Barnstorm

by Page, Wayne;

  Crash and Hooker came to attention, offering salutes to Bomber. Bomber returned the salutes and gave a thumbs-up.

  Deb clapped her hands like a bubbling schoolgirl who had just been asked to the senior prom by the high-school quarterback. Buzz circled his hand in a wind up motion. Crank her up.

  The Stearman engine came to life and sputtered. Exhaust and smoke spewed from the seven pistons as the propeller spun and stopped. Even Crash and Hooker jumped as the engine backfired. Bomber tried again. The PT-17 spat out a sound that was almost symphonic in its full-throated roar. Only the owner of a Harley-Davidson could fully appreciate this sound. Smooth and even. The biplane vibrated and shook on the tarmac. It was as though a sleeping beast had been wakened after a long hibernation. Everyone jumped and cheered. Buzz raised his right hand above his head and circled, then pointed to the runway.

  Deb raised her hands as though in the front car of a roller coaster. Bomber eased the throttle forward. He eyed the fluttering gauges on his instrument panel. All looked in order. Tires that had been flat for thirty years slowly inched, rolled forward.

  “Most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard,” Crash said.

  Hooker agreed with, “Better than the Harley we rebuilt. Detroit, ’61.”

  “Detroit, right,” Crash said. “Wasn’t it in? No, you’re right. Harley, Detroit, 1961.”

  “Really?” as Buzz shook his head. This was the first time he’d ever heard the Liar Flyers agree on anything.

  Bomber had accelerated to the end of the runway, his first pass a success. The engine sounded solid. As agreed, the RPM hovered at nine-hundred. Everyone hooted and hollered as the plane lumbered toward the other end of the mile-long runway. As it stopped and positioned for the final, higher RPM taxi test, Buzz walked over to Crash and Hooker. Standing between them in a group hug, Buzz said, “Great job, guys. Super.”

  Bomber started his final pass. Deb once again had roller coaster, raised arms. Bomber was focused, left hand on the throttle. As the biplane gained speed, the wheels bounced and settled back on the runway, then bounced again. Still in his group hug with Crash and Hooker, Buzz furled his brow, puzzled. Buzz removed his arms from the group hug and shaded his eyes as he stared down the runway. He started a slow, then more brisk walk forward.

  Crash and Hooker, experienced pilots, even though that experience was thirty-years stale, locked eyes. Had they been in the cockpit with Bomber, they would have confirmed that he was pulling the joystick back between his legs. Buzz stopped, arms fully extended as he watched the biplane bounce twice. Arms still fully extended, in disbelief he turned to face Hooker and Crash.

  The plane took off!

  Hooker and Crash dropped their jaws, shrugged, as if–not me.

  The left wing dipped dangerously low, close to leaving yellow paint from the wingtip on the runway as Bomber banked the PT-17 into a steady climb. The liberated old biplane wobbled as if the pilot were eighty years old and hadn’t flown in three decades. The Stearman that had trained American farm-boy heroes to battle Goering’s Luftwaffe took on new life. Like a caged tiger freed for the first time in years, the biplane thundered into the clouds. It wasn’t clear whether Bomber or the PT-17 was in control. Almost as if it had a mind of its own, definitely a spirit now on a rampage, the restored beast did a gentle roll as it gained altitude.

  The white-knuckled passenger tightened her grip on the cockpit supports on the fuselage at her sides. Deb lost her grip on self-control. Her blood-curdling screams were drowned out by the surge of the seven-cylinder, air-cooled radial engine. Even Deb couldn’t compete with the two hundred twenty horsepower monster that was hurtling her tassel-high, or more appropriately tassel-low, skimming the surrounding cornfields at ninety miles per hour. As the biplane swooped low over the hangar, the rear wheel clipped the wind sock that now trailed in tatters behind the blitzing blur of fabric, wire, and struts.

  Deb stomped her feet on the cockpit floor like a driving instructor trying to stop Louise from driving Thelma over a deep canyon cliff. In her moment of panic, Deb forgot Buzz’s admonition to not touch the foot bars. While Deb had flown with Buzz on numerous occasions, she had never been at the controls. Without any instruction or flight training, who would have known that quickly stomping her right foot would send a specific instruction to the plane? The adrenalin coursing through Deb’s veins certainly gave her more strength than the ancient old ex-barnstormer seated behind her. Try as he might, Bomber couldn’t override Deb’s control of the surprisingly responsive biplane.

