Paper Wings

by Les Abend

  As he circled around the left wing toward the back of the airplane, Hart caught a glimpse of the red, rotating beacon on top of the tail. It was flashing. Shit! The electrical system was still energized! He sniffed the air. No fuel smell. Good. Regardless, the power had to be shut down. He reached the back of the right wing at the same moment the boyfriend was staggering out the open door.

  Hart stretched out a hand and said, “Take your time.”

  The thirty-something boyfriend grasped Hart’s forearm and tentatively began to step down the wing until he reached the soft grass with a final awkward hop. Gently grabbing his waist, Hart guided the man away from the airplane toward his girlfriend, who was now standing fifty feet off to the side of the right wingtip, arms clutched tightly across her chest. She was biting her lower lip, her forehead wrinkled in anguish.

  Sirens began to whine in the distance, the sound becoming louder with each wail. The boyfriend began to mumble.

  “Engine just quit. Couldn’t get the nose down fast enough…”

  Hart said, “Take some deep breaths. Sit down. You’ve got some nasty cuts on your forehead, but you’ll be fine.”

  Hart guided the boyfriend to a seated position on the ground. The man spread out his legs and moved his arms behind him to support his torso. The girlfriend sat down beside him and began to hug his shoulders.

  Hart strode back toward the airplane, climbed up the nonskid walkway of the wing, and slid into the cockpit. He reached for the red mixture control and pulled it back, ensuring fuel was no longer flowing to the engine. He clicked the red rocker switch of the electrical system to the off position.

  Just before exiting the cockpit, Hart glanced at the fuel selector switch. The selector was positioned to the right fuel tank. Hart thought for a moment. No fuel smell? Interesting. He climbed back out of the airplane and circled around to the leading edge of the right wing. Hart twisted the fuel cap open and peered into the tank. He could clearly see the silvery bottom. Barely a drop remained.

  Bending down onto his knees, Hart looked under the wing. Spotting the fuel drain valve, he examined the position of the petcock. The petcock was stuck in the open position. Not good. Hart shook his head.

  Glancing through the canopy of trees that lined the airport road, Hart caught streaks of red vehicles moving at a rapid pace. The squawking of sirens was becoming louder by the second. Hart walked back toward the perimeter fence and swung both sides of the gates open. He had just finished when a cherry red fire truck rumbled its way onto the grass, rolling slowly toward the crippled airplane. The EMT truck followed moments later.

  Men wearing heavy, straw-colored overalls, the bright yellow bands of reflective striping around their sleeves and midsections, clambered out. Fire hoses were unwrapped. Walkie-talkies held to ears. Anonymous unemotional voices were heard stating matter-of-fact circumstances, the digital beep of their completed radio transmissions punctuating their reports.

  A familiar face, his fireman’s helmet cocked to one side with the straps dangling loose, grinned at Hart. The fireman nodded and walked toward him. Hart was still standing by an open gate. The man removed the thick glove from his hand and held it out, grasping Hart’s outstretched hand.

  Hart smiled and said, “Chief O’Brien, I thought you’d have bought that Irish bar by now and you were done rescuing Siamese cats from trees.”

  The fireman said, “Nah, I realized it’s much easier to just drink at an Irish bar. Besides, I thought about the potential for stolen inventory. I’d have to fire myself.” The chief shook his head. “It’s good to see you, Hart. It’s about time you graced us with your presence.”

  “Good to see you, Frank,” Hart said. He pointed at the crumpled airplane. “Your crash site is secured. Electrical system is off. Fuel is off with no leaks noted. Doesn’t appear to be any imminent danger of explosion.” Hart gestured at the couple sitting on the ground. “Other than a nice gash on the pilot’s forehead, injuries seem minor. Understandably, they’re both shaken.”

  “Thanks, Hart.” The chief waved at the fireman about to walk on the wing. He drew a hand across his throat and keyed the mic on his portable radio. “According to our expert airline captain here on scene, the airplane is secured. Please walk around the aircraft and make an assessment. For the moment you can all stand down.”

