The Floatplane Notebooks

by Clyde Edgerton

  Mr. Thompson made all the kids stand back fifty feet in case a chain link popped, which it won’t about to do. The truck pulled right up, easy. One tractor could have done it. But there was some kind of metal box from the trash pile that had jammed up under the truck while we were pulling it out so we had to jack it up and get that out. Mr. Thompson made all the kids stand back again, said the truck might fall. Hell, the kids probably wished they hadn’t bothered to come.

  So before I drove Babe Terrell’s tractor back, I told Meredith that I was going to pay Mr. Terrell a dollar for gas and would he please fork it over since he was paying for the rescue. He says he don’t have a dollar and Mark forks out a dollar and Meredith says he’ll pay him back half. So I told Papa that so far Mark had paid one dollar on expenses and Mr. Meredith had not paid one red cent, which on doomsday still won’t be paid.

  PART TWO

  1967 – 1968

  1967

  BLISS

  We left as usual at four a.m. last Thursday morning for our Florida trip, my tenth. This year the trip had a somewhat different flavor because of two reasons. First, and most dreadfully, Meredith and Mark will both be leaving for military service next summer—Mark for pilot training and Meredith, the Marines. While this was not discussed at great length, and I’m confident will not be, I couldn’t help letting my dread and heartbreak slip into casual conversation. Meredith and Mark are, of course, enthusiastic about their upcoming “adventures”—as they see them. There is nothing I can do to abate their eagerness.

  The family doesn’t seem to be particularly bothered, or perhaps I mean they don’t show it.

  The second reason the trip had a somewhat different flavor was the presence of Meredith’s fiancée, Rhonda Gibbs, a young blond woman of strong personality, heavy makeup, hoarse voice, with nonetheless a good heart, I’m sure. She sings in a rock-and-roll band. Meredith has dated her off and on for a long time, but their relationship has really taken off since summer. He’s kept me posted, and got me to help him pick out a diamond ring which he gave her at Thanksgiving. They’ve yet to settle on a wedding date, however.

  Meredith has changed so little since Thatcher and I got married it’s almost a miracle. It’s as if little Meredith, with his cocky walk and that ever-present twinkle in his eye, suddenly became grown Meredith with that cocky walk and ever-present twinkle in his eye. He hasn’t calmed down one bit. He’s working for General Telephone, a lineman, and loves it. I so tried to get him to go back to Listre Community College. He went for one year and then dropped out. Though his grades didn’t show it, he’s certainly smart enough to go to college. When I talk to him about it, he always says he wants to work outdoors with his hands, then he’ll say what Mr. Copeland is always saying: “There’s no tool like your fingers.”

  Meredith and Mark have remained good friends—hunting and double-dating together in spite of the fact that Mark has entered, and next spring will graduate from, East Carolina College, though they aren’t as close as they were when they were younger. Lord knows what all Meredith has gotten Mark into in their brief lives. The most recent discovery was that a year or two before Meredith fell down the well, he and Mark dropped a tombstone and a chicken down there. Somebody told that story at the last gravecleaning.

  The last ten years have flown by. I got a secretarial position at Listre Elementary after two years at Listre Community College, and we saved most of my salary. Then after four years of that, our precious son, Taylor, was born—Taylor Meredith. He’s four now, looks like both of us, and has a very sweet disposition. Since he was born I’ve been working part-time at the school.

  Thatcher’s been promoted to crane operator at Strong Pull. He’s very good and has turned down two offers of an administrative position, though he’s decided to take one next time they offer it. He’s exempt from the draft because of his age and also because of Taylor, thank goodness. Meredith calls Thatcher “the crane pain.”

  But anyway, in one car were Taylor, Noralee, Mr. Copeland, Mildred, and Miss Esther. Noralee, thank goodness, loves to take care of Taylor. And in the other car were Thatcher, Meredith, Mark, Rhonda, and me—Thatcher driving.

  One of the first things that happened, before light, was Rhonda started making up a song—about the floatplane—and got the rest of us in on it.

