“Maybe,” Father Danko said. “But even if they’re play-acting, it’s troubling. And there’s room for advancement.” Father Danko clasped his hands and made his case. “You saw the young woman. Obviously doing drugs. Other young people have made similar statements and some have become violent with their parents or the police. So, we took them to our one and only clinic in town and found several kinds of drugs in them. One woman kept screaming that she was going to burn us like the sun.”
Cricket felt a jolt, a moment of recognition. She had greatly enjoyed shooting and cutting up the teen. Her loss of Uncle Tommy allowed her to walk away from civilization. She wasn’t suffering from a lack of video games and cell phone calls but a massive dose of self-righteousness that lifted her above all norms. She feared herself. She felt ill thinking of her connection with the girl outside the church and those making sacrifices in the woods and her own savage fury.
That night Cricket dreamt that the sun was setting on the men and women of the World War II era. It was a whitish sun near the horizon, where innumerable dramas of war and peace were being played out across the sky. Someone spoke to her that Uncle Tommy was one of the last fighters from that fine generation to pass on, one of the giants on the horizon.
19
Small Band of Crazies
That morning Fritz had introduced his parents: silver-haired Judy Holaday, mid-fifties, athletic, tall as her husband, George, who looked every bit the trim handsome father of Fritz. After a lot of discussion with the entire crew on the likelihood of some goddess death cult emerging from weeks of teen boredom, the sight of a grass airfield and the two P-51 Mustangs made Cricket smile.
She and Fritz had taken his old surplus jeep to a farmer’s pasture about five miles northwest of Little Falls. At the west end of the field, parked alongside a stand of large oaks, sat an early sixties Chevy pickup, an ancient-looking fuel truck, and what appeared to be an old VW hippie van in green camouflage. The mechanics were going over both airplanes and had dropped the bottom cowling on Frank’s P-51.
Fritz’s plane looked ready to go.
“You know, you’re really lucky we had this two-seater at Wright-Patt,” he said. “Otherwise, I’d have to take my chances sending you up alone.”
“No problem either way,” Cricket said with confidence.
On the preflight, Fritz stood between the wing and the nose and pointed to the areas protected by armor:
“Back of the pilot seat; between the engine and firewall; behind the spinner; in front of the coolant tank. And a bulletproof glass windshield made from a single piece of plastic for great visibility in all directions. Protects the pilot from head-on fire. And the lesson is?”
“Don’t flinch when you’re being shot at.”
“Good. You just passed today’s oral exam.”
After the preflight, Fritz climbed in first, taking the back seat, and stood up in the cockpit watching Cricket nimbly lower herself into the forward seat. A snug fit that still allowed her to turn to the six o’clock position and search for enemy aircraft or make eye contact with her handsome instructor. Fritz told her they’d keep the bubble canopy open until ready for takeoff, and showed her how to operate the hand crank on her right to slide it closed.
“There’s some nasty rumors about takeoff in this bird.”
“Inform me, Captain Holaday.”
“None of them are true.”
She smiled her response and shoved the shoulder straps down into the buckle.
Fritz said, “You know to ease the throttle in. We’re very light, and you’ll get airborne quick. There’s fourteen hundred horses in that Rolls-Royce engine on takeoff.”
Cricket nodded, trying to remember the biggest single-engine plane she had ever flown and its horsepower, while acquainting herself with the cockpit switches and flight instruments, which were grouped together on the left side of the panel for easy scanning.
“Wow, never had a gunsight before.” She turned in her seat to see Fritz: the right guy in the right airplane with a no-nonsense delivery to instruct her through every stage of the checkout.
Fritz said, “Yeah, K-14 gyroscopic sight allows for target lead and bullet drop. I don’t expect dogfights, so we’ll use the fixed sight for ground targets. Just put the cross on the target. Simple, right?”
“Sure, let me master flying the Mustang today; tomorrow I’ll be mowing down savages.”