  Both men watched as two paramedics scrambled over to the couple sitting on the ground, utility boxes in hand. Hart’s dad had just parked the Tank off to the side of the crash site and was dismounting the tug.

  The chief said, “Your timing is impeccable, Captain. Are you sure that you didn’t cause this little disaster?”

  “The way the last few days have been going, you may be right, Frank.”

  The chief nodded with a smirk, shook his head at the airplane, and said, “Just what your dad needs. It’s one of his rentals, isn’t it?”

  “Yup, afraid so. Airplane has been in the fleet since before I left for college. It takes a licking and keeps on ticking. This isn’t the first rodeo. The last time it was in this kind of shape, one of our students had taken it on his first trip after getting his private pilot’s license. He landed hard and fast and ran it off the end of the runway in Saratoga Springs. So much for betting on the ponies.”

  “Actually, I have fond memories of this airplane. Shortly after you got me my license, I joined the mile-high club with Mary Ellen.”

  “I trained you well. Wasn’t she a homecoming queen?”

  “Yup. Only way a greaser like me could get a date was if I took her up flying. You changed my life, man.”

  Hart smiled and asked, “You still current?”

  “I wish.” The fire chief sighed. “Kids. Mortgage. College. Maybe someday when the dust settles.”

  With a slight shuffle, Hart’s father had begun to walk around the perimeter of the Cherokee. His face was expressionless. His eyes wandered about the nooks and crannies of the stricken airplane. The oversized plaid cotton shirt and the loose-fitting jeans made Hart’s dad appear thinner than usual. His tall frame that was normally straight and rigid was angled at the shoulders.

  The fire chief said, “Giant John has got the same old stoic Lindy face.”

  “He does,” Hart replied. The two men walked over to the older man.

  “Sorry about your airplane, John. The good news is that nobody got badly hurt,” The fire chief said. He reached out and shook hands with Hart’s dad.

  John Lindy seemed to ponder the statement for a moment and then said, “I agree, Frank. Although, it’s probably going to be me that gets hurt after I make the phone call to the insurance company. Thanks for coming with your boys.” He turned, scanned his son, and smiled. “Nice to see you, Captain.”

  Father and son took a step toward each other and embraced in an awkward hug. They patted each other’s back and then stood apart.

  “Sorry about your machine, Dad.”

  “We’ll get her fixed.” John Lindy let out a deep breath. “I saw from the office that you got on scene right after it happened. Any ideas on probable cause, Mr. Crash Investigator?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a pretty good idea.”

  With raised eyebrows, John Lindy said, “Speak.”

  “Dad, not that I don’t trust our esteemed fire chief…,” Hart smiled at O’Brien, “…but what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him for the moment. Can we discuss this in your office? Hart pointed at his rental car. “Leave the Tank here. I’ll drive us back down the taxiway to the hangar.”

  Holding out his hand, Hart said, “Nice to see you, Frank. Maybe we can toss a couple back before I leave. We’ll catch up. I’ll leave you here to play with the FAA. Tell the nice inspector to come see Dad and me before he leaves if you wouldn’t mind.” Both men shook knowing that it would probably be another few years before they would see each other again.

  Softly grabbing his dad by the shoulder, Hart led him toward the rental car. Father and son opened their respective doors and plopped into their seats. Hart dro
ve off down the quiet taxiway toward the main hangar and his dad’s office.

  As Hart parked the car, he noticed not much had changed since his last visit a few months ago. Wiry, green and yellow weeds were sprouting up in the cracks of the oil-stained, black pavement of the ramp. The chlorine blue of the corrugated aluminum hangars and office had faded another shade. A broken gutter hung at an angle, steady drops of moisture plopping to a puddle on the ground near the corner of the building.

  They walked through the open hangar door of the maintenance shop. A Cessna 172 was parked in a far corner, its cowl removed, the engine exposed, the prop removed. A mechanic’s towering, red toolbox and a shelved cart surrounded the airplane. In another corner of the hangar, the skeleton of an Aeronca Champ sat on its haunches, naked to the world. Hart had lost count on the years that had passed with that Champ in the same condition.

