by Paul Lally
‘Captains can’t call in. Especially on their first trip.’
Estelle marched over to the crib and lifted up Baby Eddy, who immediately began rooting for her breast. She deftly opened her nursing jacket, sat on the edge of our bed and fed him. She looked up at me, her face pale in the early morning light seeping into the room.
I had to go. I was late already. Still, I hesitated.
She said quietly, ‘I understand more than you’ll ever know. I’ve gone wherever your job took you. I’ve had babies and changed diapers when you were at ten thousand feet over God knows where. I’ve slept alone in this bed, wanting you beside me, on top of me, loving me, and I understood all along that this is what you love. And I love you. So, it stands to reason that I would love your job, too.’
She brushed away a strand of hair.
‘Except today I don’t love it anymore. I hate it. I don’t understand why you can’t be with Abby and me and the baby at such an important time in our lives. You’ll be a captain forever. But your family will be grown up and gone before you know it. Is that what you want?’
I let the thought of cancelling the trip flicker through my mind, but it came to a dead halt.
‘I never thought I’d get promoted like this. No warning, no nothing, just ‘bang’ here’s your wings. Go.’
‘That’s the way Preister works. You of all people should know that.’
‘It’ll mean more money for us, more-’
Her furious look silenced me.
‘You mean more climbing up from the bottom of the seniority list all over again. As first officer you were at the top, remember? All the choice trips. Welcome to just the opposite and you know it.’
She switched sides with the baby. ‘Go ahead and go, Captain Carter. Your crew is waiting for you, but I promise you, your family is not.’
As things turned out, Abby came down with a fever the morning they were supposed to leave Miami for Washington. Rosie offered to drive up to Miami from Key West and take care of her, so that Estelle and the baby could head up to Washington and then on to heaven, too, I hoped and prayed.
Ava said, ‘I’m waiting for your answer.’
‘To what?’
‘To how it felt to be a captain at last.’
I thought about her question. ‘Ever read Tale of Two Cities?’
‘Sure.’
‘It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.’’
A huge hand holding a plate filled with food appeared between us and stopped everything.
Orlando said, ‘Luncheon is served, madam. The same for you, captain?’
‘Sure.’
‘Make it two, Ziggy.’
‘Coming right up.’
During one of our refueling stops, Orlando and Ziggy had raided a grocery store for lunch fixings. Right after takeoff, Ziggy began concocting a dizzying picnic lunch of thick corned beef sandwiches, cold chicken pieces, potato salad, pickles, olives, and cheese. He did it with flair; the sandwiches neatly quartered and pinned with festive toothpicks, the potato salad arranged just so alongside the pickles and olives. Even cloth napkins.
I said to him, ‘Your wife must love having you around.’
‘Don’t have one.’
‘Your girlfriend then.’
‘No sir.’ ‘Those Hollywood ladies don’t know what they’re missing. Where’d you learn to cook?’
‘At my mother’s knee. God rest her soul.’
Ava said, ‘She’s still alive, and so’s your father.’
‘Pays to plan ahead.’
‘That’s morbid.’
‘Better safe than sorry.’
I said, ‘Where do they live?’
‘Brooklyn, thank God. If it had been Manhattan, I’d be praying for real.’
‘They survived, then.’
‘Yes, which is more than I can say for my grandparents back in Germany. They’re Jewish and it’s a living hell for them. Yellow stars on their shoulders, friends getting arrested in the middle of the night, whole families disappearing without a trace. We’re trying to get them over here, but they can’t get visas.’
‘Why not?’
He sighed. ‘It’s a long story that I don’t want to tell.’