They donned their David Clark headsets with intercom, and she read the before-engine-start checklist and switched on the fuel boost pump and primed the cold engine for several seconds. She hit the spring-loaded toggle start switch, and the four-bladed prop cycled a few times and fired, revving to idle. The engine’s rumble was bone deep. The exhaust stacks ten feet in front of her would have murdered her ears without the headsets, leaving Fritz to have to swat her with a rolled-up magazine for communication, like instructors once did in open-cockpit biplanes.
His first instruction was to go easy on the brakes and power during taxi, with the P-51’s tendency to nose over.
Two of the proudest people always rooting for her were not along the grass waving and smiling, but she waved back anyway, and made sure no tears escaped. “Get your head on straight” was one of her dad’s favorite sayings, and that she did, S-turning the plane in order to see ahead. They taxied to the east end of the pasture in order to take off to the west, into the wind. There wasn’t much to hit, but she dutifully S-turned for visibility, a real necessity in most tail draggers. While she taxied, Fritz talked.
“You know how to fly tail-wheel planes. So the basics are the same for takeoff and landing. With the tall grass, soft-field takeoff, twenty degrees of flaps. Get her off the ground early; she’ll build speed quickly. Solid climb, gear up. At five hundred feet, start the flaps up.”
Trees to the south and the pasture rising on the north kept the field hidden from the main road. An apple orchard and a farmhouse were directly in her flight path at roughly five thousand feet. She expected to be off the ground in less than half that distance. She stopped and finished the checklist and cranked the canopy closed.
Turning right to line up in the middle of the field, Fritz cautioned: “Smoothly bring in the throttle to forty inches. Don’t rush, but don’t be timid. When the tail’s up, advance the throttle to sixty inches. You’ll need a bit more rudder. Don’t overcontrol. When you raise the gear and flaps, she gets tail-heavy. If you’re slow during retraction, you’ll stall. Departure stalls are a nightmare. So, on that happy note, you’re cleared for takeoff.”
On takeoff she added more right rudder, as the asymmetric thrust of the prop turning clockwise wanted to push the nose left.
“Keep that power coming,” Fritz said. “Watch it when you raise the tail!”
Though she didn’t track perfectly straight and slightly swerved, Cricket was soon airborne and climbing at a rate she had never seen on any vertical speed indicator.
“Left turn, climb to three thousand, and level off.”
She followed the instructions and was late in both leveling and bringing the power back, overshooting her altitude. She was accustomed to a stick instead of a wheel for controlling a plane, but this stick operated a plane with a wild horse’s pedigree.
“Head to the lake.”
She banked east and aimed for the Kim Tam reservoir, named after the developer’s favorite dogs. Cricket had used this lake for practice and now whipped through the skies practicing three-hundred-and-sixty-degree steep turns, climbs and descents, and finally slow flight, which she managed with a bit of grunting and swearing under her breath as the plane lumbered close to the stall speed, like a drunk weaving and overcompensating while trying to walk.
In her first power-off stall, she recovered too soon. She didn’t want to put the Mustang through a full stall and lose control. The mushy, unresponsive controls in any plane felt like paralysis. But Fritz made her do it again. The right wing dropped sharply, and she relaxed the stick and picked up the wing with the
opposite rudder. She recovered back to level flight, speed two fifty, baptized in sweat.
“I’ve got it,” Fritz said, taking over the controls, rolling into a steep bank and climbing. “We were just shot at. A bullet or two struck behind me. We’re okay. You’ll get to see how the guns work. I’ve got the airplane.”
“But the gunsight is in front of me.”
“No big deal. I’m planning a very general, kick-ass response. Remind them they shouldn’t play with matches.”
He rapidly climbed to four thousand feet, heading east, and then began a knife-edge descending left turn to the north and continued a steep bank over the five-mile-long lake.
Diving toward the west shore, Cricket watched the airspeed quickly push past three hundred miles per hour. She looked through the gunsight, then out the windscreen, but saw nothing. Sweat burned her eyes and she was glad Fritz was at the controls. At a thousand feet above the water, the Mustang in a shallower dive, soon to be waterskiing, she finally saw movement—a few cars and motorcycles and a long dock came into view. Less than a mile away, Fritz fired one long burst. Cricket heard the thunder of six machine guns and glanced at the gunsight and saw the cross touching the shore. Several cars were parked but she saw no weaponry. The few people standing on car roofs jumped and ran.