  As they entered the office, Hart scanned the room. Certainly nothing had changed here either. The same marred and scratched monster oak desk, its surface condition a mystery because of the paper chaos strewn on every inch, was still anchored in the middle. The same scratchy, olive green fabric sofa, the cushions indented with years of rear ends sitting in the same spots, was still jammed in a corner. And the same framed photos, mostly black-and-whites, hung in a random pattern on all four walls. The photo that Hart had sent as a gag with him wearing his airline uniform superimposed between Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart was displayed proudly on a corner of his dad’s desk.

  John Lindy squeezed behind the desk and sat down on the black, leather high back office chair, the only valuable piece of furniture in the room. Hart plopped onto the sofa. A thin cloud of dust rose into the air.

  Hart chuckled and said, “Did you fire the housekeeper again, Dad?”

  “Funny,” said his dad with a tiny grin.

  “How are you feeling these days?”

  “I’m peeing a lot more.”

  “Good to know, Dad. What about the radiation treatments?”

  “They say it’s shrinking the tumor, but I get the feeling that it’s not aggressive enough for their taste.”

  “Well, let’s hope slow and steady wins the race.”

  “Slow and steady takes a lot of visits to the clinic. I don’t have the time for that shit.”

  Hart sighed and said, “Dad, it’s prostate cancer. It’s got a high survival rate. The problem was that it was diagnosed late. I kept bugging you to get regular check-ups.”

  “I’m not dealing with I-told-you-so’s today.”

  “Sorry, Dad. I just wanted to keep you around for a while. I was hoping to pick out your old folks home. We could argue about which facility had the best Jell-O.”

  “That was never happening anyhow. You were going to push me out of an airplane, remember?”

  Hart grinned and said, “All right, let’s talk about this some other time.” He angled a thumb in the direction of the crashed Cherokee 180. “You want to discuss your accident airplane?”

  John Lindy held his palms open in a gesture of curiosity.

  “It’s simple. Apparently, it didn’t register on your renter that the right tank was low. Why no one balanced it from the previous flight, I’ll never know. But the boyfriend didn’t complete a proper preflight. Anyhow, he probably did the usual and sampled the fuel with the tester. But he never noticed that the petcock on the fuel drain valve remained open after it was tested. So, whatever was left in the right tank drained with just enough fuel to taxi, complete a run-up, and a takeoff to about two hundred feet. Had he at least positioned the fuel selector to the left tank prior to his departure roll, as per procedure, the engine would never have quit. End of story.”

  “End of stupidity, you mean.”

  “Dad, who checked this guy out anyhow?”

  “No one. He showed me that he had Cherokee 180 time in his logbook. It looked legitimate. None of my kid instructors were around. I didn’t have time to check him out.”

  “Dad, really?”

  “All right, I’m an idiot.”

  Hart sighed and said, “Maybe it’s time to sell this place, Dad. The accident could have been a lot worse and you know it. The FAA. Attorneys. Lawsuits.”

  “I get it.” John Lindy exhaled. “Who’s gonna buy this dump, Hart?”

  “Well, I’ll give you a hand fixing it up.”

  “And then what?”

  “You sell the airport and slurp down rum-runners on the beach in Sarasota like all the other people your age.”

  “I hate rum. I hate Florida. And I hate people my age.”

  “It was a thought, Dad.”

  “This is all I’ve got, son. Take this away and you might just as well push me out of an airplane.”

  “I’m just exploring options, Dad.”

  Glancing out the office window for a brief moment, John Lindy asked, “How’s Cathy doing?”

  “She’s good, Dad.”

  “Really? There wasn’t a lot of conviction behind that statement. And you didn’t look me in the eye, Hart. What’s going on?”

  “We’re having some difficulty at the moment.”

  “You screwed around on her again, didn’t you?”

  Hart let out a deep breath, opened his mouth to speak, but then just stared at an old photo on the wall.

