Harry Whittington
The Devil Wears Wings
CHAPTER ONE
They gave me the okay from the control tower and I told the girl to take it down. I had been telling her she was going to be all right, and sometimes it looked as if she'd make it, but now I knew better. I had been upstairs with her for about an hour and this was more than enough. I needed a drink, I needed to lie down somewhere until the knots in my stomach loosened; what I really needed was to vomit. She sank the stabilizer, but pulled back too far and I tried to keep my voice level as I warned her to take it easy. When I spoke, she went to sweat and rode the brake. The tires struck concrete, squealing. We hopped straight up about twenty feet and I didn't say anything. But when the Cessna's right wingtip scorched the runway, that's when I really yelled.
I put my lungs and my guts into it. That yell had been stacking up in me for a long time and when I finally unfroze her and took the controls and taxied along the chute toward the hangar, the woman, the plane and I were still trembling.
I cut the engine, killing it in the shadow of the damnedest sign I ever saw. It compounded the illness in me every time I brought in a plane, walked toward it, or remembered it over a beer. Sunpark International Airport is a sprawling flat with take-off patterns that accommodate the new jet service ships. It is a way station between Miami, New Orleans, Havana, South America, New York. Huge metal cribs house Eastern, Delta, American, Pan-Am ASA. All the big lines touch down there, but as far as I was concerned that sign, sprawled across the entrance of Hangar 2, dwarfed and mocked everything else on the field.
"Smiling Jimmy Clark Can Teach You to Fly." Jimmy Clark's smiling face covered the whole left end of the sign, and his face was bigger than his plane. I always mistrust a man who eternally smiles, and he had the kind of smile that made my skin crawl. His thick red hair was like a tight skull cap over a short forehead and squinted blue eyes you still couldn't see into even when his photo was blown up bigger than his own estimation of himself.
One thing you had to admit about that picture. It was a perfect likeness. The only lie was the sign itself. Jimmy Clark couldn't teach you to fly. He'd been piloting planes for twenty-five years and still was no flier. Jimmy Clark could smile though. His photo proved this.
My pupil got out of the Cessna first, still shaken, and very pale. "I guess I washed out," she said.
I jumped out on the grease-spotted cement beside her. I was aware of a dozen things at once: grease jockeys grinning in a knot inside the shadowed hangar watching us but pretending they weren't; the pattern of black sky-chutes in geometric lines dictated by the wind's will; the neon passenger-service signs glowing palely in the stark white sunlight; Jimmy Clark standing in the doorway of his glass-partitioned office and not smiling; the look of illness in the girl's face. But mostly I was thinking my legs felt as though I'd finally reached shore after wading a long time in a rough surf.
"I washed out. I really washed out," she said. I glanced at her and that's when I realized she was bearing down too hard on it. She wanted me to lie to her. She wasn't upset because of her miserable exhibition of flying; she was disturbed because I'd wailed at her like a dying weasel. She didn't want the truth at all.
I watched a fly crawl across the breast of her flying jacket. She'd bought expensive, fashionable flying togs.
I felt myself tightening up again. I hadn't disliked her before, but suddenly I saw her as she really was, and it was everything I'd lived to hate in a female. She had this chopped hair and a full-fed face and flat eyes you can't see into and a superior air that was bred into her from the day she was born expecting everything handed to her and getting it. She was full in the face, full in the breasts, full in the hips because she'd been fed and pampered and spoiled until she was soft everywhere except in her attitude toward other people, women who crossed her and men who didn't snap to heel.
I pulled my gaze up to her face. She was slightly taller than I, because let's face it, the only place I'm a big man is behind the controls of a plane. I touch five-seven standing on the ground. I find myself looking up to most guys, and some women. Nobody ever hated standing on the ground more than I did once I learned to fly.
"I'm no damn good. I'm never going to learn, Buz."
I licked my tongue around the inside of my mouth. It felt cottony dry. I needed a drink and couldn't help looking toward the Rudder upstairs in the clean-lined, blue-metal-and-glass administration building. The kindliest thing I could think to tell her at the moment was that even some birds aren't equipped to fly. But I wasn't feeling very kindly.
"Are you mad with me, Buz?"
"Why should I be mad?" I couldn't help it if my voice shook slightly.
"You are mad. I don't blame you. I almost wrecked the plane, almost killed both of us."
I squinted against the sun. "I've been nearer dead plenty of times."
"But not because of stupidity."
"You got a point there."
She caught her breath, drew herself up and I saw the resentment and anger in her eyes. I could also see the college she attended, the sorority she ruled. She could say what she liked about herself; it was all clever and joking anyhow. But me she had paid some money. She had paid me to lie to her, to make her look as good as those tailored togs.
The fly got tired and flew away. The fly was lucky.
"You could be a little nice about it." Her mouth got sulky. I could feel the trembling start in my stomach. I could be nice to her, help her get a license, invite her to take off and kill herself and any innocent bystanders. I wanted to give it to her straight. As far as I could see, a woman driving a car was bad enough, but a woman at the controls of a plane just didn't make pretty good sense. I was even willing to admit this was just one man's opinion. All I wanted was to tell her the truth.