  Mr. Copeland stopped taking the floatplane to the lake after the first year or so, then started back, then stopped, but he’s kept tinkering with it off and on in the shop. He filled up one notebook about it, and now has started on a second one.

  We called the song “The Floatplane Blues.”

  I got the floatplane blues, swimming round my head;

  I got the floatplane blues, swimming round my head;

  I want to fly with the eagles, but

  I float with the frogs instead.

  And so on.

  Rhonda has a rare combination of loudness and softness not often found in a single human being. And the perfect name for herself. Rhonda. Meredith is crazy about her and I think they will probably be good for each other though I hope they wait until he’s out of service before they get married.

  Rhonda’s family moved into the Jenkins’ house beyond the field across the road when Rhonda was about six or seven—and Meredith was, I guess, ten or eleven. They would talk at the school bus stop. Then he took her fishing, of all things. She’d tag along when Meredith and Thatcher or Mark, or all three of them, went. Then she started “coming out” and there was Meredith, ready to love.

  Meredith told me about something that happened one day right after he graduated. He’s always been good about talking over things with me. The secret is: I listen. He comes to me. Anyway, he said that she took him into the barn over there close to her house to show him some kittens and what happened was—and I can just see the shaft of light coming in through the cracked barn door, hay dust in the air—what happened was, there’s Rhonda in the corner on her knees, picking up a kitten and saying how she likes to feel them against her breasts, which she all but exposes by unbuttoning her blouse and pressing the innocent kitten to them while Meredith stands with the shaft of light behind him—bearing in to beat upon the barn floor. He told me he didn’t know what to do, and so he left. But I’m not so sure. Meredith does not, in general, seem timid around women. It’s an interesting question about Meredith.

  But what I also know is that at some point after that Rhonda took Mark skinny-dipping. Mark alluded to it, but I never got the straight of it. I don’t know if Meredith ever found out or not.

  What happened on the trip down this time—besides singing—was that Thatcher started telling stories to Rhonda about Meredith and Mark, stories Rhonda hadn’t heard, and some I’d never heard either. It was great fun, joyous even—though this was all in the face of Meredith and Mark leaving—and as we zipped along through South Carolina we were all feeling relaxed and happy, and Thatcher told the story about the truck in the pond.

  THATCHER

  I was going bass fishing. I heard them when I got down to the graveyard. They had the ski rope hooked to the back bumper of the truck. Mark was in the water about fifteen feet from shore, wearing a orange life vest, holding on to a handle at the end of the rope. Meredith was behind the steering wheel in the truck, up on the dam, holding his arm high out the window, racing the engine. He dropped his arm, popped the clutch, and that old truck started out—along the car path across the dam part there at the deep end of the pond. The back end of the truck swerved, and up comes Mark, skiing. I couldn’t imagine it all going so smooth, so I just decided I’d watch through the wisteria vine.

  Meredith drives the truck into the pond on Mark’s second or third time skiing. He was looking out the window, back over his shoulder at Mark, gas pedal on the floorboard it sounded like, when the truck left the car path. He looked back ahead to see where he was going, slammed on brakes —too late. The truck slid—all four wheels locked, sending up dust—nose first, down toward the water, splashed in and floated away from th
e bank like some kind of odd boat—like the floatplane. The engine choked off. Mark skied right past the truck and straight into the dam. At first I was just going to stand there and watch. I mean, I can see the sunlight reflecting off the chrome around the windshield, and everything all of a sudden real quiet. Meredith is sitting in the cab with the window down, his elbow on the window sill, not moving—like he had just pulled into a gas station. Then he said something, and looked down in the floorboard. I was too far away to hear.

  Great big bubbles start to belch up around the truck. It starts sinking, tilting forward fast.

  I come out from behind the vine. “Get out, Meredith!” I say. “It’s sinking! Get out!”

  Water is halfway up the door. I start running down the bank as fast as I can, getting shed of my shoes and pants. I dive in and start swimming as fast as I can with my head out, watching. He opens the door. Water swirls through the crack, pushing the door back against him. Water is up to the window bottom.

