The Floatplane Notebooks

by Clyde Edgerton

  THE FLOATPLANE NOTEBOOKS

  a novel by

  CLYDE EDGERTON

  Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

  1988

  For Catherine

  When I die hallelujah by and by

  I’ll fly away.

  WALKER COPELAND m. CAROLINE TAYLOR

  PART ONE

  1956 – 1959

  1956

  NORALEE

  The dogs breathe in my face. They come to me and breathe in my face and turn around and run, then another one comes up and does it. They don’t jump on me. If they do, Papa hits them with a piece of water hose.

  Mama is pretty. I sleep with my head in her lap while we drive in the car in the night to go see Uncle Hawk. We woke up and started while cars still had their lights on and then in one corner of the sky it got lighter and lighter until the sun came up like a big orange.

  My favorite dog is Ben because he is brown and white and that makes him kind. Jack is black and white and has the biggest head of all. Zeb belongs to Mark. Mark pats him on the shoulder all the time. Mark is the only boy who plays the piano. His papa died in a war.

  I don’t like chicken so I eat apples until we stop and Papa gets mad because I don’t eat any chicken. Then I get some vanilla ice cream. Chicken stinks.

  I like vanilla ice cream because it’s kinder than chocolate.

  Thatcher is my brother. He washes his car all the time and goes to work to pay for it. Meredith is my other brother.

  It takes one whole day to get to Uncle Hawk’s. He lives in Florida. Papa gets mad every time I ask him when are we going to get there.

  When we stop to let the dogs out, Meredith puts me up on his shoulders and runs with me until Papa hollers. I look down in his curly brown hair while I ride.

  Mama is prettier than Aunt Esther. Aunt Esther has gray in her hair. She’s Mark’s mama.

  I like Uncle Hawk. I’ll be glad when we get there. Uncle Hawk puts his hand behind his back and holds his arm with his other hand. His hand that is hanging down flaps like a fish while he looks out the window and talks.

  I been to Florida every year right after Christmas.

  BLISS

  My first association with Thatcher’s entire family was at their annual gravecleaning last summer. What an event! Cousins, aunts, uncles, and such got together, complete with picnic lunch, and when their work was finished that graveyard was as clean and neat as a whistle.

  There is a path—wide enough for a car—which goes down into the woods behind their house, and if you walk or drive on it for a little ways you come to another car path which leads to their family graveyard. There beside the graveyard is a little open grassy area, and beside that is a raging wisteria vine, beyond which is a pond. The graveyard itself is very serene, with shafts of light coming down through tall pines onto the gravestones, which go back into the 1800s. So, one day each summer this wonderful event happens: cousins and such roll up their sleeves, and then cut, mow, trim and rake up a storm.

  That was association number one.

  Association number two was a trip to Florida, occurring this past Christmas, before our marriage.

  I, of course, had no idea that I would ever be going to Florida this early in my life, but Thatcher and I got more and more serious up until November third, when he, at nineteen, asked me to marry him, and I, at eighteen, said I would. My words were, “I will, Thatcher. I will.” The words I like to say about Thatcher are these: “Thatcher stands tall.” He is slightly over six feet and I think he stands tall not only in stature but in spirit. He has a firmament about him. A steadiness.

  They are a wonderful family, full of wonderful family members and names. Isn’t Thatcher a fun, but somehow masculine, name? And Meredith, his brother? Doesn’t that name have a rolling ring to it? And Noralee, his little sister? Soft and sweet?

  The trip to Florida, an annual event for the Copelands, to visit Thatcher’s Uncle Hawk and Aunt Sybil, started out on an even-enough keel at four a.m., having to do with lighter traffic in the early morning hours. My parents weren’t too happy with the whole idea—they are less enthralled with the Copeland family than I am—but they finally said yes when they found out that Thatcher’s aunt, Miss Esther, was going along. Miss Esther is a well-known upholding block of the community.