I glanced across her shoulder and saw Jimmy Clark poised to smile in his office doorway.
He didn't have to say it: Who did I think I was? The C.A.A.? God? Did I think I owned this flying school? If I chased away paying customers, who would buy my beer?
"We all get nervous," I said.
"Yes." She was mollified. 'I just got nervous. I don't know what was the matter. The earth was rushing up at me. It scared hell out of me. I know better."
"Sure you do. Buz Johnson's your teacher. You got to know better."
"What went wrong, Buz?"
I wanted to hit her. My fist was a soggy doughnut at the end of my arm. I wanted to tell her what went wrong: You got up this morning, doll. You put on those fancy togs and you drove out here, that's what went wrong.
Aloud, I said, "You got to take it easier. A big healthy doll like you. You got muscles. We'll talk about it tomorrow. Okay?"
She felt better; she forgave me. She squeezed my arm and walked away. I watched it for a while.
She could walk all right.
After a minute, Clark whistled me to heel. I turned around, feeling the sun bite into my shoulders, and walked into the hangar toward him. I wanted to get in out of the heat anyway.
Besides, where I was standing, I could still see that sign.
CHAPTER TWO
As I moved out of the sun into the shade, I noticed this guy for the first time. He looked like something some body had discarded and was still slumped where they'd left him. People are always standing around airfields, leaning against something, watching the planes, getting in the way, counting their money, and I wouldn't have given this character a thought except for the prickly sense I got that he was watching me and had been standing there for a long time reading me.
His face pulled into something resembling a smile and I saw he was going to speak to me. I shrugged out of my jacket and walked on by him. When he saw I wasn't g
oing to look at him he slumped back against the upright, not offended or worried, a man with plenty of time.
He looked most like an outsized rag doll that has been left out in the rain. He was over six feet tall but so thin he could have modeled CARE ads. His unruly hair looked as if it had been bleached and he kept jerking his head trying to keep a shag of it off his forehead. His face was lean, shadowed and low at the cheekbones with a pointed chin, but the thing you noticed most about him was the pouting of his mouth, as if the world never gave him a fair shake and he no longer expected it, and thick eyebrows even whiter than his hair.
"Mr. Johnson…"
He let his voice trail after me but I walked away from it. Jimmy Clark straightened in his doorway, a man with a slight potbelly, well-made suits in tasteless shades. He was the kind of man who is always telling you he ought to write the story of his life because he had really lived-married twice, flown mail, passengers and freight, and known everybody in flying worth knowing from Rick right on down. He hated planes and always had. They gave him a sick and queasy feeling when the motors turned over, and all he wanted now was to make a living and keep both feet on the ground. But as little as he knew about flying, it was all he knew. He'd accidentally gotten tangled up in it when he decided it was glamorous after seeing Buddy Rogers in "Wings," and he'd lived with his secret fright and gastric ulcers until he no longer knew how to breathe without them.
I walked toward him, thinking that he and I had each other, and maybe that was what we deserved. Whatever I'd had, I'd thrown away, using both hands if I couldn't throw it fast enough, and the truth was nobody would hire me any more except Jimmy Clark; no one, that is, with influence enough to keep my pilot's license. Jimmy Clark knew everybody and smiled at them. He sucked around, and he had a fair amount of influence, or perhaps an unfair amount. He stayed in business with his school, and he kept me licensed to fly. I suppose you might ask why I'd stay in Sunpark, if I hated it and hated Jimmy Clark and what I smilingly called my existence. Why this town, why this burg, why this particular hell? Did I think this hell preferable to any other? The answer was simple. It was the end of the line for me. I never consciously admitted this, or seldom admitted it, but down deep I knew it was true.
Clark's shirt collar was open, his tie was pulled awry, and it was difficult for him to smile. His armpits were sweaty and sweat beaded his upper lip.
"You trying to wreck my plane?"
"I could do that without trying."
"You gave it the old try out there. My God."
"You sign the pupils, pappy. I just fly the planes."
"She almost wrecked it, for God's sake."
"You don't have to brief me. I was riding with her."
"Don't you teach them anything? Don't you tell them anything? What do you do, just take them up in the air and sleep off your hangover?"
I walked by him, leaned against his desk.
"She's had the hours by now, Jim. If she was ever going to learn, she'd know by now."
Jimmy Clark smiled. You had to know him well to know how phony that smile was. "She's got plenty of money She don't mind spending it, I don't mind taking it. She can take all the time she needs learning to fly. Is that clear, Ace?"
"Sure."
I shrugged. "Some people just never can learn to fly. You ought to know that, Jimmy."
This wiped off the smile. "You bastard drunk. I was flying planes when you were a snot-nose."
I laughed at him. "Her excuse is she just hasn't learned yet, pappy. What's yours?"
His sweated face twisted into a smiling snarl. "Big war ace."
I shrugged again. "You take her up tomorrow."
He laughed. "What's with you, Ace? You come into money, talking to me like this?"
"No." I straightened up. "You don't like the way I teach the doll, you teach her."
I turned to walk away.
"Where you going?"
"What do you care?"