Fritz pulled up smoothly from the dive in a climbing right turn and aimed for Lake Erie.
“Wow, this is one horse I can learn to love,” Cricket said.
“Your airplane. Now let’s see you land, after we fly away from the field in the wrong direction for about ten miles. I don’t want them figuring out where we park and shop.”
After their scenic cruise, Fritz started a steady stream of instruction once she entered the traffic pattern.
“Flaps to fifty degrees on final; one hundred and ten on short final, and let’s go for a wheel landing. Now when the tail finally comes down, keep the stick back; that’ll keep it down and the tailwheel steerable. You know all this; I’m just cutting through the fog that comes with a new airplane.”
Cricket liked hearing the basics with the landing only minutes away.
“For a go-around, bring the throttle up smoothly to thirty-five inches manifold pressure and fly the plane, then increase to forty-five and watch your airspeed. Pilots have been known to roll on their backs adding power too quickly and slow on the controls. Get climbing and then gear up, flaps up in stages.”
On Cricket’s first two approaches she went around. Too high on the first, too fast on the second. On the third attempt she bounced and danced on the pedals to keep the Mustang pointed straight ahead. The plane eased into a slow taxi but not her heart. It was still accelerating. Fritz had her crank open the canopy and shut down near the hippie van.
“Good first flight,” he said, running through the checklist, ensuring all electrical equipment and battery switches were off. “We’ll get a postflight in soon. But first we talk to the team about our crazy cousins along the shores of Kim Tam. Maybe just drunks having fun.”
The postflight showed two bullet holes, small caliber, below the aft fuel tank.
“I think we’re fine here for a few weeks,” Fritz told Frank after a five-minute meeting with the mechanics.
“We’re running out of remote sites in northeastern Ohio,” Frank said.
“Anytime we’re up, we’ll scout for new places. There’s still that site just south of I-90. With Cricket’s diversions north and east, I expect the more ambitious to be looking for us somewhere in Pennsylvania or Canada.”
“I’ll scout for a new home, too,” Frank said. “Rumor has it we’ll get down South when the National Guard gets Cleveland under control. Plenty of places down there to set up shop.”
In the jeep headed to Little Falls, Cricket asked, “Where down South?”
“Somewhere along the Ohio River. My grandfather’s outside Marietta. Big farm and a T-hangar for his Cessna 180. That would be ideal. That’s if he’ll have us for a while. I’ve contacted the authorities and they’re going to relay his grandson’s request. It’s beautiful down there, but a lot more places for the bad guys to hide—rolling hills, sparsely populated outside the river cities and towns. My orders are to stop the chaos.”
Cricket could see him laughing at himself, pondering his own words. He lifted his head and blew off the enormity of the job, saying, “People need protection. We’re the flying wing. Let’s get back out here tomorrow so you can practice. Work towards soloing and handling that firepower.”
Fritz’s words made the pilot in Cricket soar. The woman lingering on those remarkable blue eyes and dimpled smile also soared.
PART II
A COUGAR FOR THE AGES
20
The Brazilian
Early evening, a few hours later after cooking and cleaning, Cricket and Sister Marie took a walk in town. Sister still wore the gun.
“I’m all dewy around Fritz,” Cricket said, taking Sister’s arm.
“Please—”
“Keep my head on straight?”
“Yes—”
“My dad’s phrase.”
“He’d have something to say, seeing you fire wildly on all eight cylinders.”
“Actually, the Mustang’s twelve, Sister. The Barracuda’s eight.”
They crossed the bridge with the waterfalls on their right. More people were out walking with their kids in the park across the street. A handful carried rifles.
A few shops were open. Some owners still accepted cash, most others were now in bartering mode.
