Sojourners of the Sky

by Clayton Taylor

  “Grandpa, what…?” asked Jack, before he was cut off.

  “Awry means something wrong,” said Bill, knowing his grandson’s question before it was asked. If something looks wrong, yell as loud as you can.” Then, taking a moment to look each of his grandchildren in the eye, Bill asked, “So, does everyone understand what they’re supposed to do?” Lucy and Jack nodded.

  Except for an oil leak they’d discovered while replacing all of the hoses and belts on the engine, the airplane rebuild had gone smoothly. Considering how long the aging Cessna had sat unattended and in pieces in the back of the barn, Bill’s little gem was in remarkably good shape. Based on their progress, Bill figured they’d be ready to fly in less than a week.

  Bill Pratt was absolutely ecstatic about spending time getting to know his grandchildren and working together on a project they all loved, but he was also troubled. It had been a long time since he’d piloted an airplane, and even longer since he’d flown a single engine trainer. He would never say so aloud, but he silently fretted that his skills might be too rusty to handle the tiny two-seater if something went wrong. The last airplane he’d flown was a B747, and he knew from experience that flying a big Boeing is nothing like flying a trainer. Bill quieted his mind by telling himself repeatedly to make sure the winds were light for their first flight. He knew if the atmosphere was calm, his barely heavier-than-air Cessna would be much easier to control. Unlike the Boeing, which was putty in his hands regardless of the winds, a Cessna 150 would be all over the sky on a gusty day. If an anomaly were to pop up while he battled the turbulence, things could quickly escalate out of control.

  “OK, kids, I’m about to turn the key. Everybody stand by!” yelled Bill from inside the cockpit.

  Jack and Lucy looked on from a distance. Jack was all smiles, fidgeting like a young boy awaiting a treat. Lucy, on the other hand, was cautiously optimistic. She gripped the fire extinguisher, dearly hoping it would not be needed.

  Bill turned the key, but nothing happened. He looked around, wondering what he’d missed. He sighed and then frowned. He waited a minute and then tried again. This time the engine cranked over. It cranked and cranked and cranked, but refused to come to life. Bill moved the throttle in and out a few times, the equivalent of pumping the gas pedal in a car, and then tried again.

  The one hundred horsepower Continental engine instantly sprang to life, catching Bill a little off-guard. Since he’d set the parking brake, Bill didn’t have his feet planted firmly on the brakes. In addition, the long-retired pilot had left the throttle in the full forward position. All of a sudden, the engine RPM lunged for redline!

  The sudden noise startled the old man, and it took a few seconds for Bill to come up to speed. During those few seconds, the airplane lurched forward and then sped across the grass!

  Lucy knew instantly that something was amiss. She dropped the fire extinguisher and dove for the ground, moments before the wing sliced through the air where she had been standing.

  Jack, watching the whole thing with wide eyes, backed up a few feet and yelled as loud as he could, “Hit the brakes!”

  Bill couldn’t hear anything except for the screaming engine. His brain seemed stuck in the mud, and he momentarily panicked, wondering what to do next. It was only a matter of seconds though, before his many thousands of hours of experience told him what to do. He hit the brakes hard, but the pedals mushed to the floor. He looked up and saw only the side of his barn approaching much too fast. He tried the brakes again, and this time the left brake caught, but the right side mushed all the way to the floor.

  The sudden application of full braking on only the left side, forced the raging Cessna to pivot hard to the left. No longer was Bill seeing the side of his barn--the turn had him staring right into his grandson’s eyes! He looked up and saw fear in Jack’s face. He removed his foot from the left brake, but it was too little, too late.

  Jack, acting purely out of a sense for survival, turned and ran toward some trees. He ran as fast as he could. As he raced, time seemed to slow. Nearly out of breath, he reluctantly imagined that he was making no headway whatsoever. He could practically feel the Cessna nipping at his back. Making a split-second decision, he spun on his heels and sprinted with all his might in another direction. He fought the urge to look over his shoulder, but he shouldn’t have. With his back toward the action, he didn’t realize that his last turn put him on an even more direct collision course with the spinning propeller!