  Speaking of Meredith, Thatcher’s thirteen-year-old brother, he is the has-a-sparkle-in-his-eye type, as cute as a button, and always having something up his sleeve. He runs up to me, holds out his hands for me to pop his knuckles, then pretends it hurts terribly. His hair, dark brown, is naturally curly—the only one in the family that way. Along with him on the trip was Mark, a cousin his age, Miss Esther’s son. Mark is a very polite young man and spends a good deal of time with Meredith. Mark’s father was lost in World War II.

  Before we left, Thatcher, Meredith, and Mark told me all about Silver Springs, which is near Locklear, Florida, where Uncle Hawk lives. I, having never been beyond North Carolina, was amazed at their talk of this “Silver Springs”—which was: glass-bottom boats, monkeys in the trees, and catfish playing football with a wad of loafbread underneath said glassbottom boats. And it all did turn out to be true.

  Florida definitely has an excitement in the air.

  One of the things my parents had a hard time understanding was: anybody taking four bird dogs to Florida.

  They were necessary because the men needed to hunt. Two dogs were carried in the trunk of each car, and could get air because the trunks were not completely closed. Old blankets were available for them to lie on. The places we stopped for the dogs to get out—going down and coming back—were little dirt side roads that seemed to be made for the occasion.

  Miss Esther drove her car and Mr. Copeland, his.

  I loved being on the road, traveling before light, with the one I love.

  We arrived in the fairly late afternoon.

  Yes, there we were in Florida—a very warm state with a sense of exhilaration which hangs in the air like the very fog.

  Uncle Hawk walked out of the front of his store to greet us. He is the oldest and the largest, and Miss Esther, his sister, is, I think, a little older than Mr. Copeland, who is the youngest—Thatcher’s daddy, Mr. Albert Copeland. They all look alike too. Uncle Hawk immediately hit Meredith on the shoulder and then grabbed him around the head and spoke loudly, “Boy, you done gone up like a okra stalk.” Then he grabbed Thatcher and Mark around their heads and pulled them to his chest with them laughing and enjoying it and then hugged Miss Esther and Mildred and shook hands with Mr. Copeland, pulling on Mr. Copeland’s hand and grabbing him by the shoulder and laughing. Then he reached out his hand to me and was exceedingly nice, saying nice things about me, Mildred having written that I’d be coming along on the trip. Then he picked up little Noralee and carried her as we all went inside.

  The store is quite an establishment—it’s a cafe-grocery-hardware store combination with gas pumps and a large fruit stand out front. Their home is next to the store, across a little side road, surrounded by a rock wall, and with palms and Spanish moss hanging from big oak trees. Very pleasant.

  Inside the store we were greeted by my aunt-to-be Sybil. She was carrying a tiny, short-haired dog named Dixie B., which Mr. Copeland had talked about on the way down—saying he hoped she had died.

  “Come on in,” said Aunt Sybil. She hugged everybody with one arm. She wore frilly lace around her neck and had a pleasant round face. “I’m going to hug you too,” she said to me. And did. ‘Anyone like something to eat?”

  “Oh, no,” said Miss Esther. “We still got chicken in the car.”

  Thatcher’s mother, a beautiful, thick-brown haired woman who keeps up her fingernails—and who asked me to
call her Mildred—said, “What you got today?”

  “The usual,” said Aunt Sybil. “Tuna, chicken, ham, hamburger, hot dogs.”

  “I could use a hot dog—without onions,” said Mildred.

  “What’s tuna?” said Meredith. Bless his heart.

  “You know what tuna is.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Fish. It’s a kind of fish. Comes in a can.”

  “Ain’t you going to school up there, boy?” said Uncle Hawk.

  “No sir—I mean yes sir, but we don’t study tuna.”

  Meredith is a regular spark plug.

  Sleeping arrangements were available for all. Miss Esther and I settled into the bedroom of Uncle Hawk and Aunt Sybil’s daughter, Lee, who lives and works in Kentucky, and had left to go back on the morning of the day we arrived—the day after Christmas. Lee’s a social worker and Christmas is one of her busiest times, Aunt Sybil said. I was to sleep on a rollaway bed, Miss Esther on the single bed, Mildred and little Noralee in the living room on a foldout couch.

