See About My Friend

See About My Friend(Michael D. Warner) SEE ABOUT MY FRIEND
by Michael D. Warner

Copyright 2005 by Michael D. Warner All rights reserved.

Business was slack in the Fall of 1959, following the general recession that had matured under the astute guidance of Former General Eisenhower. This president’s administration had been advised by people like Secretary of Defense, Charles E. Wilson, former CEO of General Motors, a man who had been fond of proclaiming: “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country!”

Those of us in the flying business would have been quick to disagree: Money was tight. Few people were able to buy airplanes. We found ourselves scrambling desperately to keep our heads above water, taking on chores and flights we would have turned down in better days.

During this hungry period I was employed as manager of the two-runway municipal airport serving a middle-Alabama cotton mill town. I kept body and soul together on forty-dollars a week plus money earned from occasional flying jobs that happened to come my way. Being a recently discharged veteran, still single, I survived the leanest days of that era by consuming peanut butter sandwiches and eating lots of grits. A welcome supplement were Sunday dinners to which I was invited by hopeful parents of families having a surplus of nubile females. Hey, no way this bachelor was going to turn down fragrant pot-roasts, chicken and dumplings, barbeque, and thick steaks.

One Sunday morning when Dawn’s light lit the pull-down window shade, I struggled awake. Exiting the warm army cot, I dressed quickly, shivering into my faded ex-Air Force khaki shirt with pinholes in the collar where my USAF insignia had been proudly fastened. I hurried down the hall to the lobby of the old administration building and tossed a few lumps of coal into the still smoldering pot-belly stove used to heat the large room that served as our office and pilot lounge.

I peered at the yellow plastic “Drink Coca-Cola” clock above the doorway. I knew that in less than an hour the herd of local airport bums would begin drifting in to sprawl upon our worn out sofas and settees and cane bottomed chairs. They would nurse hot mugs of awful tasting coffee I had brewed in an ancient thirty-cup steamer furnished by the company. They would spend a large part of the morning swapping lies and flying stories, between which there often exists little difference.

The sun brightened the room. I squinted out the window and watched the wind sock stiffening as it swung erratically back and forth, generally toward the northwest. The drone of an approaching engine’s sound faded in and out. Rubbing bleary eyes, I managed to smear black coal dust across my brow and cursed myself for staying out so late the night before.

Like I mentioned, few trips were turned down in those days. The night before, I had taken an anonymous passenger along with his cargo of Mason jars filled with an anonymous clear liquid to an anonymous airstrip a hundred miles south of my place to return in the wee hours. My rule then was not to ask a lot of questions. The wad of hard cash in my pocket seemed to confirm that notion as a wise one.

The drone grew louder. I stood there and watched the familiar Stinson Voyager turn final for runway three-five, fighting the gusty quartering cross-wind with ailerons and rudder. I watched her flare out, left wing low, side-slipping through the air and lining up perfectly with the runway centerline. Suddenly, she was on the deck, touching down with the quick “chirp-chirp” of a well-executed wheel-landing. I heard him pull his engine back, then watched the tail settle onto the runway as ailerons went to full deflection against the quartering headwind.

Dick Watson swung the gleaming red ship in a tight turn on the grass to park between two piles of tie down ropes. The propeller jerked to a stop. I trotted outside to help secure the aircraft, struggling against cold gusts.

Knotting the lines with stiff fingers, I tightened the ropes then followed Dick inside retreating to the welcome warmth of the big room. Standing close to the stove, we warmed our hands, each glad in his own way to be in the company of the other.

Dick managed the slightly larger and much busier field some thirty miles west of me. Over time we frequently availed ourselves of each other’s hospitality, swapping favors, spark plugs, inner tubes, shock cords, rolls of Irish linen, butyrate dope, and dozens of other items familiar to the stick-and-rag ships plying the weekend skies of the era.

Dick had flown in to pick up a set of wheel bearings for the Piper J-4 he was rebuilding in hopes of a sale for some quick cash. It seemed that her former owner had not quite mastered the art of cross-wind landings and had been more than grateful for the three-hundred dollars offered by Dick for the badly bent little ship.

The slightly taller pilot looked dashing in his zip-up brown leather flying jacket which contrasted greatly with my own green nylon flight jacket, remnant of Air Force days, having several small melted patches from when I had carelessly stood too close to the glowing pot-belly stove.

Dick tossed his cap and gloves into an empty chair then plopped into the one beside it. I thought he looked like a man with a story to tell. Just then, a squeal of cold brakes in the parking lot announced the Sunday hangar-flying crowd was beginning to arrive.

Soon, several people had gathered themselves about the stove, rubbing icy hands together and exchanging un-novel remarks about the weather.

Dick cleared his throat. It was time to tell his story.

As a flight instructor, Dick commanded instant respect from the fledgling pilot corps and they hushed to listen. A flight instructor was considered by lesser rated pilots almost as being an unnamed extra member of the Holy Trinity whose utterances on the most trivial of flying subjects were given Gospel-like respect, even memorized, to be dissected at a later time by low-time pilots hungry for any piece of aviation lore. Except for the sound of a coffee mug clicking on the hard counter and the occasional sniff of a watery nose, the room was quiet as he began his story:

“You-all have heard me tell about Watermelon?” he drawled in his soft Alabama accent, not pausing for a reply which was neither offered nor expected. “Well, he had himself a time yesterday morning.” Dick briefly glanced around the room.

