Hank handed Sammy the microphone.
“Bobby, it’s the Chief,” said Sammy.
“Are you working harder on the mound? I can feel the ground shaking,” said Bobby.
“Tractor’s getting closer to you. You tell me if the shaking gets to be too much,” said Sammy. “We don’t want to take any chances.”
“No, it’s all right. I’m just so cold,” replied Bobby. “That is the worst of it down here. You guys talking to me helps a lot.”
Charlie interrupted. “We’ve got to gas up the generator, Hank. It will only be a few minutes.”
“We have to shut down for a few minutes to put in gasoline. I’ll be right back, Bobby,” Sammy said. Hank knew Bobby would be nervous, waiting for the radio to come back on.
He helped Charlie with the gasoline. As he was holding the container, he glanced around. Hank could see the whole operation. Behind him was the small expanse of water leading from the island to the ranger station dock and Pete’s farmhouse. In between, rocking in the swells, were two or three boats picking up swimming animals. Each had lights aboard which would outline the passengers, and from time to time, someone on the boats would wash the island with a searchlight, turning the rescuers around Hank into white figures. Beyond them, in the far distance and through the reeds and mud islands, were flashing lights of twenty or more trucks and utility vehicles. Pete’s porch light was still on, and every window in his house was lit.
On the island, in front of Hank, the small beach was the center of activity. Here were several outboard boats pulled up, one with a stretcher sitting on its gunwales. Behind Hank, volunteers worked hard at filling bags. They had dug out a large pit where before there had only been marsh grass and driftwood. As the bags were filled they were handed person to person along the hundred yards or so to be placed on the walls. Since he had looked before, the walls had grown another two sandbags in height all the way around.
At the far end of the mound from where he stood near the radio, the trench was larger. With the tractor and the steady work of men with shovels, the mound was definitely showing signs of being penetrated. The large ditch extended into the end of the mound thirty or so feet. As Hank had suspected, the problem continued to be shoring up the weak and wet sides of the trench as the tractor worked inward.
The generator began to run again. Sammy picked up the microphone and started to talk to Bobby. “Your grandfather’s career with the River Sunday Volunteer Fire Department was a good one. He was one of the few who could handle the climb up the big extension ladder to work the high pressure hose. He had his fear of being closed in, a lot more than most of us, but no fear of height.
“No doubt, Bobby, about where you get your courage. We were never so proud of your grandfather as the night that there was the warehouse fire. These warehouses had been empty for years, left over from when River Sunday had canneries. It was a large wooden building right on the harbor.”
Hank took the mike and added, “My parents and I lived in rooms behind the garden shop and nursery. I woke up and heard Daddy moving around in the next room; my mother telling him to be careful. Then I heard the delivery van start up and my father drove out the driveway towards the fire house, a mile away over back streets of small yards and residences.
“I got up and tiptoed to my window to see out at the town. I saw a glow in the sky. My heart pounded as I quickly put on my clothes. I did not stop to tell my mother for I knew she would forbid me to go. Instead I left a note on the kitchen table. Outside it was summer and the air was moist with dew and humidity, some of it from the wet air drifting in off the harbor. I could smell smoke.
“Then I was running along the side of the macadam road, my tennis shoes crashing against the high grass and the stones and gravel that was there, and the rough cracks in the soil made by rainwater runoff, hardened into sharp crevasses for me to trip against, but I kept running harder, excited and afraid, knowing Daddy would be involved in this fire.”
Sammy took the mike back, “Hoses were laid all over the street and trucks were parked everywhere. The big hook and ladder truck, the most powerful in the department, was anchored against the side of the burning building. The town police held back the spectators.
“The word went out that some of our men were trapped inside the building. A huge burst of flame was shooting up through the roof. The top of the hook and ladder was right in the flame but that was where we needed the water hose. Then your grandfather came up to the ladder in his fireman’s coat. He didn’t hesitate but went right up that ladder where none of the other men would go. At the top of the ladder the hose nozzle glinted in the night sky, against the gray of the smoke and about fifty feet above the building with the roaring inferno coming out of the roof, licking at the rungs.
“He reached the top of the ladder. He resolutely turned the nozzle into the fire and signaled below for the other men to adjust the water flow. Then the hose spoke with a stream of water into the hissing fire. The water tore at the flames and pieces of roof timbers flew up into the air as the roof began to collapse. In time the fire began to die down and our men could get to the others trapped inside. No lives were lost. Some of the men here tonight working to get you safe have never forgotten what you grandfather did for them and their families.”
Then Sammy suddenly handed Hank the mike. He spit and began running toward the tractor.
“What in the hell?” shouted the fireman driving the tractor as he frantically worked the blade lever. The engine chugged down to a last lurch and stalled.
“Choked her out, damn it,” he said, getting down from the controls and moving to the front.
“You hit something,” yelled Sammy who jumped down into the trench, the Captain right behind him, both of them brushing by the firemen to the front wall. Will followed as fast as he could.
Sammy said “I don’t see anything.” He climbed up on the tractor, started the engine and backed out from the mud wall where the blade had caught.
