Barnstorm Page 3

  Running his fingers over his Blue Angel poster, it all came back to him. The torn corner of the poster. The missing piece. Picking up a model airplane off his dresser top, he returned to his bed. Seated on the edge, a loose wing fell to the floor. He remembered.

  It seemed like only yesterday. Clear as a bell. He was nine years old, maybe ten. His grade-school bedroom looked exactly like his adult, airstrip bunkroom. He had just pinned a new Blue Angel poster on his wall. Model planes dangled from his ceiling. It was dark, almost bedtime. He sat on the edge of his bed, airplane boxer shorts, airplane blanket, airplane sheets. He held a model airplane aloft, swooshing it up, down, around as though he were a Navy pilot.

  “Zoom, whish, zoom,” the young Trip whispered.

  He remembered. His father entered. Trip jerked; hid his model plane behind his back.

  “Chores done?” his father asked.

  “Y-Y-Yes, sir,” the shaken child stammered.

  “Been daydreamin’ again,” came the accusation.

  “N-N-No, sir,” Trip responded feebly.

  His father grabbed the model plane from behind Trip’s back and tore a corner off the Blue Angel poster on the wall. “Liar. Loser. Never ‘mount to a hill-a beans. Stupid dreamer.”

  His father never hit him. The verbal abuse and destruction of Trip’s childhood dreams left scars no less hurtful. Trip lowered his eyes to the floor and slumped his shoulders. He felt cold, defeated.

  As his father left the room, he threw the model plane at the young boy’s feet. The wing broke off. He crumpled the torn poster corner in a tightened fist and took it with him.

  The young Trip picked up the broken model plane and the damaged wing. He tried to put the wing back into position, but it fell at his feet. “S-S-Someday,” he stammered.

  His brief flashback over, Trip held the broken model plane. He picked up the broken wing at his feet and looked at the Blue Angel poster, the torn corner never recovered. With a deep sigh, he stammered, “S-S-Someday.”

  ☁ ☁ ☁

  Trip shook it off in time to wash the Piper Cub windows before Buzz’s flight lesson. Crop dusting was the most adventurous flying in Buzz’s busy schedule. Dropping skydivers was the most boring. Take off, climb to ten thousand feet, drop crazy people over a target, land. Blah, blah, blah. The money was good, but, blah, blah, blah. Being a flight instructor was the most rewarding. The sparkle in a student’s eye. The quickened pulse. Sharing a student’s joy in accomplishing something special.

  Trip tried to hang around flight lessons whenever he could. The windows on the Piper Cub were about worn thin from his incessant cleaning. Trip was sure that Buzz was onto his scheme, but clean windows were a good thing. Trip was usually able to pick up a new piece of information from each lesson. Someday. Yep, someday he would make his own solo flight.

  Buzz, clipboard in hand, was conducting a pre-flight check with a female student. Trip washed the plane windows, for the third time, intently eavesdropping on the pre-flight check.

  The student kicked the tires. Buzz nodded agreement. The routine continued with wing surfaces, ailerons, propeller. Check, check, check. Trip mouthed check in unison with the student. Check, check, check.

  Buzz congratulated the student, “Great. Good job. Is that everything out here?”

  Trip nodded in the affirmative.

  “Yes, sir, that’s it,” she responded.

  “Agreed. Let’s load up.”

  Trip backed away, gave a thumbs-up as the student climbed into the plane. As Buzz turned to board the plane, he patted Trip on the shoulder. “Thanks, Trip,” he said.

  With hope in his heart, Trip sought assurance, “Maybe I’ll be your next student pilot.”

  “Sure, Trip.” Then under his breath, Buzz revealed his true feelings with, “When pigs fly.”

  The door was closed in Trip’s face. Trip’s shoulders slumped as the sure, Trip comment was understood and the when pigs fly wasn’t quite as under his breath as Buzz had intended. Dejected, Trip stepped back from the plane and imagined the instrument panel checkout.

  Buzz didn’t mean to hurt Trip’s feelings. As an experienced pilot and flight instructor, he was a realist when it came to the chops needed to handle the complexities in becoming a qualified pilot.

  The student fastened her safety harness; Buzz shook it. Buzz knew this future pilot was ready and said, “Let’s pretend this is your first solo flight next week. Let’s do it.”