Most of us knew “Watermelon”, the likeable black kid who worked for Dick. Watermelon pumped gas, washed planes, swept the hangar, and performed the rest of the menial chores which I had to manage all by myself here at my small field.

His real name was Washington Jefferson Monroe, but everyone called him “Watermelon”. Maybe, it was because he looked like a ripe melon wearing a pair of too short overalls stretched tightly over the forward-protruding arc of his chest and stomach. Maybe it was because of his suspected propensity to steal the succulent oblongs, whenever he found one he considered to be an ‘extra’ just laying there in the field.

A carefree young man in his middle teens, Watermelon attended church with his twelve brothers and sisters every Sunday and went again on Wednesday night. The boy along with most of the Bible-belt population of that day was both religious and superstitious at the same time. And, as Mark Twain so aptly suggested, “Sometimes, there doesn’t seem to be very much to recommend one over the other.”

From my standpoint I’ve mumbled or screamed my share of prayers just as anyone who has flown the skies very many hours has done. Foxholes are not the only places alien to atheists. Many a cockpit has witnessed a religious conversion. Some pilots will even admit this under intense questioning.

Watermelon avoided cemeteries, black cats, the number ‘13’ and white cops ..pretty much in that order. He wore a tattered straw hat and kept a lucky crow’s foot in his breast pocket.

My friend’s airport was located at a convenient distance for pilots flying from sunny Florida back up to the northern tier of states. It was an ideal place to stop in to refuel their thirsty aircraft. Whereas, my airport was a little too far off-course to catch much of that trade. Also, Dick’s airport had a big lake nearby which was an easy landmark for even the lamest of navigators to spot.

Don’t get me wrong. I got my share of the tourist business too, mostly from those who were ‘a little lost’ and who were somehow unable to relate the large body of water below to the small sky-blue dot on their Birmingham sectional charts.

The transients passing through came to remember the smiling black kid with the large white eyes and mouthful of pearly teeth. Frequently, these folks remembered to tip him a quarter, or maybe even a half-dollar, for the energetic manner in which he polished bugs off of windshields, dumped overflowing ashtrays, and swept out gritty carpets. He also offered his services fetching cokes or running to the nearby roadhouse for hamburgers.

These recollections of Watermelon had flashed through my mind before Dick had gotten very far into his story. I may have listened with a little less awe than the others in the pilot lounge, after all I held a commercial license myself, and had a local following of my own, not as commanding as Dick’s perhaps, yet respectful anyway, if you know what I mean.

We listened a bit spellbound to Dick’s mellow voice as the tale unfolded. Coffee mugs sat untouched as a divided half-gallon of my evil brew cooled slowly. Minutes slipped by unnoticed, as the story continued. Dick basked in the homage of our rapt attention.

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Watermelon had tapped on the house trailer door at seven a.m., prompt as usual, listening while Dick outlined the morning’s chores.

“...and after you finish in the office,” he had told Watermelon, rummaging through his pockets for the keys, “you can unlock the pumps then come back up here and warm up.”

“You know, “ Dick said, “that was the last time I saw Watermelon that day.” He sipped at his cup of coffee and winced nastily in my direction as he replaced it on the flat wooden arm of his chair.

“I was already at the office before I saw the Cessna 180 parked down by the pumps, “ he continued. “You all know where that is from the office, don’t you?”

Not one of us failed to nod, showing our intimate familiarity with his thirty-mile distant layout. Even two of the newer students who had quietly entered the room, and who had never flown more than ten miles beyond our boundary lights, joined the community of bobbing heads. Not basic dishonesty, I decided, only the inexplicable group desire of humans to exhibit agreement with each other.

“Well,” he continued, “I saw the plane parked there and when I walked into the office, I found the pilot standing on the floor register, stomping the coldness from his feet. He was a stranger and I asked him if Watermelon was taking care of him okay, and he replied:

“You mean the little black kid?”

“I nodded, and he told me that he had met Watermelon about half-way to the office and had given him his fuel order.”

“Well, the coffee had just finished perking so I poured out two cups and asked the pilot which way he had come from, and where he was headed, you know. And, get this: He flies for an outfit in Fort Lauderdale that has a deal with an undertaker to haul corpses.”

Faces grew solemn and the room became so quiet you could have heard a snake glide across the cold floor. My ears perked up as they always did whenever I heard the words ‘haul’ or ‘charter’ or ‘hire’ in connection with flying, and we waited for him to continue.

“That fellow told me he had battled a strong headwind all the way and that he had already made one fuel stop and had been flying for over nine hours when he touched down at my place.”

We nodded again, this time in sympathetic agreement confirming our collective belief in the existence of built-in headwinds.

Dick took another sip of the oily black liquor in his coffee mug, made a face and said, “He told me he was bound for St. Louis with this one, and was in a hurry to be on his way.”

