Surly Bonds

by Michael Byars Lewis

  “Don’t worry, Jason, it’ll pass,” Lenny said. “Just keep pressing forward, putting one foot in front of the other. Jet training should take your mind off some of this stuff. Take some time, refocus, and then get out there and start dating again. You’ve got to walk before you can run.”

  “Thanks,” Jason said, standing to leave.

  “Of course, this school is so hard, you might want to start off with baby steps.” Matt laughed, along with Jason and Lenny.

  “You’re a loser, Conrad,” Vince said, stretching on the floor.

  “Up yours, Vince,” Jason said.

  Vince pushed himself off the floor and lunged at Jason, who dropped his books and took a defensive stance. Lenny and Matt jumped between the two. Vince looked surprised at Jason’s quick reaction and backed off, immediately. Lenny couldn’t figure out what set Vince off, but the situation diffused itself as quickly as it started.

  “Dudes, chill,” Lenny said, standing in front of Vince.

  Matt edged Jason toward the door. Tempers cooled, but nothing was done or said to resolve anything. Matt picked up the books and handed them to Jason.

  “See you bro’,” Matt said. Jason nodded and left the room.

  “Later, dude,” Lenny said. “Ball game this weekend.”

  Vince said nothing and picked his magazine off the floor. Lenny suspected their classmates wondered how Vince did so well when he studied like this. The guy spent most of his time at the gym. His five-foot eleven-inch frame held his one hundred eighty-five pounds of muscle and bone. He threw the magazine at Lenny and sat up. “These ballgames are making you go broke.”

  “I’m not going broke, you jerk. I gamble occasionally, but all my bets are covered. There’s nothing wrong with that. Like you never bet on anything in your life. You’re such a fricking hypocrite, Vince,” Lenny said, the tension in his voice pronounced.

  “Kind of edgy there, aren’t you, scarecrow?”

  “I’m not edgy . . . and don’t call me scarecrow! You asshole, you think you’re so damn superior to everyone else. Let’s see how damn well you do on this next test. We’ll see what a hot shot you are.”

  Matt gathered his papers and books. “I think I’ll call it a night, too,” he said, frustrated with the tension in the room. He picked up his things and headed for the door. “And gentlemen, try not to kill each other.”

  Lenny watched Matt walk out the door, then glanced at Vince, whose eyes drilled holes in him. Lenny ran his hands across his short-cut hair. Vince got up from the floor as Lenny left his computer and walked to the refrigerator. “Y-you want a beer?”

  “What are you doing?” Vince ignored the question. “What was that all about? Who the hell do you think you are? I don’t give a damn about you and your drama, but you’d better watch what you say around people.”

  Perspiration formed on his forehead and he shook. Vince scared him.

  “I-I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I-I’m going through a rough spot. I’m a . . . a little pre-occupied with other things.”

  “Well, you had better straighten out, mister. Don’t drag me in on your problems.”

  “I’m a little short in the cash flow department.”

  “Did you get the test?” Vince asked.

  “Yeah, but I’m gonna need more this time.”

  Vince’s brow furrowed. “How much is more?”

  “Two thousand.”

  4

  August 11, 1995

  * * *

  JASON OCCASIONALLY QUESTIONED his decision to come to Vance AFB. This morning was one of those times. He was scheduled to attend Columbus AFB a year ago, but after the incident in England, the Air Force delayed his training for a year. He asked for Vance AFB because it put him farther away from Baton Rouge and his ex-wife.

  Originally named the Enid Army Flying School just prior to the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor in 1941, the name changed to Enid AFB in 1948 with the creation of the United States Air Force. In 1949, it was renamed after Medal of Honor Winner Lieutenant Colonel Leon Robert Vance, Jr. The Oklahoma base was famous for its challenging crosswinds.

  The wind blew a steady ten knots from the north at a quarter to five in the morning. It would increase to fifteen knots by noon, as the cool mid-seventy-degree temperature would be well into the nineties. Darkness enveloped the base and several olive-drab-clothed figures scurried from the dormitories to the squadron building. The five-hundred-yard walk to the flight line; a daily ritual for most students. The long brick structure sat between two hangars on the east side of the flight line; home to over one hundred instructor pilots and three times as many students.

