Tail of the Storm

by Alan Cockrell

  I didn't think too much of the news of his illness but was a bit curious. He was not a sickly sort of person. But as the months went by, Dave didn't go back to work. He reassured me. "I'm doing well financially. I've saved quite a bit of money and my Loss of License Insurance is paying off. I'm in no hurry to go back to that rat race. The doc wants me to just take it easy for a while." Something was terribly wrong.

  Then there was another stay in the hospital with a collapsed lung. I decided to go see him after he got out. But on my way up to Birmingham I stopped in Tuscaloosa and invited a friend to go along for the flight. I would introduce him to Dave, and the three of us would have lunch. When I saw Dave I regretted bringing the friend. He had lost weight. Curiously, his hair appeared to have grown out. I could see through his facade that he was ill. And with the stranger present he would be reluctant to talk candidly about his condition.

  Yet there in that last visit with him, he remained the cocky overflowing DeRamus that he had always been: still poking fun at the military establishment; still talking of vast dreams; still adamant that he, Gene, and I would somehow come up with $100,000 each and buy Glassair IIIs to make a formation aerobatic air show team. I wanted to believe it. It would have been the ultimate of dreams come true.

  He began to grow tomatoes, which was totally out of character for him, but it was a newfound joy, he proclaimed. And the writing continued feverishly. But even as his mother moved in to care for him, he sank lower, and finally, with another collapsed lung and spinal meningitis he entered the intensive care unit, never to leave. Eventually, the beeps and squiggly lines on the oscilloscopes went steady and the sun finally went down on Dave's dreams.

  In the end it wasn't a mid-air collision, an enemy missile, a failed engine, or a test flight gone bad that got him, as he had prophesied. It was AIDS. I knew it had to be. Gene and I compared notes. We had had the same suppositions all along. I wondered if he might have told me that last time we were togetherthe day we met for lunchhad the stranger not been there.

  His manuscript, "Red Star Express," was good. I could clearly see him in his characters. But it fell victim to the collapse of communism and went unpublished. He would have been a fine author.

  But my most vivid memory of Dave was the way he was always asking those tough questions about lifethe ones that most people stuff into the closets of their souls, not willing to confront. He had a quest for the Truth, with a capital T, as he expressed it. Yet he knew the Truth.

  I slip the microspeakers of my Walkman under my headset and listen to some Moody Blues. Dave loved to listen to their distinct harmonics and exuberant lyrics while he flew his Yankee.

  "MAC Victor 6522, Jeddah, contact Cairo now, on frequency 134.6."

  Their music seemed intended for fliers.

  I know he's out there somewheresomewhere in the sunset.

  "MAC Victor 6522, Jeddah Control, I say again, I say again, call Cairo on 134.6, do you read? Over!"

  I really miss him.

  Eight.

  The Probable Cause

  I'm plowing through the tail of the Storm, seated across the cockpit from the only black man I've ever come to know well. He's talking of his upbringing in the poverty-infested Delta. Its not a delta in the geologic sense but is actually a large triangular-shaped region characterized by the low, flat, fertile floodplains of the lower Mississippi River. Hope is a sparse commodity for a black kid growing up in the Delta. Where once picking cotton was the only viable way of life, now aspirations are focused on the catfish processing plants, where the wages are often bad. But at least it's out of the sun, and it's steady work, as long as the city dwellers in Jackson, Memphis, and New Orleans don't lose their taste for the ugly, bewhiskered, pond-raised but damned succulent little devils.

  Brady Tonth set his sights higher than the fish factories. He was descended from a tarnished history of bondage and hate-mongering that most prudent Mississippians find at least disconcerting, if not repulsive. But fueled by a great resolve to succeed, Brady emerged from the poverty trap, earned an education, the silver wings of an Air Force pilot, and later the four stripes of an airline captain. The six-figure salary was a nice fringe benefit.