“Fritz said there was a little bar-restaurant where we could get something to drink, and they have a really good string quartet that plays often. I guess it’s a great time to play an acoustic instrument.”
“Cricket, the last time you fell quickly in love it turned out disastrous.”
“I know. And what I did I’ll regret forever.”
“These are terrible times, but I want you to be happy, to find happiness. Just exercise some restraint.”
“After the abortion I decided never to have sex again until I married.”
“That’s wonderful, virtuous, but is it realistic? Especially now, with so much uncertainty. I wouldn’t blame you for seeking that human warmth, that beautiful connection.”
Cricket stopped on the street.
“Sister Marie, you are full of surprises, like Dad always said.”
“I’m not talking bacchanalia because you sense the world is coming to end. But maybe certain moments, strong passions, can’t be ignored, especially with such feeling. And he is a good man.”
“Easy on the eyes.”
“Yes, very easy on the eyes; easy on the soul, too. He’s not full of himself. He’s a good man through and through. Now I’m not encouraging you to do something you’re not ready for. Please keep your head and heart in some kind of alignment. You need to open your heart to God’s mercy, keep praying for His forgiveness to touch that deepest part in you. God forgave you for having that abortion. Time to accept His mercy.”
“I can feel His mercy. Yet I resist it.” She felt it once as sunlight on her skin. Peace touched her, dissolved her distress, but anxiety moved back in the next day.
“Sister, this peace from God doesn’t erase what I did. I stopped another soul from coming into being.”
They both stopped and looked at each other. Old wounds such as this one couldn’t be dispelled by rote prayers of forgiveness. Cricket did pray. But she prayed for a deeper understanding, wanting to believe, to be shown by God that this new soul hadn’t been extinguished for all time.
Sister Marie took Cricket’s hands and brought them together. She kissed them and pulled her close for a hug that lasted until the deep hurt was just a dull ache. The joy of knowing Sister Marie, this short little nun with the kindest smile ever bestowed upon a human being, further eased the pain.
Alongside the falls were steps leading to a walkway along the river and to the restaurant. They escaped the day’s heat, descending into sh
ade where cool waters struck the rocks. They took a table outside and the waitress said they accepted cash, mentioning that her one supplier did as well. They were open only a couple of days in a row and would shut down unexpectedly. The waitress suggested to the boss they dump the old name—The Bistro Pub—and rename it The Hunter-Gatherer Pub. The owner relied on local produce and what fishermen and hunters could provide.
They were seated and brought glasses of water, and Cricket ordered wine. They were both surprised by the water and asked the waitress about such a precious resource delivered without their requesting it. “I guess we’re lucky in Little Falls,” the young woman said, shuffling off in her leopard slippers.
The sound of falling water; the light trying to make its way down the falls; the dark, wet sandstone in shadow were peaceful, even restful. Cricket fantasized about the world at street level back to normal with the expectation of the town lit up beautifully at night for families to stroll about. That fantasy shattered when the woman from the forest emerged from the restaurant in a floor-length white dress and gold belt. She was smiling like she had expected them and dragged a chair over to sit down.
Cricket stared at the woman, whose brilliant white dress seemed to glow.
A tatted Latino man rushed toward their table, mumbling under his breath in Spanish, and the woman stopped him with an outstretched arm. Fully ripped in his sleeveless bodybuilding T-shirt, he glared at Cricket and looked to the supermodel for instruction. She lightly touched his shoulder, and he went to gangster-at-ease and dragged over another chair.
“You always dress like a Vogue model?” Cricket quizzed.
“I’ve been dressing up since I was a little girl. All-white suits me, especially on hot days.”
The woman turned toward Sister and sang their names:
“Sister Marie, or shall I say a Nun with a Gun, and Emily Cricket Hastings, who always is well-armed and dripping with beauty, so glad to make your acquaintance.” She offered her hand, and it appeared golden to Cricket. Every exposed surface of skin, especially her face, was flawless, a supernormal Sharon Stone with glossy red lips. Cricket wouldn’t shake her hand, unlike Sister Marie, who did so unflinchingly.
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