  Jason stepped out of his room and began the journey with his classmates. He wore the standard-issue flight suit with his polished boots. The brown flight pubs bag issued to all students was held snug in his left hand. Inside, he carried the Dash One technical manual for the T-37, local area procedures, flight checklists, jet maneuvers manual, and academic publications. A busy day lay ahead of him. His second simulator sortie was first period. Then, another class in aerodynamics, and Computer Based Training (CBT) modules. The diverse UPT schedule proved to be one of the biggest challenges.

  Jason approached the rectangular-shaped building. All the flight instructors huddled close to the door, angry the building remained locked. Most of the students stood close, greeting the stragglers walking from the dorm. The building custodian unlocked the door as Jason walked up, and the instructors and students piled inside.

  The Eighth Flying Training Squadron entrance led to a long hallway flanked by gray lockers, flight rooms, and offices on either side. The hallways were barren. A safety board, placed in the center of the building near the snack bar, displayed a variety of safety topics. The students gathered the publications they thought they might need for the morning brief. Placing the rest of their pubs in their lockers, they filed into the flight room.

  The instructors didn’t waste any time in the hallway and gathered in the flight commander’s office. They normally arrived twenty minutes before the students to discuss training procedures and review the morning briefing. Days like today, they wouldn’t have enough time to cover everything they needed. In less than ten minutes, the briefing would start.

  Flight rooms reflected the personalities of the instructor pilots. The front of the room consisted of a podium with a dry-erase board on the wall behind it. Walls were covered with pictures and plaques, and one wall had a three by four-foot painted image of the flight patch. On either side of the room, desks ran along the wall where the instructors and students sat. These desks were the most interesting sights in the building. The instructors competed against each other to create the coolest desk montage. Each was different, consisting of pictures of various airplanes, patches of different classes and operational units, and photographs of wives or girlfriends. In the back of the room, another board covered the wall with a huge desk in front. The flight schedulers worked here. Their task: to coordinate the students’ training, ensuring it was timely and consistent.

  Jason sat at his instructor’s desk with his in-flight guide, checklist, and a small notebook, while some of his classmates prepare for the brief. Each one assigned a specific task to carry out before the briefing started. One gathered the daily operations notes. Another secured the weather briefing. Two more drew a small picture of the traffic pattern, depicting what the winds would do to the aircraft in the pattern and upon landing. As the SRO, Gus acted like a conductor, and monitored the other students in their morning tasks. The duty officer, also a student, sat by the door. He answered phones, filed papers, and did whatever else needed doing in the flight room.

  About two minutes before five, all the instructors filtered out and headed toward their desks. Each instructor had two students assigned to him. As he reached his desk, his students stood, saluted, and began the morning ritual of questions and answers. Time was short today because everyone ran late. There would be no informal question-and-answer session before the briefi
ng this morning. Jason was relieved. Dead tired from the night before, he didn’t feel up to a quiz.

  Jason and Matt were both assigned to Captain Mike Rawlings. He seemed a nice enough guy. Most instructors tried to avoid being too much of a buddy. It tended to cloud their judgment in grading situations.

  “Room tench-hut,” spouted the duty officer as the flight commander and his assistant entered the room. The flight commander, Captain Kevin Johnson, walked up to the podium and faced Gus McTaggart.

  “Sir, all students present and accounted for,” Gus said, saluting sharply.

  Captain Johnson returned the salute. “Take your seats.” He glanced at the clock behind the scheduler’s desk, then at his watch. The short, trim flight commander had a deep tan, his brown hair showing traces of gray on the sides. “Forty seconds till one minute after,” he said for the time hack. Captain Johnson read the day’s operations notes, a daily information sheet for the squadron. He stopped for a ten-second countdown for a time hack of one minute after five.

