The Floatplane Notebooks

by Clyde Edgerton

  Aunt Esther. Corncob up her ass like always. Damn if she ain’t crying too. Whoopee. Oh, God, get me through this. Where am I going to live and who with? Bury me not.

  Look at them new yellow-wood ramps. Papa is at it again.

  Inside, Aunt Esther has these pictures of Mark and his airplane. That’s wonderful. Wonderful, wonderful Mark.

  I try not to talk any more than I have to. I can shake my head yes and no, push up my shoulder for maybe. I don’t want to say what I ain’t practiced. The therapist is supposed to come this afternoon.

  What I’d like to know is what happened to God. Aunt Esther, you got him locked up somewhere, afraid to let him out—afraid he might hear somebody cussing, for Christ’s sake? If that’s the way it works He ain’t ever been in a war. And you figure in a posse of twelve fishermen, you’re going to have some nasty language. That’s the part that gets left out. Boy, if they knew I’d smoked dope. WHOA. But some of the church women wrote me nice long letters. I got to give them some credit. Credit where credit’s due.

  And here comes Thatcher with a puppy, a damn bird dog puppy, lemon and white, with a damn red ribbon. Bliss done the ribbon.

  “His name’s Floatplane,” Rhonda says.

  They put him in my lap and he’s up licking my neck, wagging his tail. Shit, I’m losing it again.

  Papa ain’t going to allow no dog in the house over a minute.

  They have my favorites for supper—T-bone steak, french fries, apple pie and ice cream. Rhonda feeds me. I got a little baby bib and everything. That was in the packet they sent home with me. Rhonda don’t seem to mind. But this ain’t Rhonda, friends. This ain’t going to be her style for very long.

  They talk about the trip, the packet, and all it says about getting me in bed.

  Then the therapist comes and explains. He’s nice. He explains stuff about the shit pan, and getting me in bed and all that, and then leaves. They all ask me some yes and no questions. I’m Mr. Congeniality or whatever it is. Hi Bake.

  After supper, Bliss is squatting down, talking to me straight on. She hugged me long and tight, like Mama. She will always hug me long and tight.

  Aunt Esther is already gone. She was pretty shook.

  Thatcher pats me on the shoulder. “That hurt, boy?”

  I shake my head. HELL NO, THATCHER, IT’S A REGULAR GODDAMN NORMAL SHOULDER. IT DON’T HURT ANYMORE THAN NORALEE’S OVER THERE. THE HURT IS OVER. HIT ME ANYWHERE. YOU DUMMY.

  He bends over a little bit, and says loud, like I’m deaf, “I’m glad you’re back in one piece.”

  SHIT ALMIGHTY. I AIN’T BACK IN ONE PIECE, THATCHER. THERE ARE SEVERAL OTHER PIECES. SHIT. ONE PIECE? THE REST OF ME IS COMING HOME UPS. YOU AIN’T CHANGED A BIT, THATCHER. I give him the shrug.

  If Mark had Thatcher’s stupidness and Thatcher had Mark’s sissiness, they’d be even.

  I got a brace for the good leg—or for the leg, period. I got a brace for the leg and that gets clicked out straight and two of them get under my arms and stand me up and I always get dizzy and everything whites out and nobody ever gives me a chance to settle down before they sit me down on the bed, so I don’t get a chance to enjoy standing up very much. The bandages are off my head. My hair’s growing back. Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear. My ear drains a little. Neat.

  So now here are me and Rhonda in bed and I can feel this ain’t going to work out. I don’t know how I feel it, but I know, because I know Rhonda. It would work out with somebody like Bliss. Rhonda loves to sing better than anything and is afraid of being stuck with Mr. Nub, and Mr. Nub’s baby, and laying here in bed with a man that can’t talk, can’t walk, can’t hardly move, can’t jack off, can’t eat, could kiss a little bit if she’d move on over and get close. But that would just set her up for nothing, and I swear I don’t believe she’s going to do one damn thing but close her eyes and go to sleep.

  On the third night home, Papa gets this idea to take me out and set me in the floatplane. This is after the therapist come again and explained my exercises to Rhonda and Mama. Rhonda hadn’t been too sick lately, with the pregnancy. She’s doing real good, Bliss says. She’s working at the auto parts store and hates it worse than anything. I don’t know how she got a job there, I swear I don’t. She don’t know a wheel from a radio aerial, but it’s less than a mile away and she can come home for lunch, and the guy lets her come home when she feels bad.