  “Come out through the window!” I yell.

  He turns his face and chest upward, and starts sliding out through the open window with his hands on top of the cab. Then the water covers up his head. The cab is almost out of sight—you can only see the flat top, at water level. Meredith’s hands sort of grabbed across the top of the cab at the same time water moved over it, kind of like a wave running over a sandy beach. I had finally got there. I grabbed at him, found an elbow. He surfaces, hits me in the chin with the top of his head, and scrambles up onto the top of the truck, which was about a foot under water. He kneeled on his hands and knees as the cab sunk on down, and said, right in my face, “I had to wait.” His hair was flat and shiny, water dripping from his nose. “Did you see how I waited?” He stood on the cab, waved his arms to keep his balance, fell backwards into the water and then swam to shore. I swam behind him.

  We sat on the bank, breathing hard.

  “I didn’t think you’d ever get out of there,” Mark said.

  “What took you so long?” I said.

  He looked at me. “What?”

  “What took you so long?”

  Then he slapped me across the side of my head with his open hand. Little Meredith. It stung and made me deaf in that ear for a minute. He stood and started walking toward home.

  I stood up and followed him, grabbed him and turned him around. I couldn’t figure it. He knew I could bust his ass. “What did you do that for, Meredith? What the hell did you do that for?” Something had snapped in his head or something.

  “Why did you ask me about taking so long?” Then he screamed, “What did you ask me that for?” His fists were balled up, his chin sticking out.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t you see, goddamn it to hell? You damn shit. That’s what Papa would ask if I almost drowned. ‘What took you so long? What took you so long?’” Then he screamed in my face: “‘What took you tho long?’ I almost drowned, Thatcher.”

  Hell, I left him alone and let him walk on up to the house. It was crazy. He just went out of his head.

  The damn truck was in so deep you couldn’t even see any part of it. We had to find it with a long pole.

  Papa got it all figured out how to get out, of course. Came up with the idea of being a frogman again. A wild idea. But it worked. I give Papa that much credit.

  We needed a bulldozer. My foreman asked Mr. Durham if we could use one of Strong Pull’s and he said yes, if we could get the newspaper to cover it. I’d just started working for Strong Pull Construction.

  So we got the newspaper to cover it. Papa walked in the pond with a cinderblock tied around his ankle and the water hose in his mouth so he could breathe and hooked a chain around the rear axle of the truck. Then I pulled it up out of the pond with the bulldozer. Papa saved the damn newspaper clipping and the last time I looked it was stuck in the notebook—the floatplane notebook, the new one he’s started.

  THE VINE

  Caroline came onto the back porch holding the bundle. She came on out and down the steps. She was wet to her elbows and her face was red and full of worry and her hair around both ears was matted red and wet from listening against the baby’s chest. She walked across the yard to the kitchen and laid out the baby on a chair just inside the kitchen door. Mrs Saunders’s slave woman Easter who was helping out came onto the back porch saying She’s getting up Miss Caroline. She’s getting up.

  Caroline met Vera on the porch.

  Vera was the color of hay. I want to see it Mama.

  Don’t make no difference honey. He was just born dead. No heartbeat at all. It happens. It just happens. You need to lay down.

  I want to see it that’s all said Vera. She held to Caroline’s shoulder. Let me lean on you.

  On the way back into the house Vera said I want him buried out there with the field hand and the others.

  That’ll be a good spot. It’s pretty out there.

  Oh Mama. Vera stopped in the yard. When I wrote Seaton about Isaac he said we could

  I know honey.

  name him Isaac if it was a boy and then poor Seaton and now I can’t even name him Seaton. There’s not going to be a Seaton or a Isaac in the whole world.

  Come on in and lie down now. You need to rest.

  While the preacher prayed at the infant’s graveside little Jenny Carmichael came running around the side of the house saw the ceremony in progress broke her run down to a fast walk and with red spots on her cheeks walked right on past the others up to Caroline whose head was bowed for the prayer. She pulled at Caroline’s sleeve. Caroline opened her eyes and bent her head down to listen. Caroline broke ranks and walked sometimes skipping into a run past the house and out to the road. As they passed the porch little Jenny said Aunt Emma said you can see the head like a hairy fist coming out.