  Those first months were terribly apprehensive and uncertain. He was the Mississippi Air Guard's first black pilot. He met with no rudeness or overt expressions of prejudice, but the attitudes were there; he could feel them. He occasionally overheard racial jokes and detected subtle condescension. Still, he avoided confrontation and instead revealed his exuberant personality. Yet he didn't know for sure whether he was making any progress bucking the headwind of prejudice, especially among certain of the enlisted contingent who often flirted with the boundaries of insubordination in their relationship with him. But one night at the all-ranks club he found out.

  The entire squadron was at the Gulfport Training Center for our drill weekend. A lavish boiled shrimp feed had just concluded, and many of the crewdogs migrated into the club and began to mingle with the local crowd. The big room was crowded and loud with country music. Although he was one of the few men of color there, he was enjoying himself immenselyso much so that he invited a local white girl to dance while her male escorts were away I had remained on the patio with the more sedate of my squadron-mates, but I heard the skirmish when it began.

  The two men, both burly and intimidating, had returned and had found the girl on the dance floor with the festive Brady. The spectacle must have affronted whatever puny values they harbored, for they wasted no time in clearing the dance floor, then commenced to teach Brady a lesson or two. Brady thought that maybe he had overstepped and now was about to pay dearly. But no sooner had the brutes seized him than Robert Evans and Mad Dog Mashaw, our two scrappiest loadmasters, dove into the fray, followed quickly by a host of crewdogs, driving the thugs away Then Brady knew that he was indeed among friends. They might be yet a little crude and a bit insensitive, but he belonged. It meant much to him.

  Still, he never forgot those of his brothers and sisters who remained trapped in despair. He tells me how they need to know that they can break out, as he did, that all they need is encouragement and a good role model. He tells me about his efforts to instill hope in the forlorn faces of the black youth around Vicksburg. He talks to them on the street corners and addresses them in schools and churches. He has a splendid gift of gab; he smoothly engages total strangers in conversation as if he'd known them all his life. He tickles me the way he talks of serious subjects of the heart and head and then, deciding the conversation has become too weighty, without pause switches to unmitigated bullshit.

  We have had many such freewheeling discussionsfrom brain to bullin the cockpit during the long cruises and in the quarters and eateries of a half-dozen air bases. I had tried to explain the paradoxical pride I felt for my southern heritage. I told him about my great-grandfather, who had had little or no formal education but had nevertheless expressed himself well with the pen and had written of the pride for the "cause" for which he had fought the Yankees. Yet he was only a dirt farmerdidn't own anyone. There must have been more to the Cause than I can account for.

  I wanted Brady to understand what I couldn't comprehend myself, how I could identify so closely with such a long lost thing. The harder I reasoned, the more disdainful the Cause became, yet the more I realized that I belong to it. It must be that the Cause with which I identify bears little resemblance to that which motivated so many in 1861. Or maybe, even in those troubled times, the Cause had many and varied meanings.

  I don't know, maybe the Cause is simply that which drives me to express my threatened individuality, to preserve and protect my freedom, to persevere in the face of overwhelming odds, like that inspirational feeling a Southerner has when he or she is the underdog. Maybe we just like being underdogs. When I see that impassioned flag with its crossed bars and blue stars, I don't see hatred and bigotry, though I see them in the faces of the wretched people who use the flag to justify them. Rather, I see courage and honor.
I see it the way my great-granddaddy saw it.

  Brady accepted and tried to understand my feelings. But he explained, with deep sincerity and logic with which I had to agree, the feelings of his culture. We didn't agree on everything, but we were able to talk about such things without confrontation, with open mindsa characteristic, I believe of maturity, the Christian values to which we both subscribed, and of true friendship.

  Brady has a way of characterizing bigotry with humor. He related a story from his days in UPT. Nearing graduation he was scheduled for the big event, the T-38 solo out and back. He had about thirty hours' solo time the day his instructor released him to fly the "White Rocket" alone to Craig Air Force Base in Selma, Alabama.

  Brady was a bit unnerved about flying to Selma. The city had been in the national spotlight because of great racial turmoil and violence. The very word "Selma" had come to symbolize hatred and struggle.