  But I see all this ain’t going to work out too good. I’m one goddamned whole hell of a lot of trouble. I’ve got to work my ass off on the exercises so I can start taking care of myself. Mama and Rhonda are going to alternate days this first week. Bliss is going to help out the second week.

  Anyway, Papa came home for lunch while the therapist was here, and of course had to take him out to the shop and show him the floatplane. They pushed me out there. The therapist thought it was some kind of swampboat until Papa opened the wings out.

  So that night, my third night home, papa decides he wants me to sit in the floatplane. Okay, I’ll sit in the floatplane. I don’t mind. I figure it’s SOMETHING.

  Mama didn’t like the idea at all but Papa says they can use the pulleys to get me up in the seat—that it’ll be easy. Mama says it’s dangerous, but I’m thinking it ain’t dangerous. What’s the worst that can happen?—I bust my ass?

  Everybody gets in the act except Noralee, who is gone off with this guy who came to get her and wouldn’t even get out of his car when he drove up.

  Thatcher rolls me out to the shop and everybody follows. We roll into the shop, which has that same sawdust, electric-saw smell it’s always had, and there that thing sits like some kind of giant red mosquito.

  It’s up on two long tables—it won’t fit on the floor with all the crap in there—so they can’t stand me up and then sit me down in it like if it was on the floor. They got to use Papa’s idea: pulleys. The pulleys are hooked to two rafters, and Papa’s got Noralee’s old swing seat hooked at the low end of the chains.

  Mama has given up on complaining about it and is standing there beside me, ready to hold my shoulders. There is a ladder for her to climb up same time I go up.

  I’m waiting to see what’s going to fall—first.

  Somebody lets Floatplane in. He knocks something over. “Get that dog out of here,” says Papa.

  Mama is still worried: ‘Albert, I don’t know about this. At least check it out somehow first to see if that pulley’s going to hold him.”

  “Thatcher, come here.” Papa grabs the swing seat. It’s about chair bottom level up from the floor. The chains are hooked in the rafters directly above the cockpit and swerve down beside the cockpit toward the floor.

  “Wait. Here, let’s slide the floatplane out of the way,” says Papa. “We’ll pull him straight up, slide it under him, and then drop him down into the cockpit.”

  I force it out: “DROP?!”

  They laugh, and slide the tables and plane out of the way as far as they will go.

  “I mean, ease you down,” says Papa. “Thatcher, here. Sit in here for a minute.”

  “What for?”

  “I just want to see—for Mildred—that it’ll hold him.”

  Thatcher sits. The rafters creak a little.

  “See,” says Papa to Mama.

  “I think you ought to check, see if it’ll lift him up a little ways,” says Mama.

  “Okay. Okay.” Papa pulls on one pulley, then the other; one, then the other; so that Thatcher is level, then slanted one way, level, then slanted the other way.

  “See,” says Papa, and releases one side all the way so that Thatcher has to grab the chains at the same time his feet drop.

  Papa rolls me over to the chains, unhooks the swing seat from the chains, slips the swing seat up under me and hooks the chains to the swing seat.

  “Let’s pull up both sides even,” says Thatcher.

  They start me up, with Mama beside me holding my shoulders so, I can keep my balance. “Lean back, son, I got you.”

  I’m
thinking, If I pitch forward … the damn floor down there is concrete. If I pitch forward, my ass is dead.

  They get me up there. Mama has to go up a couple of steps on the ladder. She’s beside me, holding me so I keep my balance. I’m able to do a good job with my arm nub, holding the chain against my side.

  Papa and Thatcher and Bliss get the tables and the floatplane under me so that the left lawn chair in the cockpit is directly below me, then they start easing me down, finally into the chair. Damn aluminum lawn chair bolted in there. That’s the damn ejection seat in this thing.

  I look around. It’s almost the very same as when me and Mark used to sit in it. And of all the days I’ve been patching together like little puzzles to run my fingers over, I’d forgotten the ones when we’d sit out here in the floatplane and go on bombing missions over Germany and Japan and Korea. Five, four, three, two, one….