  Late that afternoon Jenny told Ross how the baby boy had six fingers on each hand and how as Caroline cut off the two extras tiny stubby matchsticks tears were dropping off her nose and cheeks onto her hands and wrists.

  Caroline brought the fingers home in a bottle of alcohol and put the bottle behind the clock on the mantle where it stayed and was talked about by the children until she and her grandson Tyree died of typhoid. Then Tyree’s wife Loretta who wouldn’t let her children wear bright colors on Sunday and who had always thought it obscene that the children climbed chairs and sneaked looks threw the little bottle with the fingers down the hole in the outhouse.

  So then Thomas Pittman had another baby out there beside him. They all appeared together on blue moon nights. Thomas in his rocker, facing the house, and four babies and a leg in rocking cradles made of dark maple. The new baby was quiet and still.

  Ross sat in the door to the smokehouse one rainy afternoon several weeks after the stillbirth and carved into the rock with a chisel BORN DED. On the next Sunday afternoon Vera called out to Caroline from where she stood beside the grave. Caroline walked out and stood beside her.

  But it’s spelled wrong said Vera.

  He can spell it any way he wants to.

  Well I’m going to ask him to do it over.

  He worked a whole day on it and as far as I’m concerned he needn’t waste time doing another one. Anybody knows what it says. Besides he lives here.

  Vera pulled hair back out of her eyes. Why do you say that Mama?

  It’s true.

  I know it’s true. You don’t like me living in town.

  Caroline turned and faced the house. No I don’t. Whoever heard of such a thing. Washing clothes with the niggers. It’s not decent.

  I do what I have to do to get along and I don’t mind it.

  Before Vera left that day she followed Ross out the back door into the yard. Ross will you change the spelling on the rock to dead DEAD.

  It says dead. DED.

  Dead is DEAD.

  It don’t make no difference.

  It does. It’s my baby and I want it spelled right.

  It’s my rock. Do your own rock. It took me
all day to do it. Why don’t you do your own rock? If you can get a rock in town.

  Wouldn’t harm you none to come to town Ross see some stores and factories.

  We got stores around here.

  I know it. You’d be surprised what all they got in town. It’s not just fancy.

  I been to town.

  While Walker was away in the war a lone man dressed in a dusty blue uniform rode a horse into the backyard. He called out In here. A string of three wagons turned in and pulled up alongside the kitchen side of the house.

  The family was in the fields.

  The man went into the kitchen and came out with a blue plate of biscuits. He handed them around. There’s probably some molasses another man said. He talked like the field hand. Another said Check the smokehouse. They got two hams from the smokehouse and put them into a wagon and then they drank directly from the well bucket without using the ladle.

  They went back into the smokehouse and brought out a barrel of molasses and put that into the wagon.

  Caroline and the family came back from the fields. Vera carried William who was Caroline’s youngest in a basket. They stared at the men and passed slowly into the house. The soldiers paid them little mind. Caroline came back out to stand on the back porch for a few minutes looking at the soldiers. They sat around a fire they’d built in the yard. Then she walked by them to the kitchen. Their heads turned. One said something and a knot of about four of them laughed loudly.

  Caroline came out of the back side of the kitchen and walked over to the smokehouse. She looked inside returned to the kitchen. In a little while she stood in the door to the kitchen a heavy cloth in each hand holding a pot of boiling water. She looked down to the ground and stepped out holding the heavy pot. The men were turning around to look at her as she approached the ones who had laughed. She said I wish you were red hot in the belly and in the middle of hell and heaved the water over them down onto their heads arms and necks. They scrambled screaming and one started for her grabbed her arm and pulled her sideways. She was still holding the pot in both hands as another said loudly Whoa watch out ducking behind a wagon wheel and pointing to the porch where Ross stood with a shotgun aimed at the soldier holding his mother.