  At this point, in most air shows, the aerobatic pilot releases white smoke, announcing the finale. The only white smoke coming from the PT-17 emanated from Deb’s ears. Her eyes were huge as she swayed left-to-right, reacting to her own, involuntary guidance of the plane.

  Bomber needed to tame the beast. Either the PT-17 beast or the screaming beast in the seat in front of him. For every one of Deb’s actions, it took all of his ingrained flying skills to employ a counter-action. Even the Red Baron could not have kept this herky-jerky plane in his gunner sights. Pitch. Yaw. Up. Down. Bomber finally succeeded in initiating a steep vertical climb. As Isaac Newton could have predicted, gravity would ultimately win this battle. At the peak of his climb, Bomber knew that Deb would experience close to zero ‘G’ force, thereby inducing a high probability that she would toss her cookies. As the old Stearman failed to defy gravity, paused, lifeless, it then tumbled backwards toward the earth in a death spiral. The plane fell like a rock. Mostly upside-down as it tumbled toward the tarmac. The desired effect was achieved. The blood rushed out of Deb’s brain. Dizzy, not quite blacking out, her feet slipped off the bars. Bomber was now the sole pilot of this plummeting hunk of antiquity.

  Spiraling toward the earth, Bomber hoped that Crash and Hooker had strung the wires between the struts correctly. While zero ‘G’ force had loosened Deb’s control as the unsuspecting pilot, the accelerating ‘G’ forces now speeding air over the double-stacked wings created the lift necessary to pull the one-ton biplane from its steep dive. Would it also pull the wings off the fuselage? Five seconds to that verdict.

  At full throttle, Bomber yanked the joy stick back between his legs. One cough from any one of the seven cylinders stroking below him, one backfire, he and Deb would be planted in a crater beneath a cornfield. There might be a tearful memorial service, but it wouldn’t be necessary to find a cemetery plot. He and Deb would share space six-feet-under next years’ corn crop. A shared grave, for eternity, with Deb. A shared grave, for eternity, with Bomber. They deserved each other.

  Bomber was an excellent mechanic, just as Buzz had said. The propeller whirled and hummed as it sliced through the September air. The Army Air Corps was right. If a student pilot can fly a Stearman, he can fly anything. It was like riding a bike. It all came back to Bomber. A reflex. Instinctive. He leveled off above the cornfield and swooped low over a nearby woods. The blood returned to Deb’s brain. She could almost snatch leaves from the tops of the trees.

  Bomber circled and waggled his wings to his shocked compatriots. One last pass as he settled the plane onto the runway. The chirp of the tires on the asphalt drowned out the screams emanating from the front seat. The waiting spectators sighed in unison as brows were wiped and nervous knees unbuckled. As the plane shuddered to a stop in front of the hangar, Bomber killed the engine. Crash, Hooker, and Trip restrained Buzz from charging and tearing Bomber limb-from-limb.

  Bomber, now standing on the tarmac, had assumed a triumphal stance. Buzz broke loose from his captors and made a beeline for Bomber. Deb, weak-kneed and wobbly, had succeeded in extricating herself from her cockpit prison and seat harness. This possessed queen bee buzzed her own beeline for Bomber. A Roller Derby elbow to his ribs, Deb knocked Buzz aside. While he would not actually rip Bomber apart, Buzz could offer no such assurance that Deb would not. Buzz grabbed Deb around her waist and lifted her off the ground. Legs kicking in the air, arms flailing, Deb s
creamed, “I’m gonna kill the jerk!”

  One hand on his hip, the other caressing the nose of the old Stearman, Bomber looked as though he were posing for a cover of The Saturday Evening Post. No one noticed the enormous wet spot on the crotch of his coveralls.

  No way could an eighty-year-old bladder defy the laws of physics.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “So, was it worth it?” Trip asked Bomber, whose head was buried in the engine of his glorious Stearman.

  Each on his own stepladder, on opposite sides of the PT-17 parked in the hangar, they were fine-tuning an engine that had performed like a true champion. Bomber moved one step higher to make eye contact with Trip and responded with a simple, “Yup.”