  Soon to lose the title of ‘student,’ she eyed the instrument panel, touched toggles, tapped gauges. Confidence soaring, she verbalized the pre-flight routine:

  “Fuel – check.”

  “Ailerons, rudder, elevator – check.”

  “Seat harness – check.”

  “Okay, ready to go. Clear.”

  Buzz gave a quick fist pump and confirmed, “Roger that. Crank ‘er up.”

  Standing in the hangar large double doors, Trip watched as the Piper Cub engine started. He imagined his hand on the throttle, gently pushing forward as the engine revved. The plane taxied to the runway. Trip shaded his eyes to see the student pilot take off and slowly bank. “Much too cautious,” he observed. “Come on, show some spunk. Yep, I’ll show how it’s done. Someday.”

  ☁ ☁ ☁

  Trip had survived another day–barely. The Sky Gypsy Café was in close-down mode. The flattop had been cleaned. Deb gave the lunch counter a final swipe of her dish towel. Trip swept the floor. The Liar Flyers were long gone.

  Deb reassured Trip, “Looks like yer day improved. No more crap.”

  “Not today,” Trip admitted. “Goodnight, thanks for your help.”

  “No problem. You did check on that jump plane sticky door, right?”

  Sheepishly, Trip deflected, “First thing, I promise.”

  “Tomorrow. No excuses. Win Buzz over. Pilots are organized. Make a list.” Deb grabbed his hand and held up a few bandaged fingers. “Do you think someone with this many accidents exudes confidence? Why would anyone turn over a seventy-five thousand dollar Piper to Mr. Band-Aid for a solo flight?”

  Trip lowered his eyes as Deb dropped his hand. He tried to say something, but shrugged his shoulders in defeat.

  Deb untied her apron, laid it on the lunch counter. As she opened the door to exit to the parking lot, she stopped, glanced over her shoulder with one last word of encouragement, “Fresh start tomorrow. See you in the morning.”

  Trip brightened a little at this glimmer of hope, “Goodnight.” Now alone, Trip wandered around the cafe, surveying the pictures of skydivers, crop-dusting posters, and paused at the ‘You Can Learn to Fly’ poster. Nodding agreement, he reached out and touched the letters. “Yep, someday that will be me.”

  One last check that the doors were locked, he turned out the cafe lights and entered the hangar. On his way to his bunkroom, a short detour to the parachute packing table provided another daydream diversion. Confirming that he was alone, he grabbed a packed parachute from the rack on the hangar wall. He swiftly put the chute on his back, fastened the straps. No glitches or stumbles here. He had done this so many times, he could do it blindfolded. He backed up and scooted onto the packing table.

  Trip stood up, inched to the edge of the table and peered at the ground, only three-feet below. He eyed Socrates looking up at him. The three feet was enough to trigger Trip’s fear of heights. He shuddered; backed a step away from the edge. He closed his eyes. Extended his arms into ‘airplane wing’ position.

  He was now standing on a parachute packing table in an airplane hangar. His harness was securely fastened as he stretched his wings to their fullest. Eyes closed, Trip jumped at twenty thousand feet into a four-minute free fall. The wind rushed past his extended arms and

  legs. He imagined that he could accelerate his fall by diving, head first toward the ground. Previous pretend death plunges had taught him not to pull the rip
cord in this head-first position.

  He continued his vertical, high-speed descent until he caught his dive partner who had jumped five seconds earlier. Trip leveled off and reached to touch his dive buddy. It was Socrates. Socrates showed up in many of Trip’s daydreams. They both pulled their rip cords. A mild jerk flipped his feet below the billowing nylon chute. Patchwork-quilted farmland circled beneath them in alternating squares of green, gold, and brown.

  Four feet, two were webbed, securely nestled in wheat field stubble, the skydivers gathered in the cords and fabric. When the daydream ended, Trip removed his harness and noted that the parachute had popped out the back. A great daydream was one that blended the imagined with reality. This reality meant that he had to re-pack the chute or Buzz would be livid. Trip could lead a class on this task. While clumsy in many things, he knew his way around a parachute.

  Trip returned the parachute to the rack, looked back through the hangar, and with a sigh, turned out the lights. The daydreams might be cool, but Trip always returned to his boring, unfulfilled bunkroom life. He was not a pilot. He’d never skydived, he’d never even been up in an airplane. Maybe he’s the loser that people think he is.