Our minds darkened with mutual suspicion. Dick raised his hand slightly, acknowledging our questioning looks, then continued.

“That pilot had headed down the hall and when he came back he asked what he owed for the gas. He told me he had to get going so as to get the body there in time to be prepared for the funeral.”

Dick took another sip. “He also told me that the deceased was zipped up in a clear plastic shipping bag and was sitting up belted into the back seat of the four-place Cessna, sort of leaning its head against the right-hand window.”

“Well”, Dick said, “I told him Watermelon hadn’t come back with the fuel ticket yet, and on hearing that the pilot glanced down at his watch. And, you all know that it wouldn’t take ten minutes to top off a One-eighty, even if both tanks were empty.”

Dick looked into our expectant faces. “That pilot had told Watermelon to top off both tanks with hundred octane and bring the oil up to eleven quarts. And, he also had told him: Would you see about my friend, too? He isn’t looking so good from this rough air an’ all. Maybe he’d like a drink of water or somethin’.”

For a moment we envisioned what had happened early that morning some thirty miles away. We saw Watermelon trotting across the cold dead grass toward the gas pumps, proud to be the owner of that warm pair of gloves he no doubt was wearing. We watched him clear the pump register, then grab the hose and the aluminum step ladder as he backed toward the waiting Cessna, dragging the heavy four inch hose and pulling the bright ladder to the front of the wing.

We could imagine him methodically securing the ladder just in front of the right wing before hooking the nozzle through the fourth step, his soft black brow furrowed in concentration on the task. We knew that was when he would turn to ask the passenger if he wanted anything. We watched him gasp in horror as his eyes grew so large the whites looked as if they were about to burst from his paling face.

“Watermelon?” a pilot asked. “You say you ain’t seen him since?”

Pause.

Two Sundays passed, each preceded by a lucrative Saturday night spent hauling my anonymous charter customer to nameless places where he crossed my palm with dollars worth about sixty cents apiece. The U.S. economy struggled in a slow downward upturn, or was it a slow, upward downturn? I don’t remember. I do remember that is seemed to get worse before it got better. What the hell.. I had a pocketful of money.

Just as the sun was setting, I walked outside into the cold Winter air. The wind-sock was hanging like a limp rag from the short iron pole atop the old wooden hangar some eighty yards distant, a lonely sentinel against the orange frosted sky. My thoughts were almost holy as I contemplated the invitation I had accepted to join Fred Wilson and family for Sunday dinner. Their house sat on the far edge of town. Fred had a nubile daughter too, no doubt a coincidence I thought, as I checked my watch with ideas of locking the pumps and buildings early. Most evenings I waited until after dark to lock up in order to give any sky stragglers a last chance to buy my gasoline and to poison themselves with my free coffee.

Jangling the keys in my pocket, I strode merrily toward the gas pit. I had locked the first pump when the drone of an airplane engine broke the vesper, squelching my intention to shut down early. I squinted into the sunset and saw the last rays of a doomed sun glint briefly from the stiff wing of the red Stinson as Dick Watson rocked the swift ship into a tight turn, expertly lining up on short final for three-five, the North runway of my North-South paved strip.

A few minutes later, he pulled the mixture back, cut the switches and coasted to a halt a scant ten yards from the gas pit as his prop jerked to a stop. I pointed to the gas pump, raising my eyebrows and saw him shake his head and wave “No”. Then he swung himself out of the plane, opened the baggage door and pulled out a wooden box.

“Lo Pal!” he grunted lowering the box to the ground. “Here’s your brake linings and the other stuff you ordered, an’ here’s your bill,” he said handing me a crumpled piece of yellow paper.

I pulled the wad from my pocket and counted out his money. I loss the toss for the change. “Hey,” I cried out as he turned to walk back toward his ship, “What happened to Watermelon? Did he ever come back to work?”

Dick smiled, his blue eyes crinkling in the twilight. “Yeah,” he said. “Watermelon’s working again, same as usual. But he stayed gone ‘most ten days, then one morning one of his sisters came tripping up and handed me a note. It said he was sorry he had had to be gone, but that it had took that long to lose the curse and if the dead man was gone for good and if I wanted Watermelon back, then he would come.”

Dick said, “So, I told the girl to tell him that I really missed him and to tell him that the man who had pulled that trick ended up pumping his own gas that cold day.” He shook his head. “The next morning, Watermelon knocked on my door ready for work.”

Dick looked thoughtful. “You know,” he said “that kid went down to gas a Piper Apache yesterday evening. One of the passengers had stayed in the plane ..asleep, I guess. Ol’ Watermelon came all the way back up to the office with his hat in his hand. When I asked him if he was having a problem, he mumbled something about ‘lightning striking twice in the same place and told me I ought to go see for myself.”

“You know,” he continued “Watermelon would not gas that ship until I had talked to the man inside and until he had seen the guy move!”

“Some kid, ” Dick stated. “My old field just wasn’t the same without him, and besides,” the pilot looked at me closely, “you know how much I hate to gas airplanes.”

-- THE END --

Copyright 2005 by Michael D. Warner All rights reserved.