  I think about us sitting out here, and then getting down out of the floatplane and doing things in the shop—with both hands, then going outside and running, and running, and running, and running, tackling each other, getting my nose hit so my eyes water and I sneeze.

  Something about all that, something almost like a blanket, falls down over my head and shoulders and I start crying, my head drops and I start crying like a baby and they all think I’m crying because I don’t want to be in the floatplane, but I do want to be in the floatplane. I want to remember and feel it all, to dream it up, to see me and Mark sawing some shape out of plywood or making our own kite—with our own sticks made from bamboo reeds, or making a glass-covered box for arrowheads, and then going out to look up at a white and blue sky, and go running and running and running off down to the woods somewhere.

  But they all start doing everything they can to get me down, getting the pulley hooked back up, Mama back up the ladder. I want them to get out of the shop, to leave me alone and let me put together one of those days like it happened, like a puzzle, and run my fingers over it, but I have to relax and let them do all they have to do—over and under me like ants hauling a dead roach off somewhere, back inside to get put to bed and listen to Rhonda think about what in God’s name she is supposed to do with me in bed.

  It’s pretty crowded in the house here. We’ve got to figure something out. Mama wants to build on a new bathroom, but Papa says we don’t need it.

  Papa does his share. I can say that. He usually helps me get in the tub every few nights. The worse part is somebody helping me take a shit and then wiping my ass. Rhonda did that for awhile pretty regular, but she’s starting finding more and more to do come shit time. Papa don’t mind. Papa is like a woman in some ways. He don’t mind a lot of stuff.

  He took me hunting on the first morning of hunting season. We didn’t stay the whole day, and I just sat in the truck, but it was good to get out. I slept on the couch so I wouldn’t wake Rhonda up. Papa came in and woke me up and put on my leg brace, clicked it out straight and stood me up. I can grip pretty good with my right hand now. I stand in a walker to get dressed. I been thinking about how I’d be getting around now if it hadn’t been for the brain thing—I’d be able to do everything by myself. When I start thinking about that I get depressed sometimes. Growing up, I never got depressed; I don’t know anybody who did. I didn’t even hardly know what it was until that jerk counselor in Da Nang started talking about it. Somebody hired him in California and sent him to Vietnam to talk to the ones blowed up bad. Bad mistake. But I do get depressed now, if I start thinking about now. I can think about days when I was growing up and that helps me to feel good for some reason. At least I don’t get depressed. But if I think about now, or the future, with Rhonda gone—I can really tell she’s going to be gone, and I’m glad in a way because I worry about it all the time—it’s pretty easy to get depressed, a real heavy feeling when you don’t want to do anything, not even think. The halls of winter. It’s like I’m walking around in dark halls.

  But I got an electric typewriter now on a little hospital eating table that can be rolled anywhere. I can’t reach up and do letters yet, but Papa engineered this metal arm with a crook in the end where it hits the keys and another metal arm hooked to that that I can hold in my hand. It’s got a gear and a roller so that without much movement I can cover all the keys. Somebody’s just got to keep paper in the thing. And I’ve subscribed to a airplane magazine and I’m going to start collecting instructions for home-built aircraft. It’s sort of a joke because Papa has never had all the instructions to the floatplane. I’m going to start collecting—I don’t know what kind yet. I sure as hell can’t get instructions for our floatplane—not a full set, not from the shop.

  Anyway, on the hunt, first day of hunting season, Papa rolled me in and cooked a big breakfast, sang a few songs like Uncle Hawk, and told me that great story about when they were in school and the teacher, who they called Mr. Yellow because he was so pale, made Uncle Hawk stick his head in the trash can for tying the bell up so it wouldn’t ring. Uncle Hawk says, “It stinks in here,” and the teacher kicked the trash can and Uncle Hawk forgot he was under a table and jerked his head out of the trash can and banged it against the bottom of the table. Papa said Led Cross had remembered it all his life and mentioned it every time he saw Uncle Hawk. That got me to thinking about the Florida trips. Mark will be home on leave this Christmas, and we’ll all go to Florida together again. Strike up the band.

  Papa still writes stuff in the floatplane notebooks. He showed it to me. He’s got everything in there about the floatplane, and more. He scotch-taped this newspaper clipping in there about getting the truck out of the pond, the time I drove it in there. I’d forgot it was written up in the newspaper. Hanson County Pilot, June 13, 1958. That was twelve years ago—long enough to get an education.