  “You can’t keep doing that shit and expect her to stick around, Hart”

  Looking into his dad’s, brown eyes, hints of dark circles underneath the wrinkles, Hart said, “Mom didn’t set a good example, I guess. I hated what she did to you.”

  “So you’re going to punish Cathy for your mom’s infidelity?”

  “I guess not,” Hart said with an unconvincing degree of resignation.

  “Do you think your mom did what she did in a vacuum?”

  “No, but how am I going to be certain that any woman remains committed to me?”

  “Hart, I wasn’t committed to your mother.” John Lindy spread his arms and waved them around the room. “I was committed to this airport.”

  “And that warranted Mom’s drinking?”

  “Of course not, but that was one of her coping mechanisms. And she had a disease. Only now is she finally getting help for it. I knew she had issues with alcohol before you were born, son.”

  “Is that the reason I was an only child?”

  “Partially.”

  John Lindy rubbed his eyes, glanced out the window for a moment, locked eyes with Hart, and said, “You’re not an only child.”

  Stunned, attempting to process his father’s words, Hart’s jaw grew slack. He said nothing for a few long seconds and then asked, “What do you mean, Dad?”

  “Do you think your Dad was without his own faults?” Hart said nothing. John Lindy continued. “It became a vicious circle. I wasn’t there for your mother. She turned to alcohol and other men. And then she wasn’t there for me. Out of the blue, a woman came into my life when things were really miserable. It just happened. And then it was over.”

  “Who was she, Dad?”

  “It’s not important.” John Lindy sighed. “But you have a half brother about fifteen years younger.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know, Hart. I gave her some money to survive, and that’s all she asked from me. I never heard from her again.”

  “When were you going to spring this on me? On your deathbed? Very cliché.” Hart’s voice began to take on a sharp and sarcastic tone. “Great. You have another son. I have a brother. No big deal.”

  “I guess I was trying to protect you, son. It was probably the wrong thing to do. But as the years passed, it got harder to tell you and easier to keep it quiet. After I divorced your mother, it didn’t seem to matter.”

  Hart quietly shook his head and stared out the window at the activity still occurring at the far end of the runway. The red fire truck had been repositioned off the grass and onto a portion of the taxiway. The paramedics were escorting the boyfriend and girlfriend into the back of their vehicle. A New Yo
rk State Patrol car had joined the entourage.

  Closing his eyes for a moment, Hart reviewed the last two days. The Bermuda accident investigation. Pilot sabotage. Union involvement. Murder. A relationship on the rocks. His house up in smoke. His dad’s health. The airport. And a half brother.

  It just couldn’t get any better…

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Sunday

  18:40 EDT

  The two pilots union volunteers who had arrived at the Townsend home were pleasant enough, but their uniform attire was too soon a reminder that Ashley and Kim would never again see their dad trudge through the door after a trip with his tie loosened around his neck, the three-stripe jacket hung over an arm, and a hand clutching the worn handle of a battered, black leather flight bag.

  Perhaps the visual reminder of their dad as an airline pilot was why the girls gravitated more toward his boss from the flight office. Captain Moretti had a sincere smile, his manner inviting without awkwardness. The chief pilot was wearing khakis and a blazer with an open-collar shirt. He had shown up at their house with four boxes of pizzas. His brief speech to all three of them was simple and to the point, completely void of phony pretentions.

  Their mom sat with the union pilots at the kitchen table. The conversation was solemn and stiff. The sisters had slipped away, feeling uncomfortable with the atmosphere. Even the friends and neighbors who had filtered through the house became bothersome. Although well intended, most of them struggled to find the appropriate words.

  With a whispered exchange, Kim and Ashley had mutually decided it was best to reveal their discovery to Captain Moretti. For whatever reason, he just seemed trustworthy in the eyes of two teenage girls. They had ushered him into their dad’s office, offering him a seat behind the desk.

  Kim said, “I found a note from Dad in the console of my VW Bug. The note contained a group of weird letters. My sister figured out the letters were a website password. The password actually spelled out our first names backwards.”