  Trip flipped on his bunkroom lights. He touched his Navy Blue Angel poster, and sighed, “Someday.” With Socrates comfortable in his corner bed, Trip wandered around his tiny room, touching jet planes hanging from the ceiling. He hung up his work shirt on a simple nail in the wall. He dropped his pants and adjusted the waistband on his airplane boxer shorts. He turned off the ceiling light. The small lamp on the nightstand beside his bed illuminated the ceiling plastered with stars and crescent moons that glowed in the dark. Lying on his bed, Trip thumbed aimlessly through another airplane magazine. Sleep came quickly. The skydiving daydream must have been exhausting.

  ☁ ☁ ☁

  The full moon shone through the window casting a windowpane shadow onto Trip’s floor. The lighted wind sock on the peak of the hangar limply communicated the stillness of the night. A sudden gust of wind caused the wind sock to fully extend, rotate one hundred eighty degrees. The large hangar doors creaked under the strain of a threatening storm. A loose sheet of corrugated metal rattled and banged against the hangar side under Trip’s window.

  Trip snored, magazine on his chest. The storm and wind intensified, waking Socrates. The hangar moaned and groaned. Heavy rain and hail punished the steel roof. Trip stirred and rolled onto his side. The lightning and thunderclap were almost simultaneous. That was a close one.

  An air-raid siren blared. Trip sat up in bed, surrounded by fellow Navy fighter pilots. Responding to the call of duty, the aviators hurriedly donned flight suits. There was the commotion of shouts, orders, as Navy pilots rushed to the flight deck. Trip secured his harness and wiggled comfortably into the cockpit. As the flight leader, Trip was first to catapult off the flight deck. Amusement parks try to duplicate the adrenalin rush of these steam catapults. Not surprising that taxpayer investment of twenty-five billion dollars in an aircraft carrier provided a more blood-rushing thrill than that available at Six Flags.

  After successfully chasing the North Koreans back north of the 54 th parallel, a little tower-buzzing was warranted. Trip and his cohorts flew under the Gateway Arch, then swooped around the Statue of Liberty. He shot at King Kong as the great ape clutched the Empire State Building. Trip tossed and turned. One last snore, more of a snort, and a frown as Trip lamented that this flight experience might be fake.

  As his tailhook was snagged back to the flight deck, Trip jerked awake in a cold sweat. Yep. Exciting, but not real. The sheet metal slamming at the window near his bed was real. He crawled out of bed, looked out the window and reacted to a loud noise from inside the hangar. Still in his boxer shorts, he grabbed a flashlight, ready to explore the unknown dangers that lurked beyond. “Stay put, Socrates,” he ordered. When the duck flapped in protest, Trip gave him a hypnotic stare. Socrates retreated to his corner nest.

  Save the moonlight streaming through a few hangar windows, and that successfully filtering through cracks in the wall, it was almost pitch black. Combined with the howling wind and the rain hitting the steel roof, it would have been a perfect Halloween haunted house. Trip flicked on his flashlight. Obviously the Energizer Bunny was too scared to make an appearance. The flashlight crept in-and-out of nothingness after scattering only a bit of darkness.

  A stranger to the scene would have needed a fresh change of underwear. It was scary. Spider webs. Sporadic blasts of hail made it sound like the rapid-fire from a Gatling gun. Trip lived here 24/7. He knew every nook-and-cranny. Coaxing beams of hope from his flashlight, he pointed it toward the source of each noise. He was always half-a-second late.

  The three Stearman biplanes leapt to life with each strobe of lightning. The faded paint flashed sky-blue or as yellow as the sun, if only during that fleeting millisecond between the billion volts of electricity and the ensuing thunderclap. Enough wind was invading the hangar to cause the tarps and sheets to billow like the sails of a ship tossed at sea. About when Trip had become acclimated to the cacophony of sounds bombarding him, a metal trash can fell over to his left. Were a 12-gauge shotgun in his hands, that trash can would have breathed its last. He hit it with a feeble shot from his flashlight.

  “Darn raccoon,” he blurted.