  THE LISTRE REPORT

  BY

  MRS. GARLAND LUCAS

  LISTRE—Those who have traveled in our local woodlands have no doubt had occasion to traverse past the old Copeland family graveyard with its attendant pond and acre-covering wisteria vine—all on the old Listre-Bethel Road, now closed.

  Albert Copeland had a unique problem to solve yesterday at his pond. His truck was underwater in the deep end, yes the deep end. Mr. Copeland, who built bridges and served as a frogman in World War II, we have been told, and now manages the Anderson Sawmill, walked into the pond in his bathing suit with a cinderblock tied to his ankle. Attached to his nose was a clothespin. What an interesting sight to this reporter! On his eyes were swimming goggles, and in his mouth was the end of a long green garden hose, held there by his hand. Mr. Copeland’s other hand held the chain to be hooked to the truck’s rear axle. Esther Oakley, Mr. Copeland’s sister, also of Listre, held the other end of the hose while standing on shore. All of this provided yesterday for much local excitement.

  The submerged truck had been located underwater and marked with an anchored balloon. After a few minutes out of sight, Mr. Copeland surfaced holding his fingers in a victory sign, having untied the cinderblock from his ankle. He then swam to shore where he directed the rescue of his truck—yet another step in the unfolding drama.

  Thatcher Copeland, heavy equipment operator with Strong Pull Construction Company, Inc., and son of Mr. Copeland, drove the bulldozer which pulled the truck up out of the pond. However, the recovery was not without complications, as readers will soon see.

  The bulldozer had to be driven down the dam in order to pull the truck up out of the pond. Mr. Copeland found it necessary to construct a fulcrum of sorts, a wood pile, over which the chain could ride. Then oil was poured onto the chain as it was pulled across the wood. Mr. Copeland explained that the oil reduced friction in a way which facilitated the operation. The truck was indeed pulled up out of the water and onto the dam and eventually towed to Lawrence Wilson’s Texaco where the engine will soon be overhauled. “I was planning to overhaul the engine anyway, and it hadn’t been underwater long enough for rust to set in,” explained Mr. Copeland, who said that the success of the operatio
n was due to “friction reduction” and “natural suspension.” When asked how the truck came to be in the pond in the first place, he responded, “No comment.”

  A crowd, including the mayor of Listre, Steelman Crenshaw, attended the event.

  Lotis Durham, a foreman with Strong Pull Construction Company, arranged for use of the bulldozer. Mr. Durham, also present at the event, said that Strong Pull, Inc., has an interest in various and varied kinds of community projects.

  Mr. Crenshaw will also be at the Kiwanis Barbecue Supper next Saturday, June 21. Everyone is invited to support this worthwhile project, the proceeds of which will be for the Friends of the Library as well as for handkerchiefs, combs, and toilet articles for the young men at the YMRC.

  This concludes your Listre Report.

  Papa had underlined the part about natural suspension. What “natural suspension” is is nothing but this giant mystery. And what Papa does is figure out how to use it when something needs fixing or when things go wrong.

  Another thing that was in the notebooks, along with pictures of the floatplane, were some pictures of the graveyard. They were glued in. Some were taken when the wisteria vine was in full bloom and had those heavy purple flowers hanging all over the place.

  Then there was a page where Papa had plotted out the graveyard and put everybody’s name in the right place. He said he had to ask Aunt Scrap because she’s the only one who knew where every grave was and who was in it.

  I got Papa to put a X at the same spot where I put one on the ground with my foot—the summer me and Mark left home.

  THE VINE

  The people in the graveyard were pulled together in groups. Tyree talked to a cousin, John. “… because that ain’t what happened. What happened was they was fishing, where that overhang on Birch Creek is, and they was playing cards and Papa had been drinking Forrest Baker’s whisky, more than Forrest was happy with, so when Papa said, ‘Where’s the red-eye?’ Forrest throws it at him, underhanded, while Papa won’t looking and it hit him on the chin and they got in a fight and he bit Forrest’s finger and it was always crooked. That’s what happened about the finger. Forrest had been drinking with Dink while Dink’s little Lia was born—little-bitty when she was born—the one they called Scrap.”