walker argued about how wide it ought to be.

Didn't Walker come along and add onto it after Isaac finished?

Oh yes and of all the building they did that trellis is the only thing that gives clear marks of who done what.

Vera emptied shells into a basket and picked up a handful of beans from another basket. How did it happen? More handfuls.

Well I asked Isaac to build it. Don't you remember? It was about the time the field hand died. Somewhere in there is when I planted that wisteria. Got it from Mrs. Sutton and planted it early of a morning and told Isaac to build a trellis. Well when he finished Walker told him it won't big enough won't wide enough and to widen it. Isaac didn't want to do it
and argued with Walker so finally Walker up and done it hisself and you can see it from the back side through the porch there where Isaac's stops and Walker's takes up.

I seen that but never remembered why it was that way.

Whoever would have thought that I'd outlive Isaac said Caroline.

I hope he died gentle.

I do too.

What if something happened to him and he went crazy and wandered off and is still alive.

Naw naw that belt buckle and them other things. They had to be right about it.

At least they wrote a letter about Seaton.

It'd been nice if we could have kept us all together out there in the graveyard.

Vera pulled unshelled beans to the top of her pile. You know Papa was right about that trellis though. It won't near wide enough.

I'm kind of glad Isaac never knew.

Never knew what?

That Walker was right.

I don't think we're going to finish these before dark.

Is that a tick on that dog's ear?

Come here Sailor.

“…
and the one lost in the war,” said Walker, “was Isaac.”

“
I tried to go in with him,” said Ross, “but Mama wouldn't let me. She wrestled me down to the ground and then locked me in the
smokehouse so I couldn't go with Isaac, and then Isaac came to the door and told me I'd have to stay home and protect the family, which was a good thing in the end, because that's exactly what I done with the Yankees.”

“How's that?”

“A bunch of Yankees come through and if I hadn't been there it's no telling what would have happened. We were working the fields and came in just before dark and there was a whole bunch of them in the backyard. They'd done stole meat and I don't know what all and….”

I miss them both but I miss Meredith the most. He writes me about once a month. I almost got Rhonda to let me go with her to meet him in Hawaii for Meredith's R and R. But we didn't have the money.

Rhonda got pregnant while they were in Hawaii, which is great, and Meredith will be home in less than a year. I think Mark is going to stay in for twenty years. He's flying combat missions now.

In his last letter, Meredith said that he wanted to name their new baby, when it comes, Floatplane Jack or Floatplane Jane.

I'm dating this guy now that reminds me of Meredith a little bit. He's got the same curly hair and his eyes are the teeny-tiniest bit crossed, so he looks crazy sometimes. His name is Barry Hargroves and he's a senior at East Carolina. Papa saw him once, just once, and now calls him a hippie.

In his last letter, Meredith sent us these two little notices
they'd just gotten. One was about leech bites. It was funny because Meredith had written on it. It said to tighten jacket cuffs to the wrists before entering streams and Meredith wrote in the margin: “Too hot for any jacket.” The notice said apply insect repellant to uncovered portions of the body, and Meredith had written in: “What insect repellant?” The notice said, “If leeches are found on the body do not pull them off quickly as they will leave their heads in the bite and then cause infection.” And Meredith had written: “They won't
LEAVE
their
OWN
heads, their heads will be
LEFT
. Ask a leech if he'll leave his head somewhere.”

This was the other notice. Meredith had written “ha's” at the end of every part.

a. Remember we are guests here: We make no demands and seek no special treatment.
Ha.

b. Join with the people: Understand their life, use phrases from their language and honor their customs and laws.
Ha Ha.

c. Treat women with politeness and respect.
Ha Ha Ha.

d. Make friends among the soldiers and common people.
Ha Ha Ha.

e. Always give the Vietnamese the right of way.
Ha Ha.

f. Be alert to security and ready to react with your military skill.
Ha Ha.

g. Do not attract attention by loud, rude, or unusual behavior.
Ha Ha Ha Ha.

h. Avoid separating ourselves from the people by
a display of wealth or privilege.
Wealth? Privilege? Ha.

i. Above all else, we are members of the U.S. military forces on a difficult mission, responsible for all our official and personal actions. Reflect honor upon ourselves and the United States of America.
Ha Ha Ha.

Meredith writes in at the end that the guy who wrote all this was the same one who thinks leeches go around leaving their heads somewhere. I show all of Meredith's letters and stuff to Barry. He just shakes his head.

I had no idea how word would come.

I had thought about an officer in a uniform driving up to Mr. Copeland's and asking for Rhonda, a phone call to us from Mildred or Rhonda, or a telegram to Miss Esther telling her that Mark was shot down.

For some odd reason, I guess I'd never really thought about either one of them getting wounded.

It was a phone call from Rhonda, who's living with Mildred, Mr. Copeland, and Noralee:

“Bliss, Meredith has been wounded by a mine. We just got a telegram. It said it was serious. Call Thatcher and y'all come on over and I'll show you the telegram. It's just killed me. I throwed up.”

I called Thatcher and he said he'd come straight home. It was something that had always been possible, but that nobody would ever talk about. Nobody around here talks about What Ifs, unless it's the weather. That's for sure.

Thatcher came in from work. “Don't they know how bad he is?” he asked as soon as he got in the door.

“All I know is what Rhonda said, that it's serious. That's all she said. She said for us to come on over there.”