  Bomber tried a wink through a blackened eye that was partially covered by a gauze bandage circling his head. Looking like the losing rooster in a cockfight, he tightened a hex nut with a socket wrench. “Reminds me of that time I stole a kiss from Becky Thatcher. Back in 1943.”

  “Really, Tom Sawyer?” Trip challenged. “Even I know that.”

  “Were you there?”

  They exchanged smirks as they continued checking the biplane engine.

  Back to his hex nut, Bomber said, “Didn’t think so.”

  ☁ ☁ ☁

  Her back to the lunch counter, Deb would have taken issue with the Becky Thatcher kiss. A large mixing bowl cradled under her elbow, each stroke of the large wooden spoon assaulted the pancake batter as though Bomber’s face were the target of each stroke. Buzz, Hooker, and Crash, seated a not-so-safe distance away on the lunch counter stools, should have known better than to opine on the previous day’s happenings.

  Hooker, possessing the least modicum of judgment, started with, “Never thought I’d see the day.”

  Crash blathered, “Sallie Mae, 1947, Des Moines.”

  “Yup,” Hooker agreed.

  Buzz choked on his coffee at the feigned agreement on something so obviously irrelevant. Deb was within striking distance. Couldn’t these old fools see that she was looking for an excuse to pounce on someone? Anyone? Them?

  It was Crash who crossed the line first, “So, Deb, was it worth it?”

  Her whipping of the pancake batter stopped as she whipped around, ready to whip the closest old geezer she could find. Deb’s face revealed injuries matching those of Bomber. Her black eye was so black it was purple. Her other, non-purple eye was covered with a patch, masking the fact that it was in worse shape than the purple eye. She looked like a pirate too drunk to say Argh.

  “Darn right it was worth it,” she screeched as she punctuated each word with a shake of her battered, wooden spoon. A huge blob of pancake batter arched skyward off the wagging spoon and splatted on the lunch counter in front of Crash. “Next time, I’ll tar and feather that old buzzard.”

  Never knowing when to keep his mouth shut, Crash asked, “Aren’t buzzards already feathered?”

  Elbows on the lunch counter, spoon ready to Roto-Root Crash’s sinuses, Deb warned, “Ya wanna piece of me, Crash?”

  Buzz, hands raised in surrender, slid off his stool and retreated. The two ancient combatants did less sliding, and more stumbling, in their retreat. All had seen the wisdom of skedaddling while their legs were still attached.

  “Cowards,” Deb accused. “Now git.”

  Crash, the last one escaping to the safety of the hangar, stuck his head back in the cafe with, “Hey, Deb. Let us know when yer ready for another test flight.”

  Deb whirled and threw her pancake javelin across the cafe. Crash ducked to safety just in time as the wooden spoon went splat, and stuck to the hangar door.

  There would be no pancakes on the Sky Gypsy Café menu that day.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Hooker swiped his finger across the tip of Crash’s nose. “She got ya good.”

  “A little pancake batter ain’t gonna hurt,” Crash grinned. “At least I don’t have a black eye like Bomber.”

  From across the hangar, Buzz shouted, “Hey, come on. We’re on a deadline here.”

  It took forever for them to agree, but the Liar Flyers selected names for each of the three biplanes. The first test biplane had been named Willin’ Nellie, after some floozy barmaid they all remembered fondly from St. Louis. Or was it Kansas City? No matter, after yesterday’s test flight with Deb, it was unanimously agreed that a change to Screamin’ Deb had been earned. Bomber was squinting his one good eye to apply the final red brush strokes finalizing the name change. The flaming, fire-engine red paint was a perfect match to Deb’s beet-red face as she attacked Bomber the day before.

  Ole Red and 38 Dee wouldn’t get their christening paint nomenclature for another week. Hard to believe that the Liar Flyers were almost finished with the rehab of all three Stearman biplanes. When Trip had bailed from Buzz’s crashing jump plane three months ago, these biplanes were ready for the trash heap.

  Covered with tarps and spider webs, home to raccoons and mice, tires as flat as pancakes, Buzz had been ready to sell them off. He still might sell them. Especially with the restorations, each plane was worth close to a hundred thousand dollars. That was a bridge yet to be crossed.