  Mr. Copeland, Thatcher, Meredith, and Mark were to sleep in the guest room built onto the garage, out behind the house. From there they would get up early and go to the fields to hunt. I, of course, did not visit Thatcher in those quarters, nor did I wish to.

  The first night, we watched television for a while in the living room, then Aunt Sybil said maybe we ought to turn off the television and talk a little bit, catch up, which Miss Esther agreed with.

  One of the first things Uncle Hawk wanted to talk about was the floatplane kit which Mr. Copeland bought from Mr. Hoover, who is going to teach Mr. Copeland to fly—in exchange for hickory shavings that Mr. Copeland gets from the sawmill he runs. The Anderson Sawmill. Mr. Hoover has a restaurant and cooks barbecue with the hickory shavings.

  “How big is the thing, Albert?” asked Uncle Hawk.

  “Twenty feet—the fuselage—the middle part is called the fuselage, and the wing span is thirty-four feet. She can sit one or two. I’m using the two option. It’s called a floatplane. Fly it off the water.”

  “Mr. Hoover said all the pages to the plans weren’t there,” said Mildred.

  “It’s mostly aluminum tubing,” said Mr. Copeland. “I’ll fly it off the lake.”

  “What kind of engines?” asked Uncle Hawk.

  ‘All the plans aren’t there?” said Aunt Sybil.

  “I’ll find them. I just got me a notebook to keep up with all I’m doing right now, what I do to it, and the test runs. That’s required by law—the FAA. It’s an experimental aircraft.”

  “He don’t write it accurate about what happened though,” said Thatcher.

  “I do too.”

  “Not on that first test run.”

  “Well I sure did.”

  Thatcher said one thing happened at the lake, but when Mr. Copeland wrote it down it sounded quite different.

  NORALEE

  I was sitting under the tree when they came out of the house and went into the shop, so I followed them. They got the floatplane down off the table to load it on the boat trailer. The wings were folded back against the sides. It had two propellers in front. Papa had screwed two lawn chairs in it where you sit.

  “Can I go?” I said.

  “You need to stay here with your mama,” said Papa.

  Mama came out the back door. “How do you know it’ll float?” she said.

  “It’ll float.”

  “Joe Ray Hoover said—”

  “It’ll float. I ain’t worried about it floating.”

  “If it sinks,” said Thatcher, “that’s a hundred and thirty dollars of chain-saw engines on the bottom of Lake Blanca.”

  Thatcher and Meredith painted it red.

  “That’s the last thing I’m worried about,” says Papa.

  “Why can’t I go?” I said.

  “You ain’t old enough,” said Meredith.

  “I am too. I’m five.”

  “You’ll be in the way.”

  I wanted to see what all would happen. “Please, Papa. I won’t be in the way.”

  “Let her go,” said Mama. “You need somebody there to run for help.”

  They let me go. They said they were going to zip it around on the lake. They let me ride in the back of the truck. They all rode in the front. The dogs rode in back with me.

  We had a long ride to Lake Blanca. Papa drove slow. It was a sunny day and we were just riding along pulling it behind us down the road with people passing us.

  When we got it to the lake, a lot of people came around and watched them get it down in the water. Meredith and Thatcher had on their bathing suits and were down in the water and Papa was standing on the plank thing that goes out in the water. Meredith just got to be a teenager.

  More and more people came up and Meredith and Thatcher got out of the water.

  “Who’s going with me first?” said Papa. He was standing on the wood thing and he was holding the wing.

  Meredith said he would.

  Because the wing was in the way they couldn’t get it close enough to the wood thing you stand on to get in it. Then they got it turned the right way and got in. Papa told Thatcher to hold the tail while he started it up. It was sunk down low with him and Meredith both in there. Papa sent Thatcher to the truck to get the lawnmower rope to start it with. The little rope with the little wood handle and a knot in the end. A man who walked out there was holding the floatplane while Thatcher went and got the rope. I was staying in the back of the truck like Papa told me.