We finished the rest of the long water hop to Apalachicola in silence, each of us lost in thought and our ears numbed by the constant engine drone. I let Ava take the wheel to get some multi-engine hours in her log book, while I scanned the instrument panel for signs of mechanical trouble, and out the windows for Nazi compliance fighters. I doubted they’d be patrolling this far out in the Gulf of Mexico, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
Fortunately, nature was on our side: puffy cumulus and high cirrus clouds were starting to pile up, created by a low pressure system sweeping in from the northwest. If trouble turned up we could duck inside the clouds and hide. By my calculations, we had a day or so more of decent flying before the high pressure system surrendered to the low, and the endless cycle of sun, clouds, and rain, would repeat itself.
I said, ‘Be nice to have a chart instead of just a heading.’
‘Ziggy, toss me my flight bag,’ she shouted.
Moments later he handed up a thin tan briefcase.
‘Look in the back,’ Ava said. You’ll find a New Orleans sectional. I use it a lot.’
‘Why?’
‘My family’s from there, remember?’
I poked around inside. The normal pilot’s tools: pencil, plotter, whiz wheel, log book, maps, and to my surprise, instrument approach plates too. It’s one thing to be a fair weather flyer, but to be trapped inside the clouds, unable to see anything, relying completely on your plane’s instruments to get you safely on the ground, that takes a true aviator.
‘You got an instrument ticket?’
She laughed. ‘Barely, but yes.’
I unfolded the map. ‘Lady, you are full of surprises.’
Ava said, ‘Lake Salvador’s southwest of New Orleans. Got it?’
I located the kidney-shaped area of water easily.
‘See that island about three quarters of the way up?’ she said. ‘That’s Couba Island. Our destination.’
‘No nightlife for you in the ‘Big Easy,’ huh?’
‘Next time you visit New Orleans, I promise.’
‘No thanks. Invitations at gunpoint aren’t my style.’
‘Sorry about that. I was afraid you’d refuse.’
‘I still can.’
She shot me a look. I shrugged my shoulders. ‘But I won’t. Besides, I need to collect on the bonus you promised for finding the gold.’
‘There’s a lot more than a bonus waiting for you down there.’
‘Like what?’
She pulled the pin from the control column and swung it over to me.
‘You’ll find out.’
We picked up a tailwind that increased our groundspeed. A relief because if we hadn’t we would have had to land before nightfall. As it turned out, the lights of New Orleans were starting to come on as we passed over the city at three thousand feet. I reached to turn on my navigation lights to avoid collisions but thought better of it. I didn’t want the Nazis sniffing my tail, especially with what we were carrying.
North of the city, Lake Pontchartrain was a vast, indigo blue nothingness in the gathering twilight. On the south side of New Orleans, Lake Salvador looked the same, only smaller. Couba Island sat crosswise near the top, its marshy surface laced with hundreds of glistening rivulets spread across the land like slug trails, filled with God knows what kind of critters, most of them more than happy to have you for dinner.
I’m no stranger to Louisiana, but to be honest, I’ve spent more time flying over it than being in it. Like Florida, it’s got its share of heat, humidity and humanity, all bunched up together, itching, eating, laughing and loving. But where Floridians caper about, doing such things in the sunshine, I find Louisianans are much happier doing them at night. It’s almost as if they can see in the dark better than
we can. And what they see is blurry, with no sharp edges, soft and easy, and always filled with high drama and great romance.
I have a theory about that. Just a theory, mind you. While the east coast of Florida gets pounded by the Atlantic, by contrast, its west coast opens out to the glittering, quiet, Gulf of Mexico that just sits there in all its flat, watery glory. I think it’s the Gulf itself that causes this relaxed spirit in Louisianans, who on the surface may appear sultry and stupid, but underneath sly and cunning creatures alert to the slightest sign of danger, but content in the meantime to loll about, toothpick in teeth, grits on the griddle until it turns up. Life’s too short as it is, and if you’re a Louisianan, you’re not going to do anything to speed things up.
I said, ‘You’re from around here, right?
‘Born and bred. Momma was living in Georgia, but she moved back to be closer to her family after daddy died.’
‘How old were you when that happened?’
‘Oh, he died long before I was born.’