  Things were rapidly escalating out of control and Bill knew he had to do something else before it was too late. His mind then replayed the words of one of his instructors from somewhere in his distant past, Bill, do not hurry. Identify the problem; then act quickly and deliberately. The wisdom forced Bill to become like a robot, analyzing what had to be done and then doing it.

  Bill jammed the left rudder pedal to the floor, forcing the Cessna to veer away from his grandson. He then pulled the mixture control to cut-off, effectively starving the engine of fuel. The engine quickly sputtered into silence, but the airplane was still traveling at a good clip. The old captain then released the left brake pedal and told himself to hang on. He waited a second and then pushed both brake pedals at the same time while pulling the parking brake lever to full-on. He knew the toe brakes, located on top of the rudder pedals, worked independently of the parking brake. It worked. Seconds later, the airplane skidded violently to a stop. The excitement was over.

  Jack was at his grandfather’s side first. “Are you all right?” he shouted.

  “Yes, I’m OK,” said Bill. “How about you?”

  “Man, that was way cool!” exclaimed Jack.

  “I guess we know the engine works. Now all we need to do is fix the brakes,” observed Bill.

  Jack and Bill stared at each other for nearly a minute. Bill’s first instinct was to scream his head off, but he also wanted to beg for forgiveness. He did neither. Bill realized that as a young father he would have found a way to blame his children for his stupidity and then yell at them for being reckless. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake with his grandchildren. It was an opportunity to be a different man. He knew he’d screwed up, and figured that his grandkids knew too. No words were required, at least not yet.

  Jack waited for the angry words that never came. He was a kid. He knew adults always managed to find a way to blame someone else. When he saw his grandfather crack a smile, Jack knew inside, though he didn’t quite understand it all, that it was the beginning of something. Indeed, he was leaving boyhood behind, and embarking on the road to manhood. He’d been accepted by an adult as an equal.

  Lucy ran to her grandfather’s side, clutching the fire extinguisher that she’d discarded earlier. Her mind was clear and she would do whatever it took to make sure her family was safe. Once satisfied that everything was OK, she lashed out at them. She flung the extinguisher to the ground and exclaimed, “We are going to have to be more careful! Somebody could have been killed here!”

  Bill turned and looked at his granddaughter with surprise. “Yes, you’re right, dear. I take full responsibility. From now on, you are in charge of safety. It’s up to you to make sure Jack does as he’s told, and that I don’t do anything stupid.”

  “OK, that’s fine,” she said. “From now on, I’m the boss.” As she turned to look for any damage to the Cessna, she noticed John Tacker staring at them from his back porch. She could tell that he was not happy. “He’s back,” said Lucy, nodding her head in Tacker’s direction.

  Twelve

  “Lynn Helms was a knockout,” said John, resuming his conversation from earlier with Liesel. “She had all the right curves in all the right places, topped off with long, curly black hair. Her olive colored skin gave the appearance that she was permanently tanned. And most remarkable of all: she was almost as smart as me. When we were together on campus, most people wouldn’t even bother trying to join in on the conversation because our banter was usually too far above their heads.” He pa
used, then continued. “I finally managed to land a date with her, and I thought it went pretty well. I guess I didn’t realize she didn’t feel the same.

  Oddly enough, Bill Pratt, my best friend at the time, and I were born in the same month and year: October 1932. We lived on the same street and played on all the same teams, though Bill was always much lower on the team roster than I. He never said it in words, but I knew he lusted after Lynn every bit as much as I did. I’m sure he knew that she was much too far out of his league so he never even bothered asking her out. I knew he was jealous, but he never complained. When I went off to Penn State University, Lynn and I wrote nearly every day. But when I came home for Christmas break after my first semester, I sensed there was a distance between us.