“I’m going to try her again, a little slower. Captain, stand by with some shovels just in case,” Sammy called out. He applied the power and moved the blade up to the bank. The front of the tractor began to dance, the wheels compressing against the plywood and sandbag runway. The engine climbed in revolutions but refused to lift the blade against whatever it had contacted.
The Captain waved Sammy to slow down. He released the throttle and the tractor idled.
“Might just be a root. How long is that plane anyway, Captain?” asked Sammy.
“Sixty feet. He’s about fifty feet from the sides of the mound at the other end. If the boy is where we think, the tail section could be here, close to end of the trench.”
“OK to bring the tractor up again, Captain?” asked Sammy.
The Captain nodded.
The pressure on the tractor blade made the engine work very hard, almost enough to make it balk. Sammy expertly applied power, revving the engine up and down, working the controls to try to get the bucket to lift the obstruction.
Charlie turned the radio on. Bobby was calling, his voice loud. “Daddy, it’s shaking here. The light just went out too. It’s dark again.”
Hank immediately ran toward the tractor. He waved vigorously and shouted, “Hey, Sammy, hold up down there.”
Sammy was so intense on driving the tractor he did not hear Hank. By then however, the Captain, who did hear, had jumped up on the running board and switched off the ignition. The tractor trembled to a stop, steam coming off its hot engine cover as the wild rain spat against the metal.
“What in the hell?” said Sammy.
“Hank wants you to stop everything,” the Captain said, his voice louder as the engine became silent. “Some of the mound is falling in on the kid.”
“Good Lord,” said Sammy.
Hank returned to the microphone and talked to his son. They listened as the little voice came over the speaker, the only other noise the wind and large raindrops slapping the sandbags.
Bo
bby’s voice called out, “I’m falling!”
Then silence.
Hank called, “Bobby! Talk to me!”
It took a few tense moments but the boy finally answered, “I’m all right. The seat I was on fell down into the water. A lot of bones are around me. I can feel the skull. I also touched a pair of goggles.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No, but more mud is filling in behind where I sit. I can feel it oozing. I can barely hear you. Maybe you can talk louder.”
Charlie shook his head. “We got full volume power going down there, Hank.”
“We’ll try to speak louder, Bobby.”
“The animals are swimming around.”
Hank felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Betty Allingham. “Tell him to remain as still as he can.”
“Betty says the animals will not bother you if you don’t move.”
She added, “Tell him to move slowly if he has to move at all.”
“Betty says to move slowly, so the animals won’t get too scared.”
Bobby’s voice was trembling. “Yes, they are just as scared as I am. I forgot about that.”
Then he continued, “Tell Cathy I’m going to bring these goggles out for her to wear when she flies.” He paused and said, “Oh golly, I think I’ve let out Cathy’s secret. What I said went out for everybody to hear. Oh, God, she’ll never forgive me.”
Hank called back, “No, honey, her father wasn’t listening.”
“She’s my friend. Don’t you think she would like that, Daddy?”
“I’m sure she would like it.” Hank winked at Cathy who was listening with a grin. “Try to climb out of that water.”
“OK.”
“Can you get hold of anything?”
“I can hold on to the seat support.”
“Be careful, Bobby,” Hank said.
Betty pressed the back of Hank’s neck. He reached up and touched her hand.
“Thank you,” he whispered. Then he called Bobby again.
“How are you doing?”
“I just wish I could see something. I keep moving my hand in the air. This was a big airplane all right. Does Captain Steele think we found the lost P47?”
“No one knows, Bobby.” He heard the sound of the boy’s exertions as he tried to move around in the cockpit.
Hank turned to Charlie. “What about sending down another light?”
“If we pull the other out and send down a new one, it might cause more collapse, like a small landslide next to Bobby. I don’t think we ought to do it,” said Captain Steele.
Then, from Bobby, “I found a place closer to the right side of the airplane to sit. I’m back out of the water again. The animals are down below me.”
Hank wanted to keep hearing Bobby’s voice. “Are you all right?” He didn’t want to say that they could not replace the light.
Bobby said, “Thank the Chief for telling me that story.” Hank knew his father was not respected when Hank was young. He was an immigrant. In a small town like River Sunday, that put him on the lowest level of society. Hank had heard his father called a displaced person, a “DP.” When he was older, he found out displaced persons were like the long ago Acadians and the French trapper, people moved from their homes because of war.
Hank was a small child when he first heard the name “DP.” His mother was driving him from a swimming lesson at a friend’s beach outside of town. He remembered the heat that morning and that the metal dashboard of the car was hot from the sun - too hot to touch.
He could only see a little bit over the dashboard of the car. He had to sit forward on the front seat and pull himself up. A few hundred feet ahead a large harvesting machine had turned onto the narrow road from a cornfield. It was a giant red machine with a small control cab high up off the road. In that cab he could see a man smiling at them. The harvester was driving directly down the center of the road. His mother grasped the steering wheel with both hands. She had stopped singing and was muttering. He couldn’t understand what she was saying. She slowed the car and blasted the horn.
“Goddamn smiles of these people. Why can’t they be like your father and show some brains for a change?”