  Thatcher and the man held on to the tail while Papa tried to start a engine but it wouldn’t start. Then he wrapped the rope around the little thing on the other engine and jerked it and it started. It was the one in front of Meredith. It was running real fast and made a lot of noise and the plane was pulling on Thatcher and the man. The dogs were standing there barking. Papa told them to turn loose. When they turned loose the plane started out in this big circle. The engine was real loud. Papa was pointing down under the front inside, and hollering at Meredith. The plane was turning in a big circle back around toward the wood thing where the man was. The dogs were still barking and standing on the wood thing. The man started running back onto the land. Papa bended down and I couldn’t see him no more. The plane was going in a big circle but it was headed toward the wood thing. Meredith stood up. He bended over like he was talking to Papa. He jumped out.

  The airplane kept in the circle and missed the thing you stand on. It kept going in a big circle and was headed back around right at Meredith so he started swimming fast and looking back over his shoulder. It looked like it was going to miss him but it—Papa was down inside working on it—it straightened out all of a sudden and came right at Meredith and he just waited for it and when it got to him he dived under water. Then Papa stood up and when he sat down it was headed straight for the land. When it hit the land it sort of flipped Papa up to the front and then back. He put safety belts in it when we got home. The dogs ran up around him barking. The motor shut off and they quit barking. Fox and Trader.

  Thatcher told Mama when we got home that if Papa had been going any faster he would have cut his head off in the propeller when he hit the land. But he wouldn’t have, because he was on the side where the engine didn’t start.

  THATCHER

  This floatplane thing Papa’s working on. I swear. The frame is a bunch of aluminum pipes that fit together, and it’s on pontoons so it’ll fly off a lake.

  Papa says by the time he’s finished building it he’ll have all his flying lessons from Mr. Hoover, who has an instructor’s license and instructs part-time at the airport. Then he’ll fly it off Lake Blanca.

  My ass. He’s taken it to the lake once to try it out on the water and it just turned in these two big circles and ended up grounding itself. Meredith jumped out.

  So when we get home that afternoon Papa writes in his notebook. It says “Record” on the front. He had the date, the temperature, the wind direction, the altitude of the
lake, which he said was sea level—hell, I got more sense than that—and then this:

  NARRATIVE ACCOUNT: THE EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT WAS TOWED TO LAKE BLANCA BEHIND OWNERS JEEP TRUCK. ALONG FOR THE OCCASION WAS THE OWNER, SONS MEREDITH COPELAND AND THATCHER COPELAND. DAUGHTER NORALEE COPELAND AND TWO ANIMALS, FOX AND TRADER (DOG NAMES). THE AIRCRAFT FLOATED LEVEL IN THE WATER AND WAS RUN SUCCESSFUL OUT ON THE WATER AND BACK IN. THIS WAS THE FIRST TEST RUN. PASSENGERS WERE THE OWNER AND SON MEREDITH. ALL PARTS WORKED.

  Then it’s got Meredith’s and Mark’s and Noralee’s weights and heights. I’d be in there but I’m grown.

  “Papa,” I said, “you wrote up in that notebook that it was a successful test run. Couldn’t much more have gone wrong except if it blowed up.”

  “What are you talking about?” he says.

  “You wrote down that it was successful.”

  “It was.”

  “But it ran around in circles and one of the engines wouldn’t start!”

  “The rudder was caught.”

  “I know. But you didn’t write that down, and about the engine not starting.”

  “No need to. I got it straightened out. That’s why I didn’t write it down. I got it straightened out.”

  “But you’re supposed to write down what happened.”

  “What happened was I fixed the rudder, and now the engine starts. I’ll write that in later. There’s no need to write about all that for the test run. Just the simple facts.”

  “Papa, that’s … why you got them weights and heights and birthdays in there?”

  “So they won’t get lost.”

  “What will the FAA say if you got all—”

  “It’s a record. That’s all it is. I’m keeping it. It’s my record. You want a record of something, you write it up. But don’t you go complaining about my record or how I keep it, or I’ll hide it. You ain’t no government official.”