  But Brady had no time for that. His paramount priority, like that of all UPT students, was to get through the program and graduate. The challenge was tremendous; the washout rate was high. But he was relieved that his itinerary was to refuel expeditiously and return to Columbus.

  The flight was uneventful. Brady had hit his checkpoints and set the '38 down on one of Craig's long runways. He taxied to the transient parking ramp and shut down the engines. Then, looking down, he saw that the service personnel were civilians, not the Air Force airmen he expected. No doubt they were citizens of Selma. And they were white. As he unhooked his oxygen mask and raised his sun visor, the men stopped and looked up at him incredulously, mouths agape. Brady knew what they were thinking. "That niggah done stole that T-38!" he guffawed.

  I told Brady about the first black pilot I had ever met. I too was a student in UPT learning to fly T-37. Although our instructors, clad in their helmets, masks, visors, and hoses, often appeared to us as beasts, they were very much human. In fact most of them were only a year or two older than I. Many of them were "first assignment" instructors, meaning they had never flown anything but trainers. Because of a good UPT performancebut one maybe not quite good enough to get a fighter jobthey had been retained to teach their newly acquired jet flying skills.

  For the most part I didn't care for these guys because I sensed that they were frustrated with their jobs. They really wanted to get out and "fly the line" like a real pilot. Their attitude often resulted in a strained relationship with their students. UPT was challenging enough without your having to put up with a guy who was trying to prove that you can't walk and chew gum simultaneously, let alone fly a jet. Such was my attitude when Captain Brown came.

  A slight hush fell across the training room when he walked in. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a bushy hairstyle that must have pushed the haircut regulations to the most liberal of interpretations. His eyes were the color of coal tar, and he carried his big frame as if he were on the backside of some great achievement. He smiled diplomatically but yet at the same time looked slightly annoyed; he was here among us, casting an imposing presence, but was subconsciously elsewhere. And he was intensely black.

  This was a time of widespread racial turmoil and upheaval. Black people in any prominent position in society were exceptional, and black pilots were almost unheard of. The potential for confrontation was clear. Captain Brown was obviously the new instructor we'd been told to expect. The changing of instructors was a common practice, and we never knew when we would be assigned another one without explanation. I just hoped I would not be the person to find out what this bold new pioneer of his race wanted to prove. I wasn't prejudiced. Naa, not me. I had always regarded black folks as my Dad had taught me: they were human beings and deserved respect. But there lingered a reservation back in the dry bays of my mind that maybe black people were better adapted to things other than flying.

  My pulse began to race with anxiety. I was from Alabama, for cryin' out loud. My governor, George Wallace, was running for president on a states' rights platform, which everyone knew was a smoke screen for segregation. In those days if you mentioned Alabama, people thought of a smoldering children's Sunday school room and bloodstains on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. Both were the work of a few pitiful zealots, but the images were devastating. And here I was caught in between. Maybe I could lie to him about where I was from, but I could never cover my accent.

  Presently Captain Brown and the flight commander emerged from an adjoining office into the big room. The flight commander pointed at me, and Captain Brown came to my table.

  Why me, Lord?

  He extended his hand, smiled warmly, then sat down and with a calm, completely reassuring voice began to melt my silly concerns away. I saw immediately that this man was a far cry from those first-assignment instructors. He was a seasoned combat veteran fighter pilot of a hundred missions over North Viet Nam. He had flown Phantoms, had seen friends perish in fiery crashes, and had watched some men parachute into the hands of a tortuous and vengeful enemy. His countenance was that of a man who had glimpsed Hell and knew now what was important in life and what wasn't. Yes, I could sense it. Here was a man who stood far above petty prejudice and vindictiveness.