He could hear her words but did not understand them. The man was smiling at them.
The harvester began to pull to the side of the road to let his mother get by. She slowed the car more and then carefully squeezed by the huge machine, narrowly avoiding the side of her car being scraped.
He heard her say “DP” and “Jew” like it was a swear word. Then she caught herself and quickly turned to Hank. “Don’t you say anything to your father. Forget that you heard me say anything about Jews and DPs.”
When his father came to River Sunday after the War, he took a gardening job for the only person in River Sunday who would hire him, Missus Steers. His mother had been one of her housekeepers. Missus Steers was not popular and was considered suspicious, mostly because she was European of German heritage. Stories were made up about her, especially about Nazi submarines visiting her place at night.
The gardens at the Steers house were so big that he and Mudman thought they could ride their bikes around paths among the overgrown boxwoods and not be seen by anyone in the house. They climbed in the trees. One day Hank saw a face at one of the second story windows. It was Missus Steers, white hair all streaked out. Next to him in another tree, Mudman called, “The old lady is watching us.”
“Hank,” Pete’s strong voice came at him and brought him back to the present. “They’ve got to get going on the trench.”
“Bobby, we’re going to dig again,” said Hank into the mike.
“All right, Daddy.”
Captain Steele climbed down into the shaft and walked up to the firemen who were poking at the mud with their shovels. “We’ll keep on going but with smaller bites.”
“Here, stand back, Captain,” said Sammy, starting up the engine again. The tractor came forward again and its blade went in a few inches at a two foot distance to the left. The bucket came back out, half full of mud. One of the firemen pointed to the wall where the right side of the blade had cut.
“Hey, Captain, see what she hit into.”
Captain Steele stepped up to the wall and chipped at the mud with the tip of his shovel. “Bring the light closer, boys.”
Chapter Fifteen
The Captain moved his hand tenderly over the vertical edge of gray corroded metal stretching three or four feet up from the base of the mound. “It’s her all right,” he said, almost whispering. He grinned, like an old man who suddenly sees a long lost schoolmate at his high school reunion.
“What do we do now?” asked Sammy.
“Yank the plane out,” said Will, rushing to the Captain’s side. “You’ve got to use the tractor.”
“Will, we’d kill the boy. The tractor’s too hard to control,” said the Captain. “We’ll have to dig by hand, and carefully.”
Tawny followed Duke into the trench. Bits of the walls were slipping back into the cut area and causing the men to shovel more quickly.
“How long before you reach the child?” she asked the Captain. Her cameraman began running his video.
The old aviator shook his head and continued cleaning the thin ridge of metal. “We’re on the plane’s left side. We could dig a tunnel right up to where the boy is located, maybe forty some feet to the cockpit,” said Sammy.
“Maybe we could climb through the fuselage itself,” suggested Pete.
“We could dig along and look for a way in, we could do that,” said the Captain.
“Why not go in through the fuselage?” asked Will, already working with the others to dig around this metal strip.
“We are not as small as he is. I think he got into that cockpit through the ripped section when the left wing broke off. Inside we’d have to cut through all the machinery of the aircraft. The machinery is, however, what is holding the fuselage together. If the hull wasn’t full of equipment, if it was hollow, in other
words, it would have collapsed. Same would happen if we cut through it.”
“Have you thought about unexploded bombs?” asked Sammy.
“We’ll just have to be careful,” said the Captain. “If there’s ordnance still on her, we could get hurt, that’s for sure. When we get to the plane, we’ll have to check that out as best we can.”
“If it’s my aunt’s plane, she had no ammunition, no bombs on board. That would mean no danger to us. Let’s go for it,” said Will.
The Captain turned and faced Sammy. “The biggest problem is digging along the left side of the hull. We might loose the fuselage from its grip on the earth, make it slide on further. The boy told us that the plane shook when it got hit by the tractor.”
Pete said, “We can’t stop it from moving.”
“The boy will be long gone before we can get to him,” nodded the Captain. “Remember, you’re dealing with five tons of metal here. That big Pratt and Whitney engine on the front of her is like a lead sinker on a fishing line.”
“We’d never reach him,” said Hank.
The Captain checked his watch. “You wouldn’t get to him before that high tide, that’s for sure.”
“Like I said, what do you think we ought to do, Captain?” asked Sammy.
“We could put a line around her tail and pull her out,” blurted Will. “I got a winch on the tractor.”
“That tail fin would break off. The metal’s too corroded,” said Bob Johnny.
The Captain turned around. “Will’s idea might not be so far off.”
“You really think that plane could be pulled out, Captain?” asked Pete.
“Not pulled out. Held was what I was thinking. It might be the only chance we have. The more we dig the more chance there is that the plane will loosen and slide into the earth. On the other hand, we can’t get at him without digging.”
He thought for a moment. “What I’d do is get a line around her to hold her steady. With that done, we’d have a chance to cut that tunnel beside the plane to get at the boy. No, Will, I don’t think I’d try to pull her out. Too many things could go wrong.”
Easter Sunday (River Sunday Romance Mysteries Book 7) Page 11