  Bill Pratt attended a local college and we wrote every few weeks or so. I still considered him my best friend. I had no knowledge that Bill and my best girl had started dating. Friends told me later that it wasn’t serious at first. I mean, more often than not they would simply bump into each other at a friend’s party or at Fuzzy’s malt shop on Spruce Street in downtown Scranton. I was told they each considered the other to be nothing more than a good friend.

  In my sophomore year in the fall of 1952, I was living in State College, Pennsylvania. I don’t know, but living there made me feel like I was out of my element. I didn’t know anyone and nearly everything about the small town seemed strange. I guess I’d become a fish out of water.

  I began to notice that with each passing month, letters from home became fewer and fewer. I assumed Lynn was busy so I didn’t let it bother me. Then one day a letter arrived from Lynn announcing that she and Bill were going steady. The news was devastating. I simply could not believe that my pal since childhood had the nerve to steal my girl away. I was furious. I planned to beat Bill to a pulp the next time I saw him. But over time, I slowly came to realize that my relationship with Lynn had always been one-sided. I realized that Lynn’s letters never really conveyed anything other than friendship. Eventually, I forgave Lynn, but I could never allow myself to absolve Bill of his transgression.

  I tossed Bill’s unopened letters away, and decided that it would be best if I avoided him altogether. Looking back, I’d have to say that this was the beginning of my downfall. I couldn’t concentrate, and my grades took a nose dive. It didn’t take long before I was on academic probation. A few weeks later, the coach was forced to boot me off the football team. That’s when I realized that the perfect life I’d been leading was over. I was never again to be the envy of everyone in town. I was forced to watch as my future evaporated away, drifting off with the frigid Pennsylvania winter wind.

  It all became crystal clear: my best years were behind me. What else could I think? It’s an old story, and I know I’m not the only one this sort of thing has happened to. But unfortunately for me, it became my story. It was a difficult truth to swallow. So, with a war raging in Korea, and with nothing to lose, I quit college and enlisted in the Air Force. I needed an escape.

  I didn’t know it then, but my ex-friend Bill Pratt, who was probably doing much better in school than I, was falling ever more deeply in love with Lynn. But for some reason, he too left college and enlisted in the Marines. I heard he was color blind or something and got rejected for pilot training. They shipped him off to Korea soon afterwards. My path, however, turned out to be quite different than Bill’s.

  Unfortunately for me, I drew the short straw when it came to flight instructors. I should have seen it as an omen. For initial training, I was assigned a man who considered it his sworn duty to wash out as many young airmen as possible. If someone proved to be too competent to fail, he made their lives hell.

  Red-haired and with a face full of freckles, the thin yet muscular Bucky Stemphoski very much enjoyed his position of power. He’d grown up in an orphanage and subconsciously took out all of his frustrations on his students.

  Bucky was only vaguely aware that the other instructors referred to him as “Slab” behind his back. It was a name they believed aptly described the angry pilot because he was born with a large flat spot on the top of his head. They’d often rib Bucky that he would only pass a student if they could land an airplane on the back of his skull and then get it to stop before it reached his bushy eyebrows.

  As fate would have it, I got assigned to fly with Bucky. I can only guess, but I imagine he was going through a particularly rough time when I reported for duty. From the first day, Bucky told me that I had no chance of making it through. The often irritated instructor repeatedly did things during training that were not part of the lesson plan, meant solely to scare the wits out of me.

  One time, while practicing a nighttime cross country flight, Bucky turned the fuel valve off. The engine sputtered and quit. Surrounded by darkness, I was unsure of what to do first. The ten second delay sent Bucky off into a tirade, screaming nonstop until I finally figured out the problem. What the wayward instructor failed to realize was that his frightful antics actually forced me to become a better pilot.

  Flying with a half-crazed instructor is where I learned how to survive in an unforgiving environment. I discovered how to trust my gut and not over-think a situation. My piloting skills were developed there. Skills that I knew might one day save lives,” said John.

  “Like tonight, for example,” observed Liesel.