He stepped forward, caught my shoulder and put muscle in it. He pulled me around.
He was smiling.
"Take your hands off me, Clark." I could feel the shaking start in my hands.
"Don't walk away when I'm talking to you. I'll tell you when I'm through talking to you." His voice quavered. But he was still smiling.
"So talk."
"I might have something for you to do around here."
"I'll be back."
"I told you. I don't want you drinking on the job."
For no good reason, I remembered suddenly the way it had been when I first came back here to Sunpark after the Korean scrap. Clark had been impressed all to hell by my war record and my medals. He was the man who knew everybody worth knowing in aviation, and in those days he considered me one of the big ones. Maybe that was what gave him such a charge to push my face down in it when he paid me sixty bucks a week as a flying instructor.
I wiped the back of my hands across my mouth. My hands quivered just enough so I was too damned aware of it. God knew this was the point of no return. If I didn't tell him now where to go, I was going to have to buy an electric razor. I couldn't go on looking at myself in a shaving mirror mornings.
"Don't push it, Clark."
His smile pulled wider. He had me where he wanted me now, down where he wanted me. I could threaten to quit, and he could let me, he could fire me, at the top of his voice so it echoed to the rafters, and then I could beg him to take me back. Last stop. End of the line.
He waited, but when I didn't say anything, he became very polite. "I just wanted to ask you something. Buz."
I waited, feeling the weight of my jacket across my shoulder, feeling the quavering in my stomach that was never going to quiet, feeling those squinted eyes laughing at me, begging me to make trouble.
"Yeah?"
"This pupil. She say anything? She coming back tomorrow?"
I nodded. "She'll be here. Unless she gets killed crossing a street somewhere."
I waited another moment. He went on smiling but didn't say anything. I swallowed back the green sickness and walked away from him into the sunlight. I wasn't ever going to tell him where to go. And the real horror of this was, only one man knew this better than I did-smiling Jimmy Clark himself.
CHAPTER THREE
This tall thin guy pulled himself away from the upright and shambled along, falling in step beside me. He even walked in a loose, rag-doll way, and I kept waiting for the stuffing to start dribbling out of his shirt sleeves.
"Mr. Johnson…"
He looked as if he intended walking along with me. I stopped, looking him over irritably. At the moment it didn't matter where he was headed. I wasn't going that way.
His bleached eyebrows wriggled like albino caterpillars.
"You had a close miss out there." He smiled, showing his front teeth.
"It happens."
"Don't know if I could take it."
"No. Not exactly. Mr. Johnson, my name is Coates. Sid Coates."
I waited, looking at him without really seeing him. Maybe he was a prospective student. It would make Jimmy Clark unhappy if I discouraged him.
"You give flying lessons?" he said.
I jerked my head toward Clark's cubicle office inside the hangar. "See Jimmy Clark. He signs them on."
He bent forward slightly, smiling in a chummy, out-of-balance way. "Well, that's it. You see, I know something about planes. But I may not be any good, you see? Oh, I can do better now than that dame. But I always believed that flying was like playing the piano-I play the piano a little, too. What I mean is, a guy can play at the piano, and never be any good. It's like that with being a pilot. You see what I mean?"
I nodded.
"And I figured, I don't want to mess around with it. If you knew me, you'd know I've messed around with a lot of things. Never did any good. I don't want to do that with flying. If I got it-fine. If I haven't I'll take up finger painting."
"You think I can look at you and tell?"
He smiled and
those white eyebrows wriggled.
"No. I figured, you take me up for a short run. I expect to pay. But I'd trust your judgment. I've heard a lot about you, Mr. Johnson. You're the only man I'd take his word on a thing like this, just like that. I got a lot of respect for your opinion."
***
We levelled out above the town, and this far in the clean clear air above Jimmy Clark's sign, the tensions relaxed and I felt better. From three thousand feet the Florida countryside looked orderly, a simple geometric pattern of faded greens, brown, tan, a patch of plowed earth, each segment cut off and set apart squarely and cleanly. But even now I knew it wasn't so. The instant you touched ground again you knew better.
I talked mechanically, explaining the panel, the instruments. But Coates wasn't grabbing it. He was bored. He looked as if he had to bite his lip to keep from explaining this panel to me. I saw he'd lied. He knew more about a plane than he'd admitted down in the hangar. I got that uncomfortable feeling of wrong again, unexplained wrong, the kind that doesn't make any sense, but won't let you alone either.
"You want to handle her?" I said.
"You think it'll be all right?"
This feeling of wrong bugged me now, loud and clear. This boy was laying this respect for the war-hero flier pretty thick. He was giving me the old back rub. For some reason he was giving me the business, trying to make me purr.
"I don't know," I said. "We can't tell until you try it. Don't worry. We got dual controls and I got fast reactions."
He bestowed upon me another smile full of admiration and I mistrusted him more than ever. It occurred to me that this boy was one of those-he could fly without a plane.
He took the controls and I gave him some simple commands. He executed them all well enough but in an awkward, rusty manner. It was obvious he'd had flight training, maybe a long time ago, but hadn't put in much flying time.
The Devil Wears Wings Page 1