  Next, the flight safety officer discussed the safety topic of the day. After him, the flight standardization and evaluations officer (stan/eval) walked up front. He was the individual responsible for the quality of the training. The stan/eval officer was also known as the “black hat”, the “bad” guy. The students shifted uncomfortably in their seats. No one enjoyed this portion. He asked a series of questions, followed by an emergency procedure (EP) in the jet. A student would be given a scenario to talk through and solve. The idea is to be able to perform under pressure. If the student given the scenario applied the wrong procedures, he was graded unsatisfactory and sat down for the day to study.

  Nothing could be more frightening than looking stupid in front of your classmates. Nobody wanted that. As the students sensed the question/answer period coming to an end, most tried to avoid eye contact.

  Today was not Jason’s day. Given the EP of a catastrophic engine failure right at his go-no-go speed, he thought it was simple. “Go-no-go” is an airspeed calculated to determine at what point the jet can abort the takeoff and still stop on the runway.

  Having defined the problem, Jason attempted to solve it, but his lack of sleep made it difficult to focus. Operating under the assumption he should take-off, Jason elected to do so. Any emergency occurring after this speed, in most cases, would be taken care of in the air after the aircraft safely climbed away from the ground. The instructor continued to question him about various other factors during his emergency, the situation appeared to get worse. After another two minutes, the instructor failed his other engine and told him to sit down. Jason knew what that meant. Life once again sucked.

  “Lieutenant Bailey, you can pick up the EP where he left off, change anything you like, or start all over,” the instructor said.

  Bud Bailey stood. “Sir, I’d like to start over.”

  “Go ahead, Lieutenant Bailey.”

  “Okay sir, I’ve got a catastrophic engine failure at my go-no-go speed. I scan all the engines. What do I see?”

  “You scan the engine gages, and you see the same thing as Lieutenant Conrad. Everything is winding down on your number two engine.”

  “Okay, sir.” Bailey took a deep breath. “With a catastrophic engine failure at go-no-go speed, I elect to abort the takeoff. I’ll do this by applying the procedures for abort. That is, throttles idle, brakes as required. Am I able to stop the aircraft, sir?”

  Jason’s chin fell toward his chest as he grimaced, staring at the ground, realizing at once the mistake he’d made.

  “Yes, you are.”

  “Okay, sir, once I do that, I’ll shut down the engines and emergency ground egress. I’ll make sure I get my seat pin in and exit the aircraft on my side. I take my chute and head off at a forty-five-degree angle, three hundred feet away, trying to avoid any firetrucks.”

  “Okay, good job. Have a seat.” The instructor went on to explain the emergency in greater detail. Jason tried to pay attention, but he was drained. This was an easy one and he blew it. He was letting outside events distract him. Five-thirty in the morning and he already wanted to go home. The highest highs and the lowest lows, Rawlings had told him. Why did the lows seem to come more often than the highs?

  5

  August 11, 1995

  * * *

  IT HAD BEEN A LONG DAY for a Friday, but Jason struggled through it. He reviewed his Dash One and listened to other students brief and debrief their first flight in the aircraft known as “the dollar ride”. After work, Jason and his friends headed to Chicaros for the flight party. Chicaros sat on the northern outskirts of Enid, covering the northwest corner of a T-intersection, across from an empty lot and the Enid Speedway. The outside of the building was a dilapidated, no-frills white structure with a gravel parking lot.

  Lenny, Vince, Matt, and Jason arrived at quarter to six. Matt had become a Chicaros regular during his short stay in Enid. The four of them squinted to make the transition from bright daylight to the dark interior bar, as they pushed through the small crowd inside.

  “Hey, guys! Matt, the usual?” asked the bartender as he placed mugs in the over-sized freezer.

  “Hey, bud! Four large beers,” Matt said as he saddled up to the bar.

  “Run a tab?”

  “Always. Hey, these are some friends of mine. This is Jason, Vince, and the pale-looking one is Lenny.”

  “Pleasure to meet you guys.” The bartender disappeared around the L-shaped bar.