  John didn’t reply, he simply smiled and looked deeply into Liesel’s eyes.

  “Well, I somehow managed to make it through flight training, but Bucky’s written reports of my performance kept me stateside and out of the action. To make matters worse, I was assigned to non-flying jobs at various bases around the country. I was being penalized for nothing. I had to sit and read about my classmates who went on to action and glory. My mates got to fly the newest fighters through Mig Alley, while I begged, borrowed and stole flight time in whatever leftover World War II airplane was sitting around. I knew the airlines wouldn’t hire a pilot who didn’t have a bunch of flight hours, and with my sights set on Pan Am, I had to work much harder than most.”

  He paused briefly. “Liesel, for some reason the world has been conspiring against me, and there is nothing I can do about it.”

  “I think it’s strange that you and Charles never talk about Bill and your childhood,” said Liesel.

  “Like I said, I think he knows I’m sensitive about it,” said John.

  “What’s Bill doing now?” asked Liesel.

  “As far as I know, he got some flight training after the war and flies for Northwest Orient now. I’m sure one of his old Marine buddies, and probably even his dad, put in good recommendations for him. I’ll bet all he had to do was walk through the front door.”

  “From what I’ve heard, John, no one simply walks through the door to an airline job,” said Liesel.

  “Yeah, maybe. But some definitely have an easier time than others.”

  “I think it may just seem that way. Everyone has their own story to tell, John.”

  “What about you? What’s your story?” asked John.

  Liesel told John her life story. She’d grown up in a small town south of Heidelberg, Germany with an American father and German mother. Her father was one of the Army officers put in charge of rebuilding their town after World War II ended. He fell in love with Liesel’s mom and her country. They married and made their life there.

  John had wondered why Liesel spoke impeccable English, with only a slight hint of a German accent. The more she talked, the more John forgot about everything else in his life. He loved watching her lips move as she spoke and how her blond hair occasionally brushed across her face. He smiled when she pronounced certain words, finding it both sexy and endearing.

  Liesel felt much the same way about John, which is why she decided to tell him almost everything.

  “I usually keep to myself on layovers, but I think I should tell you right now that Charles and I had a very brief fling,” said Liesel.

  “You and Charles? Really? Charles is ma
rried. I’ve known his wife for most of my life,” said John, clearly taken aback.

  “John, don’t be naive. You know how it is on layovers sometimes. You’re far from home and lonely, especially over the holidays.”

  “Yeah, but Charles? That’s hard to believe,” said John, still trying to process such an incredible revelation.

  “It didn’t last long and we were never intimate,” she said. It was a lie, of course. Liesel had in fact been intimate with Charles on two separate occasions, but judging by the way John took the initial news, she doubted he would understand. She sometimes forgot that Americans tended to be more prudish than the Europeans. She’d long considered that attitude a perfect example of American hypocrisy: Claiming a holier-than-thou attitude publicly, while drinking and carousing behind closed doors.

  “Oh, well that’s different,” said John in a noticeably relieved tone.

  Liesel wanted to tell John more, but knew better than to go any further. She liked him and wanted to get to know him better. In the back of her mind, she had a notion that he was the one. Liesel knew that any concerns she had about her brief affair with Charles were better left unsaid.

  The two talked for most of John’s one hour break, with John falling deeper in love with each passing minute. Something in the back of his mind kept telling him to probe a little bit further into Charles’s and Liesel’s past, but each time it came up, his conscious mind brushed it aside.

  “I suppose it’s almost time to go back up front, Liesel. Wish me luck,” said John.

  “You’ll be fine, John. Don’t worry,” said Liesel.

  There was an awkward moment that Liesel fixed when she leaned over and kissed John on the lips. It was a long and passionate kiss that neither wanted to end. On some level, they each knew the kiss sealed the beginning of a long and loving relationship.

  John looked into Liesel’s eyes and said, “That was wonderful.”

  “Yes, it was,” she replied, while holding her right hand over her heart.