She cut off my question by with a quick laugh. ‘I’m adopted. Momma never had kids with daddy. He was way too old for that when they married. Anyhow - look quick - at your nine o’clock and you’ll see the top of our house.’
Too late. The failing light revealed only the trees and dense underbrush that covered the island, hiding the ground from view.
‘Landing zone’s on the south side,’ she said. ‘Make your base turn to the north at five hundred feet. When we turn final, I’ll flash your landing lights - where’s the switch? - never mind, got it.’
‘Hang on back there,’ I warned. ‘We’re heading down.’
I pulled the plane into a thirty degree bank to line us up for the crosswind leg.
‘Light’s fading fast,’ I said. ‘Got to put her down soon.’
‘Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.’
‘What do you know that I don’t?’
‘Turning final are we?’
‘We are now.’
The island tilted to right as the plane tilted to the left. Just as I leveled the wings, Ava reached up and flicked the landing lights. Thanks to my Pan Am training, I’m as fluent in Morse code as I am Spanish, and quickly recognized her signal A...V...A, twice in quick succession.
In answer, the black void ahead blossomed into twin rows of underwater landing lights glowing just for us. Captain Fatt couldn’t have done a better job himself.
‘What the hell kind of setup have you got going down there?’
‘We ain’t whistling Dixie, I can tell you that.’
The moment we landed the underwater lights flickered out, replaced by the dark, hot gloom of a mangrove swamp, for that’s what Couba Island was. Not an island with palm trees and volcanoes and pretty green hills with banana trees, but a series of narrow inlets, overhanging vines, marshy ground and mysterious figures darting here and there in the shadows of the approaching night.
‘Taxi down that inlet to your right.’
‘Can we fit?’
‘Trust me.’
Moments later the S-38 was swallowed up in the narrow confines of a waterway that, once past the initial vegetation opened up to be about two hundred feet across. I slowly taxied along its meandering course for half a mile and then spotted the faint blue wavering dot of a flashlight held by somebody standing on a narrow dock projecting out into the water.
‘Our tie-up?’ I said.
‘Follow the bouncing blue ball,’ Ava said.
The closer we got the more people I could make out standing there waiting. But it wasn’t easy. Dressed in dark grey uniforms and faces splotched with camouflage, they were more shadow-like than real.
‘Some welcoming committee.’
‘Don’t mess with them. Let me do all the talking.’
I cut the engines; Orlando stuck his head out of the boarding hatch and threw a line to one of the waiting men. He pulled us to the dock and made it fast. Ava was out of her seat and out of the plane before I had a chance to shut everything down. She moved like a panther; here one instant, gone the next in a lithe twist of hips and legs.
Her voice rang out loud and clear. ‘Unload the forward hold first, gentlemen. The rest is on the floor in the passenger compartment.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Where’s Thompson?’
‘Up with Miss Helen.’
‘The general?’
‘Due any minute.’
‘Captain Carter, you come with me. Mr. Diaz will stay here and supervise the unloading. Mr. Siegel will assist, won’t you Nathan?
Ziggy saluted. ‘Yes, boss.’
She turned to the guard. ‘When you’re finished, please escort these two gentlemen to the administration building.’
‘Yes ma’am.’
‘Any chow left?’
‘Plenty.’
‘Feed them well.’
She pointed into the darkness. ‘Captain, if you please?’
I followed her along the dock that widened the closer we got an impenetrable wall of twisted swamp vegetation. We passed through a narrow opening, and I had the sudden sensation of being in some kind of a military camp; armed men bustling here and there; some singly, some in groups, all moving in absolute, highly-disciplined silence.
‘Quite a setup you’ve got.’
Ava said nothing, just kept walking. We entered a grove of towering cottonwoods that dwarfed us.
‘Daddy planted these himself when he first came here.’
‘Must have had a lot of time on his hands.’
‘After the war every Johnny Reb did.’
‘‘But that was - I mean, your father fought in the Civil War?’
‘Alongside Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg. He was second in command.