  He captured my respect at once. He began to cultivate a pilot-to-pilot relationship with me, not the instructor-to-dumbshit type that prevailed at the other tables. He stressed that I was going to be the beneficiary of his greater knowledge and experience. It was as simple as that. I had logged about fifty hours in the Tweet, including a few solo flights, but that first flight with Captain Brown was to be my first lesson in aerobatics. Normally the lesson would make students apprehensive, as aerobatic training was a totally new experience. But as we took our chutes and helmets, and walked out to the jet, I marveled over how relaxed and unpressured I felt.

  He didn't say much while I started the little jet up and flew it toward our assigned airspace over the town of Pond Creek. Then, with his coaching, we put the Tweet through thrilling sequences of loops, rolls, immelmanns, split S's, cloverleafs, and my favorite cuban eights, high over the plains of northwest Oklahoma. The freshly harvested wheat fields, neatly dissected by straight roads and fence lines, rolled lazily across the top of our canopy, rushed straight at our nose, and fell away as quickly behind our tail. Cumulus-studded blue sky and yellow field spiraled and oscillated in a swirling kaleidoscope of color, as we rolled and looped like a blissful young dolphin in a boundless ocean. We were pilgrims, fresh out of bondage, turned loose in a promised land, where the uncompromising gods of airspeed, altitude, and power jealously demanded our devotion. Yet sin we did, forsaking the margins of our concentration to self-indulgence and, awash in a resplendent freedom, drank of the joy and laughed wildly within our souls.

  Years later I would stand in some of those same fields down below, beside my future father-in-law, and watch those same Tweety jets waltz high overhead, revealed only by an occasional reflection of sun on canopy, their engines barely heard above the prairie winds. And I would remember Captain Brown's calm, patient, and clear-headed instructions as he chatted into the mask microphone as if he were teaching me to oil paint.

  "OK, a little more back pressure. Thaaat's it. Now lay your head back against the headrest and look as far back as you can. Just wait. Here comes the horizon now. Pick out a section line and pull straight down through it. Can you believe they pay us to do this? Incredible. It ought to be the other way around. Now, when your nose passes through that green-roofed farmhouse, the one there beside the pond, unload and roll out. Great. Now, hold your dive angle. Watch your airspeed. Start the pull again at 250 knots. Thaaat's it."

  I glanced at Captain Brown a time or two, during his demonstrations, as if I could somehow see his face through all the trappings. The cockpit shadows retreated across his helmet as the jet rolled sunward, and all I could see was the reflection of myself in his visor. My image looked exactly like his. I knew that he was smiling, that he loved what we were doing. Yes, this man was different. Whatever he had, I wanted it.

  Th
at night in my room, as I watched the grim TV reports of racial strife and struggle, I reflected on the events of the day. We had both reluctantly returned to earth and to the realities of Newtonian physics. But while I was infused with new confidence and fresh inspiration, I realized that Captain Brown had indeed returned to bondage. And his shackles were far worse than mere chains. He was bound by attitudes of hatred, prejudice, and closed-mindedness. Then I knew why Captain Brown so passionately sought the freedom of flight. The jet doesn't care about the race of the man who merges with it to become one creature. The wind, the sun, the billowing clouds, and the vast blue skyscapes are color-blind guardiansthey cast away the shackles of all who fly into their courts with heavy hearts, seeking sweet release.

  I knew then that, although I had the fuel and spark built in me, Captain Brown engaged my starter and brought up the rpms. And I owed him for much more than just the gift of self-confidence. I was forever indebted to him for opening my eyes as well. I doubt he ever knew it, but he had unlocked some shackles of mine. From that point onward I constantly searched my thoughts and attitudes for telltale signs of subtle prejudice and prejudgment. And in doing so, I discovered the joy of relating to others as God intended. We are all his children. We are all siblings. Together we seek, and together we are given. Or forgiven.

  A few weeks later I was assigned another instructor and Captain Brown was gone as quickly as he had come. But the fire in me continued.

  Nine.

  Bernoulli Baptism

  This is a rare treat. The need for men and equipment to support the Alabama Air Guards deployment of their Phantoms to the Persian Gulf has brought me home. But it's only a quick stop.