  Turning to continue his search for evil varmints, he bumped his head on a biplane wing and fell to the ground. Since it was after midnight, he would probably debit this clumsy event from his quota for the following day. His flashlight had enough energy to illuminate a step-ramp underneath the plane. Like a two-step stool with a board extending over the wing, it was used to prevent novices or stupid people from putting a foot on a wing. Old biplane wings were made of linen, cotton, lightweight fabric, or sometimes modernized to a nylon or polyester-type concoction. A foot in the wrong place resulted in embarrassment and a hole in the wing. A foot on the wing close to where it was attached to the fuselage was acceptable.

  Trip looked up at the open cockpit. He knew that Buzz had this graveyard off-limits. But Buzz wasn’t here at three a.m. Trip positioned the step-ramp and unfolded it over the wing. Step-by-step he inched closer to nirvana. Stearman–eventually part of the Boeing Company–started making these biplanes in 1939 and throughout World War II. The N25 and PT-17 models that formed Buzz’s graveyard collection earned their reputation as trainers. They were somewhat clumsy to fly, likened to trying to land a refrigerator with its door open. The Army Air Corps figured that if a fly-boy recruit could handle these flippity-flop contraptions, they could fly anything. They were ready for combat.

  Trip turned his shoulder, pointed the flashlight at the step beneath him. He was only about three feet off the ground, but his fear of heights got the best of him. Though he dreamed of being a pilot, he hadn’t quite made the connection between success in a cockpit and his fear of heights. He lost his balance and fell butt first into the cockpit. His feet straight up in the air above his head, it took him a moment to regain his bearings.

  Twisting around in the correct, forward-facing position, he looked into the second, open-air seat in front of him. He was seated where the action was as these old biplanes were piloted from the rear-cockpit position. The controls necessary to operate the plane were duplicated in the forward-cockpit seat. Quite effective for pilot training.

  His flashlight illuminated the instrument panel, joy stick, rudder foot bars. The foot bars screeched and screamed as rust and metal-on-metal were reminiscent of fingernails on a chalkboard. With a loving index finger, Trip wiped thirty years of grime from the limited gauges on the instrument panel.

  The world was at peace. Trip ignored the thunder and lightning. Hail on the roof and sides of the hangar could have been flakes of new Christmas snow. The rattling of the tarmac double-wide doors was smothered by the thunder beating in his chest. “I was born for this,” he confirmed. “Someday. Tomorrow I’m diffe
rent. I can do this.”

  Rat-a-tat-tat came the gun fire from the rear. The German Messerschmitt was gaining on him. Another German plane was at ten o’clock high. It had drawn a bead and looked ready to fire. Trip was the wingman for this twenty-plane squadron over Nazi-occupied France. It was 1943. If he could draw the fire away from his squadron Captain, the mission would succeed. It was up to him. Trip did a combination dive-roll where he peeled off from the Allied formation. It worked. He had sacrificed himself for the good of the mission. The two Luftwaffe planes pursued him toward the French countryside below.

  Trip’s World War II dream had become intertwined with the reality of the thunder and lightning storm outside his airstrip hangar. Was it present day thunder or was it Messerschmitt 80mm canons?

  Trip saw only one way out. Ahead was a wooden bridge over a small stream. The stream was flanked by lines of trees on both sides. The cool morning air had created a fog bank that blanketed the stream. The trees, fog bank, and meandering stream created a tunnel effect. He went for it. The German pilots were hot on his tail. Trip dove under the low bridge. He left the top inch of his vertical stabilizer on the lower support beam of the bridge. Wheels kissing the stream below, Trip disappeared into the fog bank. The German pilots were not so lucky. When the first plane hit the bridge in a ball of flames, it caused the trailing Nazi pilot to climb and bank hard away from the bridge. Right into a towering oak tree. Two German planes–gone. Trip figured that the maintenance crew back in England could repair his plane without much trouble.

  The wind was still strong enough to gently rock his Stearman pile of junk like a cradle. Trip closed his eyes and dreamt of beautiful women waiting to touch the shoulder of a hero stunt pilot.

  Chapter Three

  The storm left as quickly as it had arrived. At sunrise, the wind sock hung limply, exhausted from a night of flailing at a mighty foe. The morning calm was rudely broken as the large hangar door was opened. Buzz entered the hangar and knocked on Trip’s bunkroom door.