  Jason had heard stories about Chicaros, but it was his first time here. Chicaros was a bar for pilots. The walls were lined with pictures of T-37s and T-38s flying in formation, plus snapshots of various aircraft, flown by previous clientele. Plaques from several places hung on the walls amid pictures from Desert Storm and other hotspots around the globe.

  The bartender brought out four, thirty-two-ounce frosted mugs filled with beer. “Here you go.” He lined the mugs up neatly in a row and moved to the other end of the bar to serve someone else.

  Matt raised his frosty mug. “A toast.”

  “To what?” Vince said, as the other three raised their glasses.

  “To survival.” Jason tapped the other mugs with his own.

  “I’ll second that,” Lenny said. Those were the first words he had said since they had entered the bar. Beer poured out the sides of his mouth as he chugged.

  “Jason, I wouldn’t worry about today,” Matt said. “It’s gonna happen to us all, sooner or later.”

  “Well, it happened to me, and I didn’t like it.” Jason’s shoulders sagged. “I must be trying too hard . . . I’m putting too much pressure on myself.”

  “If that’s what you think,” Vince said, “then you probably are.”

  Jason glared at Vince. The remark dripped of condescension as Vince no longer considered him a threat. Vince had struck up a friendship with Jason when the course first started. It was awkward and unusual, but Jason soon realized it was a case of “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.” Once Jason began to struggle academically, Vince moved on.

  “What I think is, it’s time for me to get ripped.” Jason took a swig from his mug.

  “Amen, brother,” Matt said, and followed suit.

  Someone in the bar cranked up the music as Jimmy Buffett’s Changes in Latitudes blared out of the speakers.

  “I think I’m gonna be homesick,” Jason said, “I love Buffett. Reminds me of spring break. Long walks on the white sands of the Florida gulf coast.”

  Jason’s comment was cut short as someone came up behind him and grabbed him in a bear hug. Half his beer spilled on the floor. The other three laughed at their helpless friend.

  “No homesick momma’s boys in my flight, Conrad.” Jason recognized the voice of Gus McTaggart. “But if you’re dying to get sick, we’ve got a keg of beer out back.”

  Gus released Jason. “Well, I guess I’ll go refill my mug since you decided to help me empty it.”

  “Blow me,” Gus said.

/>   “Thanks, but the beer tastes better,” Jason said. “Very professional of you to offer, though. Sets a fine example for us young troops.”

  Gus took a draught of his own beer. “Go fill up your mug, gomer.”

  Jason saluted, turned, and maneuvered through the bar to the back door. The keg sat in the far corner of the patio. Jason eagerly filled up his mug. He was tempted to grab a second and spend the night as a two-fisted drinker, he needed to unload some stress. As he turned around, he bumped into someone, splashing his beer on his pants.

  “AAHHH, this is not my day. God must not want me to drink tonight.” He wiped the beer off his pants.

  “I don’t think God had anything to do with this—it was all me. I’m sorry, let me help you with that.”

  The first thing he noticed after her soft but confident voice, was the enticing fragrance of her perfume. It had a rosy smell with an edge to it, strong, but not overpowering. But when he glanced up at her, he couldn’t believe his eyes. About five-foot four, her jet-black hair cropped in a wedge style, and blue eyes, made his knees weak. Her olive skin was enhanced by a black tank top and khaki shorts. She reached forward and wiped his upper thigh with her towel. Jason stood speechless.

  “I didn’t realize you were behind me. I tend to rush myself when I work.” She rubbed along his thigh and never broke eye contact. “You don’t mind if I do this, do you?”

  Jason shook his head. It was only somewhat embarrassing. He had no desire to meet anyone, not matter how good she looked. “It’s not your fault. Sometimes I’m careless. Please don’t feel bad.”

  Her eyebrows jutted upward. “Oh, okay. Bye.”

  Surprised at her response, he sulked as she walked off. She sure was quick to relinquish blame, he thought. Chivalry’s not dead, but it’s easily ignored. He refilled his beer and as he pulled his mug from under the tap, he felt a tap on his shoulder. As he turned, two beautiful blue eyes stared at him again.