  The entire Highland and Clinton County communities wanted in on the action. Buzz had to continually remind Deb that a lot of the paying traffic through her Sky Gypsy Café was due to the free entertainment provided by the constant blathering of the Liar Flyers. Fathers would bring their young sons by for a hot dog, when what the kids really wanted was to hang around airplanes and hear old stunt pilot stories. The fathers would roll their eyes and have to explain words that were inappropriate for young, tender ears.

  Buzz was cautious and didn’t like people wandering aimlessly in his hangar. There’s a lot of dangerous stuff around airplanes. Walking into an invisible, spinning propeller could ruin anyone’s day. For the past month, he finally gave in and let the older kids, those ten or above, watch the biplane rehab process IF, a mighty BIG IF, they were accompanied by an adult. And they had to stay behind the ropes. He moved all three biplanes into a corner near the Sky Gypsy Café and set up a few folding chairs.

  One thing led to another, until each Liar Flyer had adopted a couple of teenage interns. Were it the 1960’s or 70’s, these eighteen-year-old hotshots would have been at the drag strip, working on cars. Now they were elbow-to-elbow with eighty-year-old ex-stunt pilots. Every day Bomber was assisted by an eager young mechanic. Hooker led the structural work; struts, wires, fuselage. He made sure that the ailerons responded to pilot instructions from the cockpit. Crash knew linen and cotton; a good thing to know on an old biplane. It was a Google-proficient intern who clued Crash in on the new Ceconite 102 fabrics that would update the tattered linen and fabric wings. It took a full day for Crash’s eyes to uncross when the intern showed him the websites where they ordered the Butyrate Dope and paints. Part-time seamster, full-time painter, and always the instigator, the three planes glistened and shone because of Crash’s artistry. And the intern’s computer savvy.

  Buzz continued to stress his most important motivator; his promise to give all of the Liar Flyers recertification flight training. Bomber had been grounded after his spontaneous spin around the airstrip with Deb, but Buzz promised to lift the suspension AFTER the last two biplanes were proven air worthy AND if the Liar Flyers behaved.

  Upon hearing Buzz’s latest ploy, Deb was furious. She stomped into the hangar and challenged Buzz, “Have you lost your mind?”

  “Mornin’, sweetheart.”

  “Don’t mornin’ sweetheart me,” as she poked Buzz in the chest with her index finger. “Ya really gonna trust those has-beens with expensive biplanes?”

  Buzz backed up an inch or two, done instinctively when someone gets in your face. “Settle down. Bomber actually handled that plane pretty well-”

  A sentence that Deb didn’t let Buzz finish as she shouted, “--Pretty well? Pretty well? You weren’t
within an inch of yer life. Men. Worthless. Frickin’ testosterone!”

  “Promise of flyin’ again has them stoked,” Buzz said, convincing only himself. “Besides, most of their stories are true.”

  “True?” Deb lost it. “Nothin’ but a bunch of blowhards.”

  As Deb marched back to her cafe, she overheard Buzz say, “At least she hasn’t cut me off.”

  “Heard that,” she huffed over her shoulder.

  “Yet,” Buzz whimpered.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Trip needed a Gerty fix. It had been two weeks. Plus, he had news. While he wasn’t overly apprehensive about seeing Gerty again, his return to his airstrip home had happened rather abruptly. Granted, not as abruptly as his parachute arrival at Gerty’s. Buzz accepted Trip’s request for an escort. The thirty-minute drive to Gerty’s was mostly consumed by talk of the upcoming air show. This was the news Trip wanted to share with Gerty.

  “This is it,” Trip said, as Buzz turned into Gerty’s gravel lane. As Buzz eyed the quaint Victorian farmhouse, white picket fence, and red barn, he quizzed, “You did all this?”

  Embarrassed, Trip pointed to Gerty, busy hoeing in the garden, “There she is.”

  Maggie straightened her apron as she bounded off the kitchen-side porch toward Buzz’s pickup.

  Trip announced his presence with, “The cafe ran out of eggs.”

  Buzz complimented Gerty as he remarked, “You’re right, Trip. This is a nice farm.”

  “Not for long,” Gerty lamented. She wiped her brow as she leaned her hoe against the garden gate. “Do I get a hug, or you just going to stand there?”

  The ice broken, Trip and Gerty embraced warmly.

  Maggie had now waddled to an attack position near Buzz. Trip rescued Buzz as he offered Maggie a genuine hug as well.