General James Longstreet. Ever heard of him?’ I stopped walking. ‘You’re his daughter?’
‘One and the same.’
‘But how could you-’
‘I’m adopted, remember? Mamma didn’t meet the general until thirty years after the war. She was thirty-four when they got married. Daddy was seventy-six. That was back in 1897.’
‘Must have been some wedding.’
‘Drove her family wild. But she did it anyhow. Daddy died seven years later. From happiness, I’m certain. Anyhow, that’s when she adopted me. She always wanted a daughter and I always wanted a mom.’
‘She must be something.’
‘Eighty years old, and still packs a punch.’
The silvery-white columns of an antebellum mansion materialized in the middle of this mangrove-like island. Faint golden gleams of light glowed in the first floor windows.
‘Home sweet home in the summertime when I was growing up,’ Ava said. ‘Forty rooms, fifteen bedrooms, never did know how many bathrooms.’
‘I could use one right about now.’
She laughed and grabbed my hand. It was surprisingly warm and strong. ‘Meet mamma first.’
Some people look old. Others look eternal. Helen Dortch Longstreet was in the second category: short, trim, grey hair pulled back in a no- nonsense bun, a black dress trimmed in white lace, crystal-clear blue eyes, and a wide, friendly smile wrapped around a small cigar.
‘Smoke, Captain?’
‘No thank you, ma’am.’
‘Good for you. Nasty habit. Picked it up from the General and never put it down.’
‘I’ll have one momma, if you don’t mind.’
‘You know where they are, sugar.’
She waved in the direction of a bookcase that lined the entire side of a vast parlor and Ava went to fetch one from a humidor. What a place! Heavily draped windows, immense stuffed divans, chairs, and plaster- trimmed ceilings twenty feet high if they were a foot. I had lived in the south all my life, seen my share of plantation mansions from the outside, but never until this moment the insides of a real one, unless you count watching Gone with the Wind but that was just a movie set. This was the real thing.
Mrs. Longstreet crossed over to a dark mahogany brea
kfront and swung down a shelf to reveal at least thirty different bottles of liquor. The light from the chandelier sparkled off them like diamonds in a jewelry store.
‘Something to wet your whistle, captain?’
‘Bourbon if you’ve got it.’
She gave me a long look. ‘It’s about all I’ve got, son. Except for a little gin. The general likes his gin.’
Ava blew out a thin stream of smoke. ‘Uncle Georgie’s here?’
Her mother wearily closed her eyes. ‘Two days so far. Feels like two weeks.’
‘I need to see him.’
‘He’s on his way. Rest assured he knows the exact moment you arrived, down to the last second.’
She handed me my drink, we touched glasses and tasted.
‘Nothing gets past the beady little eyes of General George S. Patton.’
‘General Patton is here?’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘After the Neutrality Act, he got tired of twiddling his thumbs at the Pentagon waiting for orders that he knew would never come, so he took a leave of absence.’
Ava said, ‘To join the Sons of Liberty.’
Her mother laughed. ‘George didn’t exactly join them. He’s a general, remember? He commands the whole lot of them now, and they love it.’
‘How many?’ I said.
She waved her cigar in the direction of the window. ‘In Louisiana, maybe five or six thousand by the last count. Mississippi’s somewhere near ten, Arkansas I can’t recall, but whatever the number is, it’s growing fast.’
‘That’s one hell of a militia.’
She laughed. ‘Don’t let the general hear you call it that. He prefers ‘army.’’
The tramp of heavy boots coming closer and closer, the door swung open and in marched General Patton. I had seen movie newsreels during the Louisiana War Games of 1940, when he outfoxed the ‘enemy’ forces invading the Gulf Coast. His armored tanks ran rings around the infantry, hitting hard and moving fast, with umpires scrambling in their wake, waving flags, calling soldiers ‘dead.’
Ava flew into his arms. He embraced her quickly, but kept his eyes on me the whole time. When she let go he said, ‘This the man?’